← The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
How the AfroTech Community Is Really Using AI (Survey Results Inside)
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Morgan
Hey everybody, it's Morgan. I am back for another episode of the Journey podcast and today we're talking about all AI and the realities of how our community is using it. So I just got off of Blavity Fest, which was so fun in Atlanta. We had thousands of people join us for a weekend of basically like imagine a barbecue meets a conference. Like so much fun outside. We had Kirk Franklin, two chains and incredible speakers. And one of the things that kept coming up of course was aac. And I thought it would be helpful for people to hear the data that we have at Afrotech on how our community is using it. Feels like there's a misconception of like, oh, people are just using ChatGPT and they're not really incorporating it into their life. And so we actually did a survey a few weeks ago. I think over a thousand people took it, which is, you know, enough for a significant kind of data analysis. But it's really important information because there's a misconception that we don't use AI and that that's actually false. What our data shows is that we're using AI quite a bit. Our usage of AI perhaps isn't something that's getting us to the next level. But I want to talk to you about the results that we did find. So I've got my notes in front of me. So we asked really simple question, how are you using AI? How are you using it in your workplace? How are you using it in your creativity? And then also of course, what are the things that you want to know so that you can get to the next level with your automation, with how are you using it, how you're protecting yourself. We do these types of surveys often at Afro Tech because it helps us inform the programming and the level of depth of programing that we do. But I thought I would actually share it with you guys this time around. Also shout out to everybody who responded, we appreciate you. Okay, so key insights, let's talk numbers. First, 93% of you said you're familiar with AI tools, which is really good because in fact 61% of you said that you use it every single day. And another 32% said you use it three to four times a week, which is still really strong. So it's not just for like the tech bros or the engineers. The type of person that took this survey was everyone from side hustlers to career professionals to entrepreneurs, founders, VCs. Everyone that you would expect in the Afrotech ecosystem was represented and also every level we had recent college grads we had all the way up to senior executives also take this. So that's really helpful. The most popular tool, no surprise, is ChatGPT with 96% adoption within the Afro tech community. That's pretty good. Like that's impressive. Jitfi came in very close at 63% shout out to Google and Gemini and then Microsoft copilot was 51%. You're using these tools for research, writing, emails and brainstorming. But what's really important is that you're not using these tools necessarily just for the sake of tech. You're using it to get your work done and to boost productivity. I mean that was the number one use, was like it just helps you move faster with your work day. Now, in terms of what you want to learn, automation was the number one thing. I think we're all aware of AI agents that vaguely. But it seems like there's a disconnect between using it to answer questions or as like a thought partner to actually incorporating AI into your workflows, which is really, really important skill. Basically, how do you take and integrate multiple AI tools in a way that's going to help you save time in your work and actually just eliminate some of the manual labor that we're all doing every single day. What else was interesting in here? Oh, one of the things that I thought was the most interesting and I think it kind of debunks this myth that creatives don't use AI or like hesitant to AI to use AI. AI users that were the heaviest were actually creatives and they're using it for image generation, they're using it for automation of editing or things like captions on videos, things like this. And the question that most people had was I don't know which tool to use when. Like, I don't know if I'm using the right tool for this use case. And I think that's how we all feel like this fear of. I think that there's probably something else that's better than what I'm doing, but I don't actually know how to parse this information. I don't know who to follow, what to follow to actually find the right tool stack to help me with my unique workflow. And then my founders of course did a great job too. So one of the things that was my takeaway as we're thinking about programming for Afro Tech this year, it's not an AI101. That was really last year's thing was like, what is AI and how should you use it? It's Deeper than that, you're going to see us do a lot more programming that's actually like, hey, like how to use advanced figma features, you know, how to actually automate your canva usage. People really want to know, Basically like level 2, level 3 of these tools because we know that there's automations there, we're just not sure how to plug them up. So here are some things that we've been thinking about data privacy compliance. I think that there's some hesitancy on ownership of intellectual property when you're using these tools, especially if you're generating products or apps using Vibe coding. Five coding is such. This is an aside, you guys, but five coding. That phrase annoys me. Like can we come up with a different phrase? It's kind of like when everybody was starting startups and they're like the lean methodology, the lean startup model. Shout out to Eric Rees and it's like, okay, cool. Could it just be like a startup that doesn't overspin, you know? So perhaps somebody could suggest another term besides Vibe coding. If you're not familiar with Vibe coding mean vive coding means when you use an AI tool that basically helps you build a product or an app, website, a landing page without you actually having to be able to code. So in the same way that in ChatGPT you can like type something like analyze these financials and come out with this output and let me know your recommendation. You're not actually writing the Excel, you know, formulas for ChatGPT to do, it's just doing them. It's the same thing with Vibe coding. So you're like, make me a website with this color scheme and this hex code and these fonts and solving these problems and here's them copying this bags and have it solve this, you know, unique set for this user and it like starts to build that site for you and you can actually use it. I think that's the key thing is it's taking it to another level. It's not just like a high fidelity wireframe. You actually can use that product for yourself or you can sell it and have other customers and clients on that product. So really what people want to know is a how I use AI case study. Like and I think that's something that I'll probably try to incorporate more here on the podcast, which is showing people examples. So let me just give you a couple that I showed our Work Smart community these last last month. So every month I do a live coaching call. I call an all hand for anyone who wants to Join and we talk about different things, what's on their mind, what's happening in the market. But then I also share with them kind of the tools and things that I've been using. If you know me, you know I'm a very basic gardener. In other words, I'm bad at gardening, but I enjoy it. So I don't take it too seriously. But I do spend some time on it. Last year I planted a bunch of perennials and our gardener, who we worked with to help me like get the whole thing set up, but planted a bunch of perennials. And then of course this year a lot of them came back, but I, I couldn't remember what we planted. It's not like I was one of those organized people who, you know, had a beautiful chart and organized all the information before we planted it. I was just like, that looks cute. Go ahead and plan a girl. Okay. So some plants came back and I was like, what is that? What is this going to look like? So I told ChatGPT, I took a picture of it, I uploaded a ChatGPT and I said, hey, I live in Nashville. I planted this plant last year to perennial, like, what is this? And it was just, you know, maybe like five to 10 leaves. And it just sprouted. And it told me exactly what it was, how to care for it, but it didn't have an image of the, what the flower was going to be. So I said, okay, thanks Chat. Can you make an image of what this flower is going to be? And it added in context in my own backyard what that full plant is going to look like in full bloom and when it's going to bloom later this year. How cool is that? So you can use ChatGPT for not just, of course, your day to day life, but also just say answer simple questions that you have. I have some other vines that are growing and had thought that I sprinkled vines that flower, but they haven't flowered yet. So I kind of was like, what's going on? Because these vines are super big. And I took a picture and I sent it to Chat. And Chat said, it's a cucumber plant, girl. I couldn't. I don't remember planting cucumber seed. I do not remember. I do not recall them. However, I believe Chat more than I believe my memory. So we will see if these turn into cucumbers on the side of my lovely office. So these are some of the ways that I use Chat. My dad and I were having an argument at dinner last night. He's very Much long term stock guy. Like, he is a person who taught me about trading stocks. And you guys know I've been trading stocks since I was 13 years old. But he always told me and taught me the kind of buy and folded methodology where, you know, you just reinvest your dividends and you just keep putting money in, especially when the market's down. And that served me really well. But then I met Terry from trade and travel Terry and investor Terry. And she taught me basically, you know, how to arbitrage the market a little bit better with day trading. Now I don't day trade because I don't have the time and I'm certainly, I don't have the attention to detail that it requires. But I did give me a new framework for thinking about, hey, you can have this really great stock or set of five stocks that you love, that you think are fundamental stocks. And you can when there's a dip, buy and then when they jump up, sell and kind of keep trading that one stock. And I had it. I didn't really fully know how to do that. So she taught me about, you know, candlesticks and everything. And it was really helpful for me. And I've made a lot of money in the last nine months because the market's been so volatile with that approach and blending the approaches that I. And anyways, I was talking to my dad about this and we were kind of arguing in a very philosophical way. My dad's a professor, so it's a very professor dad argument. And he was like, no, long term stocks over a long period of time, high quality stocks with good CEOs, the rate of return is going to be better. And I kind of was like, you know, I think that I need a more diversified approach. Like, I think it's time that I get into real estate and multifamily properties and like owning more doors. And he was just like, no, because of the maintenance. And you know, then you have the headache of people, you know, renting and you might have vacancies in your properties. And he was like, no, like the math, I promise you, doesn't add up. So he pulled up this chart that was in some article, CNBC or something that showed like the s and P500 over 10 years versus the value of a house in 10 years. And I looked at it and I was like, that's fine, maybe for a single property that you own, but not necessarily for a multifamily property that will also appreciate and cash flow. So he sent me this long chat to be teaching and I said I copied his chat to be T output and I put in my own and I said reinvest the cash flow during that same ten year time period. Also assume it's not your primary residence. Assume that it's a multifamily property and that you do have a management company for managing this unit. And assume that the like once or twice a year there's some sort of like cost of maintenance that you have to manage. And surprise surprise, I was right. Scott said, let me, let me pull up with chest because I'm petty. He hasn't responded to this by the way. You guys could have Mike. I know he didn't like that answer. He said this is what Chad said. Chad said even after including property management's fees and applying the full tax burden, the multi investment the multifamily investment yields an additional $480,000 more than the S&P 500 index strategy over 10 years. Here's how four for a multifamily you get depreciation shield annual annually reduces taxes taxable income by about 30 to $40,000, which lowers your tax liability even more. With an aggressive rental income assumption, your management fee in Nashville at about 5% gives you a higher yield even after vacancies and fees. And cash yield utility annual after tax cash flow ranges from about $46,000 but $72,000 in year 10. And this liquidity buffer hedges behavioral risk including any market drawdown. And then we kind of use these these kind of philosophies as a family for kind of how we operate. So it also checked it against our like family philosophy which was like per the psychology of money, multifamily cash flow encourages patience and mitigates the panic sell reflex seen in equity market strain volatility from the Algebra of wealth this is another book the liquidity of family properties functions as a constraint which allows you to preserve wealth and Buffett Buffett cautions that real estate demands local knowledge and competitive advantage. But given Nassau's high occupancy growing rent market, these conditions are more often met. In this methodology. Vogel and Kramer also advocate for low friction costs favoring index funds. However, the post depreciation depreciation tax advantage of real estate, if managed professionally, could justify its complexity for investors with sufficient capital and sufficient risk tolerance. In conclusion, shout out to chat Chipotle for backing your girl up. In conclusion, under the defined assumptions, a national for Emily property, even with a professional management fee and even with the tax treatment, outperforms the S&P 500 index investment over 10 years in both net return and in behavioral resilience. So this is the way you can use ChatGPT with your family. Now, do I think my dad's going to go half on me, with me on this multifamily? Absolutely not. But him and I are dealing with different risk followers, right? Like, he's in his 60s. He's not a retire. I'm not. So I have a higher risk tolerance. So anyways, you can use ChatGPT as your financial advisor. You just got to know how to ask the right questions, right? Like, there's a way that you set up that question where you're not gaining the right information because you're not building in all the assumptions. So you got to give it all the facts. You got to say, this is where I live. I'm going to invest those returns. I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. Like, you've got to give it as much information as possible. And I think that's my number one piece of feedback. Even looking through the AI survey that we did for AfroText, like, it's important for you to understand how to prompt and use these tools. Just using the generic baseline of a tool like ChatGPT is like using a generic, like, search thing in Google. If you're just like, Google, like, what's going on in New York today that's just so generic? Like, you gotta actually tell it exactly what you want to know and then it'll give it back to you. So I do think that, like, for users of AI, my challenge to you, which now you're PEM hust, the day to day of chatGPT is like, try to build your own custom GPT. Try to train your GPT on how you like to communicate and try to get better at prompting. Look up YouTube videos, look up podcasts, on how to do props. Even if you look on Reddit, I look on Reddit a lot. And Reddit will write out, like, different threads and Reddit will write out an entire prompt for you to copy and paste to solve whatever problem you're solving. And then you can take that and make it a D E T so you don't have to try to remember those prompts over time. All right, y' all, I am now late for a meeting, so thank you for joining today's episode and make sure you like and subscribe to the YouTube channel. Talk to you later. Bye.