And we are back recording and back streaming again. We are moving again and our bodies are alive, and I apologize to all that we're watching before. We'll edit that out when we release this. But here's just the fun of live video Brian? But we're back. Continuing on 70 percentile of Canadians are using ai.
Yes. And in fact, it certainly. It feels like we've passed a tipping point there. If that number of Canadians are using it, among the Canadians who are using tools like chat, G P T, yeah. Something like 74% of them are entering in sensitive information on top of that. So I would say that, we seem to be past even, the web 2.0 revolution in terms of people moving to the cloud.
Yes, it appears that Canadians, by and large are more comfortable using this type of technology at least using it themselves. Interesting. What's really interesting though is that. While some very large number of Canadians are using the technology themselves, a very high number of Canadians feel very uncomfortable with the idea that businesses are using this technology, especially if it involves the use of their sensitive information.
For example, 40% of people. Feel like businesses are less likely to be able to perform the way that they expect them to. They have less confidence that they'll be able to deliver on the services that they're supposed to if they use tools like chat, G p T. And what's really interesting. Is that people should understand that chat.
G p t is going to make most businesses better at what they do. Not just chat, g p T, frankly, any of these, the big AI tools, they should make services better. But Canadians in fact, are concerned that there's going to make things worse. They're also going to make it so that Canadians. Don't have confidence that they're gonna be able to keep their data secure.
And what's interesting there is that AI has become a seriously important tool in terms of protecting people's con confidential information. There isn't an IT person on the planet that isn't happy that they can have an AI looking out 24 7. Yeah. To make sure that there aren't breaches of data and bad actors trying to make their way off their servers.
And yet Canadians don't know that. And so it is really interesting. It seems to be a very different evolution than say like Web 1.0 or Web 2.0. In that sense. Is this Brian?
But Brian, this is fascinating, Brian. Is this more like coming from analog to the internet where there were some people that were just no want, nothing to do with the internet.
Is it the same people that are like, no I don't want businesses to have anything to do with ai, and yet what I find fascinating about that statistic is that businesses are run by people. So is the same person at business, the same person that's going home and using chat? G t is not the same person.
I think it's a really good question and I think you're by the way, like you're hitting on the right points, I don't know if it's the same people Exactly, but there's certainly some similarities. And I would say, like my experience working on QuickBooks, for example, where I was working with a lot of accountants, there were a lot of accountants who got it right out of the box.
Yeah. They understood why working on the cloud was gonna make everybody's lives better, their clients theirs, et cetera. But there were a lot of them too who just said, no, I'm clinging onto my desktop until I'm done working. Yes. And certainly, those people they had their arguments around security and they had their arguments around is it going to be as ef as efficient and so forth.
And I think, time's proven that it's better to get ahead of these things than it is to be the dinosaur that sits in the back of the room and waits to. Become redundant. Words per minute in the accounting world is no longer that big of a feature. Frankly, as an employee or as a bookkeeper, et cetera.
That's all been replaced. With Web 2.0. Now, if you're going to be moving on to AI and web three, which are probably, two connected technologies in a lot of ways, a hundred percent, you're looking at, further becoming redundant if you don't embrace these things, which I think, just.
Not that I'm here for this reason, but as a plug for the work that you're doing, Keith, I think it's super important to be able to what do you make of all this help people to enter
into that era? What do you make of all this Brian is, does, clearly you've spent your time in, in this field, you've done your research, you've done your reading.
You're working with customers, talking with customers about it. When you look ahead 24 months, let's just say, does it look dystopian to
you? I think that, there's some real concerns around AI that I have, and by the way, I'm not the world's foremost expert on the security risks. One of the risks is really having to do with things like, who owns my appearance, my voice, et cetera.
It was one thing when, I, that there was a gentleman in India or in Pakistan calling out trying to convince my mom that she needed to bail me outta jail or whatever it is. Yes, it's another thing when it is my voice. And the technology will get better in terms of the intonation and the spacing and so forth.
And my face, that's a appearing on the camera because, whatever the next version of Mid Journey is able to create a likeness of me that's imperceptible and perceptively. Similar to Me. So that's, I think, one of the real dangers that I, I don't know that there's an answer to it, but I also know that, whether you decide to participate in these things or not, odds are good.
That this is going to be a problem regardless. I think that there's some real work that is ahead of not just, governments, but also corporations, industry associations and so forth that educate people on what it is that is involved. What are the best practices we need certifications that are going to be shortcuts for consumers to understand.
I can trust this business's use. Of ai because if we don't get to that point and it's the wild West, there's just no way to know whether your data, your image, your voice is going to be safe.
Yes. Did you hear oh, I see that I just got a text from my, got a text from off the screen from our colleague Roland, who's saying he's getting some off-screen echo, so I'm gonna tre something here.
Roland, I just turned some knobs down here. Can you no, there's no audio coming from there. Can you say something, Brian?
Testing. Testing. 1, 2, 1, 2.
Turn that down over there as well. So Roland, I think that we're gonna do everything we can to eliminate all the audio effects. We've got that muted and I got that muted and I think we're good.
We're gonna give that a shot, Mr. Roland, and see if that works out for us. It's still happening. He says, Brian, do you have
headphones? I do have headphones
you wanna throw some on. We'll see if that fixes things up. Here. Live in the lab. While Brian's doing that, we're having a chitchat about ai, the impacts on society with artificial intelligence, PR expert, Mr.
Brian Tritt joining us today from the agency. Bandaid. Bandaid. Not bandaid, but brand aid. Brian? Is that any better, Keith? I think I'm, we'll have to see what Roland has to say. Yeah, it sounds good to me. But we'll see what we'll see what Roland says. If it's still echoing well then it's probably somewhere within our tech setup.
So what when you think about the likeness and, you, your digital likeness and still happening? No, which is good. The headphones work. Thanks. Thanks Roland. Thanks Brian. One of the, one of the, one of the segments we're trying to do here in the lab is talk about current events.
Did you see the news today from the New York Post regarding the interview with Donald Trump yesterday?
No, I did not Tell me.
Oh, so Roland, are you saying it's still happening because you just said no to me? So anyways there was an interview that, and I haven't checked recently, but I just opened my morning coffee this morning, New York Post, put one of the news channels down in the States. Had an interview with Donald Trump and just questioning whether the phone in interview was real or not.
Oh, I see. Yeah. That's 'cause his voice, because his voice, that's interesting. His voice didn't turn, although with Donald Trump, he has, before he said that it wasn't him, but he's called in posing as his assistant before and stuff like that. So he's quite, he is a pretty big character when it comes to to faking his way into interviews.
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. But apparently it was it was him. Oh yeah, I can hear the beeps. Is this great? Eh? So you're hearing the beeps rolling in off the computer. So I need to figure out how we're gonna turn the WhatsApp beeps off the computer so nobody can hear that. I don't know why there is an echo.
Is it a bad echo? Roland? Turn that down a little bit. Turn that down a little bit.
Let's go with that there. Let's go with that there.
All right. We're gonna keep work rocking and rolling here and and see what happens. We were, yeah, so the Donald Trump situation. So I heard the interview and to those that haven't checked with the New York Post today, it was an in interesting piece. It was a, it was, like I said, he phoned in and I heard the audio and I gotta admit, there was times it didn't sound like him.
So whether it was him or not, I haven't checked recently. But that is what you're suggesting is gonna potentially be fooling people, right? Is that you're gonna get those video calls, get those phone calls, get those FaceTime calls, and you're not gonna know, your mom's not gonna know whether it's actually a legitimate person on the other end.
Is that what you're saying?
I don't know that this is going to happen to be clear. Yeah. But my hope is it doesn't. Yeah. But that's one of the things that people are afraid of right now. Yes. And it seems very possible that it could happen. The, they, I don't know about you, Keith.
My phone rings off the hook. Yeah. With c r a scammers and others Oh goodness. Who are trying to get me to all time. I How much easier would it be if they were using my mom's voice? Yeah. And I just, I feel it's a very real threat that people perceive out there, and one of the reasons why they would be hesitant to put sensitive information onto a company's servers because they are afraid that their data could get breached and for a multitude of different reasons.
Yes. Yeah.
What do you. What do you make of the world in, or better yet what, where does your head go when you think about the American election coming up next year? Or the next Canadian election and, it's really the fir the first time we're living in an AI generated election era.
Where does your head go with that? Optimism? Skepticism, dystopian again.
I know enough about how Canadian politics works to know that they probably don't have the most sophisticated avant-garde AI in enthusiasts running their politics, right? With that said, that could change, yes. In, in the US I would think that there's probably more of a threat in this coming election cycle, I should say of that stuff being used. I think it is interesting. I would think that you would be foolish not to take advantage of all of the tools that you have at your advantage. I would think that you would want to invest in those sorts of tools and certainly it would give you a leg up over the competition if instead of having to rely on highly paid.
Analysts to crunch numbers. You could just go to, your l m and ask it questions about, tell me which three talking points are gonna resonate the most with this particular audience. I would think that there's some real, possible use for the technology as far as elections goes.
I also though would be concerned. Not so much about the AI aspect of it, potentially, not in this cycle. The things like what you were talking about with, forgeries becoming easier to make, et cetera. The truth is though, like you could have done this previously if you really wanted to.
Deep fake technology is not that new. It's just accessible. Deep fake technology. And so convincing of technology is
relatively new Andre and readily available. Yes. Yes, exactly. Great segue chat. G p t came out last November. You're a pr, you're in a PR agency. What was it like when you first use that tool and what was going through your head?
I thought this is it for my profession. You know what I asked chat g p t to write a to write a media pitch about something that was topical at the time. And, I too afraid to use it, for real business purposes. I was just putting in a fake, fake scenario and asking it to do it.
And I thought it wrote better than I did. Yeah. And it came up with some really great strategies as well. The more that I used it, the more I realized no, actually that it's not quite ready to take over my job yet. But, I wonder within a few years, whether it might be
what has it been for your job though?
I would say, it depends is the truth? When I was working at Binance there were ways that I could leverage it in my day-to-day life. And that was huge. It gave me shortcuts. I was able to figure out ways to be able to get more value out of the tool.
By, for example, I. Asking it, the opposite of the questions that I had been asking it by giving it setups, telling it who it's supposed to act like, giving it guidelines in terms of what it's supposed to, to output. And it's been very helpful to me in my work. Today.
But I would say that the problem is that many companies have not yet caught up to the technology. There's security issues that I'm sure you're all too aware of course, with the the work as well. And I've heard, some people that I respect say things like, listen, the fact that security is coming in version 2.0 of this thing doesn't give me enough confidence to use it in version 1.0 of the thing.
But I think, there needs to be either. A way that you could deal with this problem using insurance and there are ways to deal with it using insurance. Or alternatively if that's not an option which it wouldn't be in, like the FinTech space for example. You can't put anyone's financial data at risk, obviously.
Yes. Then you're looking at. Ways that you can use the tool that don't involve using any sort of secret or confidential or sensitive information, and there's still ways you can do that. So I
I I'm glad you raised that because I'm gonna rant for a moment here. Sometimes I wonder, Brian, whether that's just the headline mania.
Driving clicks and click bait. Listen I'm not suggesting nobody should be worried about security when it comes to chat, g p t or code or Bard or any of the AI tools, but is it any different than how we use Google or how we use the internet today? Like we use common sense, right? I
don't sit on Google.
Probably not. That is the truth. And I think you're right. You're asking the right questions. You're you've obviously thought this through, right? So I'm not sitting down, but the data shows that the public is afraid. And the truth is If you were on the wrong end of a data breach, yes, that would be big news and would probably be pretty deleterious to the, it'd be bad news basically for your business.
Yes. I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't use ai. I just think that we should be aware of the fact that, using cloud or using Llama, I don't know what sort of things I don't mean to just pick on perplexity, but I don't know what sorts of things they have in place to protect that information from, getting out.
And then of course there's also like the the T 1000 aspect here of what is the AI gonna do with my information once it has it. And I think, these are all really big reasons why there should be more transparency around practices when it comes to these sorts of things. If I'm going to, buy widgets from company X.
Company X needs to now have a section on their website that says, this is how we use ai. This is how we make sure that your ai that our AI doesn't do anything to put your data at risk. These, to me, are just like real basic things that I think most companies are fully capable of doing. They just haven't done it yet.
Yes. Yeah. I would certainly agree with that. Let's talk a little bit about PR and truth. And how the world is continuing to interpret truth. I'm fascinated by truth these days. Brian, I know I, I ranted about project. I'm working on truth box. We talked a few minutes off air about it and I'd like to take a few minutes talking about just the idea of truth with you and for anybody listening and I've been.
When I talk with my business partners about this, I really continue to paraphrase this one statement. And you know me. I think you know me well enough. I'm not a conspiracy theorist and I'm not trying to suggest becoming one at all. And I'm not trying to unwind what society has known for the last 100 years or forever about truth.
What I know though, 'cause what I've seen with my own eyes and what I've built with my own hands is I can create my own truth now and I can distribute that truth. In mass quantities to the point where I can convince a lot of people that is truth. And we have spent a lot of time talking about AI and what it can generate and what it can do.
And I don't know if enough people are considering what I've just talked about, which is what is true and how and where we are getting our sources of information. I think we are moving towards an internet, which is largely pay walled. Where if you want to interact with the New York Times or the C B C or the B C or whatever news organization you're gonna have to pay to get into their content because that's how you're gonna get your trust.
But I'm really curious as to where people go and get their content from the horse's mouth and where they go and get their truth. From your perspective, Brian, in pr, what is truth in 2023?
So that's a big question. Keith, I agree with you by the way, and I'm super excited to hear more about Truth Box.
I think the way that the little that I have heard and what I've heard you tease on previous episodes of this show I think it's going to be hugely important for people to be aware of just how. Much this accelerates a problem that already existed. And what's the problem?
Is that, I hate to do this because, like you I'm sure we, I love social, I grew up as a social media manager. Yes. Working on your business. Frankly. Yes. Like social media has given me so much and it enriches my life on a day-to-day basis. But the algorithms. They're not designed to deliver truth.
They're designed to deliver engagements and dollars Yes. To, to advertisers. And you don't have to go any further than, yes. The quarterly releases for, the the different publicly traded companies to see that so I think, this idea of there is a truth, it's a reporter's job to uncover it.
The reporter has ethics that person is going to adhere to that will help them to figure out how to report on the truth. It seems to me that, the media keeps getting smaller and smaller in Canada. Yes. I. That puts more and more pressure on these. And by the way, being in PR and exposed to a lot of reporters, it's not an easy job that they have to begin with, and now it's becoming more and more difficult by virtue of these heavy workloads.
I think they become more important. I think a reporter has never been more important. I totally agree. I think what the, like what somebody at the New York Times does, or I keep becoming the Times just 'cause they're, they've been around forever. And it is not about agreeing or disagreeing with what the Times produces.
It's about having a third party that's doing their investigative journalism and. And investigating, right? There's not enough investigating happening, and as we can create more fake content, investigating has to happen. Where I'm struggling, O'Brien, I go back to the truth is rarely do we as consumers appear to get the truth from the horse's mouth.
I
think it is interesting. So there's two things that I would say about that. So one of them is that's true. And look, social media is going to serve up information that is frankly going to be a bit of an echo chamber. Yes. Things that aren't popular are probably less likely to appear on your newsfeed unless you happen to engage with things that are really unpopular with you.
Yes. And I would suggest that recent legislative changes have. Probably amplified that for certain types of people. And I think it's potentially only going to get worse in that sense. But getting back to you getting back to your original question, like these reporters, there's a large variance now in terms of, what sort of reporting people are giving and what sort of of reporting people are putting in.
But there's some really good journalists out there that I would trust inherently. Yes. And then, there are others that you raise an eyebrow and wonder what's actually going on. And as a person who, is just a member of the public, especially if you're a member of the uninformed group of people Yes.
And people who don't follow this stuff on a day-to-day basis. And that's the vast majority people as far as I know. Yes. Then. It's really tough to know what's real and what's not and that it is concerning. I think the role that AI plays in this though, is really one of exacerbating it.
It's making it worse. It's putting, tools into the hands of people who previously, if you couldn't write well. Nobody was gonna read your ble. Now, if you have access to L an L M that can write perfectly and writes better than I do and spent 11 years in post-secondary education, yes.
Anybody can write stuff. And so like you're removing a certain level of you're, I don't wanna say intelligence but you are though. You're that level of being able to actually express yourself, if that comes easily now to everybody. It, democratizes it and not necessarily in a good
way?
Knowledge has, so Google was one way of democratizing knowledge, whatever was 20, 25 years ago. AI has democratized conversational insight and conversational knowledge, unlike any other technology. When I can have a doctor in my pocket and talk to it. As much as I want and get feedback, and get empathy and get answers to my questions and get conversation more than I ever get with my Canadian doctor.
I dunno how you don't use that. And I, and I didn't go to school for eight, 10 years to go and get that knowledge. I have it sitting in my pocket.
No, I hear you. Although I will say that the flip side of that is that at least I've been on the other end of an l m asking you questions about me, medical problems and so forth, and it turned out it was completely wrong.
Yes. And in fact, like had me worried for a week about something, whether something was really gonna be a. Big health problem for me. And it turned out that it was a little blip. Nothing to worry about. Yes. So I, I would say that, once that technology gets better and better, there's no question you'd be silly not to use it.
In terms of getting back to your original question around hearing it from the horse's mouth, I would say that, for me, Hearing it from the horse's mouth is not always the truth. I'm gonna hear a real spin on it. Yes, I trust most I shouldn't say most. I trust many journalists, probably most journalists even, to be able to help me to understand whether what I'm hearing is true or not.
Because if you haven't investigated it from all sides, you're probably not going to be able to, deliver something that resembles the truth. On the other hand, I also think it's really important that people have that. Opportunity to express themselves and to say their peace because the truth is, Most of the time, nobody's gonna know it better than that person, that organization, that, that business.
And if you don't hear from them and if you've silenced them, and in fact you're hearing it from third parties who have no real, reason to be sharing that kind of information in the first place. They haven't done the research. They're not qualified to do these things. They don't have a track record or a reputation that would indicate that you should listen to them.
That's a very bad situation to be in. So I think truth box. I know that I know of it. Gonna be a very valuable public service.
I speak with my son about the news. Brian, he's 16 and I was asking him where he gets his news, where he gets his where he learns about things. And he, he told me that he it's largely from I.
It's people, I'm gonna use the word influencers, even though I hate that word, but it's people that he has received that information from in the past that, and he was like, yeah. So I learned about this per, I learned about a bit of news from this person I follow on Instagram and they were.
Correct on a few previous things they've told me. So as a result, I now follow them. And it was fascinating to me that this human being was, again, not the New York Times, not a Western or Eastern or any reputable news organization. It's somebody in his circle that is his news source. That to me is when you look at the changes to social Brian, where social media is, I think it's, no it's not.
I'll rephrase that. Social media is broken, social media is done. The way the social media was when you and I were at I C U C and the way it was over the last 15 years that's no longer the case. We both know that. So I think we're seeing. The people move is to private messaging groups groups, messaging is the, is people wanna communicate, right?
So the influence that, I guess the point I'm trying to make here is the influence that one person can have. We know that, but when it comes to sharing news now are hard news. And fake AI generated news or fake AI generated people. It's a real fascinating conundrum that I don't know many people are still thinking about.
I.
Yeah, I totally agree with you. Yeah. It's, it is interesting and just as to deviate for a moment, I don't know if you spent much time on threads the first few days that it was absolutely, yes, it was hot and going, was that. For me, it was just like a breath of fresh air. It was like re reminiscent of, the old early days on Twitter.
Yeah. And it just, it felt so good to be on a platform that, wasn't about delivering content. Instead, it was, seemed at least more about engagement. Social networking, getting to actually speak with somebody else and another human being. And I just say, I'll get off of my soapbox in just one moment, but it is just, it felt so good to be in that kind of an online platform at that particular moment.
I. I've spent a little bit less time on threads recently, so has most of the world, a little bit of Yes, that's true. I'm not alone. Yes. But it is it is been really interesting to see, like it's a little bit more commercial probably than, it was in the first couple of days, but it's still, I don't know.
It warmed my heart.
Yeah. Yeah. I, so I left social back in whatever it was, 2000 and 16, 17. Just left. And as a result, it reflections, it reflects upon, the follower accounts and all that. Ridiculous those numbers. But my point is that, stepping back into it you certainly see a different world, right?
It is. It's, it really is a shopping mall, isn't it? It really is a big flyer. It really is just a big corporate cesspool of people just trying to gather your attention to sell you something. And I frankly, now that we're back in the game, we're one of them. We're trying to gather people's attention, pay attention to us, build trust in us, build a tribe with, the business athlete performance lab and get interested in what we're doing.
And hopefully along the way we can monetize that interest. 'cause that's really what it's about. We're trying to monetize this, right? You're not here because you're not looking to make some money. We're going, okay, Brian's gonna be on the show. We're hoping to get some awareness for Brian. You one day, outta this.
Maybe Brian gets some business and it's the same thing. We're all fighting for attention. It's quite fascinating to me when you step back into social today.
Yeah, it is a good point. It really is. Definitely, there are very few people who are I shouldn't say that. Consumers are on there because they're genuinely interested.
Yes. But they're not engaging with one another. The way that I don't know, Keith, if you've spent any time with Scott Monty at formerly of Crayola who at for motor company. Yeah, of course. Yeah. When we were working on his business sort of social, the way that God intended it.
Which is to say that it's about people interacting with one another and getting to know one another and, having debates about things, not just trolling and flaming. And I don't know, to me, like I, I have this very romantic view of what social was like originally and completely
changed. But it's interesting 'cause you used the word debates.
And then you also used the word a few moments ago, or a concept around these echo chambers, right? As social became a big echo chambers, the debates left. And here's where I will say that I got challenged with a lot of people in the dying days of Twitter, which was people were not wanting to hear discerning voices.
No. Why? Why can't we all drink the same Kool-Aid? And I don't know you, Brian, but I don't wanna live in that world. I don't wanna live in a world where we all drink the same Kool-Aid. I want to have healthy debates, I want to have conversation, I want to have opposing views. And it seems to me now you either gotta go over here for this point of view, this point of view, or this point of view, but you can't go to a place where we all can have a nice conversation and have a debate and just be human about it.
It's unfortunate.
I totally agree with you and I think, to me, you know when you
talk about, 'cause you can't monetize that 'cause you can't Monet it. To your point, you can't monetize that. Because I
think you probably could, but my guess is just the algorithms prefer. The algorithms have picked up on the fact that people are more likely to engage with things that resonate with them and things that are familiar with them.
They're going to make them resonate more than, things that, that aren't the opposite per perspective. Getting back to what you were talking about in terms of what's going to happen in the election cycles coming up, to me, this is where it gets really concerning where I live. In Toronto and central Canada, we'll call it Eastern Canada.
There are certain narratives that appear to be just completely different than the ones that you would hear in your part of the world, for example, in Central Canada. Sure, yeah. And it is, it's interesting and to me, like that combination of things where you have, Significant differences in terms of the narratives that people are hearing.
Particularly on social. But even beyond that, if you look at local news stories that they're very different. It to me that it is a scary thing. And frankly, like I, I don't know the answer to how this all comes to a
head. Yeah. I don't know if many of us do. I know that's When I he, when I hear stats that experts are predicting that, by 20 25, 90 to 95% of the content on the internet will all have been AI generated it.
It makes my morning coffee routine where I sit down and read the paper. I. It makes that whole thought process really intriguing to me because it's just, it just becomes one big machine loop, right? And again, I go back to truth. I just start to question where I'm getting what's really happened.
Are we moving into a world where everything is just spin? Which goes back to, that's why I think there is, there's more value in journalism than there ever has been, frankly.
I totally, you're preaching to the choir on that one. But I do think that, there's some really interesting things that are happening now and the the entertainment industry is probably like a prime example of, what could go wrong, what could go right, depending on your perspective.
But the news industry, that's. That's something too. When I was at collision, that conference, I attended a bunch of sessions that were intended to cover off media issues. This was me trying to get closer to one of my important stakeholders in terms of journalists, of course, people that I have to work with on a day-to-day basis.
But what I heard was a lot of newsrooms have had all out bands on the use of LLMs. And part of the reason for that, I think is self-preservation. It's not the only reason to be clear. There are other reasons. It can be dangerous to use an l M if you're at a news organization because it's, as you're well aware, yes.
It occasionally can hallucinate. Yes. And if it's not hallucinating, it might get something wrong and it's only as good as the information that it's trained on, of course. And so in those sorts of like really publicly facing ways, if the New York Times put out an article in that article was full of, issues.
Because they relied on ai. Nobody would ever buy the New York Times. Of course. Yeah. You could imagine why those sorts of stakes would be there. On the other end, for organizations that aren't going to use it, It's gonna give them a huge thing up. How much less expensive would it be if I didn't have to pay a reporter?
And yes, there's a question around is the quality of the work going to be good enough? It probably wouldn't be as good as, I shouldn't say, probably it won't be as good as real reporters. On the one hand, on the other hand, so much less. I think it
makes reporters better. I think it gives, I think it, I think tools like G P T and the underlying technology.
Makes a reporter job better. I'm not really communicating with the great English right now, but I just think it, it enables them to create, communicate, and deliver some really great journalism if used properly. Not leaning on it for fact, but leaning on it to help them bring a story, bring a truth to life.
I imagine that it can be used in ways that would be super helpful even today. Yes. I think the, there's such perceived danger though. If it's misused, boy it's, I wouldn't second guess these editors at this point, but I agree with you. There, there's certainly things that I find myself doing with these LLMs, like having it Grammar checks, bell check make point out where there might be gaps in my logic, like there, there's all sorts of uses that I've found for it, and I imagine that it would help anybody that's writing be a little bit better at their jobs.
I think the danger is just once you open up that floodgate, how far is it from that to now? Yes, we've got an editor in chief and an army of AI working for them.
I would not have been able to start the Business Athlete Performance Lab bap a year ago without a I.
When I look back at what bs, you know what B is? It's an incubator. It's a, we're got a number of different projects, inside the house. Right now we're working on, the League of Business Athletes, a high performance elite coaching executive coaching fitness wellness program, which melds the best of business and athletics and helps you achieve greatness, right?
Helps people achieve their big, hairy, audacious goals. Help people achieve their fall goals. Like our attempt to go climb Mount Kenya. Working on things like that inside the lab. But my point here, Brad Brad Brian, is that we, I. Are able to do that with this remarkable technology.
And again, I read this article today and this gentleman, this VC was talking about the fact that what large language models and generative AI has been able to do is get these lean startups, experimenting, bringing ideas to life quickly. Not spending a lot of money and finding other success or failure.
That's what I have found inside of the lab. So I use generative ai. I use tools for everything that I do. I mean everything. So I don't use a notepad anymore. I dump my notes into a conversation with G P T because when I leave a note inside of a notepad, it's static. When I leave a note inside of A G P T conversation, a new conversation, it becomes dynamic and we can have a dialogue about it.
I don't believe everything it tells me. But what I do use it for is preparing me for situations that I don't have any awareness about. Hey, I'm going over here. I know nothing about the company, or I'm gonna meet with this person here. I know nothing about their industry, nothing about the company.
Tell me what I should be asking. Tell me what I should know. I use it prepping for emails. I use it. I use G p T four and Bard and the other tools for everything I do in my day. Because I, because since I started using it, I was like, Okay. I have this superhuman in my pocket. And if I, if I know how to use it appropriately, not again, not believing everything, but use, use it as a tool again, why wouldn't I?
And it has changed my life, frankly. And I am, and I'm enjoying meeting with my CEOs and the CMOs and these executives that are saying, tell me how Witt can also change our business and change my life.
And it's no I commend you for that. And truthfully I'm the same in, in terms of what I'm working with Branded.
And if I'm working on things, it's frankly like I, there's no risk. If it's just my stuff, of course I'll put it into G P T or another, l m or whatever it's, I'm working on, frankly I've been relying on night Cafe also I'm a big fan of that design platform because the truth is I think when it's my stuff, I'm comfortable doing that.
To me the. It starts to get tricky when it's a client stuff. Of course. I need to be very careful because, if something were to, if there was a security issue, of course, or if something was wrong and it came through into the work, that's a big problem. Yes. Not just for me, but for my client.
Of course. Of course. But I'm with you and I love those AI note takers by the way. I think they're just fantastic. I love being able to record myself or, yes. Record situations that I'm in, I was asked for permission first. Of course. Yes. And then uploading those things and asking for top takeaways or finding ways to figure out, are there implications from something that I should be taking into account using?
G p t to try to figure out what the insight is. Yes. Ask asking key questions that will help to unlock those insights, think about things differently. I totally agree with you. I think it's, game changing technology. I just, at this point, I think the unfortunate thing is, Unless you're using a version of chat g p t that's built within that company's security system, sometimes, there can be some risks that are
involved.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We've done some really cool things in the lab. Brian just to share with our listeners and yourself we've done some really cool things in the lab with some companies where we're taking their own private data and building them their own G P T four or g p t, and basically building with no hallucinogen, with no hallucinating guardrails, not talking bad shit.
Just keeping the conversation clean, keeping dialogue safe, and delivering great output, brand output, policy output on par. And when you show it to some of these business owners, they're like, wow, I didn't realize we had all that data or surfacing data that they forgot about, or surfacing content that they just.
Bring it all to life again, right? So that, that's what we're really finding with these custom gpt working with the customer on the educational side of thing, which took all their educational learning program that they've made for the last 20 years and took all that content and built a G P T around it and basically brought this content to life again 20 years later.
Some really cool things you can do with it. I love
that. And I think by the way, like that's the future. Yes. I also think I told you this before, but not the first time that, that you've come up with a visionary idea. The notion in particular with baffle I think that you've tapped into something.
There are very few senior executives, I'm telling you stuff that you already know. But there are very few senior executives. That don't work out and aren't interested in becoming better, in all aspects of their life. Yes. Yeah. The idea that, you'll have, as far as I know, it's still the only one that you will have the only real l m of note that's devoted specifically to a combination of coaching in your business and in athletics.
Both of which have some serious implications for leadership more generally. Your l m is really only as good as what it's trained on the influence from its users. And so like to me it's super interesting the idea that you could three in the morning when you wake up in a panic, you might not feel comfortable calling your coach.
It's true though, and feel comfortable asking Babel. Yeah. And hopefully, if enough people are using it, You will end up with some really great results that, that come from that. It's
fascinating to me how many people that I have talked to and have read about and done research around that are leaning on these AI coaches or virtual coaches.
And I will be honest with you, I've used pi large language model from Reid Hoffman in the gang. I'm not sure if you know of pi.
I, I,
Hey, pie. Hey pie. Hey pie. Ai, I think it is it is a fascinating ai and what's fascinating about it is just the empathy and the conversation that you have with it.
It's unlike G p T four or binging or the other language models and I was chatting with my stepdaughter, a a couple of months ago, who's seven, and we just had an engaging conversation with it. So my point is, when I hear people using AI for coaching or for companionship I can see the benefit of that really.
I.
Oh, for sure. Absolutely. And I, if you try, I don't think that, some of the larger LLMs will let you but they seem to be capable of yes. Doing the sorts of things that, I don't know, some sort of a therapist would be able to do
well. So when I started the lab and I was and one of the questions posed to me by one of the partners was, how do we scale coaching?
Because there's only 720 hours in a month. How do we turn that into 1440 or 28 80 right now? And it was a question that I was troubled by, which is, how am I gonna scale a coaching business? I had no desire just to build a singular coaching business. So it was like, okay, let's use ai. I.
Let's use tool sets to, to enable us to scale Brian's expertise, scale Craig's expertise or AJ's expertise. And by either using tools like virtual replicas of them, AI models of them using AI know AI models of their knowledge. Do some really neat things with a company in New Zealand called Soul Machines where we're bringing.
AI avatars to life. So a really neat thing that I think bridge the gap in the coaching sphere, that if you can be coached by both a human and perhaps a, an AI assisted human, why wouldn't you? So some really interesting things there. But a good time for me to segue to a segment in the show where our ambition was always to have chat, G p t help drive some of the questions.
So what we did was we took your LinkedIn profile and anything we could find about O'Brien Tritt. Went to YouTube, we did a found previous interview or something of yours and Roland did some work and we have some G P T questions based on LinkedIn. We have some G P T questions based on your previous YouTube interview.
So without prompting, this was some of the questions we got from G P T four. So the first one FinTech and crypto expertise. First of all, before we get into the question from Keith to Brian. Is that industry dead now that AI has taken on the swarm of conversation?
Are people still talking crypto and NFTs and FinTech, or is it, or has it become normalized or did some of the lawsuits over the last 12 months really shake people to their knees?
Yeah I think it's to be determined. I would tell you that my opinion, it's purely an opinion. It should not be taken as financial advice.
Yes I have not always done well in the markets. Made a couple of good guesses over the years, but don't trust me on this sort of thing. What I would tell you is if Bitcoin is still at whatever it is today, it's 2020 something thousand. Yeah. Yeah. Th 34,000 yesterday. Okay. Canadian.
Okay. And the s e c has sued Binance. They've, there, there are all sorts of lawsuits in the US against major exchanges. Other players in the industry, they've shut down banking relationships. If Bitcoin hasn't fallen to zero yet, I think it's unlikely that it will. Ah, interesting comments.
Yes, the. The situation with F D X unfolding and then, like all of the nonsense and fud that, that, surrounded, that it just, I don't think it can get any worse. That's my opinion. Interesting. And I think that the people who are invested in it, they seem to be really invested in it.
And the other thing of course is that we've seen some interest, new interest in fact in ETFs coming outta the us. So I, I think to me it looks like. Trending in the right direction overall. Yeah. But with that said, don't take my word for it and don't bet it all on Bitcoin just because I think so.
So that leads to our question from from G P T, which was you have a rich background in FinTech crypto and B two B and B two C Tech. How do you see the convergence of these industries especially with the rising prominence of a decentralized finance?
That's a really good question. Have we probably got the right person to answer that question at Weber?
I will give it a try. Yeah, let's do that. For me, when I think about the use of ai when it's combined with Web three, everything just could be so much easier. Yeah. If you think about something like QuickBooks I don't know. Keith, just how close at certain parts of your career you've been to keeping the,
keeping the books.
I'm familiar QuickBooks. Yeah. I've spent my time in there until I got it. I'm handing it off.
Yeah, exactly. You get to a point where you're like, I didn't get into this because I wanted to enter things into my QuickBooks. Yes. Although somebody who likes these sorts of things that actually think it's fun, but the truth is you didn't get into it for that reason.
Fast forward to a utopian situation where you're a manufacturer, you get your raw materials from Vietnam. The money is transferred back and forth by crypto. You never need to make an exchange. There's an immutable ledger that's attached to it, so it all automatically shows up in QuickBooks. You no longer have to bug lawyers because you've programmed contracts in, in, into the into the networks.
So it all just happens automatically. I. There's a world eventually where you don't have to worry about anything except getting the work done. And wouldn't that be a beautiful thing?
It wouldn't that be a beautiful thing, but humans have a propensity to want to get in the way of the, there always seems to be bureaucracy that has to get in the way of results, at least in my experience anyways.
I think, look you'll still end up doing taxes and so forth. Yes. But it'll all be there. Hopefully, eventually the government can tap into some of these blockchains and maybe you don't even need to do that much. But there, they're definitely, I'm not to, this is not to say that you wouldn't need an accountant or a bookkeeper, but I think that the type of work that they'll be doing will be very different hopefully, instead of being focused on making sure that you're not getting yourself into trouble.
And many of them already do this, by the way, the good ones do. They'll be focused on how do you optimize, how do you make sure that you're focused on the right products? Where should you be putting your money? Where should you be putting your r d, et cetera, to help you to maximize output from the business with the help of ai, making them even more powerful.
Yeah. Yeah.
Excellent. We're gonna wrap up with a couple last questions from G P T four. We've been going at this for an hour with a little bit of a technical break here and live in the lab. Our first show with Keith and Brian live in the lab Monday to Friday, noon central time. That's our ambition and as we all know, ambition I.
When you have ambition, I think it allows for great opportunity for success, but ambition also allows for failure. And when you have failure, you learn, then you try again, right? So if we have no ambition, we can't achieve either success or failure. It's gotta start with the ambition. Brian, personal interests.
When G P T four looked at your LinkedIn, it's said you've listed interests like animal. Welfare and economic empowerment. How do these personal passions intersect with your professional life? And do they influence, Ooh, here's a good one. Do they influence your PR strategies?
No, to the first one, so I, my interest in animals probably doesn't really.
Affect my professional life all that much. I wish that it did. Frankly, it hasn't to date. I've been a vegan since 2001. You know that, that's probably where most of the animal Yeah. Related stuff comes out in my career when my colleagues realize what a pain in the ass it's gonna be to try to pick out a restaurant that we can all eat at, or, go bar to go after, after hours.
As far as my interest in economic empowerment goes, that's been a constant over the last 10 years. Working on TurboTax, trying to help people to take control of their own taxes and their own financial year really. Taxes, I'm stealing a line here by the way. But taxes are the story of your year.
Yeah. And so there's nobody better equipped to tell that story probably than you are unless your year was extremely complicated. In which case then you better go to an accountant. My friend said QuickBooks will take care of you. Yes. My, my accountant friends who use QuickBooks, I should say with QuickBooks it was helping small business owners and to connect with accountants so that those accountants could help them in ways that they couldn't even imagine.
And when I say accountants, I mean being inclusive of bookkeepers as well, though those two are two diff different professions and they both. Bring a lot of value to the table. When I worked for Goeasy, if you're not familiar with them, you'd probably be familiar with Easy Financial or Easy Home, or course.
Of course, yes. One, one of those brands it was about taking people who had serious issues with their credit and empowering them to be able to improve their credit. And proud to say that, we had data that showed that. 40% of our customers within 12 months were graduating to prime lending, and 60% of 'em were improving their credit over the course of that time.
Spectacular. Just spectacular results, as far as that goes. And then working for Binance, that's the bleeding edge of finance. And I can only tell you. In the West there are far fewer use cases today. But if you live in a country like Argentina or in Turkey, some legitimate uses for crypto.
Yes. And will help people in ways that, I, you and I would've trouble even imagining. And when we think about, even in places like Asia where it's a lot more ubiquitous. So stuff like remittances. If I'm sending money back home to, whatever country I immigrated from.
Doing it with crypto allows that money to get there so much faster, so much cheaper. Just to me, empowering people to be able to do those sorts of things was highly rewarding and frankly has been, I. Throughout
the career. That's awesome. That's that's fantastic. Brian. One of the, one of the questions I did not ask that I was, that part of our goal here in the lab is to start off every conversation with our guests is about the concept of the business athlete.
I started my day with a walk today. I went for a walk and got me cleared my head and 'cause I knew I had a busy day today. I knew I was spending time with yourself. I start my day every single day routinely in the gym, religiously and in the gym for me is not only physically but mentally, emotionally, that concept of taking care of my human.
Tell our listeners and tell us about yourself. How do you weave the business athlete philosophy into your life as a busy human being you.
I grew up playing competitive sports. I would say that the pinnacle of my athletic career was probably I dunno, I was an all-star high school goalie for the Montreal area.
Nice. And I played hockey for N Y U as well. N Y U by the way, not a powerhouse in hockey. And I was not that good either. I was an academic all American. I was not an all. So I, I had a lot of fun doing that, and that's carried over into my adult life. So occasionally renting myself out as a goalie as well as playing on teams I.
This past year, I hung up my goalie skates. Yeah. And decided that I was going to focus on being a skater. And let me tell you, Keith, it has been so humbling. I am terrible at being a skater, and the worst part is I step out on the ice and I skate well. Everything else I'm terrible at. So I get out there and people think, oh, he looks like he's pretty good.
And then I get out on the ice, I'm out of position, I can't see what's going on. I can't control the puck. And it's just that, it's phenomenal. So you asked about fall goal. I'm starting, I. Hockey I'm playing in a league where I will be far and away, probably the worst person on the ice.
So that's my goal, is just
to survive. That's awesome, but at least you're doing something right. And that's absolutely, that is the that's the ambition, success and the failure come after the ambition. Good for you. That's spectacular. Brian Tritt last words to you. Any questions you have of me, any comments you wanna make to the listeners before we say goodbye today at live in the lab.
I would say, this has been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. Yeah, and I would also say that, if anyone is interested in hearing more about what the public thinks about AI using businesses or if they want to talk AI and pr, feel free to reach out to me. I'm always happy to have that conversation.
I'm happy to take people through the results of the survey that I ran. No charge of course, and very happy to meet anybody that is interested in talking about those topics. So thank you very much for having me. And if you're looking for me again, it's brand aid pr.com.
That's awesome. Brian.
That's spectacular. So I'm gonna do a switch to this camera. Stick around Mr. Trip before we say goodbye. And everybody, I thank you guys all for joining us live in the lab. In the business TI Performance Lab, you can join us here every single Monday to Wednesday to Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday noon, central time, live in the lab.
And then we're gonna record this and spit it out on the social. So if you miss this live, you can view it on demand and catch up, along the way. So thank y'all for signing in. Thanks for joining us today. Thanks for joining myself, Keith Billis, and for joining Brian Tritt as well. Have a good one, everybody.
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