The AI Readiness Project: Turning Ideas Into Action with Tara Bonhorst

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Forget trying to keep up with AI. It's moving too fast. It's time to think differently about it. Welcome to the AI

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readiness project hosted by Kyle Sham and Anne Murphy. They're here to help you build the mindset to thrive in an

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AIdriven world and prepare for what's next. [Music]

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Oh, Ann Murphy. Hello. Shaking. How's Am looking? Am I looking Shannon? Am I

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looking like a disturbingly old guy at the club? [Laughter]

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At the clubb. Um,

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how are you doing with your AI readiness these days this week? I'm doing good.

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I'm doing good. I uh I oscillate wildly

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from feeling clueless to feeling like I have a clue. And I'm I'm in a process of

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starting to feel like I have a clue, which I think is a very bad place to be.

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Why do you why do you think so? Because I think when

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about the time you think you have AI figured out, something changes and you don't. I There's something about there's

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something about being in an ongoing

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adaptive adaptability mode where just you're going to have to adapt to new stuff all the time. I think when you

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start to feel like, ah, I think I got my head around this, I think you risk trying to lock it down and have it be

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that forever. So, so that's why I think it's a bad thing. How are you doing? What's going on with you?

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Well, you know, I I said before the show, I'm not exactly sure what I'm talking about

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today because we're doing we're like in the where the

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rubber meets the road phase of the work that we're doing in the AI space. I'll

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give you a couple of examples. You know, we're going to talk about today the AI readiness program and that it has

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quietly dropped. It has it is soft launched. It is soft launched as we say.

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Then we Oh, Rachel. Good. We We got We've got our friends in the house and Steo and

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Reggie. Nice. Um so, you know, so the AI readiness program is now available to

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people. Meanwhile, we have just today we had our first

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um cohort. We start we launched our first cohort of the certified AI educator program in she leads AI. So we

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now have our first yeah our first group of six women going through this and

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we and the thing that's so cool about it is that we have an internship. So they will not only be learning how to educate

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like through an adult learning learning and development, you know, framework where you're like officially doing

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things the right way for people to learn things. But then they get to try that out on um our audience of young college

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age women in poor countries who are wanting to learn AI. So our educators

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get to try it out. Meanwhile, I got into this thing today where I need to say to

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somebody, who are the um consultants in the AI in the she leads AI consulting

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agency? So, I was like looking around. I'm like, well, here here's who they are. Like all of these things are we've

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got the conference like I was going to say all these things are happening. Yeah. And we've got the conference. So,

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like here we are. All of this stuff is coming to fruition. And I feel like this

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is what people on their AI journey will experience at some point where you just

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go there's so much there there now. There's such a center of gravity. Whether it's

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because you've decided you're joy and now you are an AI filmmaker, right? Or

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you know you're you and you're like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna show up on TikTok every single day for

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forever or whatever. however it manifests. Like bunches of us are

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getting into this era now where we know what we're doing. We know what we have to offer the world and we're making it

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available to the world. And like that is just very very it's a very heady thing.

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It's a head. Okay. So So I'm gonna I want to let you off the hook a little bit if that's okay.

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So please do. So you you said you like weren't really

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sure how ready you were for AI. I think you're not in a sort of as we define, you know, AI readiness, it's this

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curious sort of exploratory, adventurous kind of headsp space, right?

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Yeah. What you just described, you actually can't be in that headsp space right now. Right. What you just described is, oh crap, I've got to be

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the expert right here. I've got to like I've got to show as a leader who who knows what they're talking about, right?

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And and as you said, put put the rubber to the road. So, I think I think the fact that you're feeling not too

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connected to that open curious thing is actually a really good sign of where you

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are, right? You you need to be there as a leader and whether you make the right decision or not that time will tell. But

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you have to be there having made a clear decision. Here's who we are. Here's where we're going. Here's the consultants. here's how this course is

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going to go. Here's how the AI readiness going to roll out. Right? So I give I

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feel like you're in a really good place, but it's not where where you and I normally are when we talk about this AI

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readiness. It's not where Yeah. Like because it is what it is. I need to be able to say this is how we teach

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prompting. This is not how we teach prompting. Yeah. Exactly. This is how we

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do use casebased education. Yeah. And is is it the right thing for all time?

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Probably not. Will you change it a week from now? Maybe. But right now, you have to be definitive. So, I think that's I

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think I think I think you're in a very healthy place. I I applaud you. I mean, damn. Some stuff going on.

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I think I am. And and I and I guess what I what I'm grateful for is that

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at some point in watching watching the um learning lab I you said something

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about developing a point of view. I think sometimes I think our brains like

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mix together but there was something about developing a point of view. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

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And I started thinking about how there are so many leaders out there like especially like um industry leaders

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where developing a point of view is a very high stakes risky situation. No

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matter what the topic is when they develop a point of view that's when they're sticking their neck out, right?

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And now we're asking people to develop a point of view around AI, right? And it

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you kind of have to like Yeah. I I don't I don't know that it's developing a point of view about AI. I

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think it's developing a point of view to be able to be successful with AI. I

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think if if AI is going to amplify you and you don't have a point of view, then it's just going to amplify lots of ideas

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that are not focused. But but I think it was you that told me that, you know, when I was talking about

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this idea of have a point of view, have a creative point of view, that there's a lot of people in this world that have

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never been asked to have a point of view or to your point, if they have one, it

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feels dangerous, right? I may work in a corporate culture where having a point of view is like risking your job, right?

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Risking your livelihood. Um, and yet when you have a suite of

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tools that can allow you to literally do anything, how do you choose what to do?

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And and I I think that only comes from, well, what do you want,

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right? What do you want? What does good look like? Who's it for? What are you trying to accomplish? And it's you're

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the only one that can look at the output of what this AI does and go, is that

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good or not? Right? And so like by definition, you have to have a a point of view or you're just going to be

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putting out crap or you're gonna or you're going to ignore what it put out and just put it in the world and it's

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going to be riddled with mistakes and then that's going to come back on you as well.

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Totally. Totally. You're right. I think to be good at to be good at AI, you have

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to have a you have to have a point of view. And you can get by for a little

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while without it. Um but eventually, you know, you have to be able to articulate

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over Thanksgiving dinner. Somebody's going to ask you, you know,

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Yep. Why is it good? What's it good at? What's, you know, all that sort of stuff. Yeah. I think inherently we we

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all have some sort of an opinion on something. When we generate something, we go, "Oh, that's good or that's not good." But having a point of view is

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really thinking about upfront. I think I'll talk about this a little bit in what to focus on this week. You know,

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before you sit down to do something with AI, have you thought about what you actually want to do or are you just

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sitting down to crank something out? And you know, there's there's a place for that, just playing and just seeing where

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it goes. But there's also if you want to accomplish something then I think having a point of view and and refining that

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point of view right like this is why I talk about Rick Rubin so much but I also think about like Gordon Ramsay right the

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one thing you know about Gordon Ramsay is he's got a clear and definite point of view that if something doesn't taste

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good to him he literally spits it out right and he tells you what he feels

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with no filter right and I think that I think that could be

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That strong a point of view I think is sometimes makes people a little bit fearful. Well, I don't want to be a

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jerk, right? But having a point of view is important. And if you have a point of view, that by

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definition means that there will be some people that agree with your point of view and some people that don't agree

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with your point of view. And and a lot of people don't necessarily want to be in that uncomfortableness,

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you know. Well, yeah. And I'll give an example. So

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recently, one of the things that's been happening to us is the question about AI and the

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environment has been on everybody's minds in all of our presentations. And for a little while, I was kind of going

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to let that slide. like I was going to just stay silent on that topic because

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it's you're threading quite the needle once when you open open up that

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conversation like you're threading a needle with the people in the room for sure. You are in a situation where you

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can lose all of your credibility in their you know from their perspective or

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where you can change some people's minds or where you can sound like you're just polyiana.

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So that's been coming up more and more for people and so we're having this robust conversation today about how do

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we handle when you're in the moment and you let's say somebody has hired you to give a presentation

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which is a deliverable and you've got somebody who's needling on the you know

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any of any objection around AI but particularly the environmental one because it's a hard question to answer.

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It's like actually difficult. you have to know stuff or you have to have really good

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talking points. And so some of us are coming up with our point of view on that like right now.

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Right now like while we're talking or right after we're talking, we're making notes to ourselves and we're doing research and we're coming up with what

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are our bullet points for next time. Yeah. Yeah. I I I'll tell you my I I'm glad that

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you're going there. I am not going there. I'm I'm not taking much time to to to put much energy into that

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ironically because here here's here's my thought on it is what is the purpose of saying AI

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takes up too much energy? If the purpose of it is to say, hey, I I really want to

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do something about that. I love AI and I want to find a way to make it more efficient, then great. But I think most

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people bring that up as an argument why they're staying on the sidelines. It takes up too much energy, so I'm not

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going to do it. Right? It's one of those tropes that's really easy to say it takes 10 10 times more energy than a

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Google search. Okay. Yeah, it does. It also, you know, makes you, you know, 50 times more efficient at your job, which,

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you know, may counter counteract that. But here's what I can promise you. The

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AI models are getting more and more efficient. as they get more efficient, a lot of them are going to start running

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on edge devices like phones where they're not going to take up so much energy and and also the AI is going to

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start to solve things like, you know, fusion and and you know, we're going to

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find more efficient ways to generate energy. So, I feel like in in the long-term scheme of things, it will be

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solved, right? because if we want to have if we want to have these toys to play with, if we want to have these

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tools, we're going to have to solve the energy thing. Um, so so my only point would be to the degree that you're using

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it takes too much energy as an excuse not to get into AI, I don't I I no

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longer accept it. Like if you want to if you if you if you want to go into AI and and uh and find a

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way to make it more efficient, more power to you. Go do it. let's let's go to solar, let's go to wind power,

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whatever it might be, great. Um, but if it's just an excuse to stay on the sidelines, then it just for me, it just

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becomes another trope of why people are avoiding dealing with this. Yeah. And

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it's listen, at the core of AI readiness is being is being ready. Your your sync

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just went way off, so I think our our timing there's a there's a skip. Yeah.

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So, it is way off. Yeah. Hi, sorry about that. Um, didn't mean didn't mean to cut

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you off, but um but but being AI ready means being engaged with what's going on with AI. So, um, so with that, let me

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let's let's uh Yeah.

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Okay. So, one thing uh two things actually. So on just so just to like

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give you or and the listeners a little nugget when people because I agree with

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you that a lot of times it's just one of a series of examples of reasons to stay

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on the sidelines and also it's an pretty unintellectual argument because it's a false dichotomy.

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You're it's not either or. So, if we're going to kind of go the route of being a

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little bit um nonsensical, right, I'll recommend two things. One is if you're

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concerned about the amount of energy that each chat GPT, you know, thread is

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taking, learn how to prompt better so you're not going back and forth. So, I put it back on them.

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That's good. And then the other one is kind of like buying carbon offsets. For

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every hour you save by using chat GPT, spend an hour doing climate um justice

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advocacy. There you go. Perfect. Love it. It's great. Beautiful. All right,

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you win. Uh let's see. Oh, that's not it. Okay, one thing to pay attention to this week. Okay.

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Um, so, so here's a thing I think would be valuable for people to pay attention to

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this week. Chains. And here's what I mean by chains.

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Um, one of the things that has struck me in the past

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couple of weeks is that when someone says, "What's the

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best tool for XYZ?" It's almost an impossible question to answer because the tools are

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really complicated. A lot of tools are multimodal and have all these different features that they do.

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Um, and I also feel like saying things like, you know, what's the

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best tool for making, you know, this kind of output

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kind of reduces how you make stuff with AI down to a

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really simple um, it's just like a tool like it it perpetuates the idea that you

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just push a button with AI and out comes some work, right? So, one of the tropes that people say is, "Well, AI is for

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lazy people. You just push a button out and out comes the thing." So, when I talk about chains, what I'm talking about is the process, the workflow. What

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are the chain of events that have to happen if you say, "Oo, I want to make one of those Yeti videos, right, where

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there's all, you know, the yetis sort of walking through the woods talking about whatever product they're talking about.

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I want to do one of those." Well, what is the chain of events? What are the chain of tools? What are

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the chain of activities? What are the jobs that you need to do to be able to produce one of those videos? Well, the

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first thing you have to do is you have to have concept, right? So, step one in the chain is have a concept. Now, is

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that a concept you came up with? Are you just copying someone else's or you going to go to chat GPT and brainstorm it? Are

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you going to go to a whiteboard and brainstorm it? And then second thing might be work with chat GPT to come up

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with a campaign, right? Maybe you want to talk about you want to have yetis talking about Yeti coolers, right? Get

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it? It's Yeti and Yeti, right? And how did you come up with that idea? Maybe that's a collaboration with ChatGBT. And

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then now once you have a concept, now you can come up with individual ad ideas and maybe you have chat GBT write those.

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Then you have to come up with a voice for the character if you want to control the voice. Or maybe you're just going to use V3 and just have it automatically do

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it. So there everything that we do in AI is some chain of events, some chain of

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jobs. And some of those involve AI tools and a lot of those just involve human

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input, right? I want to do this. Chat GBT gave me a result. I don't like the result. Make it better. There's a lot of

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back and forth. I'm going to go make an image of what my Yeti is going to look like. No, I don't like that. No, I don't like that. No, I don't like that. Back

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to point of view. So, my my thing to pay attention to this week is when someone

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asks you, "What tool did you use for XYZ?" Don't just answer the tool. If I just

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say to you, "Oh, I used Hedra to make that or I used V3 to make that." You're just like, "Oh, okay." And then you

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don't have a V3 subscription and you don't know how to do it. But if I say to you, oh, to make that thing, well, first

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I had the concept and then I kind of did this brainstorming thing with chat GPT and then I went to the whiteboard and

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then I went to 11 Labs and I designed a voice and then I there's there's something about unpacking that process

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that lets the person asking the question know that there's way more to this AI stuff than just pushing a button. It's

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there's a lot of craft in it, right? Even if what you're just doing is

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a recipe book, right? It's I got to come up with the ingredients and then I come up with the tone and and and I started

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with my grandma's recipes, but some of them were bad and so we changed some of them and like there's there's a chain of

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jobs that has to happen before you get to some output. Some things with AI are

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much more simple, but most things that I see that are of any value have been some chain of events, some chain of jobs that

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are strung together. So that's my thing to pay attention to this week. So, I'm curious as to your thoughts of if I am

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blowing smoke up my own butt. No, I Okay. Yeah. So, Reggie in the

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comments just said exactly what I was saying, which is this is a craft. So,

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there's all these people out there saying AI is ruining our craft, right? AI just with AI. Yes, a craft. Yes, it

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is a freaking craft. Don't take that away from me. It is a craft. I am a com

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I am a creator. And you know what? Yesterday when uh we were in the AI

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salon presents, we had um uh Princeton

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Marks, Princ not Princeton, Preston Marks from Jelly, Pearson Marks from

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Jelly Pod was on the AI Salon Presents last night and he was showing us Jelly

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Pod, which is a it's like a podcast, an AI podcast creation. Yeah. And what was

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really cool was he was feeling sheepish about doing a demo because a lot of times demos are can kind of be have the

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connotation of being salesy. Well, Leah Fasten, who's your co- um co-founder of

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the AI Salon, she said, "Wait a second. Time out. You've created this. This is

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your art." Yeah. This is your art. Do us the honor and the privilege of showing

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it to us. like and and by the way what an act of vulnerability too when we show

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people our our babies our artwork and I just that stuck in my head and I was

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like this why can't we claim in the sea of people on LinkedIn etc saying you

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know AI this AI that AI is taking your jobs AI is ruining all the crafts blah blah blah why don't we get to own that

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AI itself is yeah to be creators

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The fact the fact that you know that that when when you sit down and to

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think, "Hey, I need to create a uh an ad for LinkedIn."

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You sit down and you're like, "Okay, I need to do this this." You you kind of know the seven things you're going to

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do, right? How did you get to that? Well, you got to that through trial and error. And you got and you got it to a point some of those chains of jobs that

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you put together are known, right? like like if you were to if you were to document it, you could probably say,

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okay, for this kind of output, I use this tool, then I use that, then I use that, then I use like you could write it down. There's other things where you're

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just like, I don't really know. I kind of know where I'm going. And you kind of meander down this path of the of these

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things. And at some point, if you get it right, you're like, oh, I want to remember that. So, what what I would

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encourage people to do for the next week or so is start noticing your chains of

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jobs. Start noticing those chains of events. start documenting them, right?

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Start documenting them and then start talking about them because I think that that idea of revealing the craft of AI

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is really important. And I think it especially for like the doom the doomers

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that are like, "Oh, AI is just push a button. It's just lazy." No, it's only lazy if you treat it lazily. If you

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treat it like a crap, yeah, then it's not lazy. It's it is it is an art.

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So, here's here's a fun challenge. What if we all committed to when the next time somebody says, "What did you use to

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make that?" We we take like a minute to take a step

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back and say, "Yeah, I will tell you the tool that I ultimately used, but here was my thought process going into tell

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you how I got there." Yeah. Or let me tell you how I got there. Or it you know what? It was a lot of tools and some of

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them weren't even AI. You know what? I I used a whiteboard. I used whiteboard technology for this. It's from like

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1962. [Laughter]

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Yeah. And then to maybe even also to articulate that there's a category of

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tools that I used. I chose from, you know, maybe you're like, you know what I did? I used a tool that makes videos,

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right? There's 15 of them. or I tried three tools that make videos and two of

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them failed. This was the one I went with, but I've done other projects where I went with one of the other ones.

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Right? Like again, that's that idea of it's not a singular thing. If if we

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reduce it down to the tool did the work, it removes us out of the process

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and we're critical to the process. Even when we have agents and we're saying, "Hey agents, go off and do this stuff."

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We're the ones that say what to do. We're the ones that curate what's comes comes back. We're the ones that choose

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what to put in the world. So all of that is some chain of events. So that's my

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that's my big my word for the week is chain. My activity for the week is start paying

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attention to the the craft of what you do and start talking about it. Yeah, I

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like it. I think that's good stuff, Kyle. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let's uh I'm excited to get Tara up

25:52

here. So, let me let me just talk a little bit about the AI salon and then you can talk about she leads and then we'll talk about the AI readiness

25:58

training program. Um, so if you have not joined the AI salon,

26:04

what are you doing with your life? What are you doing with your life? Go to the salon.ai, click on join our community

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and join our community. And if you haven't introduced yourself to the community, what are you doing with your life? introduce yourself to the

26:17

community. And then if you're in the community and you're like, "Yeah, I'm just kind of"

26:23

then you should really think about joining the mastermind, which is this um more focused

26:29

um way to step up your AI game within the AI salon. Um so the AI salon is free. The mastermind is

26:35

subscription-based. Uh and you can really step up and it's it's a really great group of people that are stepping in there. It's just getting started. I'm

26:42

really excited about it. So, go join the AI salon. Join the AI salon. Um, so, and also if

26:51

you're a woman in AI or wanting to get into AI, join She Leads AI. So, what we

26:56

have is an AI academy for education. We

27:02

have a consulting agency. We have a paid community. And we have something that's evolving into like kind of a think tank.

27:09

We're not exactly sure what it is, but it's all of our like nerd brains wanting

27:14

to nerd with more people who are similarly nerdy. Um, and one of the ways

27:21

to figure to find out if we're a good fit for you is to attend social

27:26

Saturdays. So, this is an evergreen opportunity. You are fully invited any

27:33

the year. We are on Zoom from: 10:00

27:38

noon. You can get a Zoom link by just going to sheleadsai.ai.

27:43

There's a little registration button. You get the Zoom link and it's good for any Saturday ever. It's free and we

27:51

would love to have you. Yeah, come join. The other thing, a little known fact, uh I run the mansplaining division of She

27:57

Leads AI. I'm really excited about that. Um Yeah. So, yeah, it's a it's a it's a

28:03

lesser attended little corner of the community, but uh but you know, I'm I'm

28:09

there to answer any questions you may or may not have that I can't answer properly. Exactly. Exactly. Or I can

28:16

restate what you really meant. I'm happy. Yeah. Um so,

28:22

um AI readiness, we have the AI readiness training program has soft

28:27

launch. We officially launch in I think a week. Um but if you go to are you readyforai.com

28:33

this is the um the training that we put together based on uh the the uh

28:39

presentations from AI festivists and we looked at the what were the commonalities across all of those and

28:45

how could we break that down into um a training this is per request of the of

28:50

the participants of of AI Festivus and it is now live uh Vicky Baptiste uh put

28:56

together the training and it's really quite remarkable and very thorough and you get a lot uh for for what you're

29:05

paying here. You get a lot. So, go check it out. Um it is well worth your time. Um yeah, so there's that. Thoughts on

29:12

thoughts on are you ready for AI? You excited? Well, I think that I, you know, so I was going back through some of our

29:19

speakers and the their presentations yesterday and

29:25

how enduring their

29:30

recommendations and and thoughts and perspectives and the things that they're

29:35

up to. Like, I know that AI changes at the speed of light. I get that. I'll

29:40

give you that. But what's in the AI readiness program like like what's in

29:46

Tara's program that we're going to talk about in a minute, it's fundamentals. It's like who you are and how you relate

29:53

to AI. It's like how you think and it it's not like you have to learn exactly

30:00

every button in some app that you've never heard of and when it goes away you're you won't even know because you

30:06

just it's like not that important, right? And so the the content there is

30:13

going to help you think broadly about AI and you're going to know, you know, the

30:19

next thing that comes down the pike. You're going to be like, "Oh, this is how I thought about, you know, making

30:26

videos before, but now I can or how I made images before and here's how making

30:32

videos is different, right?" Like how I approached it. So, it'll allow you to

30:38

create a a way to like organize your thoughts around AI. Yep. It's a it's a it's a shift in mindset. Um and uh and

30:46

really really really exciting. So, please go check that out. So, with that, why don't you tell the good folks about

30:51

Tara and then we'll bring her up here, but while she's backstage, you know, say all sorts of nice things about us. I'll

30:56

say all sorts of things. Yeah, exactly. Um, so

31:02

one of the things I really appreciate about Tara is that she is a learning and

31:08

development expert. So when she creates something, it's made the right way for our brains to actually learn. Nice. You

31:17

know, I mean, Kyle eventually teaches us stuff. He gets around It's like if you

31:23

hang around Yeah. you'll learn something. Whereas Tara's

31:29

like, if I do X, your brain does Y, right? So, she knows how to teach us

31:35

stuff. And she took that skill set and turned that turned and created AI

31:41

educational content that is the only ondemand content that I would ever

31:48

recommend to anyone other than the AI readiness program because but that's

31:53

different, right? If someone was like, I need to know how to use AI, I would only say go to Tara. Go to Tara's programs.

32:01

And she's also a delight. She is so generous to the AI community and such a

32:08

fan and such a supporter. And she's also hilarious. And her recent content series has been a

32:16

joy to follow along with. Tara, welcome. Hi, Tara. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

32:22

Hey. Oh, thank you so much. That is, you know, such high praise from you, Ann.

32:28

And yeah, I'm so happy to be here. Uh,

32:34

and yeah, I'll just I'll tell you a little bit about Do That Dave first. Great. You know, a lot of people ask

32:40

sci-fi classic film and novel: 2001

32:47

e a rogue AI system named HAL: 9000

32:53

and then very famously declines to follow the commands of their human crew.

33:00

you know, there's, you know, out there in space and uh they're trying to uh get inside, one

33:08

of the astronauts is trying to get back inside the spaceship and says, "Open the pod bay doors, Hal." And Hal says, "I'm

33:14

sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." So, you know, it's a little cheeky, but you know, I launched this to

33:22

help people discover AI regardless of their level of technical expertise and

33:28

learn how to use it in their work, but also to understand how the technology works so they can control it instead of

33:36

letting it control them, you know. So, we offer interactive self-paced courses

33:42

in basic AI literacy and skills. uh we do live hands-on workshops so people can

33:49

actually learn by doing instead of just listening because like you know Ann was

33:55

saying that's one of those principles of learning design where you know listening and remembering is very much the lowest

34:03

order of learning objectives that you can have. And what you really want to

34:09

get to is these higher order objectives like applications analysis, you know,

34:15

thinking about how to use these tools, you know, and building these chains of

34:21

processes that we can, you know, actually get to our outcomes and not

34:26

we're not just using AI for AI's sake, right? We're trying to get something out of it. Do something. So do that, Dave.

34:35

That's a little bit of where that comes from. And uh yeah, one of my favorite uh

34:41

one of my one of our f my favorite course at do that Dave is the one that I presented during AI festivist which is

34:49

called the future product playground. And this is a creative exercise really

34:57

where we show people how to brainstorm product ideas of the future using chat

35:04

GPT or Claude or their AI friend of choice and then you know come up with

35:11

something that's going to come out 50 or even like a hundred years from now that seems like sci-fi right now but you know

35:18

is probably not going to be for very long. And then we actually just really take the to ridiculous lengths and have

35:25

people do a whole go to market strategy for it. So they do their business plan for their future product and then do a

35:32

pitch deck because you got to go out and get some VC money to make your your future product and we do creating a

35:40

landing a product landing page creating collateral like videos

35:47

uh you know social media stuff. So, it's a way to really introduce people to a really broad variety of different tools

35:55

and different use cases, but in a way that's not, you know, just going through

36:01

a checklist. It's like all anchored around this, you know, fun concept. And

36:08

it we we've really seen people just kind of realize how easy it is also to

36:17

take some of these ideas that maybe used to seem really out there and really impossible but can you know you can do

36:26

this stuff now. You know, it's not, you know, a lot of people, I think, get hung

36:33

up on this idea of like, well, I I wouldn't know how to start a business or I wouldn't know how to launch an

36:38

organization or, you know, a big even just a big project, but it's really, you

36:44

know, you can now it's so much easier than it used to be because you've got

36:50

all these tools to help you. So, we've seen a lot of I've seen a lot of students just kind of have that moment

36:57

where, you know, they go from thinking, "Wow, I can never do that to," well, I

37:03

can. Totally can. So, you you mentioned something, Tara, that

37:09

um I'm I'm curious if there's been evolution there. You're talking about sort of use cases, like I want to make a

37:15

homepage, you know, I want to make a website. What's your philosophy and has it changed on, you know, did you teach

37:22

here's chat GPT 101, here's to here's tool 101 versus here's use case, you

37:28

or: 2011

37:33

teach the tool, do you teach the use case, do you teach the chain of events? Like where where's your head these days? And has that evolved?

37:41

Yeah, I I always try to stay tool agnostic with everything I do. I think you mentioned earlier, you know, that's

37:48

which is a great way to think about it. Talk about the class of tools that you're using, not like particular one

37:55

because they're all a little a little different. Sometimes it's going to depend on, you know, what you're looking

38:02

for and what you're trying to accomplish. I myself, you know, switch back between back and forth between chat

38:08

GPT and Claude and Gemini just depending on what it is I'm trying to do. And I do

38:16

try to give those tips as I go along for what's worked for me. But at the end of

38:22

the day, it's really going to depend on, you know, what your style is and what

38:27

you're looking for. So yes, really try to teach that skill of like thinking about which tool you want to use too.

38:34

Thinking about what you want to achieve with it instead of like yeah we're going

38:39

to use chat GPT for this and we're going to use gamma for this. I mean I have to pick one to demo it and so I use my

38:46

favorites but also try to give people you know thoughts on how they can

38:53

work through that decision makingaking process for themselves. So,

38:59

very cool. You're muted, Ann. No, man's on mute.

39:05

How did that happen? Um I Sorry, I got distracted by the chat.

39:13

People are talking about whether they whether whether guys can sneak into Sheile's AI or not. It would be awfully

39:19

difficult because we are a cameras on community. So, you would need to you would get kicked out just by not having

39:26

your camera on. Um, anyway, what I love about the playground is that

39:36

it it really addresses this thing that Kyle was talking about about the chains.

39:41

You're teaching people to think so much more than use the tools. The tools are

39:47

just like this. They're the they're like

39:53

You just went mute again. And

40:01

we have a gremlin. I can hear I just unmuted you or No, I can't. Oh, am I am

40:06

I back? You're back. Okay. Yeah, my something is happening. If something if

40:12

something happens even more, I'll come out. I'll go out and come back in. But it's like the tools are just like stops

40:19

along the way. And I love how if you get somebody to think about something, you

40:25

know, kind of kind of kooky, crazy, like unthinkable that could happen in the future, you give them the gift of not

40:33

having to worry about how because our re in our real everyday life, all we ever

40:39

have constantly are stuck in how. How am I going to do that thing, right? And it's so boring and dantic, right? You

40:46

can't spend time with your head in the clouds because you're constantly having to be practical. But what you're letting

40:52

people do is play and dream. And you're like, "Don't worry about the how. We'll figure that out. It's going to be one of

40:59

these type of tools and one of those type of tools, but in between you're going to do all this stuff. You're going

41:04

to maybe journal. What are all the different things that you could create?" Like I specifically remember in first

41:11

grade they asked us to come up with an invention and I came up with an invention that my

41:20

uh substitute teacher by the way told me was impossible. And I was like yeah

41:27

that's cool. It's not may maybe it's I mean in first grade I was like whatever but you know yeah it's not it may not

41:33

seem like it's possible but who cares about that right? Like, and that's what you're letting people do. They're like,

41:39

"Well, okay, we'll figure that out." I just think it's awesome. Yeah. I I wish I could find that teacher and just slap

41:46

them. I'm not a violent person, but like, how dare you say, you know, quash

41:51

people's dreams. But, you know, and I think that's a lot of what's happening right now with AI adoption

41:59

in enterprise level. It's just everyone's thinking about how they can

42:04

use these tools to do what they're doing right now. And that's great. That's a great place to start there. Obviously,

42:11

in a business, you have to be focused on the ROI. But there's this opportunity

42:17

right now to think, you know, think about, well, what's even possible? What

42:22

is there's things that we haven't even dreamed of yet that, you know, and you

42:27

mentioned like Kyle, you mentioned fusion. Maybe there's even something

42:32

completely beyond exactly imagined yet. So, and and

42:38

certainly within a business context, right? How we do what we do as a business may radically alter over time

42:47

and you know, is that change going to come from within or is it going to come from, you know, is going to bully you

42:52

over from the outside? And I, you know, I fear that a lot of the companies that just live in this sort of efficiency use

42:58

the tool as a, you know, as an efficiency tool model are going to get blindsided. And those companies that

43:04

figure out how to train their people to think critically and and do exactly what you're saying, they're going to be the

43:09

ones that that discover new new way of doing things from within. And I think that's ultimately, you know, that's

43:15

that's how the winners will emerge over the next 10 years. I think, you know, I

43:20

agree. I don't think it's going to be these big players that we that we know right now. It's going to be

43:27

organizations that are more agile and more creative and you know,

43:34

not the Titanic, which is a lot of, you know, these big headed straight for the

43:39

iceberg. Well, we're out here kind of like in our little boats. Can I ask you a question on on audience? So, you've

43:46

how how long have you been doing do that, Dave? How long have you been doing AI education, whatever it's been called?

43:53

I think it's been about, you know, a year and a half. A year and a half. I'm just What's the Have you seen a shift in

44:00

your students in in in in the learners? Have you seen a shift in either how they're showing up or or how they're

44:07

learning or or what you're teaching them? What do what are you seeing um in

44:12

in your in your you know, audience base? Yeah. I mean, I don't know if it's it,

44:19

you know, I always definitely try to cater to the absolute beginners. And I

44:25

think the misconception right now is that there aren't very many of those left. And you know, we're inside our AI

44:33

bubble, right? We're all very much in it all the time, every day. And it's kind

44:39

of inconceivable that there's people who haven't even heard of it or tried it. But I know for a fact that there are

44:45

plenty because I meet them all the time. Yeah. You know, my my uncle uh you know

44:51

from he was just visiting me this past uh

44:57

couple weeks ago and he's like so what is this AI thing? I don't even get it.

45:03

Like is this and he's like is this is AI the one making all these horrible

45:08

comments on Facebook? Yeah. Well, how could be Yeah. I mean,

45:14

unfortunately, some of those are real people, but a lot of them are Yeah, exactly.

45:20

It's like and and he's like, you know, he's been, you know, he's worked in the

45:25

corporate world for for decades and he's semi-retired now, but still it's like

45:32

it's not a given that everybody knows this yet. And I'm I'm in Silicon Valley,

45:39

too. I live in San Francisco, so we're even more of a bubble. We're even worse thinking that everybody knows it. And I

45:45

go to these events around town and I talk to people and I'm like, "Yeah, there's people who haven't heard of it." And they're like, "No." Wow. It could

45:52

be. Yes, it could. It could be. That's amazing. Yeah. All right. So,

46:00

let's tee up our three questions here. Yeah. Jump in. So Tara, one of the questions that we

46:05

ask all of our guests to answer is when did you know that it was time to go

46:12

allin on AI and what happened next?

46:18

Uh you know it was pretty shortly after I think chat GPT 3.5 was first released

46:26

e public there in November of: 2022

46:33

was at the time I was doing a lot of freelance work as a learning designer and you know my business partner at the

46:40

time kind of came to me with this and like have you heard of this and I was like oh it'll never be better than me

46:47

and it's still and I started to play around with it and

46:52

I was like oh I guess I was like oh I could use this to do this you know I

46:58

used it to do the parts of the stuff that I always hate doing as a learning designer. Like I like coming up with

47:04

concepts on my own and writing a lot of the content, but then I get to the end I'm like, "Oh crap, I got to make quiz

47:10

questions. I got to do a course overview. This is the stuff where I'm like, I don't got time for this." So,

47:17

you know, I really started to see that potential and just really see it as not

47:22

like a replacement for every anybody. Like I never thought in the beginning

47:29

the first you know the initial iterations of the technology I never thought it was going to be replacing

47:34

anybody. Now I'm not so sure but as it's advanced but you know at the time I was

47:39

like but this can be you know this isn't going to replace me but this can

47:44

multiply my effect. I can do more and I can do more of the things that I've

47:51

always wanted to do. So I really just and and you know I've I've seen I've

47:57

done a lot of work in the past developing programs for

48:02

um you know people in marginalized communities helping you know build like

48:08

technical assistance programs for people who want to start their own businesses was what I was doing a lot of at the

48:14

time and I was like you know this and I just thought this is going to leave those people behind just like everything

48:20

else has every other advance. and every other, you know, the disparities in

48:26

educational outcomes are so stark that this is going

48:32

to just make the gap even wider than ever. So, that's really where I where I

48:37

got in and what I've been doing ever since is just trying to make sure that

48:44

everybody who has access to this. Yeah, that's amazing. That's great. Um, okay.

48:52

So, so let me let me ask you question number two that we asked our guests and it's it's kind of I I'm interested in

48:59

this one just based on what you just said. So, given your your specialty, your focus and your your worldview, what

49:07

are some trends or what is a trend in AI that you're following and why? It's my

49:13

favorite question. Oh man. I mean,

49:20

everybody's looking at agents right now, right? And uh I just I've been following

49:27

this very much from the sidelines. It's not something that I do a lot in my

49:35

teaching practice because it takes more it to get to that point

49:42

where you're ready for that than people realize. You don't discover AI and then the next day you're

49:49

building your own agent. It's so much more goes into it than that. You have to know how to work with these models. You

49:57

have to know how they behave. You have to know how to get consistent results. And like again, you know, theme of the

50:03

day, you have to have your workflows documented. You need to know the chain

50:08

of events that needs to happen to get to what you want. And that's not even an AI

50:14

problem, right? That's a workflow, that's an ops pro, you know, problem that these workflows are, you know, tend

50:21

to be like especially creative workflows, they tend to be illdefined,

50:27

live in somebody's head exclusively or, you know, their institutional knowledge

50:32

that aren't necessarily like easily teased out. And that's a big part of,

50:38

you know, what you have to do before you even get there. I think it's kind of funny and I also think it's hilarious

50:44

the way, you know, people are slapping this agent label on things that are not.

50:50

Yeah. It's like natural foods, right? When everyone was like, "Oh, yeah. It's

50:56

it's a label that means literally nothing right now." Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Now with now

51:05

with Agentic, that is not like that's an automation. And this is not a system that has agency and that can make

51:11

decisions and that can take independent actions and act you know so that it's

51:16

going to take a long time I think for that to shake out. So but I just kind of sit and watch this trend and kind of

51:22

like yeah what's what's the what's the the what

51:27

will be the tipping point for you where you feel like uh like someone's actually cracked it? So, I assume you've played

51:33

with like Manis or Gen Spark or those things that have agentic elements in them. Um, you know, do you think those

51:40

things are there? Like what what's going to be what's it going to look like? What what's going to show up in the world

51:45

where you go, "Ah, now now we've shifted gears."

51:51

Yeah. I I think it's going to come from Yeah. getting the workflows act actually

51:57

documented and seeing how

52:04

these models and these systems, these agentic systems can actually pass off these different tasks in a way that

52:11

makes sense. I'm not sure I know exactly what that looks like or how we're going to know. Yeah, that was like it's just,

52:20

you know, maybe we're going to call customer service one day and

52:26

an agent an agent is actually going to solve our problem. Right. in a way that makes sense and that's

52:33

gonna be like that was actually an agent that was

52:39

but it's I think it's it's quite a ways off and you know I that's something I do a lot in my workshops right now I've

52:46

been working with some teams that are just they've been using AI but want to

52:53

go a little deeper and be more strategic and I'm trying to get them set up for

52:58

this this occasion And I like to say like GPTs or like a

53:03

custom AI assistance, that's like the gateway drug to us. You see what they're

53:09

doing. You observe how these tools behave so that you can set yourself up

53:15

to use, you know, hand stuff off in a way that you don't have to be there.

53:22

Yeah. That's really and that's the thing I guess if if you're wondering like where's the tipping point, it's when

53:28

they act right when you're not there. Oh, that's good. That's really good.

53:34

Realic. That's really good. I love that.

53:40

That's great. I'm with you on the, you know, when when

53:46

we're working with people and they're at the stage where they're ready to make custom GPTs, the brilliant part and why

53:51

I think currently like we should still have the goal of getting to the phase

53:58

where we know or we're interested enough and we know how to make custom GPTs

54:03

because if that's your goal, you now know how to prepare for agents. you know

54:09

how to prepare for different workflows. You know how to prepare better for the even very very basic stuff because the

54:16

the the very beginning of it which is so boring I want like it's so pedestrian is

54:23

you have to have documents that you put it you know you have to have some documentation some files that matter

54:30

that like are current and are relevant and you have to Kyle and I were looking

54:36

for a file yesterday on his live for 17 minutes these poor humans were sitting around watching us talk about a

54:43

file that we thought maybe sort of kind of existed. This was you know great content

54:49

obviously and you know if if you can't if you can't locate that because of the

54:56

way you run your business then you can't benefit you can't do context

55:03

engineering. Now, we're trying to call it engineering, by the way, which is just like so annoying. Um, why can't we

55:10

just say context? Just like why couldn't we just say prompting? Why do we have to say engineering on the end of it? So

55:16

that tech bros are the only people who supposedly can do the thing. But anyway,

55:22

I believe that teaching people some of these goals gets them ready for the bigger stuff.

55:28

All right, question. I heard that for the first time. Oh, sorry. I heard that term for the first time the other day,

55:34

context engineering. And I was like, Lord, you mean you have your Google Drive

55:40

organized? Good job. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I don't

55:47

you know how to talk. Okay, congrats for that. Okay, so what So here's our third

55:54

question. Our third and last. We've always We've got three. This is three of three. Um what does AI readiness mean to

56:00

you? And what would you advise somebody who's just getting into AI?

56:07

Ready? Yeah. I mean, it's hard to be ready for this because, you know, we don't even know what we're ready for.

56:13

Like, you know, we're not even sure this is going to end. It's probably not. Um, but

56:21

I think you know the part for really being ready for anything is this like if

56:29

you want to call it context engineering or whatever, but like knowing what you have, knowing where your knowledge

56:35

lives, knowing how to what knowledge you need for what tasks,

56:42

having your workflowmented, you know, really thinking about, well,

56:48

if I were to ask a you know a hum a human to do this

56:54

task how would I do that what you know what conversation you know would I have to have what would they need to have and

57:01

that's really you know yeah knowing who you what you do and what you're all about is the best way to be ready from

57:08

there you can just start start tinkering with it and you know have that context

57:15

ready you know I always uh I have what I call my AI go bag which has got like

57:21

like my all my you know the prompts that I've used the instructions that I've

57:26

created for different GPTs and assistant applications and all the contacts like

57:33

my greatest hits that go into pretty much everything that I do and you know

57:38

having that ready I think that's that's how I stay ready. You got to keep track

57:43

of this stuff. Yeah. And I, you know, I take it from somebody who's had to go back and dig a lot of this stuff back up

57:50

after the fact. Easier to do it. It's easier to do it as you go along. Save those best prompts. Have your documents

57:58

that you use all the time in one spot. You know, don't ever sink effort into a

58:05

particular tool without making sure you documented what you did with that tool

58:10

and what the outcomes were and you know how you could replicate it somewhere

58:16

else because that's great. Some of these tools are just not going to be around. Yeah. Even six months from now. So never

58:23

never you know trap your work into any one platform. I think that's how you

58:29

stay ready. Stay nimble and just, you know, be ready to move all the time.

58:35

Love it. Love it. Stay ready. Stay ready. Questions.

58:41

Yeah, those are fun questions, aren't they? Awesome. So, let's um Oh, wait. I'm

58:48

getting I'm getting an echo. I don't know who it's coming from. Um but but thank you for that. That was really

58:54

awesome. Um uh if you if you have not done it yet, go check out do

58:59

thatdave.com. That's uh that's Terara's website. Um and anything else you want to say to the

59:05

good people about what they should go uh check out on your side?

59:10

Uh yeah, I mean if you have never tried AI before, we have a course called basic

59:16

training. It's always free and it's really just gets right down to like how

59:22

do you like opening up chat GPT creating an account like takes it all the way

59:28

back to the very beginning and just like guides people step by step through their first conversation and then also like

59:36

what do you do next? What like how do you share these outputs? How do you save these outputs? How do you verify these

59:43

outputs? most important part, you know, and and so that's a great place for

59:49

anybody who's really just at the very beginning. Otherwise, you know, we've got uh the course that we offer through

59:57

uh she leads AI Academy, which is our explore generative AI course, and that

:: 00:02

really digs deeper into how these tools work, but with with an applied bent.

:: 00:07

Like, you want to know how they work so you can know how to use them best. It's not just it's it's not super technical.

:: 00:15

We're going to show you what you need to know to get the most out of them. Beautiful. Beautiful. Great. Well, Tara,

:: 00:22

thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. It was so much fun. You guys have the most fun. It's so fun to have you on

:: 00:28

the show. So, great. Thank you. Good luck with everything. Thanks for

:: 00:33

everything. Bye. Bye. Thank you.

:: 00:44

[Music]