The AI Readiness Project with Karl Yeh: How Construction and Manufacturing Are Using AI Today
What does it take to get real results with AI in industries like construction and manufacturing—today? Join us for a candid show with Karl Yeh, Chief AI Officer at 0260.AI, as he shares how companies rooted in tradition are achieving tangible wins by applying AI in practical, no-nonsense ways.
Karl gets straight to what’s working on the ground. Whether you’re exploring where to begin or trying to steer clear of expensive mistakes, his perspective is sharp, practical, and worth hearing.
Why Attend?
Learn how AI is being applied in “old school” industries—with measurable results.
- Discover the core elements every business needs to consider before diving into implementation.
- Cut through buzzwords and get real-world advice from someone on the front lines.
- Hear from Karl, whose practical approach is drawing attention across LinkedIn, TikTok, and beyond.
Our Guest Expert:
Karl Yeh is the Chief AI Officer at 0260.AI, where he helps traditional industries like construction and manufacturing tap into the practical power of AI—without the hype. With a knack for translating complex technologies into clear, usable strategies, Karl focuses on results businesses can see today, not in some distant future. He shares real-world applications and down-to-earth insights as a host of The Daily AI Show. When he’s not helping industries modernize, Karl competes in adventure racing, blending endurance and strategy—just like in AI operations.
Transcript
0:34
Forget trying to keep up with AI It's moving too fast It's time to think differently about it Welcome to the AI
0:41
readiness project hosted by Kyle Sham and Anne Murphy They're here to help you build the mindset to thrive in an
0:47
AIdriven world and prepare for what's next [Music]
0:56
Oh yeah I love our our groovy opening every time It makes me happy It's really
1:02
growing on me too Like I I just love it
1:07
I love it I like how she's she kind of sounds like like a like a girl scout or
1:14
something like let's go and we're gonna get there Forget about that
1:20
Let's go do this kind of They don't even know how ready you're going to be for AI You're going to be so ready You're going
1:26
to be so ready You're going to get a badge Well our people are going to get a certificate They They are It's fantastic
1:32
If they take the AI readiness project course we are there We're we're very Look look
1:39
we're we're there We've got that It's coming It's coming What are we probably
1:44
within a week Within a week Within a week we will drop the AI readiness
1:50
program which allows you to like in such a delightful fashion
1:57
revisit the 34 speakers from AI Festivus from you know the end of
2:03
2024 And as you go through these videos and you revisit them then you get to do
2:08
these fun little exercises at the end that Vicky Baptiste made up And you get to see Kyle and myself in between each
2:15
one And then at the very very end you get a certificate And by the way we talk
2:21
about the certificate and how important it is and how how dope it is to be able to tell other people that you finished a
2:27
program like this and you have a certificate But the thing that we have kind of forgotten to talk about is how
2:34
important it is for people to demonstrate that they are part of a community of humans They are real or
2:41
multiple It's one of the themes that I've heard We we had a number of people at the salon this week that mentioned
2:48
she leads AI and and um you know Paul Ritzer's group and some other group some new groups I hadn't even heard of And so
2:55
I I'm starting to see people kind of not only self-identifying but starting to self-identify triangulate within
3:02
different communities which is really smart I love it I know it's really good Well that's kind of the spirit of this
3:09
So anyway and we've got got Carl Yay on today I'm super excited to bring Carl up We'll bring him up in like half an hour
3:14
or so after we're done yip yapping And after we're done yip yapping But can I
3:19
yip on one other thing which is that next week we have Angelina Martin who is
3:27
the author of ADHD and AI And so next Wednesday same time same bat channel
3:34
She'll be with us and it hopefully will be as unhinged as one would think with I
3:39
three carriers Here's what we should do We should get all excited in the first
3:44
half hour and forget to bring her up You know you know that thing where Jimmy
3:51
Kimmel always said "Oh sorry Matt Damon We'll have to bring you up next." Oh sorry Matt Damon We ran out of time Doing it with her Yeah Sorry we ran out
3:58
of time You know what She may not even know because she may have walked away by then Exactly Exactly She's probably vibe
4:05
coding some new platform to raise awareness about ADHD
4:11
Oh So what are you AI ready for Yeah
4:17
What's on your mind I'm gonna go first today Okay Um
4:22
well today today Open AI launched 03 and 04
4:31
mini and 04 mini high And as David Shapiro categorized it they have solved
4:38
math What do you mean They hit 99.5% on they basically maxed out the
4:46
benchmarks for math Oh I thought you meant with all of the numbers that they have added to their models 04 03 Oh
4:54
that's No that like even 03 maxed out at 99% can't figure out their model naming
5:00
No that uh so they've solved math for us Good So they they've solved math Um and
5:06
and so so I think and that's something I I I'll talk about in a bit about what to pay attention to
5:15
However for the for the first time since November 30th
5:21
2022 I think that there's a second date that that is effectively as relevant Well it's not
5:29
th:5:34
st:5:40
that the image gen model launched And there is just something about it being
5:45
so natively incorporated in there And then what's happened is like it's like every day since then there's been some
5:52
new video model some new large language model some that are like all of these
5:58
things are now starting to get multiple tools and and the tools that they have are starting to be so good that they're
6:05
indistinguishable from human only work like like I feel like we're entering this
6:11
threshold where I think up to this point AI was
6:17
janky enough that that you could have the hubris or the
6:25
defense mechanism of saying yeah but you still need humans in the loop and I and I feel like we have crossed a threshold
6:32
where there are going to be some things where you actually don't need humans in the loop and if you look at what 03 does
6:38
It's a it's a semi semi-agentic model And here's what that
6:44
means One of the things they described in the in the launch today is they had it solve some problem and it used 600
6:53
calls to a tool in in doing the answer like it it is like writing its own
6:59
Python code executing it looking at the answer putting that into the mix And it did that 600 times before it gave an
7:07
answer So we're So So now the tools are not only multimodal where they do images
7:12
and words and math and problem solving now they're starting to do multi-step um
7:18
problem solving that you don't need to babysit it anymore right And so so the
7:24
AI readiness thing you know it feels like what it's accelerating
7:29
is us all having to go to that place of so if the tools get good at doing all
7:35
the stuff then our job starts to look more and more and more like well what do
7:41
I want to accomplish and who do I want to impact in the world And like what
7:46
kind of difference do I make like like I feel like we are we we have entered this new
7:54
phase where those people that really start to get introspective and say what
8:00
do I want to do in the world just assume that over the next year the tools are going to be so good you'll be able to do
8:06
it even if it involves things like you have to be good at math and you're a math dumb dumb like I am you know it's
8:12
like like the execution you can
8:17
do it right Like that's where we're entering So that's where my head is I'm I'm in it So I'm I am sort of flying
8:23
really really high and and thinking like five years out and it's crazy So it's
8:29
crazy And I feel like I am I am more energized about AI than I've been in a long long time The past two weeks have
8:37
been really energizing for me And I was like I was like burned and B I mean some
8:43
of I know you were like whatever man
8:48
Yeah Yeah You were kind of you were Yeah I mean you were kind of like whats for a
8:54
little while A little plateau which was actually really good to be around because we need to see that even the
8:59
most you know you're an AI agitator Even the most agitating of of AI agitators
9:07
also hits a plateau It's not always just this like Yeah spongelike experience
9:16
Well and and part of that plateau was we had been promised the tools
9:21
getting so good that you know we we wouldn't be able to keep up with them and and they just weren't they just
9:27
weren't that good So part of it was I felt like I was wasting my time because I'm like something better is coming and
9:34
that was not a good like I am not proud of that I went to that place but it also I think it gave me a chance to rest I I
9:41
think one thing that is going to be a constant for us is you're going to get
9:46
excited about stuff You're going to have the adrenaline rush You're going to you're going to jump in and deep dive on stuff and then over time you're going to
9:53
need to sort of sort of back out of it and and rest And then when you come back it's probably going to be at a different
9:59
level and you you'll get excited again So that to me feels like that's something that's going to continue
10:06
Uh how about how about you Where like where's your head Well couple of things One is about the
10:14
about the rest piece Vicki is in the chat and you told me on the weekend that
10:20
Vicki had worked on a project for 10 hours and that you know the conclusion
10:26
of it wasn't what potentially wasn't what exactly she was looking for and I
10:32
don't know I guess that got in my head Vicki and so that night I I went to bed
10:39
but like manice it just lives in my brain it was like you need to get out of
10:44
bed right it woke me up and said "Wow you need to get out of bed You have the
10:49
following things that you need to explore." So I got out of bed dutifully and from midnight till 7 o'clock in the
10:57
morning I was changing my whole life You know it wouldn't be that big of a deal
11:03
if I was just like "Let's write an email sequence or something." But it was like "No let's redo our whole entire
11:10
consulting offers." Like every single thing You started another one in the meantime Vicki Of course you did Um you
11:17
know let's just tear everything down and build it up way way way better and make
11:23
it possible for us to deliver the product the offer that we deliver that
11:29
is so awesome But the the thing that we
11:35
you know people pay us a lot of money to provide these uh plans for them But the plan is just a prerequisite to doing the
11:43
implementation So it's a perfect metaphor for with AI
11:48
now I can make this part quicker easier better more intelligent So that can get
11:56
done So I can spend time one-on-one with executive directors helping them fundra
12:01
which is where the money happens It doesn't happen from the plan And so now
12:06
I can reduce the plan the cost of the plan by 90% And still make money you
12:12
know Yeah Yeah So just like changing my life And then the other thing is that
12:19
um with some of the stuff that's come out particularly thinking about um the
12:26
memory piece you know now how chat GBT is officially remembering all the things
12:32
Um which if you don't know chat GBT now remembers all of your previous chats and you can just say "Hey what did we talk
12:38
about last year about fundraising?" And exactly go get it So to for me um one of
12:46
the things I've been contemplating is how close we're getting with our AI
12:53
thought partners and one of my friends Louisa Milano who you know and folks
12:58
here know um she refers to her AI as her cso chief sole officer Wow Right Because
13:09
now with the memory it really really really knows us better than we know ourselves right It knows what's in our
13:15
like heart of hearts Yeah And so what that I I mentioned at the AI salon the
13:22
other day like I'm thinking about what it means not even just when I have my
13:27
relationship with AI but what it means for me and my relationship with other
13:32
human beings who have a relationship with AI So when I'm in the room with you
13:39
know you I know that you've recently maybe maybe you prepped for this meeting
13:44
with your AI avatar Yeah Right And so now I'm like whether it's my digital
13:50
twin or just or or just you you know chatbt but I pasted it or it just knows
13:55
all my stuff and I just like oh give me some talking points or give me some questions Yeah exactly which would be if
14:02
you think about like sales or fundraiser or whatever like it's really good that you may have more informed buyers Like
14:08
that's exciting to me On the other hand they're probably going to be more
14:14
discerning because they have more insight coming into the conversation Yeah I also you know there was a thing
14:20
that came up I think it was my office hours last week that you know how you've got people in your life that they show
14:25
up at a certain level maybe they show up at a C++ level Yeah because of AI those
14:31
C++ players are going to start showing up at like a B+ or an A level and
14:39
and it's going to start to become apparent like what's authentic who's authentically showing up and who's AI
14:46
showing up because we have it right now with the avatars right people do the thing where they make the sort of
14:52
saucier version of themselves and then you see the real them and you're like I think
14:59
I think that's going to happen with s just sort of how people are engaging Now listen maybe the AI prepares them they
15:06
show up as a B+ player and they actually get better like there there is also the possibility that AI augments us and kind
15:12
of gives us the confidence to step it up a bit So that's a possibility too
15:18
Um well I think that Sorry just one little thing is that as
15:25
everybody kind of works things out in advance of the conversation you know how
15:31
they're showing up we're going to have better conversations We're going to have better group process because we're not
15:37
going to be vetting the cobwebs and the bad ideas and whatever It's going to be like people come in and they're informed
15:44
and we can expect that of each other So like our team meetings we're you have to
15:50
prepare ahead of time because why wouldn't you And then we start at that level instead of starting at this level
15:56
Yeah it's you know the Khan Academy the the sort of flip the classroom upside down thing Like that's that was always
16:01
his vision and it I feel like that's where we end up I want to just pop up this comment that Herb put in here
16:07
because I think it's really good The place for humans in the loop should always be between the AI outputs and what you send to others And I I I agree
16:13
with that I think that the other place is in the initiating of the right like what what do you want to accomplish So
16:20
there's the intentionality of what you want to use AI for And then I agree with Herb here that our job is once AI
16:26
creates all this crap right And it's like it's our job like it's your job and to say okay of all the strategy it
16:33
created for this you know fundraising organization here's the stuff that I think is good right And that's the stuff
16:38
you're going to put in front of the client And they're going to they're going to trust you for that They already trust you for that But if you put
16:45
something in front of them that's crap you'll start to erode that trust right So your job is always going to be even
16:52
if what it outputs is perfect you're the one that knows okay I know that this is
16:57
good for them and that's like that becomes your role So I just I thought that was a really good comment
17:03
So yes Herb I absolutely agree and also what a beautiful smile you have by the
17:09
way Congratulations on that All right so let's uh let's flip over to the to the
17:16
thing to pay attention to this week So yeah what is the one thing The one thing
17:21
this week is um if you haven't started playing with it or if you haven't if you
17:29
if you have dabbled with chat GPT I think the thing to do next week is
17:36
not dabble like dig in um really understand what 03
17:44
does and what 04 mini does because what they do and I assume you haven't uh uh
17:49
played with them yet because you've been out living your life and doing your things So so you know how
17:56
um you know how um when you run one of the reasoning
18:03
models it says thinking and then if you sort of expand it you you see it it sort
18:08
of thinking these models both do that but they also do it with tools So if they're like you
18:16
know it'll it'll say like "Hey I I probably need to figure out the I don't know the the interest percentage if
18:23
they're asking to you know about a mortgage." And then it will and it shows you the work It like spins up a window
18:29
writes Python code executes it takes the answer from that puts it in the thing and it also does it with images I
18:36
uploaded an image I I I went and um I went to Google and I said "Find me a a
18:43
complicated image." And I found this sort of graffiti looking thing with just like hundreds of like objects on it And
18:49
I said "Give me a catalog of anything that you could recognize in this image." And it brought the image up and it
18:56
looked at it and then it cut it into quadrants and started analyzing each of the quadrants And then it gave me a
19:02
catalog of all the things that it found in the image And then I just said "Make me a drawing of you know one of them."
19:08
And it just did it And so just go experience what it's like to watch this
19:15
thing visually think and reason and go through its its thing It's a much more
19:21
sophisticated experience than it used to be So for me that's it So so like it
19:27
starts to get to this place where especially if you've been on the sidelines but even if you
19:32
haven't just the experience of watching it do what it does is a completely
19:37
different thing than anything we've ever seen and and it's it's in the neighborhood of Manis right The the sort of crazy Manis where it goes and looks
19:44
at a website and it does this and it does that It's in that neighborhood but it's now contained within the the the
19:50
chat experience Okay Well this explains why earlier today I was doing a demo and
19:56
it started writing code and I was like wait I just closed it because I was like these people are not ready I don't know
20:03
what this is I'm just going to close the window real quick and reopen Jed GPT Yeah Well and I but you know that that
20:11
that is a like I assume they're showing their work because Deepseek when it came
20:18
out it showed its work and everyone you know that was when the market lost$1.2 trillion dollars in a day Um because
20:23
people were like oh this is so much better than chat GPT So I think that's why they're showing it But to your point
20:28
there's times when you don't want it reasoning You just need a quick answer And that's like the 40 model not the 03
20:34
model Like the naming thing a whole separate thing But but I think this would be a really good week week to dig
20:41
back into chat GPT and just experience how different it is because it is different The other thing that they
20:47
added and I don't know if you know this um I I discovered it yesterday is
20:52
there's a new button in the lefthand menu called library and if you click that what is that It's all the pictures
20:59
you've ever created It's like it's a library of pictures Yeah it's really cool Oh I know
21:07
I know because you know why how I notice it I just One second here Sorry Live live show everybody We're we're we're
21:14
rolling We're rolling But the dogs have needs Um because what I did today was I logged
21:22
in on an incognito window to just plain old chat GPT to doublech checkck what
21:27
people who aren't paying have access to And so because that lefthand you know
21:33
column wasn't just all like the dog's breakfast the library thing stood out And so I looked in there and it was
21:40
empty So I was like "Huh maybe something's coming down the pike." But it's it's all your So all of your images
21:48
are there Yeah And you can scroll through them just like midjourney It's really cool
21:53
So and you can edit them What do you think is like Jim Ross is
21:59
here and he I know that Jim is a person who is really good about being
22:06
consistent and that he in particular has himself on like a a game plan to
22:13
experiment with AI for a few hours a day and he's just seen that like p you like
22:19
the the the compounding interest of of getting better each today people who are employees right now
22:29
Mhm How and when do they do they just like take PTO and just like stay home
22:36
and learn how to use CGBT You know I said that I I got a lot of questions early on from parents talking about what
22:43
should I tell my kid to do in college And what I said back then was they should leave class and they should go
22:49
back to their dorm room or go to the library and just do AI learn about AI find geeky nerdy friends who are doing
22:57
the same and hang out with them Yeah Um I I almost feel that doubly so with
23:03
employees right now You know whether whether like you know whatever you're
23:08
allowed to use at work use at work But on the weekends use other stuff on your nonwork computer right Go play with
23:17
Midjourney Go make stuff for your kids Or you know like like Brandon did with his kid where um his four-year-old made
23:24
a song inso and and now his four-year-old's running around going "Daddy can I listen to the song I made?"
23:30
It's it's it's like like just be in the conversation I I honest to God I look at
23:37
Jim Ross is kind of the gold standard of just set an intention and show up every
23:43
day and and you know he goes to the extreme extreme in my case just because of the ADD but he sets a timer for an
23:50
hour every morning and just does AI for his business and sometimes he knows what
23:56
he has to do and sometimes he doesn't but he just does it anyway Yeah And he's always experimenting right and and
24:03
so I think it's I think it is the secret to to being laid off last and hired
24:10
first Same And in fact the that there was a leak from the CEO of Spotify this
24:16
past yes that basically said you know AI competence is a core skill now core like
24:24
it's a core expectation and you know he also said you can't hire anyone new unless you can prove that the
24:31
AI can't do that job which by the way I mean there were conversations
24:38
about that a couple years ago already and I'm quite sure that th this is the beginning of of the
24:47
end for lots and lots of people who we know and love That's been the real like other than man is keeping me up at night
24:53
I've just had this like spike in anxiety about the people I care about because so
25:00
many of the people I work with are in marketing or marketing adjacent fields which are just such easy pickings Like
25:06
such easy pickings I it's gonna be it's gonna be it's gonna be every job I mean
25:11
the thing David Shapiro on X if you go watch the videos that he did about this new thing that that you know if if it
25:18
solved math right like anywhere where you need need high mathematics you no
25:24
longer necessarily need a high mathematician to do it Yeah now like I
25:30
don't even know what you would do with high mathematics So you need to have but you know chat GPT could teach me in
25:36
probably an hour Yeah Oh for sure So so yeah what do we
25:41
need math for I mean I've been asking myself that question since fourth grade but
25:46
um so so let's just quickly talk about our community So the one of the things that and I deeply believe is is that
25:53
community is everything And I I I got to tell you the more these tools get sophisticated the more I feel this way
26:00
You can't possibly learn enough You can't possibly learn fast enough You can't possibly be passionate enough And
26:06
you're human right So you're going to burn out and you're going to go through this and that And when you're in
26:13
community you can draw on the energy of others Other people show up and go "Oh
26:18
I'll teach you something." And you can just sit back and absorb it and things like that And so the the salon is we
26:23
just hit officially hit 3,000 members Um so yes congratulations Lucky them Lucky
26:30
them Exactly Exactly And I'm going uh in two weeks I'm headed to Washington DC
26:36
with Daisy Thomas and we're we're flying in um 50 different people Um 10 of the
26:42
startups are AI startups and we're going to be going all around Washington and talking to staff of senators and
26:48
congressmen and things like that So really really excited So so please come join the salon and then go to tell us
26:55
about your remarkable organization Okay Well okay So one of the things that
27:01
women inside She Leads AI are working on in anticipation of the job loss is
27:06
they're creating a job companion AI kit So that and we're going to go around
27:12
like uh one of our She leads AI members is starting in New York and she's going to road trip all the way over to Oregon
27:20
this summer and we're gonna meet her in different places Hopefully that's so cool go and talk to legislators and um
27:28
one of our friends suggested shrink wrapping the van in a sponsor's logo
27:35
which happy to shrink wrap our van in whatever sponsorship logo is required
27:41
like we're happy to do it I think three I think three mile storage is uh you know they want to get their awareness
27:47
out storage you know would look really good on the outside of a VW bus the nice
27:53
thing there is Jim would provide the graphics with using AI there Yeah
27:59
exactly So this is the kind of thing that we do though you know we look at
28:05
opportunities to help and then now we're the people who have these rare unique
28:10
currently rare unique skill set to build this stuff and we also understand the
28:16
people process and culture component So that's really you know in she leads AI
28:21
our mission is to unite accomplished women to advance AI for global prosperity And a lot of things fit under
28:28
that but something like doing this job this AI job
28:33
companion kit type thing is s is like what a a what an awesome way to use
28:40
these skills that we're privileged enough to have had the opportunity to learn As hard as it has been to learn
28:47
them it is a privilege that all of us can afford to stay up all night learning these things Yep No I I am I am I'm
28:57
thrilled So yeah please go check out join And if you are curious at all about
29:03
Sheile Leads AI tomorrow we have a an event from 8:00 a.m Pacific to 8:00 p.m
29:09
Pacific There'll be 12 or 15 women speaking about how they're using AI to
29:14
uh repot themselves So you you just can't get enough of the massive events can you Oh my god We tried to make it
29:21
three hours and it just couldn't happen You just couldn't I know Yeah It's crazy Well listen speaking of special people
29:27
and and special guest Carl Y I'm so excited to bring Carl up Why don't you you know embarrass him a little while
29:33
he's backstage and then we can bring him up and he can defend himself Well Carl
29:38
yeah exactly Carl is for sure a touchstone for bunches of us when it
29:46
comes to AI operations and business So he's oftentimes the person that people
29:53
seek out when we're like hey you know this it seems like this company should
29:59
be able to do XYZ thing or isn't this weird I was at so and so place and I was
30:06
sharing this with them and they like all looked really confused or you know what do you price this as or what are some of
30:12
the issues that you've come up with and I can remember number of examples where Carl has been able to like demystify
30:19
stuff for all of us He's extremely successful He shows up on the AI Daily
30:24
Show every single morning with a group of five or six other big brains in AI
30:31
and I think they've probably done like 700 episodes or something like that A lot y um and yeah I'm just delighted to
30:39
have him here today and honored and uh just Yeah everybody meet Carl Carl Hey
30:45
everybody Welcome Welcome Thanks Thanks Thanks for coming on the show We're just
30:50
you know we're We're just a fledgling little show I think this might be our seventh episode So we just have to
30:57
multiply that by a hundred and we'll be in the neighborhood where you guys are It's not really 700 I think uh if Brian
31:05
is around 350 so about half of that So uh Okay Still that's a
31:11
lot That's a lot You guys really have set the bar very high It's it's mostly
31:18
fun just talking every day and and I'm as much as I try like we I try to be on
31:24
every day It's like you know and I think that's what's nice about multiple people is that you know we all get busy with
31:30
with certain things but there's always at least two or three people on the show to to talk about that subject So yeah
31:37
Yeah Yeah So so if you do that eb and flow that we were talking about you've got someone to to cover you So so why
31:43
don't you jump in and just you know tell us um who you are give us give us a little bit about your background and and
31:49
the things you're thinking about We'll ask you some questions you know toward the end of the show but would love to just know what's making you tick these
31:56
days and where you where where you came from Yeah So um I came from the mostly
32:03
owned my own SAS company from:32:12
of was a little like I don't know what I'm gonna do So a contract came up which
32:19
supposed to be 18 months turned into three years and then yeah it's and then
32:25
from there um went to uh another SAS company and worked with them and then
32:33
hen AI blew up um November of:32:38
um led their AI adoption uh work but really my interest in AI started when I was a kid because the
32:46
first game that my dad ever gave me was this um uh was a chess set and uh it was
32:54
an electronic chesset So I would always be playing against the computer and you know the the story about Deep Blue and
33:00
then Alph Go and I remember when I was
33:06
where I was I was sitting in an office I don't know if you you all remember 20 I
33:11
think it was:33:17
IO demonstrating AI making a reservation to a restaurant and I thought wow I
33:23
don't know if you all remember that I so I'll tell you why I remember that in a second but but go ahead Yeah so I
33:29
remember that and I thought this is amazing this this is where things are going So this you know accelerated my
33:36
deep dive but obviously you know we started playing with with GPT2 Dolly
33:43
stable diffusion but nothing was obviously ready for prime prime time
33:48
right it was it was like oh that that's neat and you can see it progressing but no one expected it to to go where it was
33:57
in the short time frame and then obviously everything blew up since then
34:02
um and we we started a business on it a couple years ago and but haven't looked back Um but really for me the the thing
34:10
that I've been seeing and where why we created 0 to 60 is there is a I feel and
34:18
I I think you would probably agree there's a there's our AI bubble where
34:23
everyone's excited and everyone's hyping everyone up but then there's the rest of
34:28
everybody else especially businesses And it's it's
34:34
getting noisier Have you noticed that it's getting noisier 100% last couple of weeks the push back is is intensifying
34:40
Oh my god thank you I'm so glad you mentioned that Yeah Yeah You're right The bubble good way to
34:48
put it Yeah Optimistic bubble Well we're right And and in that bubble we always
34:54
see you know like the the hype the hype train people who are like and you kind
35:00
of know how they start their it's usually on X but it could be on LinkedIn
35:06
or or something It's like you know 10 wild examples mind blown mind blowing um
35:13
you can make money with chat GBT something or someone's cooked this is cooked this is cooked we're all cooking
35:20
or something you know Yeah you know anthropic is cooking or something like that And it's software engineers are
35:26
over Yeah So someone's dead SEO's dead this is dead or whatever it is right But
35:34
if you take that out and you talk to just general businesses and everyday people they're like "Yeah AI is kind of
35:42
cool but like I have other stuff to do Um that's awesome." And you know when
35:48
you show them the like all the amazing things outside all the the cool stuff it's like wow this is really really cool
35:56
But remember people have other interests They have their families They have things to do Um and this isn't a
36:04
priority for a lot of people So you know that hype isn't matching to me what I'm
36:10
seeing on the ground talking to over a hundred businesses hundreds of businesses clients prospects And it's
36:17
like you know when you hear McKenzie uh a KPMG whatever big report saying oh
36:25
adoption is 70% or increasing by% And I was like I don't know who they're
36:30
talking to And maybe it's the audience we're talking to but I'm like I don't
36:35
see that at all No I don't Who are if you were to guess who are they talking
36:43
to I don't know For real Because where are they getting the I don't see Well you you know you know something that
36:50
that I've experienced and I'm curious if you have Carl is I'll talk to someone and like oh yeah yeah I use AI a lot
36:56
What do you use Oh chat EBT like they always have that answer and you're like well how do you use oh you know emails
37:03
and then the minute you show them something that is not just you know a call-in response like Google search
37:10
their their draw drops open and it's clear that they've never really So it might be that people are answering oh
37:16
yeah I use AI means they've used chat GPT a couple of times right Or co-pilot
37:21
Or co-pilot Exactly Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah And I think that's the like today I was
37:29
talking to we're doing a presentation to um like a it's an entrepreneur group I
37:34
don't know if you heard of EO before Um right So I was talking to a uh um an EO
37:40
group And we always begin our presentation with how many people here use AI What do you use it for And then I
37:48
always like to ask hey who's paying for any any AI Oh that's good We're we're
37:53
usually talking maybe one or two people in the room depending how big the room is Wow Then you kind of know you're like
38:01
okay so obviously you haven't had the full capability the the things that you use and then even the people that we say
38:09
oh I'm like this person's a resident AI expert I'm like okay cool So then we can
38:15
talk more more advanced intermediate things But then usually I would say 99%
38:20
of the time then again we're like you kind of dig a little deeper and it's
38:25
like oh you either haven't paid you don't pay or even even if you do the
38:31
term custom GPT it's like I've never used it before and then you're like okay
38:36
and that's not a slight against anybody that is more of a there are things that have come out and it's so fast and I
38:44
like using the example of:38:50
first iPhone So cool That's amazing Everyone's excited Imagine if we're on
38:55
iPhone 16 Imagine if iPhone 16 came out three months later right Yeah Yeah
39:01
That's a great point That's a really good point With the complete app store right I was like but then there would be
39:09
no app store because no one had built the apps right Well like what apps I don't know these apps Yeah that's that's
39:16
something that I thought about a lot that the the progression from like you
39:22
know when the worldwide web came out and HTML 1.0 came out like to get to some
39:30
level of saturation and some level of maturity was like a decade Like it wasn't it wasn't a handful of years
39:37
right It was a long time And and you're right that like the jumps here are are
39:43
so significant that I think I think even people that maybe tried chat GPT a year
39:48
and a half ago and just kind of assume well it's probably the same kind of thing as it was then That's the thing
39:54
where it's just it's just not the it's not it's not even a single tool anymore right It's it's a dozen tools right It's
40:00
a um there there was this um it was a quote maybe last year I think Brad
40:08
Litecap from OpenAI said it where and we're finding this too
40:15
when a an a tech is deployed in most businesses the assumption it is that the
40:23
tech the software the functionalities remain static Sure
40:30
there's features and whatnot built in but like if you buy a let's say a Salesforce if you buy an
40:38
ERP the ERP does the same thing It does what it's supposed to do like end to end
40:46
CRM whatever it is It's there hasn't been a tool in the past that essentially
40:53
changes how it operates Yeah Right So Exactly if you so it's different when so
41:00
when a company attempts to purchase this uses AI or purchases AI tools they're
41:08
still treating it like a like a tech in the past so when you're trying to deploy
41:14
it and this is where you know we have issues when it is trying to deploy it secure it in that way like an
41:22
ERP it doesn't work like that it's changing its functions
41:28
And it it's so it's so different and you were even talking about this I think
41:33
earlier in the show the the way that people are adopting it is they're kind
41:40
of in that past mode versus there's actually I don't know if you both have
41:45
heard the term Lumiere's law So Lumiere's law was it's more of a it's
41:52
a like a photography term So think of when you know when the video
41:58
when moving picture came out and people were so used to photographs people were
42:05
still using um mo uh they were still trying to use
42:10
essentially video but in the format of photography So it was just a bunch of
42:18
um images in a row A better example would be when the the internet first
42:24
came out all the websites were literally just um brochures online brochures
42:30
because that's the only way knew how to it's literally looking at new technology
42:36
through the lens of old technology I think that's kind of where we are at the moment I think that I that's huge the
42:42
the thing that that struck me because this happened for me personally and then I see it with other people is that where
42:48
people inevitably go when when they sort of get their aha moment about AI they go
42:54
to I'm going to I'm going to go for the efficiency play or they go to like Zappy or automations and things like that
42:59
where like I'm going to make my work more efficient which is how computers have always behaved right But this
43:05
generative thing where it's like what if you could reimagine what your work even is Like that's that's like that's a
43:10
thing that we just to your point we don't have we don't have a context to under computers have never acted like
43:17
that So it's I think it's a huge huge point and you raised a good point We don't
43:22
know we know what we know and we don't know what we don't know So there isn't
43:28
for those in in when when moving picture first came out they didn't know that you
43:33
could do the things that we do with movies today It took evolution to do that and like all the different use
43:39
cases and people being creative So it'll take today everyone here everyone
43:44
this is why I remember March:43:51
Alolman said "Hey we're going to release these to the world but it's kind of up to us to figure out how to use it It's
43:59
not their job." And that's very different than a lot of tech tools that
44:04
here's the defined purpose especially for a generalized tool you've
44:10
got engineers like if if you watch the open AI you know live streams what are
44:15
their examples math physics engineering right like I today I was like why is there not a poet on there well because
44:21
they don't have one that works there right um but but yeah but it's that's who's using the tools once they put them
44:27
in the world is people who are not just mathematicians So so let's jump I made a banner for us
44:34
Ann look Oh three questions for our speaker Um I wanted to just just like hearken
44:43
back really quickly though to remember how frustrated we all were that Open AI
44:50
didn't release any documentation and everyone was just like "Oh that's great Thanks for giving us this thing that
44:55
nobody knows how to do anything with." which for some people probably was a disservice for for the people with the
45:01
more curious minds and some time available to them It was brilliant that
45:08
there wasn't any documentation because we literally had to figure out how to break it Yeah And in that process that's
45:15
how we learned the most more so than and Open AI learned a lot too right Like
45:21
they're like "Oh they use it like that Oh that's important to them." Oh yeah Good point Yeah they sure did Um so Carl
45:29
one of the questions we like to ask people which I'm wondering what what your how you will identify this moment
45:35
in your life trajectory but we like to ask people what was the moment that they knew that they had to go allin on
45:41
generative AI and then what happened after that Well I kind of touched on that before
45:48
ed So I when during Google IO:45:54
going all in There was nobody there to go all in
46:00
Like it was that John Travolta meme It's like where every where is everybody Where is everybody You know what's funny
46:07
I I said I said I would I would uh tell you my thing for that I remember that
46:12
Google IO and it and and Sund got up there and he showed all this stuff and it was
46:17
really good And then I went to to like use the AI that he made it sound like it
46:24
was going to be so easy And like they were talking about embeddings and weights and like like you had to
46:29
understand like AI theory and and like what all that meant and temperature and
46:36
I just I just backed like I just went away from it So when chat GBT came out
46:41
four years later like that was sort of this instant moment where oh like now
46:46
it's just like a Google you know chat chat box right like you don't have to
46:51
know all the math so so so talk about
46:57
um how did that evolve like like did did you you went all in on it no one was at
47:03
the party like did you figure out the tech have you been doing it that whole time or did you back out of it as as
47:09
well like like just talk about that journey a bit No so when that happened I
47:15
remember if you listen to Paul Ritzer Yep Love it His uh his marketing
47:21
blueprint and I remember because I had that book and I had him sign it at a content marketing Yeah Um and he uh and
47:30
he was that was the very first time he started talking about it I remember that book And so he him he was the only one
47:35
in that kind of space and maybe a few others There's actually a podcast called
47:40
the No Priors podcast They've been out for a very long time So you kind of pick
47:47
pieces in it But because there was no practical applications you're just like
47:53
"Oh I'm just gonna have fun playing with it." And that's kind of all I did Now I
47:58
remember I kind of wrote in I don't know a business plan in a couple goals of
48:05
mine like hey I want to explore it more learn about it more and then see what I
48:11
can do in business but like I think having implemented so many things from a
48:16
business perspective ran my own business too it's you kind of understand there's
48:21
no way people will right the the embrace of this unless
48:28
you have a very very specific use case probably most likely machine learning use case some sort of data
48:34
classification and that's kind of it and then even then that's very rare for
48:41
companies to to do that so I kept playing with the tools but I never
48:48
actually went beyond it so listened some podcasts um did that really where I was excited
48:57
about is the combination of AI and blockchain That was when when blockchain
49:03
started growing again Yeah Um I was like "Oh where can AI now play in this
49:08
space?" Because and obviously from a web 3 blockchain crypto perspective I think
49:14
that was really ruined by the essentially the finance bros the NFT
49:20
bros Yeah Yeah Yeah Where everyone was trying to scam their way and trying to get make the dollar But I always felt
49:27
the underlying technology had such promise but that was getting lost in the
49:32
monkeys and the scams right Either the monkeys or the scams and then you're
49:37
like "Oh no." So um it was it was sad but then I kept my eye on the AI piece
49:44
abs and so on So it was until:49:53
I'm like "Okay we now we got to go." Chat GBT came out Yeah Yeah Now we got
50:00
to go cuz I have the kind of a little bit of a background understanding Remembered what Sundur was doing and I'm
50:06
like this can actually happen now Met my business partner around March We
50:13
started I started creating content got some businesses who were interested and then kind of just took off from there
50:21
Brilliant Brilliant Okay here's question number two Um based on you know who you
50:28
are what you're good at you know you're based on your expertise So just sort of think of the lens of of the things you're good
50:34
at what are the trends that you think are important that you're following like
50:39
what what what's what are trends seeing and why Um the one that I ha I I'm
50:47
really keeping my eye on and I'm actually uh I guess talking through and trying to
50:55
get businesses to understand is I don't know if you saw why
51:01
combinators call for startups:51:09
call for B2A business to agent right where the customer is agent That's one
51:15
The other big one was vertical AI And that connects to something else which
51:21
I'll say in a second But I guess the call is any vertical SAS
51:26
essentially any vertical SAS can be and to me will be disrupted If Y combinator
51:32
is asking for startups to literally disrupt wipe out a vertical
51:38
literally to get vertical AI vertical SAS that has a big implication not just
51:44
for SAS for everything else and and to me the underlying theory and we can see it with vibe coding right the term
51:51
voding is all the legacy companies Salesforce
51:57
agents Microsoft whatever it is They won't be the ones who are going to
52:03
be the major disruptors in my opinion because regardless of how they operate
52:09
they still are fundamentally born from business like
52:15
traditional how traditional businesses are are are developed like like you I think we all know from a SAS company you
52:22
get seated then you grow you get more people then you try to raise more funds
52:28
series A series B series C grow grow grow grow grow and find yourself either an exit IPO or you know whatever that
52:35
end goal would be At some point figure out a business model hopefully not be poor and like you know make some of your
52:43
money back I think though if you look at what is
52:49
happening the biggest flex used to be hey how big is your team Oh yeah That
52:56
flex is not that's not a flex That's a red flag right Right That's no longer
53:01
the It's like wait a minute Why can a team of five or 10 now punch above their
53:08
weight and compete with a team of 200 300 500 Yeah And if you can't Yeah you're right That is that's going to
53:14
become a red flag And then and then that that starts to look to me like every legacy company that's got 200 people you
53:23
know trying to build the next product Well wait a minute what how's that going to change right And are they going to
53:29
resist that change Yes And and to me that isn't like exacerbated by we all
53:37
know like especially major major SAS companies um you have your if a if you
53:44
have if you're lucky enough to have Nike let's say Nike as a client you're gonna customize your tool however Nike wants
53:52
it to be customized But if you have a medium company you're not going to customize it that much And if you have a
53:58
brand new you're not going to customize at all Well what happens when those companies are starting to look at these
54:04
SAS products be like you know that's great that you'll customize it for me
54:10
but how about if I screen capture a whole bunch of your your tool I'm going
54:16
to take it to I don't know Bolt and Replet and just build myself your your
54:21
product totally tailored to what I want Y
54:26
completely and I don't plan to sell it I just plan to use it y for our internal
54:33
purposes So why would I pay you And that to me is the that moat that SAS
54:40
companies have is starting to lower and lower because of can people do it now
54:45
for the bigger no but we're always I'm sure we always say what happens in three
54:50
months what happens in six months what happens in 12 months when everything 03
54:56
today I don't know what's going to happen I I don't know how good it is I've seen
55:03
the zoom capabilities of 03 I'm sure there's very very great entrepreneurial
55:10
minds in in your audience that be like I'm going to take 03 I'm going to take a Salesforce screen capture a bunch of
55:17
them and ask 03 build this out Let's go build it out I don't know what that's going to look like but it's gonna I'm
55:24
sure when 04 comes out it'll be better and five and six So that that is the
55:31
biggest trend that I'm seeing And and I tell a lot of businesses
55:36
hey it's not enough that you I've heard a lot of crawl walk run but I'm like
55:43
that's fine from a legacy to get people but that 10erson company that is in your
55:50
space they are born Do you I don't know if you They're not even running They're on a rocket Like it's it's a different
55:57
mode I I think the I don't know if you've seen the movie The Dark Knight or Oh no The Dark Knight Rises and I think
56:06
Bane says it's like "Oh you've been you know like oh you use the darkness or
56:11
something like that." He's like "I was born and shaped in the darkness." These 10 these companies these startups
56:18
they're literally shaped by AI They are not trying to bolt on a product They're
56:24
not trying to bolt on a process They're not trying to use NAN as an automation Maybe they are but their whole business
56:31
is literally AI They're they're circling They revolve around AI And they're g
56:38
that means to me they're going to run circles around companies who are like slowly starting to adopt it And that's
56:44
sort of the biggest trend I'm I'm really following Love it I Drew I really
56:50
appreciate what you said The UX is just a microphone Couldn't agree more I had that conversation yesterday with a
56:55
client who's building a new space and I'm like promise you do not build an
57:01
open air office I promise you you're going to regret it because we're all going to be talking to like one little
57:08
thing and it's going to be going everywhere Um Carl we talk about AI
57:15
readiness instead of AI literacy And I would be curious to hear what when you
57:21
hear AI readiness what does that mean to you And what would you recommend to somebody who's still in that maybe maybe
57:29
dabbling phase Um what would you recommend to them So when we talk about AI readiness um
57:37
what that means to me is and I'll I'll kind of put it from a from more of a business lens where we look at it is
57:44
it's I think I've heard you say it's not enough for you to dabble anymore It's
57:50
that's not a that's not something it you have to actually use it and you have to
57:57
connect it to whether you do it for your job but ideally you do it as a like you have to
58:06
be in the space and you have to understand it I know people are busy I
58:11
know you have all these things going on but you cannot you
58:18
you can't just ignore it or you can't just let it pass you by You actually
58:25
have to be whether you pay attention do one newsletter do one
58:33
review on X put a bunch of people on lists whether it's follow somebody on LinkedIn follow Ann and Kyle on on on
58:40
LinkedIn or or or Tik Tok You kind of have to do that just because it
58:47
is I tell businesses a lot you have to have some sort of foundation because if
58:53
you don't we've seen the things move so can you believe 01 was announced in
58:59
September and it's September and now we're here and all these they
59:06
smashed all all the benchmarks they they like effectively topped the benchmarks out in eight months or six months here
59:12
it So that's what I mean I think by AI
59:17
readiness But I think we also know no matter how much we we
59:23
tell we have to let everybody else know because there's too many people I see
59:30
that are not the that are literally just letting
59:36
this pass And and maybe that's the fault of the AI companies and the hype machine
59:41
where there's so much news people have said "Eh it's something else Something else." And three or five years Yeah
59:50
Exactly Yeah It's it's um Yeah we're It's absolutely crazy how
59:58
um how how fast it's moving and it's the the thing I'm I'm curious to your take I
::I know we need to wrap up here We started a few minutes late so we're a little late but um so I appreciate you staying Um but but it's things are
::moving so fast My like the thing that that kind of makes me achech right now is the it's accelerating so quickly that
::the people that are getting left behind like in the web days you could still see them right But this thing's going so
::fast It's like I don't know how people catch up when the thing is so capable so
::quickly Yeah Yeah Well here's one thing though I had
::a I was thinking about this too What happens when it's so capable that the
::people who weren't able to you know get on that train are it's easy for them to
::just get on like driverless cars right Yeah They just get in them Yeah Just use
::this I I don't need to know how it works I don't need to know anything I just essentially use it And And maybe that's
::where we're going It's become it's so easy that it benefits everybody without
::everybody having to put in the work which I'm sure some people here like you know for the past two years just that's
::all we've been doing but like maybe that's we need to do that or else I I
::don't want to think about the hey there's going to be a bunch of people who you know are left behind because
::they're concerned about other things and I know a lot of people like AI this is
::the greatest thing but I'm like no there's there's a lot of other issues in the world that are pressing too so it
::isn't this isn't we've got to keep ourselves in check and we got to have a little bit of
::perspective on on the space as well Wow Well this has been awesome I mean this
::has been awesome I wish our show was seven hours long because I could sit here all day I feel the same way Well
::Carl thank you so much Thank you so much Thank you so much Carl That was a treat Absolute treat All right Goodbye
::everybody Bye everybody [Music]
