Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome RVA to Inspire AI, where we spotlight companies and individuals in the region who are pioneering the development and use of artificial intelligence. I'm Jason McGinty from AI Ready RVA. At AI Ready RVA, our mission is to cultivate AI literacy in the greater Richmond region through awareness, community engagement, education and advocacy. Today's episode is made possible by Modern Ancients driving innovation with purpose. Modern Ancients uses AI and strategic insight to help businesses create lasting, positive change with their unique journey consulting practice. Find out more about how your business can grow at modernagentscom. And thanks to our listeners for tuning in today. If you or your company would like to be featured in the Inspire AI Richmond episode, please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share or follow our content and stay up to date on the latest events for AI Ready RVA.

Speaker 1: 1:12

Welcome to Inspire AI. Today's episode is something special. We're breaking the mold with a dual podcast collaboration. I'm teaming up with the CloudCast, the industry's leading cloud computing and AI podcast. It's a go-to resource for technology and business leaders navigating the evolving world of cloud computing, ai, open source, aws, etc. Etc. In this episode, aaron Delp and I ditch the traditional host-guest setup. Instead, we co-host a conversation covering AI's impact on industries, cloud innovation and the future of automation, ai literacy and how technology is transforming the way we work. Whether you're a business leader, ai enthusiast or just looking to future-proof your career, this discussion is packed with insights you won't want. And we're back.

Speaker 2: 2:36

And we have maybe a slightly interesting podcast this week, because this is actually a dual podcast, and so if you're on Jason's podcast, which I'm going to introduce him in a second, you might be really confused as to who this is. But what we're going to be doing this week is a bit of a dual podcast. Jason McGinty and I have decided to put our heads together and talk a little bit about AI, and we both have AI podcasts. We're both going to be publishing these podcasts as well. So, with that, why don't I kick it over to you, jason, and do a quick introduction and tell everyone a little bit about your podcast as well, and then I'll do likewise? Yeah, sounds good, aaron. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 3:20

It's pretty exciting actually, this dual podcast opportunity. I haven't been in the game nearly as long as you have, but it's podcasters like you that do inspire me to keep going journey of learning and finding that there's so much information out there, and I looked at a couple of them, like super data science and practical AI and said to myself I could really learn a lot if I hosted a podcast and interviewed specialists in my field, and therefore that's just when the idea kicked off and I started making moves. Six months later, I had a podcast launched. Live Podcasting is just a side gig for me, like it is you.

Speaker 1: 4:16

I'm a senior manager software engineering at Capital One. I do that for my day job. I'm also a board of directors member for AI Ready RVA. For the sake of how I deliver AI and my working experience, I'll be steering clear of anything related to Capital One today. Generally speaking, I can talk about AI and industries, and especially AI and how it's shaping the greater Richmond region and the tracks that AI Ready RVA has a vision and mission to accelerate in the coming years. I would love to talk with you about that today.

Speaker 2: 4:55

Yeah, fantastic. And why don't we start there? Actually, I'll do a quick intro and then we'll kind of jump into backgrounds as well. So for those out there that are new listeners, first of all, thank you. I have a podcast that I run with another gentleman, brian Grace Lee, and it's called the Cloudcast, and we have been doing cloud computing and emerging technology.

Speaker 2: 5:18

Very similar origin story just a lot longer ago. We are going on our 15th year of podcasting. This is, for us, going to be episode 900 and something. I don't remember exactly what the number is going to be, but we've been kind of same thing of like we're in Raleigh, we worked for big enterprise companies and wanted to learn about this cloud computing thing, and so we started a podcast way back when and it grew and it was a really successful way to give back to the community as well. So the community has been very awesome at like hey, do you want to be on the podcast? And they're willing to share their time and their knowledge, and it's been amazing journey over the years. So, jason, tell everyone about the nonprofit please.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Sure. So AI Ready RVA is Richmond based. We cater to the greater Richmond region and beyond, aspirationally speaking. The nonprofit recently launched as a 5013C in July of 2024 and has been building engaging community experiences ever since. Even before that there was plenty of community engagement, but we generally focus around the conversation that AI is driving change in our community.

Speaker 1: 6:48

So the mission specifically is about AI literacy and engaging the greater Richmond region in education, business leaders, professionals that want to do good in the community and through which leverage our skills, our networks, to enhance the greater Richmond region through AI literacy, as well as various community engagement events.

Speaker 1: 7:27

Signature events, such as the launch event, where we're pulling in dozens of Richmond leaders as well as the leaders in the community that help us create the right policies for our businesses as they relate to AI, are the ones that we're trying to attract attention towards and build partnerships. We're also building partnerships through colleges like VCU, U of R and several other local educational structures that are going to help us build out our community of thought leaders as well as develop these educational organizational structures to support the community in its AI literacy evolution. So a lot of that is really just kind of in play right now and building the partnerships and generating the funding needed to stand up the structures is what it's about. So we have this vision, we have a lot of enthusiastic leaders that want to get behind it, and now we're generating beyond the awareness action.

Speaker 2: 8:46

Nice, fantastic, and I think what we're going to do for the format of this podcast is we have a list of questions and, rather than be a designated host and guest, as is typical, this is going to be dual host, dual guest. We're going to alternate here with questions and topics, and so, jason, why don't you start us off there? Sure.

Speaker 1: 9:12

Aaron, tell me how do you think AI is currently disrupting your specific area of focus.

Speaker 2: 9:33

So, it's really interesting because I think there's what do I use AI for on kind of a daily basis and where it has made the most significant impact in both my personal and professional. I'll use the term like. I use the term front end, back end, and what I mean by that is I'm not great at times at brainstorming things and coming up with ideas and so like, but once I get started I'm good and so like if I can throw something out there to you know one of the algorithms and you know, give me some ideas on this, and then I can kind of go off and running and take that middle piece and take it to you know a pretty decent conclusion. But then also, too, sometimes I'll get stuck on something on the back end of like, hey, this you know paragraph or this you know graphic, or some of these other things. And, by the way, I do you know technical marketing as as kind of my day job.

Speaker 2: 10:13

So, like, creating content is is something I do, um, but when it comes to like cleaning things up, like help me refine this a little bit further I find it good for that. So those are kind of the the two biggest things. I know a lot of a lot of folks out there use it for summarization. I, I, I do, but I think for me it it more just helps me when I get, you know, a writer's block on the creative journey, sometimes Sure.

Speaker 1: 10:43

Yeah, well, that that's where most people start, I think, aaron.

Speaker 1: 10:46

Yeah absolutely To me. That's exactly where I started is just seeing what it could do, and I think the more I iterated on that, the more I learned about its strengths and opportunities, if you will Sure. So what I generally like to use it for is starting fresh, getting a sense of what's the structure that I need to develop around this concept. So you know, I prompt it with. This is the scenario, this is the role I'm playing, and what I want to see from it is a thoughtful organization of ideas, and that generally will give you a list, an outline of sorts, and if I'm looking to use that in, let's say, a presentation, to work with a community about this concept or educate them about this concept, then I will transform the topic to you know how do we develop this into a presentation, one in which is educational and interactive, and it's really smart about taking the history of how it's learned about you and what makes you tick or what's important to you, and then generating the ideas around that.

Speaker 1: 12:09

So, right now, ian knows pretty much everything I know about AI, ready, rba. I have talked to it ad nauseum about that, and so when I say I'm creating a podcast and I'm going to talk with this person about that, about this idea let's call it maybe responsible AI and I want some really good, structured questions around responsible AI and this person is in this industry. It can help me formulate the entire structure of that Without hesitation. I will use like 90% of it because it's that good and it knows it that well. So, generally speaking, like I try to take it to the extent the edge of its capabilities every single time until I know that it's veering off in the wrong direction and I need to bring it back. You know what I mean.

Speaker 2: 13:05

That makes perfect sense. I love that. How do you see the role of AI literacy and community engagement playing out over the next couple of years?

Speaker 1: 13:15

Flipping the script on me there, Aaron Well.

Speaker 2: 13:20

See how prepared you are here.

Speaker 1: 13:21

Yeah, I see AI literacy as being a cornerstone of success in society. To be perfectly blunt, everybody needs to get to know how to use it if they're going to want to excel in their careers where AI can make an impact. Where AI can make an impact, I'm sure you're familiar with the statement these days that AI won't replace you, but it will allow somebody else that can use it to replace you or allow you to do your job better than somebody else that's not using it. Various forms of that same statement are going to ring true for every single person in society over the next few years.

Speaker 1: 14:09

So literacy starts with you know what are the basics, what do I need to know to just function with these new tools? And then it comes to like broader learning and creating a more structured approach to leveraging the tools, and that's where I think the community engagement pieces that'll help you accelerate is when you're immersed in the opportunities, in in the experiences that others in your community are also. What you're going to find is that you'll hear those experiences and be able to leverage from other experiences the takeaway knowledge to expand what I just said a moment ago, that taking it to the edge of its capabilities, and you're going to want to be able to do that, because people in your same role, competing for your position in your field, are going to be doing that the uncertainty of whether or not they should be, you know, lying low or just pressing forward. I say, go for it.

Speaker 2: 15:31

Yeah, yeah, I like that, I like that. Let me also add a little bit to that as well, because it originally was supposed to be directed at me. I just flipped it on you, right it at me. I just flipped it on you, right.

Speaker 2: 15:46

Um, here's the biggest thing I see going forward, um, and this is just a trend you know with with technology in our industry as a whole, because a lot of these things yes, ai, you know well, some people say ai isn't new, but I'll say gen ai is. Gen ai is what got all the buzz and got on the mainstream. But a lot of these technologies just handle your standard curve of like they go from something brand new and bespoke and then they eventually go through this area where, you know, it's kind of the middle of an S-curve, where you're in the middle of the curve and everyone's figuring out how to turn profits on it, and then the end of the S-curve is commoditization. Well, what we typically see a lot of times is in the beginning, when things are bespoke, it's very standalone, right? Like you'll go out to OpenAI or Claude or any of these others, and it's a standalone app for all intents and purposes. But you look at, you know Microsoft Copilot. You look at some of these others where the AI is starting to be built into the application, and that is, I think, where the mass adoption really starts to happen. And I also think, from a business standpoint, the profitability starts to happen. And I also think, from a business standpoint, the profitability starts to happen.

Speaker 2: 17:09

So something we track on our podcast a lot is a little bit. We call it chasing the money. Just because the technology is out there, is it actually profitable? Right now, ai is taking in billions and billions and billions of dollars of VC money and it's generating millions of dollars in revenue. You know if we're being generous. And so how do we flip that script long term? Flipped long term not by being a standalone application, but by being baked into the tools that everyone is already using and enhancing productivity that way. And the big thing that's recently covered in the press is Jevons paradox. If you're not familiar with it, it is. You know I'll butcher it because it's not in front of me, but the summarization is you know, as technology gets cheaper and gets more commoditized, that it actually becomes more useful, if you will, because it's more available to more and more people. And I think Jevin's paradox both has to come to AI and will come to AI over time. Yeah, has to come to AI and will come to AI over time.

Speaker 1: 18:24

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:26

So, jason, let's move on to the next topic and let's go back to AI-ready RVA. Where do you see AI-ready RVA in, say, five years, and what impact do you hope it will have in the region?

Speaker 1: 18:50

Yeah, great question, aaron. I think about this as a leader of AI ready RBA and consider you know what? What kind of forces are we going to be working with in the next five years that AI is going to attract right? And it's really hard to with any certainty say what's going to happen with AI in five years, but I imagine it's only going to get more powerful as a technology. It's only going to attract more businesses to using them.

Speaker 1: 19:20

And that leads me to believe that the communities, largely speaking the ones that we are going to be investing heavily into supporting, which is, the underrepresented communities to pull in grant funding, sponsorships and other community-engaging financial partnership-type activities to educate the greater Richmond region, and we're going to do that through a number of work streams, if you will. One, those that are in heavily impacted industries. Those are going to be the ones that need to shift horizontally to a new set of working circumstances. We'll call those pivot careers, the careers where you already do, you already leverage certain skill sets and now you're you're enhancing them with AI technologies to be the workforce of the future. So that's going to be another. And then then we also we also want to work with the undereducated groups that can become part of the workforce, given AI capabilities, and we want to support them in their journey. So I think those three groupings, as well as many other possible groupings, are the ones that we're going to be focusing on in the next three years.

Speaker 1: 21:04

Possible groupings are the ones that we're going to be focusing on in the next three years, given that we are working with partner.

Speaker 1: 21:14

We're partnering with organizations like VCU to establish a physical base for this organization.

Speaker 1: 21:18

We should have, you know, computer labs set up, computer lab setup, be able to pull in various educational content, leveraging all sorts of tracks where we're supporting the learning needs of the community in these three different work streams. And then, by five years assuming AI hasn't taken over everything by five years, assuming AI hasn't taken over everything we know that we're going to need to advocate more for the community at large, and so I imagine we'll be working very closely with policymakers to ensure that we can support the community more than disrupt it. And by that I mean, if the disruption is too fast, then no amount of efforts that anyone puts into slowing it down or helping educate the individuals like you're just not going to be able to get there fast enough. And since it's going to move so fast, we're going to need to work with those policymakers to support the growth and the maturity of our operations so that maybe more organically divide and conquer the future versus get slammed or thrust directly into something that our community cannot handle.

Speaker 2: 22:45

We're thrust directly into something that our community cannot handle. Yeah, yeah, I love that concept. As well as trying to be inclusive with everything, but also to being understanding that at the same time, I like the ability to absorb everything, like we've seen many instances in our careers of technology for technology's sake, right, and that isn't always good and it isn't always what everyone wants, and so being thoughtful about all of it, I think, certainly is super helpful and that's a fantastic approach. Thank you for that.

Speaker 1: 23:23

Yeah. So let me ask you a question, Aaron Sure. How is AI making you a more productive person in your personal or professional life?

Speaker 2: 23:33

I'm. Well, here's the thing I think anyone in technology is a lifelong learner. Like, when I say that I think I'm, you know, I'm honestly just saying everyone in technology honestly needs to be. And so because of that and again it was kind of one of the basis for starting this podcast is I really enjoy learning and absorbing a lot of new topics. There's often a lot of research that has to happen and a lot of kind of summarization that has to happen, because you'll have conversations, whether it's a professional conversations or even personal conversations, where, especially if you know I'm the techie, and people find out I'm technical, and then you know we'll be at a you know at a gathering or something and somebody's like, oh, tell me about so-and-so, and especially, you know my job is AI, technical marketing, and they're like oh well, I have lots of questions about AI and so you need to be able to to speak to many different levels and many different audiences, and I think AI in particular really helps with that research and summarization part of all of it.

Speaker 2: 24:41

Like I'll tell you, for instance, I don't use Google anymore. I haven't used Google in probably a year. I use Perplexity. And why do I use Perplexity? Well, because I can just you know, natural language language dump out a thought and it will come back with with decent answers and it's not a whole bunch of ads and it gives you the sources and yeah, I've caught it where I'm like that's not right, like a couple of times, you definitely have to trust but verify. But you know, I tell everyone I'm a huge proponent of that as, again, you know, taking one of those use cases and building into something we do and it not being standalone. I use perplexity, just honestly, as my research and summarization tool. I mean, I use it 10, 15 times a day, every day, because I'm just whether you know it or not.

Speaker 2: 25:42

Well, yeah, I mean, it's just it's. I'm always typing stuff in perplexity. My perplexity history is like it's off the charts and it's crazy.

Speaker 1: 25:51

on the topics Do you find that it knows you really well and it makes references when it responds to your role in yada yada or because of your interests? I think you'll want.

Speaker 2: 26:05

Yes, you know no, I think well, so it's actually there. You know there's a difference there between, okay I I, perplexity, no, but the other big one I use is claude. So from anthropic um I, I prefer claude over open ai. And we could go into the reasons another time. But the Claude, when it comes to you know, true Gen AI of like, help me out with something. Or, you know, help me talk about this or think about this, or you know, here's some documents to look through. Claude actually does a fantastic job of that more personal approach. Perplexity is a research tool. Claude is definitely more of a softer touch, if you will.

Speaker 1: 26:52

Oh, I am very interested in your Claude versus chat GPT.

Speaker 2: 26:58

Oh, okay, Well, I'll go into it If you think it's valuable. I's the thing.

Speaker 1: 27:02

Well, I don't use clouds, so I'm just curious you know.

Speaker 2: 27:07

No, it's you know at any given time. I mean in the state of the models, you know, in the very beginnings, certain ones were better and you know certain ones were, you know, more personal or certain ones were better at say you know, give me code versus write something for me. Um, and this is all before, like the, the, the newer reasoning models, like 01 and some of these others, um, but Claude, for me is because most of the things I do is more around help me with writing or help me with content, as opposed to give me, like, write me code.

Speaker 1: 27:52

Right.

Speaker 2: 27:53

And I have found the approach that Claude uses. It's more of just. It has a subtle personality, if you will.

Speaker 1: 28:02

I've heard that.

Speaker 2: 28:04

And I've just found it to be more, both approachable and the way it gives out the answers, a little bit more thoughtful. Now I'll be the first one to tell you, though, I haven't played around with the newest generation reasoning models all that much, but it's mainly because all that much, but it's mainly because I I haven't been to the thing where I'm like, hey, you really need to reason this out and think about this for a long time because I need a super thorough answer. It's for me. It's more I need creative answers than I do. I need reasoning and scientific and factual answers in what I use.

Speaker 1: 28:45

Well, I see I prefer my chat bots with no personality. That'll just be my choice, though.

Speaker 2: 28:53

Fair, all right, so why don't we move on here? I'll ask you a question here what challenges do you foresee in getting people more engaged with AI education and how do you plan to overcome them?

Speaker 1: 29:09

Yeah, the challenges are going to be spectacular. I think we're going to need to meet people where they are. We're going to need to partner with businesses that support the idea of educating their employees, and I'm talking about small and medium-sized businesses, not the enterprise-wide companies that have access to all sorts of educational platforms and can fund enterprise licensing for the thousands. Right, I'm talking about the smaller organizations that don't generally spend a lot of time learning, that aren't tech-forward organizations but need to be learning, that aren't tech forward organizations but need to be embracing it. So I think about that and I say to myself how do we get what I know to be a value into that community? And it's really about again meeting them where they are, so creating a virtual environment, creating a physical environment and allowing them to come in, and then also creating engaging communities where they're immersed. We want them to feel like, yes, it is something that they need to commit to for the learning sake, but it's also something that they should commit to for the means of leveraging these technologies for their benefit, and so the more they're exposed to that, the more they're exposed to information that my organization is sharing with them through socials and other newsletters and podcasts and various cohort events and this, that and the other. They should have the immersive environment that they'll need to get there.

Speaker 1: 31:02

That said, it's going to take a lot of work to convince people that it's worth their time to do so. My first point was we're going to need to build partnerships with the organizations that have access to the people, and by that we'll need to have structures in place that are accessible to engage the communities where they are, through the organizations that they're already looped into, the organizations that they're already looped into. Then we can leverage their power to support the cause through their resources. There's no way AI Ready, rva is going to build all the resources on their own. We're going to need to lean into the partnerships of the education community, the other nonprofits in the area, to say this is important. Let's partner, um, the other businesses that that care deeply about the future of Richmond. This is important. Let's partner and and strategically, uh, solve the problem at hand together.

Speaker 2: 32:11

Yeah, and I like, I really like where you're going, with all of that being thoughtful at the local level and and oh, by the way, I mean this is a model for everyone out there that that can easily be recreated I mean pretty much anywhere.

Speaker 1: 32:26

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 32:27

And and it's certainly going to be a necessary need going forward, yeah, I think, aspirationally speaking, if it works in Richmond, we're going to want to share it with other big cities in Virginia and the surrounding states and let it flourish. You know, I think about this. There's an engineering leadership community, elc. It also happens to be a podcast Engineering leadership community, I think it's. It's also happens to be a podcast. Uh, engineering leadership community, I think is what it's called. Uh, they, they have outsourced their, their model to um other big cities around the country and said this is how you do it. You know, if we put the structures in place and we say these things work, this is how you engage the community, go and engage your community, build your cohorts and we can help you build the partnerships and secure the grant funding to educate your community, then, you know, hopefully it creates a natural progression of evolution across the country. But you know, that's very aspirational, like I said, and we got to take first steps here in Richmond.

Speaker 2: 33:43

Love it, I love it. That's fantastic. Our next question was a little bit more about how it will impact the industry. And you know I kind of talked about commoditization. I already talked about Jevons Paradox. I already talked about, you know, building it into applications. But here's another thing You're talking about education Got me kind of thinking along a different line.

Speaker 2: 34:13

I'll tell everyone here's probably the biggest thing that I see difference between now and five years from now, specifically in just education and training as in kind of an industry, whether it's professional or even at the academic level. I've got two kids in college right now. I've got one daughter in undergrad and one daughter in post-grad and you're starting to see it like right now this is very timely. But like there's lots of like concerns about professors and use of AI, whether it's at the college level or at the high school level or just in communities in general, and it's almost a very adversarial view of all of this which, in my opinion, is a little short-sighted. And what I mean by that is, I think, as AI moves forward in the industry, it just becomes another tool in the toolbox. Right it's, it's a screwdriver, it's a hammer. Um, it's not the end, all be all that everyone thinks it's going to be We'll eventually settle into.

Speaker 2: 35:30

This is where AI is useful, but I think it's upending a lot of professions. But I think one area in particular is education and for all those things we just talked about, whether it's Gen AI, whether it's summarization, and does that then elevate the quality of the work so that those things that were before considered like you know, the main work streams now become elevated to where now there's some higher level work or there's some higher level thinking that could be solved with something like this? And does this truly the rising tide floats, all boats, kinds of things of the industry becomes better as a whole. I don't know.

Speaker 1: 36:19

I'm hopeful that that is where all of this will go ultimately though I see so big picture, though, like, where do you see AI agents fitting into industry change? Because you keep going back to summarization and research. Yes, some of the very early on assistance type plays, but let's say we start automating workflows.

Speaker 2: 36:52

Yeah, so, and here's the thing'll I'll, I'll steal my thunder from from one of the other questions we have a little further down. Um, I'm I don't know how I feel about AI agents, and here's why. Um, I haven't seen like you see like demos of it and you're like we follow the industry and you see like, oh, so-and-so has AI agents out and you know it's doing this, it's doing that. I haven't seen a compelling use case yet where I'm like, oh, wow, I need AI to do that work for me.

Speaker 2: 37:31

Um, I could see like, okay, what are the things I hate to do? Well, I hate to do email. Um, I, you know I spend as little, as little time as possible in email. Um, so it, hey, if there's an AI agent that kind of you know was my email reader and and kind of would take care of those things and kind of act like an assistant, hey, that might be nice. Um, but I also don't trust it, um, because I'm like, well, is it going to send emails on my behalf and what's it sending? I want to know. I guess maybe I'm too much of a control freak to to ever let it go actually do stuff for me. There's a difference between delegating stuff to it and then trusting it to actually do it properly. I don't think I'm there.

Speaker 1: 38:18

That's totally fine and there's going to be a lot of hesitation in the world to adopting those technologies.

Speaker 1: 38:30

But the fact is is that they're there and they're going to appeal so much to organizations and individual business owners to.

Speaker 1: 38:41

It's going to be hard to say no, I don't want it, just because it's scary.

Speaker 1: 38:48

You're going to find that once you get past the initial shock of it and say, let me go ahead and give it a shot and build the trust between you and the model, if you will, or the agent, and then you build that trust, you give it a little bit more autonomy, you build that trust. You give it a little bit more autonomy, you build more trust. You start leveraging multiple agents to do more things on your behalf. You build more autonomy, you build more trust, and the cycle continues and continues, and continues. So I personally believe that AI is here to stay and it's only going to get more intelligent and be able to handle more tasks on our behalf, and everyone is going to be using it to the fullest to your podcast agent to do everything for you except talk, or even maybe one day you want to give it some talking points, and so you're just sitting there, well, and hey, it's been a couple of weeks and it's filling in the dead air for you.

Speaker 1: 40:10

Who knows?

Speaker 2: 40:11

No, absolutely. And there's, I mean, and there's, I mean there's even services out there you can train on your own voice. 11 labs comes to mind. If anybody's familiar with 11 labs, I mean there are podcasts. I know that are 11 labs generated yeah right now. So somebody is writing the script, but 11 Labs is handling the voice.

Speaker 1: 40:33

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:34

Which I find super interesting. But I'll let you know another story and I'll kind of add this as well. So this last weekend my wife and I we were planning a vacation, but we had a very specific set of criteria for this vacation. So I have a whole bunch of Marriott points and you know anybody out there who's big Marriott people. They just did a big devaluation of it and so I've had hundreds of thousands of points. I was like you know what I'm cashing these in like right now before they fully integrate in the system and raise all the prices. So I was like all right, I got points. You know that I've been literally for years building up. I'm going to burn all these suckers down at once.

Speaker 2: 41:15

And then I had I used to have Delta status. I have Delta credit card. You get a companion pass every year. I had been able to use that sucker for like the last year or two and I was like I am using this companion pass. So my wife and I sat down on the sofa this weekend and it was like all right, where in the world do you want to go, as long as we can pay for it in Marriott points, and fly on a companion pass. Well, that sounds easy enough when you get started. And that led to two laptops sitting next to each other on the sofa and about three hours of hey, I can go to this Marriott place, but oh, delta, doesn't let me fly there on the companion pass. And like that matrix of all those conditions, man, if I could have had a decent AI agent to go, I could spit all of that in and it could go find things that would have been amazing.

Speaker 2: 42:05

I would have literally saved hours of our lives.

Speaker 1: 42:10

You should check out velocity black you heard of it okay.

Speaker 1: 42:15

I have no yeah, check it out it's. It's a concierge service that will basically take whatever parameters you're looking for, in whatever time period, and go and build out the perfect getaway for you. It's pretty far advanced in terms of what the technologies are available to the average person. But I liken it to the pro model of chat GPT, the 200 a month model that that can uh run the gamut of of take it, take all of your requests, access all the apis and make all of the decisions on your behalf and and spit out in the uh. Here's your itinerary at the end of of all the decisionmaking that you're allotting, and that's basically what Velocity Black seems to be able to do, the pro version of ChatGPT, and where I believe that the industry is going to shift left very soon and make it more and more affordable and more affordable.

Speaker 1: 43:29

Right Like right now, it's too expensive for people to use on the regular and it might not even be worth the industry's time to make it available generally to general populations because it might be so expensive to run. But as the compute technologies get better and better, the models become smaller and smaller and you know the industry forces the innovation that is generating these. These possible outcomes are effectively transforming the cycle and and turning it into a state where it's very likely to happen soon and it will be affordable for everyone. And if you're not using it, then you're going to be hitting your head against the laptop for three hours because you're not using it and you're going to hear from your friends.

Speaker 1: 44:28

oh, I spent 30 minutes planning out my entire vacation because this tool is so awesome, and you're going to be like why haven't I been doing that? So there you go. I am a firm believer that it's all going to be there at your taking within the next year or two. Aaron.

Speaker 2: 44:46

I love that. Well, here, let's do this, then I'll ask you one more question, then we'll wrap up here. Sure, I mean, it's a it's, it is ties into that future. So what's, what's one futuristic ai advancement you hope to see in our lifetimes? Um, so it's got to be a little more aspirational. What's, what's your thinking on where all this can go and what do you want to see?

Speaker 1: 45:08

yeah, yeah, so when I thought about this question, I was obviously thinking I could use an autonomous agent that handles life for me. Right Now, I don't have to spend countless hours doing the mundane tasks, so I could do that. That would be pretty simple, something within reach, and it would have a positive impact. I think about futuristic and AI advancement, as some things will have positive impacts and some things won't have positive impacts.

Speaker 1: 45:44

I want to keep this as positive as possible. You know, if I were to be extra aspirational, we'll say I would want an AI companion to be able to do things around the house for me that I don't want to do myself, like cleaning the dishes, folding the the laundry, taking out the trash.

Speaker 2: 46:16

Um so you, you want the jetsons cartoon I I want.

Speaker 1: 46:21

What's her, what's the, the robot's name?

Speaker 2: 46:24

yes, I want that in my house yes, uh, oh, gosh, dorothy dotottie, something like that.

Speaker 1: 46:33

And I loved the Jetsons growing up. I was looking at them flying their cars to their houses up on giant pedestals and thinking that's an amazing future. Yes, you know. But yeah, that's the future. I think that positively would impact my life if I had the ability. All right, yeah, and Aaron, you know I've really loved this conversation, but I want to hear about your positive AI future. Tell us about that.

Speaker 2: 47:03

Sure. So, by the way, real quick for those following along at home, the Jetson's maid's name was Rosie and, yes, perplexity did tell me that, so we have that solved. But here's where I really potentially see this going. I really like the concept of you tapped into there of of time savings. Um, because I I feel like more so, especially, uh, for us in the technology industry. The technology can almost become burdensome at times, um, and so what I'm always looking to do is how can I save time with tasks? But it's not necessarily so I can do more technical tasks or do more mundane tasks, like I I've.

Speaker 2: 48:09

I've reached a point in my life like I'm trying to cut some of those things out so that I have more time with the kids, more time with my family, more time for so, um, another thing about me, as I do a triathlon training and anybody that out there that does triathlon, it's it's time consuming, so it allows me to do more biking, more running and more swimming, and so for me, I'm all about. There's a concept out there called the time millionaire, and what that simply means is being able to balance and manage your life to the where you may not necessarily be financially a millionaire, but you have your time in a place where you have lots of times, you're focusing on the right things and you're not necessarily bogged down with a lot of these mundane things, if you will, and so I'm a bit of a productivity nut at times, and so for me, like that's my biggest thing I look for in the future, and the biggest thing I think AI can bring to us is, at some point we all become time millionaires.

Speaker 1: 49:28

Yes, I think about that in general and say the mundane tasks are really soul-sucking and let life be more enjoyable. Let us use more of our creativity to whatever it is that we're doing creativity to whatever it is that we're doing, and less of of of the side of brain that feels like we're doing things that we don't really want to do, like like filing taxes and let let the, let the computers do those things for us so that we can get back to nature and enjoy life, spending time with friends and family or doing something more creative, like I said, that builds, that gives us energy, versus depletes us of energy. You know I find myself extremely busy on the weekends, but with ai I can. I can do things very efficiently and they're so much more enjoyable because I don't have to do all of the mind-melting work to set things up and get them going.

Speaker 2: 50:44

I love that.

Speaker 1: 50:45

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 50:45

I think that's a great place to stop. Yeah man, awesome. Well, I appreciate your time, aaron.

Speaker 1: 50:57

Absolutely. Thank you so much as well. I neglected to to state what my podcast was called at the beginning of this go ahead man, the whole introduction kind of threw me off.

Speaker 1: 51:05

but yeah, for for the audience, the podcast Inspire AI. It's got a longer form name called Transforming RVA Through Technology and Innovation. Inspire AI happens to be part of a lot of podcasts out there and mine doesn't necessarily come up when you just type in Inspire AI. So Transforming RVA Through Technology and innovation will be key to searching me out. But yes, please join me in this fascinating world of AI and let's talk.

Speaker 2: 51:44

Awesome. I love that and for everyone out there that my voice is potentially new to you. If you're interested in learning more about cloud computing, emerging technologies and AI. I completely admit our podcast at this point is a little bit of a I'll use the term eclectic grab bag of tech stuff, but it's all kinds of different topics. Keeps you on your toes. If that sounds interesting and any of your podcast players, just go search for the cloudcast. Uh, we tend to uh pop up. Um, and that's one one thing, jason, it's uh, you know, being early to the game, you get that seo juice, so I, I could just put you know, put the cloudcast in anywhere and it should pop up. So, all right, jason. Well, thank you very much for your time this week and, uh, I think we'll wrap it.

Speaker 1: 52:33

Thank you absolutely good to talk to you my friend take care bye and thanks to our listeners for tuning in today.

Speaker 1: 52:47

If you or your company would like to be featured in an inspire ai richmond, please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share or follow our content and stay up to date on the latest events for AI Ready RVA. No-transcript. If you or your company would like to be featured in the Inspire AI Richmond episode, please drop us a message. Don't forget to like, share or follow our content. Stay up to date on the latest events for AI Ready RVA. Thank you again and see you next time.