Wake Up With AI

Welcome to wake up with AI, the podcast where human powered meets AI assisted. Join your hosts, Chris Carillon, Niko Lofakas, and George b Thomas as we dive deep into the world of artificial intelligence. From the latest AI news to cutting edge tools and skill sets, we are here to help business owners, marketers, and everyday individuals unlock their full potential with the with the power of AI. Let's get started.

Happy Tuesday, LinkedIn. Good morning. Welcome to wake up with AI, the podcast where human powered meets AI assisted. Yeah. Here with Nick and George today.

How are you guys doing, man?

Doing well. Sorry. I just I I got some I got some shocking news not too long ago. Just a couple like, a minute ago. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it and, like, I mean, AI news

is one thing.

Yeah. I know. No.

Are you gonna be alright?

Well, I don't know. I'm thinking about myself and, you know, this this news made me think about, like, what happens to me when I'm, like, a decade older. But, you know, it's it's a thing for another time, but I'm doing good.

That's crazy to think about right now. What what's going to be happening in 10 years, especially if we don't wake up right now?

Yeah. Not only with us, but with the world and with, like, this idea of AI and assistance. And I don't know. Maybe I've always been part AI, and I just don't know it. Maybe that's why Nick at 53, I look like I'm 43.

I don't know. I don't know what's going on there. But

This guy this guy over here from the fountain of youth didn't wanna

talk to somebody about it. Well done either way. So we're we're showing up every day now talking about the latest AI news, cutting edge tools, and skill sets for everybody, for business owners, marketers, everyday individuals. Nico has been talking about some unlocks on the on the personal fronts at home. So whether you're looking to streamline your workflow or just, you know, stay ahead, maybe get ahead of the curve a little bit, you know, we hope this is the right place for you.

We wanna help you rise and thrive, thanks to AI. Oh, nice. What are we talking about today? What's what's new?

Boy, do I have

something for you guys. So, yeah, normally, we would be talking about tools, but I'd like everybody to to sort of know that to me, it's not about the one thing. So, like, yeah. Okay. I keep keep in touch with, like, what's going on with the models because that's the core basis of what everything else is building off of.

Realistically, I'm on the whole landscape. I'm looking at the software, the hardware, the chipsets, the the materials that are making it, who's making the robots based on it, who's driving automations based off of it, who's building stuff based off everything. Some really interesting stuff about the longshoremen story, but probably get to that a little bit later this week. Because what I found out today was utterly amazing to me and especially to what I believe in and how I believe the future should go. There is a school with no teachers.

What what?

There's a school with no teachers that only runs 2 hours a day. No. Now before I tell you anything else, I just just as a piece of evidence before anybody says, oh, this is impossible, if you wanna go further impossible here, they run an Airbnb where their bookings are currently at $10,000, I believe. For for how long? I'm not I'm not even sure

how

long it's booked out, but they run their own b n Airbnb. So this school has no teachers. It's all run by AI. AI is the only thing via iPads and computer interface that is teaching them, and it is doing the one thing I have wanted to see so badly in school my entire life, Socratic method. These kids are learning how to put furniture together.

They're learning how to cook their own food. They're learning how to they're learning arithmetic, but they're learning it through how to pay bills and how to make money and how to start a business because that's the math that is important for everyday life. Right? I don't know anybody that's running a law firm that needs calculus unless you're running a law firm that deals with, you know, specifically with numbers. Maybe you do something with with property tax and it's good to know calculus, you do things a little bit faster.

I don't know anybody that needs quantum mathematics for that, though. I don't know a doctor that needs calculus.

Light work.

You know what I mean? I do that on

a Tuesday.

So, like, this this thing and so, like, okay. No teachers or the kids just running around amok. No. They're I forget what they call, what they call them, but there's, you know, basically, supervisors who are there with the kids, but they're just parents, basically. They're not teachers.

They're not required to be teachers. They are actually encouraged not to try to teach the kids. They are always encouraged to help them to interface with the with the with the generative AI. It seems like this is a terrible thing. There's there's plenty of people who have said, you know, oh, too much exposure will make it worse.

Again, these kids are at school 2 hours a day. Right? And they are doing things that I have never seen in other high schools ever. This one girl was showing off how she was using generative AI to do what? Turn around and create a mobile app that is a generative mobile app to give you advice on dating.

Oh. Remember that whole thing about Beyond the app. To learn to code. We have to go learn okay. We gotta pay $2,000 to learn Python and take all these coding courses and all that kind of stuff.

Really? Because a high school kid just developed their own generative AI app mobile on their phone, and I I guarantee you they don't know the first thing about coding mobile apps.

So news flash, this went from possibly a 30 minute podcast to a 3 hour podcast. First of all, I'm I acted like I was shocked, but I'm not shocked. And, Nico, I'm gonna tell you this. I'm actually kind of excited because and listen. You can send the hate mail, George at George b thomas.com.

Feel free. But the educational system is broken. It has been broken for years. It is outputting things that we don't need anymore. We do not need more people on a manufacturing line.

We do not need people who can retain information long enough before they clock out. So when I hear you talk about that, I'm like, oh, you mean it's a school that's gonna create people that we need in the future that can actually think for themselves, that are creative, that, like, have this by the way, we didn't combine this. We didn't know we're gonna do this, but today's skill is AI literacy. You mean they're gonna have AI literacy and know how to actually live in a world where they're gonna have these assistants to do the things that they're gonna do? You mean they're gonna spend less time wasted inside of a homeroom classroom and a lunch period, and they'll actually be able to do real shit in the world?

Oh, okay. I think I'm down for that.

This is one of those things where, you know, where there's fear of this stuff. It's because change is hard, and we're comfortable in the old ways, and we don't know what the future holds. So it's not everybody's like that. We have powerful tools now available to us to make things like this happen. This is where you take out all of those subjective biases, and things like AI can help you design, you know, curriculums.

Like, if we tell it, hey. We think kids are gonna have to know about this and this and this when they grow up because we never had that. It's gonna design a curriculum that teaches you math through entrepreneurship.

Let me give you a real world example of this. First of all, one of the things that I do is I I go to bed a master. I wake up as a student. I'm always learning. I I I have to have that mindset.

We do this other podcast called Beyond Your Default, and Liz, my cohost, was like, hey. I wanna do an episode on episode on happiness paradox.

And I

was like, sweet. I don't know what that is. So over the weekend, I literally grabbed my GBT voice assistant that talks to you, and I'm in my backyard on my back porch going, tell me what the happiness paradox is. Why is the happiness paradox important or not important to a human's life? Oh, you just mentioned this thing.

How does that actually affect if we're rooted in these four things? Oh, so if that's true, then why does this happen? And I had an hour long conversation where I was learning about something that I wanted to know more so that I could turn around and actually do a podcast where we are educating people on our thoughts on the topic.

Not to cut you off. I was talking to a a colleague, and I had asked her because, she just had a baby. And so I asked her, I said, you know, what do you this how I also figured out that she's probably a decade younger than me. I was like, well, what do you think of the day when, you know, Teddy Ruxpin is teaching your kid? Right?

And she said, who's Teddy Ruxpin?

Yeah. She did. So I had to you know, she she figured it out, though, so we went with Tickle Me Amo. But, you know, what happens on that day and though she seemed a little initially, she seemed a little not necessarily resistant to it, but, you know, just under trying to understand, wrap your head around it, which seems, you know, it's very confusing for a parent until why? How many times your kid ask you why?

Oh, god.

But, dad, why? But why? But why?

Why is the sky blue?

But how but how? Now you have this thing that's with you all the time that answers those questions. Again, this Socratic method of teaching where, like yourself, how is this thing work? Why does this happen? You just kept asking why, how questions.

Right? That's how you learn. Okay? And so you have this feedback. And to me, I gotta tell you, I think this is the greatest thing to have ever happened to education.

I I know this is exactly what Sam and Dario and all these guys were were talking about, about making education and intelligence free for everybody. I don't know how it's going to happen. I really I just hope that it does, and I don't necessarily know what it's what it looks like. But all these states that we used to look down on, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, for being too destitute to have the money to have the education programs. Why is our intelligence gated by money?

Oh, bro. See, it's gonna be a 3 hour podcast. It's gonna it's gonna

So, like, now it's not. Right? Intelligence is free. No more blockades. I'm just waiting.

I'm I'm excited to see what happens to the rest of America that's been kept from being able to learn like this at this rate and in this way.

Let's talk about the blockade, which I wanna hear what you mean by AI literacy, George. How does one go about that? How do you think what are you getting at there?

Yeah. So and it's not as complex as it sounds like. AI literacy is probably the smartest part of the whole thing that I'm gonna talk about. But in other words, what I'm saying is learning the language of artificial intelligence. And the god's honest truth, AI is as we just witnessed with Nico's by the way, I in a 1000000 years, if you ask me what is Nico gonna bring up this morning, I would not have said AI in education.

But AI is shaking things up in education for business owners, for marketers, for sales pros, for for everybody. Like, AI is just shaking up the world. And here's the thing that I wanna do before everybody gets anxious, because I literally was having this conversation this morning with you guys and fully understanding there are humans that would maybe hear this, and they're, like, they wanna hurl. And there are humans that hear this, and they they're they get excited. And, like, teachers, if teachers heard that, oh my god.

AI is stealing my job. Take a breath. I'd I want you to realize something that Nico said in there. There's at least still these guardians, whether it be, like, a parent or a teacher or so maybe the teaching part of teaching changes, and maybe some of it is still leverage. But AI is not here.

This radical change is not here to replace you. It's here to help you do what you do only better. Imagine if teachers could be faster. If imagine if teachers could be smarter. Imagine if marketers and business owners could be faster and smarter.

One of the things that really resonated at inbound in my inbound talk was when I said, you've never heard a carpenter complain that a hammer was gonna take their job, or you've never heard that a doctor was gonna lose their job to a scalpel. And people really resonated that. A AI is your new tool. It's your new assistant. You need to learn how that tool works.

A construction worker gets great after swinging a hammer for, like, a long time. A doctor has to go to school and use the scalpel for a long time. You need to understand your assistant and use your assistant. To get the most out of it, you need to understand it. Right?

And that's where AI literacy comes in. So what is this AI literacy? It's learning a new language or like learning a new language, except you don't need to memorize, like, conjugations, and you don't have to have a perfect accent, all that kind of crazy stuff. Right? This is the most important part of what, I think, what I'm gonna say for the skills section.

You just need to know enough to make it work for you. You just need to know enough to make it work for you don't have to be a coder or a tech wizard, but understanding the basics of how AI works and what it can do will give you a serious advantage over those humans that are ignoring it or just Heisman trophying it. Like, I get it out of here. I don't care. It can run me over.

It's your secret weapon. If we take this back into the business realm because I think that's most of the viewers or listeners, like, it'll help you analyze data. It'll help you automate tasks. It'll it'll even help you create some of the dopest content that you could ever create, like, quicker, more impactful. But the trick is you've got to know how to wield it effectively if you wanna stay ahead of the game.

Think of it like this. And I think this is the cool part for me, the part that I've learned along the way. You don't need to know how to build AI systems. Now while Nico wants to probably do that, you don't have to do that. You you just need to know how to use them.

Like, we do this in everyday life. Right? Think of a car or think of AI like a car. You don't have to be a mechanic who knows how to put the engine together from scratch or what the alternator is or what this, like, vacuum hose does. You just need to know how to get in the damn driver's seat and drive it.

And by the way, use the GPS to get to your destination, and we all do that when we get in a car. Here's the thing that I wanna just put in a bug in people's ear. When I see

look up directions anymore?

My god. I don't know where I am unless I do my GPS. But here's what I want you to think about AI and AI literacy, great prompted suggestions. How can we make this better? The power of questions in real life is a thing.

The power of questions with your AI assistant is a real thing. You have to practice. You have to ask questions, but I wanna get practical for a second. Say you're a marketer. AI can help you figure out which content is getting the most traction with the audience.

Segments, you can start to segment it more, create it more in-depth. People will start to vibe with your message. But then it can also like, you can adjust the strategy based on those insights because of your assistant. Again, you can adjust the strategy. You are in the driver's seat.

It is assisting you. Sales? You can sift through data all day. Why? AI can sift through data and tell you which prospects are most likely to convert way faster.

AI can serve up the insights, but you've gotta be the one to take action and close the deal. It's all about teamwork. Here's here's the funny part. I know I'm talking about AI literacy, but there are so many humans out there that can't even work with the human teams. You're gonna have a problem.

Like, if you don't work well, if you don't play well with others right now, the world that we are moving in when it's you and AI side by side, AI is your sidekick, you're in trouble. Alright. So here's here's the thing. 3 things. 1, take time to learn the basics.

Spend a little time watching some intro videos, listen to this podcast, whatever. Read some articles. 2, pick up a freaking AI tool and start using it day to day. You don't have to use them all. You don't have to get overwhelmed.

1, the idea here is pick 1 and get comfortable with it. Pick another one, get comfortable with it. I literally have a backup to the main tool I use. Like, if that tool goes down, because we live in a world where the Internet and tech goes down, I have a backup that I'm comfortable with using as well. 3rd thing I'm a say is stay curious.

Listen to this podcast, read articles, subscribe to newsletters. The more you know, the more you can use AI to make your work life not just easier, but better. And by the way, that's what Nico was talking about is, like, education, better. Yep. Business, better.

Marketing, better. Wake up.

I say what I think is sort of the best parts, which speaks to exactly what George was saying for last. In this whole cusp of this educational new educational method, the one thing that they did that was not AI assisted was rejection practice. The practice of being rejected by somebody for an idea, for a thought, for an opinion, for whatever it is because the models are not they're designed. They're engineered to not do that. They're engineered to only help us.

They're not engineered to necessarily represent a simulated situation like that. I'm sure that with enough prompting, you could maybe get it to do something similar to it, but not in the way that a human would, not with the same type of human reaction. So to your point right. Right? It well, I don't want I don't wanna go

back there.

I don't wanna go back there

because,

Yeah. I could've debated you 2 on stage for for a while about the empathy thing. Because me and my wife got into that as well, but I don't wanna get into it. Philosophy goes on forever. But what I thought was interesting about that is, again, what you said about marketing.

It's like, yes, we use this as a tool, but we also, again, not only have the human verification aspect of it, but we also have the human verification of how people are using the tool. So even when it comes to to managers, are you using it effectively? When it comes to team members, are you able to get the same output as I am? How are we working together in order to do this? How is each team member maximizing along the way?

And then on top of which, again, monitoring output from all different angles. Hey. Is this prompt from this model as good as this prompt from this other model as good as this one from this other model? There's still a lot of testing that needs to go on, a lot of fine tuning that needs to go on. And at the end of the day, it's human hands that are on it.

Right? And when it comes to teaching, yeah, okay, there's there's gonna be this method where the computer handles all the positives, but maybe it is the human teacher that handles all the emotional things that the machine can't deal with. So now teachers take on a different role rather than having to themselves remember gobs and gobs of information. Right? Their main goal is to teach a child, teach a person how to interact and how to understand the world around them more so than just, you know, hey.

Here's here's our book lesson. Here's your pop quiz. You know? Let's get her done.

You're breaking my brain right now because I I immediately go to, well, that means that when you're getting hired to be an educator, there's definitely a double down on making sure that we have good humans in the seats to do this new thing that they have to do. And I'm not beating up educators, by the way. I love educators. I feel like I'm an educator. I love educating people, but sometimes anything we do becomes a job.

And when growing our future humans becomes a job and not a passion, we have reached that Alright. Moment. Anyway

No. I think this is where there is no shade on on the actual people in the classroom because so often they're they're not put in a position to be successful, and they have to teach to the test and not teach, you know, for knowledge and understanding and all these things that that Nico mentioned. You know, that's not dissimilar from what we always talk about inside of orgs. Like, how do we put people in a position to be successful? And when you describe that, Niko, I was thinking, like, if we rely on AI for all these other more objective where it's proven over and over that, you know, positive reinforcement has all these effects, but there's still that emotional understanding in the moment that's required.

It it puts us in a position to always be present because that's the part. As long as we're dealing with other human beings, that's the caveat here. There might be there there will be moments in the future where you might be interacting with a robot and this this is becomes less important. But if you're in the deal room trying to close a sale, and let's say you've got AI right there, you know, helping you, and then it it comes to light that the CEO knows the brother of the organization that you're trying to close, it's not gonna be able to pick up on that. You you'll be able to use it once you identify that scenario.

It's like, oh, it's like, basically, this is a subjective thing that was just added into this conversation, so we need to handle this differently. Now you can get help with that, but this identification of, oh, this is different right now because of some emotion or some new human has come into play. We miss that stuff when we're the ones having to write all the notes and constantly think of everything that's going on. We miss those nuances. And if we can kind of unload that mental load Yep.

We are in a position to be as successful as possible.

It's funny that you mentioned this because I was literally I had a AI consulting hour with a person 4 days ago, 5 days ago. Anyway, doesn't matter. One of the questions they had was meeting assistance, AI assistance for meetings. And I was talking to them about the platform that I use, And I said the biggest thing that you need to understand is it'll take you from being a note taker to being a navigator in your meetings. And the light bulb moment, the brain explosion of, like, you mean I can actually be who I've always wanted to be on my calls instead of jotting down notes the entire time was like you could tell in that alone, in that time frame, like, we had free the human to actually be the human they wanted to be because they were gonna have a new assistant that could take notes for them.

Yep. Yeah. And in those moments, like, that doesn't mean you can't take notes. Like, you sure as hell should note down the most insightful things that pop up. And then after the conversation, start confirming with the AI that it also thinks it's insightful or why it's insightful.

And just, like, it's still learning too. Like, it's way better at learning than than we are, honestly. And when you get that loop going, man, that's the powerful thing. But with this more than anything else, like, there's no prompting course. There might be some workshops you can do where you're the one, like, doing it.

But if you're not the one using this, like, I I think back to when I always talk to my mom about Google and why I was good at it. Right? I was literally like, I whatever is in my head, I I just put that question into Google exactly word for word. Like, that's how I got good at it. It's the same thing with these tools.

Like, if you don't know where to start, just whatever is on your mind at the moment, just put it in there, see the response, react.

Chris, it's funny because sometimes I've thought about, like, I need to change my job title to, like, pro Googler. Because it's, like, for years and I told Dan Moyle this, like, when I worked at Impulse Creative. Dude, you don't need to know everything. You know, you need to know how to find where everything is. With AI, that is so much easier to, like, be able to find where everything is quicker.

Anyway, if you were a great Googler, if you were a great communicator, if you were great with playing with others, you are positioned to be dope in this new world that we're entering.

I want to, since we only have a minute left, that's perfect timing because, I'm gonna gonna leave George with this, and I'm sure that I will have a separate side conversation. But in the realm of empathy, good sir, there's a study that was done. Patients at a hospital were given, you know, the same treatment essentially, but some of them had a real human bedside doctor and the others had doctor GPT. Doctor GPT way outperformed the human doctor Really? When it came to bedside manner.

Because to your point, when you think about it, doctor GPT is never tired, is never annoyed, is never angry, doesn't have some issues going on at home that they're bringing into the workplace, is never complacent, loves their job, loves helping people, and is always happy and excited every single day. Can't replace that.

Who who wouldn't wanna wake up with a tool like that?

That's the thing. The technology's here, and it's up to you to use it to your advantage. We're all sitting here, and we're like, AI is the future. Like, AI might be the future. But we need to not forget that even though we've kind of, like, exploded the educational field this morning and exploded the medical field this morning, we can't forget humans, good humans, who are leveraging it.

That's the real magic behind it all.

But what do we need those humans to do, Niko?

We need them to oversee. We need them for oversight, and we need them to wake up

with AI.

Yes, sir.

Yes. That's a wrap for this episode of wake up with AI. We hope that you feel a little more inspired, a little more informed, and a whole lot more excited about how AI can augment your life and business. Always remember that this journey is just the beginning and that we are right here with you every step of the way. If you love today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review.

You can also connect with us on social media to stay updated with all things AI. Until next time. Stay curious, stay empowered, and wake up with AI.