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Can AI Take Over the CEO's Role? Exploring AI's potentials in Decision-Making and Strategic Planning
Organizations are rapidly evolving in the digital age, with the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a significant inflection point. AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are no longer just cool tech for the advanced users but are steadily becoming essential components in day-to-day operations. From meetings to decision-making processes, AI holds the potential to transform business functionalities and reshape corporate landscapes.
The Value of AI
The transition from traditional systems to AI may seem daunting, but it's an evolution worth experiencing. With capabilities ranging from language-based thinking to providing crucial insights for decision-making, AI is a powerhouse of value. It is increasingly evident that hands-on experience prompts the realization of this value. By personifying AI and integrating it within teams, it can drive significant advancements in change management.
Overcoming CEO's Reluctance Towards AI
Implementing AI requires a cultural shift within organizations. It's natural for CEOs to exhibit initial reluctance in embracing AI, primarily due to unfamiliarity or concerns regarding data security and privacy. However, the key to combat this resistance is by focusing on specific use cases, assigning non-technical individuals to lead AI adoption, and ensuring a first-hand experience of the technology.
AI's role in Decision Making and Strategic Planning
AI is no longer confined to recommending your next movie or providing weather updates. Its reach has extended to more sophisticated realms such as acting as a thought partner. It can assist in numerous areas such as board meeting preparations, analyzing medical reports, or providing a roadmap for decision making. A specific use-case is AI's role as a thought-partner in decision-making, especially in the healthcare sector where it can summarize options based on medical reports and discussions with doctors.
The Paradox of AI Adoption in Organizations
A paradox is observed when it comes to AI adoption in organizations. Despite ranking higher on priority, AI’s actual usage remains low, with only a small fraction incorporating generative AI. Yet, in stark contrast, it is estimated that an entire sector like the call center industry is projected to lose nearly 80% of jobs to AI in the next five years. This discrepancy may largely be attributed to the anxiety surrounding AI, which is primarily fueled by media portrayal.
The Future of AI: Potential Role as CEO
Some standpoints suggest that, in the future, AI could potentially take over significant roles such as that of a CEO, aiding both strategic and tactical decision-making. Despite the noticeable resistance to AI adoption, there is an intensifying need for CEOs to push through the initial skepticism and leverage AI as a go-to partner for decision-making.
AI's evolution from a technological curiosity to potentially taking over a CEO's role paints a fascinating future. The adoption and integration of AI in businesses can lead to significant productivity boosts, especially for small businesses with limited resources. Ignoring AI can be a missed opportunity to enhance decision-making processes, maximize productivity, and lead the business towards a prosperous future.
Topics Covered in This Episode
1. AI's Role in Decision Making
2. AI Adoption in the Organization
3. AI and Data Security
4. AI Education and Importance
Podcast Transcript
Jordan Wilson [00:00:18]:
Can AI do your CEO's job? Maybe not yet. But if you're a CEO and you aren't taking AI seriously, you need to, and you need to really take note of today's conversation and the guests that we have on today because I think that AI can almost do your CEO's job. Alright. I'm excited for today's show. What's going on, y'all? Welcome to Everyday AI. My name is Jordan Wilson and I'm the host. And this Everyday AI thing, well, it's for you. It's your daily livestream podcast and free daily newsletter, helping us all learn what's happening and what's going on in the world of generative AI and how we can all use that to grow our companies and to grow our careers.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:00]:
So if you're new here, thank you for tuning in. As always, make sure to check your podcast show notes for related episodes and to go to our website. The link is in there at your everydayai.com because each and every day, we recap our expert interview in our daily newsletter written by a human for humans. So make sure you check that out if you haven't already. And also our thanks a million giveaway to celebrate, 1,000,000 downloads here at everyday AI. Alright. I'm excited for today's episode. You know, as a small business CEO, myself and someone that works with a lot of CEOs, today's I got a lot of hot takes on.
Jordan Wilson [00:01:36]:
But before we get started, we're gonna go over the AI news as we do every single day. Alright. So first, Department of Justice investigators are looking into NVIDIA's $700,000,000 acquisition of AI startup Runway. So according to reports, the US Department of Justice's lawyers are investigating NVIDIA's acquisition of Israeli AI startup Run AI on antitrust grounds. So the deal announced in late April is reportedly valued at $700,000,000 according to TechCrunch. So Run AI specializes in virtualization of GPUs, allowing customers customers to maximize chip usage, which is critical given the high demand and limited supply, for these chips. So right now, NVIDIA obviously holds an estimated 90% market share for high end AI chips, raising concerns about competition and market dominance. You know, it's funny.
Jordan Wilson [00:02:27]:
I was actually partnered with NVIDIA at their GTC conference, and I saw NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang and the Run AI CEO posed for a bunch of photos. And I'm like, what's going on here? And then 2 weeks later, they announced this acquisition. Alright. Our next piece of AI news. Apple is placing its hopes on AI as their sales in China have faltered. So Apple reported a better than expected 0.9% decline in 3rd quarter AI or in 3rd quarter iPhone sales surpassing analyst forecasts. So with a 14.1 sales percent increase in its services segment, Apple is leaning heavily on AI to drive future growth. Despite overall gains, Apple's China market saw a 6.5 sales decline, though it was an improvement from the prior quarter.
Jordan Wilson [00:03:15]:
So analysts are predicting a strong upgrade cycle for the AI enhanced iPhone 16 series expected to launch in September. So, yeah, you have to have one of the newest iPhones in order to take advantage of Apple's new Apple Intelligence. So, you know, Apple quarter over quarter not doing that great according to expectations. So they're really hoping that everyone's gonna run out and go buy a new phone just to use the Apple intelligence. Alright. Our last piece of AI news, pretty big one here. Google has launched a new version of Gemini 1.5 pro, and it has overtaken ChatGPT, their GPT 4 o model as the most powerful model. So Google has unveiled Gemini 1.5 pro, available for early testing and feedback through Google AI Studio and the Gemini API.
Jordan Wilson [00:04:03]:
The new version is just called version 0 801. So, you know, August 1st. Alright. So right now, that is not available on the front end of Google Gemini. So if you're a front end user, you're not gonna see that. You're only gonna see it if you are using Google's AI Studio or Gemini API. So the release marks a significant advancement in Google's AI capabilities as it quickly topped the chatbot arena lean leaderboard with an Elo score of 1300. So, yeah, the Elo score on the chatbot arena is essentially blind head to head testing.
Jordan Wilson [00:04:35]:
1,000,000 plus users vote on which one has the best output and, you know, there you go. Gemini's new version of 1.5 pro did pretty pretty much, I mean, a lot better than even, Gemini or sorry. OpenAI's GPT 4 o, which got an ELO of 1286, and Claude 3.5 SONNET, which got 1271. So pretty impressive scores, there from, Google's Gemini 1.5 pro. Alright. We're gonna have a lot more on those stories and more in our newsletter, so make sure you go and check that out at your everydayai.com. Alright. But let's talk a little bit about if AI can do your job as a CEO.
Jordan Wilson [00:05:14]:
Right? Do you have to be worried about right? Are are we gonna have AI CEOs? You know, there's a couple companies have done some publicity stunts around that. And should every CEO be using AI? Well, I've I've got a lot of takes on this, but, I'm excited for my guest. So let's go ahead and, bring our guests onto the show. There we go. We have, Greg Shove, the Section CEO and the founder of Machine and Partners. Greg, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show.
Greg Shove [00:05:41]:
Thank you, Jordan. Good to be here.
Jordan Wilson [00:05:43]:
Alright. I'm excited for today's show. And for those that aren't aware, tell everyone a little bit about what you all do, at Section.
Greg Shove [00:05:49]:
Yes. Section's a business school for the age of AI. We're an online school, and we make, great business education and great AI education radically more accessible, affordable, and just good, for anybody who wants to learn online with us. And we do it through live and live cohort learning and on demand, of course. So we, you know, we we make courses and we deliver great outcomes for for students, employees, who wanna kinda, you know, get ready for particularly for this age of AI. So how do they do their job, how do they augment themselves, in this in this moment, which is an AI moment, obviously. And then that machine and partners is a an innovation lab, an AI innovation lab. We build AI apps and prototypes for enterprise customers.
Greg Shove [00:06:29]:
So we also have our hands on or I have my hands on trying to actually build this stuff besides just talking about it.
Jordan Wilson [00:06:35]:
Yeah. So before we get into the kind of the the guts of today's conversation, you know, I'm curious as someone that runs in in a large online learning center, right, in section, what has the demand been like? Right? Are are you guys just getting bombarded with CEOs being like, hey. We've been hearing this AI thing is pretty important. We need to learn it. What what specifically from CEOs, what has that demand been like?
Greg Shove [00:07:01]:
From CEOs, I'd say, you know, muted, not so much. I mean, they they want it for their employees. I think CEOs are talking about AIs, you know. I mean, I think, mentions that AI in analyst calls, Wall Street analyst calls has bun up, right, in the last year. Every CEO wants to look like they're AI savvy and that they're making their organizations kinda AI AI ready, which, by the way, is code for saying we're we're gonna be more efficient. Right? We're gonna we're gonna save money, which is also code for saying, we're gonna lay some people off. So I think that's what the CEO and CFO are trying to communicate. Having said that, I don't think many executives actually have their hands on AI and are not you know, they're not really using it.
Greg Shove [00:07:36]:
I think they want their organizations to be AI ready. And so our demand for AI classes has gone through the roof, went from 0 to over 14,000 students in the last 12 months. So that's great. That's mostly though small business. That's, you know, people with, you know, solopreneurs, side hustlers, people who need an edge. If you think about AI, it's an edge. Right? It's a productivity and cognitive edge. And people who need that are students, you know, high school or college kids.
Greg Shove [00:07:58]:
Right? And then people who work in small business work for themselves, you know, kinda neat don't have all the resources of a big company. Right? Don't have don't have the ability to call IT or call the data, you know, the data analyst team or, you know, whatever. Right? Don't can't call a copywriter to write the copy. So those are the people I think came to AI first, and that's why GPT, I think, OpenAI had such incredible growth. They tapped into that sort of unserved market, which is people that need a little bit of help, right, a little bit of a productivity boost. And that's that's not typically a VP of marketing in a big company. Right? They have all the re they have all the resources they need. Listen.
Greg Shove [00:08:30]:
I wanna go back to your first question, which is can AI, you know, be the CEO? I've done 6 startups. 1 bootstrap, the other 5, including section backed by venture capitalists. They can take my job. If AI want the if AI wants it wants the job, AI can have it. They you know? It's not it's not it's not easy being a CEO as I'm sure that a lot of your audience knows and as you know. Right? Building a building a a small business is not easy. So it's or some days I'm like, hey, dude. Hey.
Greg Shove [00:08:56]:
Are you Claude, do you want my job? It's all yours. You know? Like, this.
Jordan Wilson [00:09:00]:
Well, let's let's even talk. Yeah. Because, you you know, I and we'll get into even a little bit of your personal usage. Right? I'm a small business CEO. I use AI all the time. But even maybe for those, you know, those CEOs may be listening right now who might still be on the fence. Right? Or they're like, okay. Yeah.
Jordan Wilson [00:09:17]:
I'm pretty sure we need to start using AI. Let's just address it for for those people. Can AI do their job?
Greg Shove [00:09:25]:
Yeah. Listen. AI can do, I think, one thing that is critical to all of us. I think the best leaders, best individual contributors who wanna be leaders and the best leaders have this quality that I call high low. They can think and act high low. And high low means you can be strategic when you need to be. Right? You can think about what's our product strategy, how do we price this product, you know, who, you know, who's the best customer for the product, how do we find product market fit. That's thinking high.
Greg Shove [00:09:49]:
Right? Thinking low and doing low is I gotta write the press release, or I have to write the sales outreach email and stuff like that. Right? And this idea of going from sort of on the ground to 10,000 feet and moving between those two modes, High low are basically operating modes for individuals and for companies or for teams. And you gotta go up and down, right, between those two modes all day long, all week long, all year long. Right? So high load to me is sort of a key requirement to be a leader, I think, in any size business. And I think most of us, it's not natural to us to be good at both. We're typically you know, often we're good at being operators or we're good at being thinkers, not usually both, and not kinda at the same time. I think we all have strengths and weaknesses. We all have blind spots.
Greg Shove [00:10:27]:
Right? We we we all have strong muscles and weaker muscles, and that to me is the kind of the the power of AI. When we think about sort of approaching any decision, we should apply this kind of high low end lens. Right? How to be, again, how to be strategic, how to be tactical. And if if you're not really good at that, then use AI is is my point of view. Use AI as a thought partner. I think AI AI currently is undervalued as a thought partner.
Jordan Wilson [00:10:52]:
Yeah. Absolutely. And, you you know, speaking of that, we did a whole episode, 310 on, that exact one. So if you wanna go check that out, let's do that. But I wanna get to even how CEOs, Greg, think in in view, you know, large thing think and view about large language models. So, you know, as an example, I think I'll work with CEOs all the time and they're flabbergasted. Right? When I can say, oh, here. We can take your your your transcript of your last, meeting and all of a sudden, you know, put your own data in there, run some prompts, and all of a sudden you have an email to shareholders.
Jordan Wilson [00:11:27]:
You have a PowerPoint deck, and it's all built within ChatGPT, and you don't have to leave. I think people are amazed. Do you think that there's maybe a a huge disconnect between this kind of topical awareness that CEOs have of large language models and them actually fully understanding the business capabilities? Yeah.
Greg Shove [00:11:43]:
For sure. Listen, I think CEOs are like the rest of us. They're getting a lot of their AI news from the media, not media like yours, right, but kind of mainstream media, and that's mostly misinformation or disinformation. It's just it's hypergloom. That's the first thing. Second thing, you think about certainly a larger company CEO, they're getting their their AI sort of updates. So they're kinda maybe they're even they're kinda they're they're they're learning about AI from their head of technology, typically. The CIO, CTO, they're maybe their engineer.
Greg Shove [00:12:09]:
And those guys, I think, are a little more skeptical. And I think they're a little more concerned about it because the hype has been, you know, use AI and you and you'll be way more productive as an engineer. You're not you're not gonna need as many engineers. I think most CTOs and CIOs are those kinds of people. Like, yeah. You know, it's helpful, but it's not a game changer. Right? They're not yet hearing from business people. The CEO is not yet hearing from business people like, hey.
Greg Shove [00:12:29]:
It made my team that much more productive or that, you know, that we're we're producing better quality output. So they need to get more stories kind of from their organization around this is really working and, you know, this is the benefit we're getting. It took a while at our company is small. Section has 30 employees. Right? And so it took us a while. Right? I I was like the evangelist initially. And then, you know, I kinda got what everybody else gets, I think, organizationally. A little bit of resistance, a little bit like, oh, here's the CEO, you know, off on a new adventure, you know, talking about AI all the time.
Greg Shove [00:13:00]:
And then people started to play with it, and then you know what happens, people bounce off AI. Right? They try it, it hallucinates, and that no no no one knows how to prompt. Like, what's prompting? Right? That's a weird thing. So people start to play with it, don't get a lot of good outcomes right away, and then they kinda bounce off. Right? And you gotta push through that, and the CEO does too. You know, his organization his or her organization has to push through that, and then they have to individually. They they they go try AI. Right? And nothing you know, they're they're not blown away.
Greg Shove [00:13:27]:
Right? And in part because what's the CEO do all day? CEO sits in meetings and tries to make decisions. That's why I think this idea of AI as thought partner is kind of an unlock for CEOs to realize that if you can use AI as someone to sort of, you know, talk to someone, something to talk to. Right? And load your own data. I don't I don't think CEOs get this. You can share safely. And again, remember, CEOs are hearing all the data is not safe. They're gonna steal your data, train their models on your data. Again, that's just nuts.
Greg Shove [00:13:57]:
It doesn't work that way. Right? You can have private AI or secure AI, you know, individually or as an organization. But this idea of loading your business plan into AI or loading your product road map or, you know, information that's important to you and then have a conversation with your AI about it, and expose your blind spots, expose some things you haven't thought about. Right? Unintended consequences, unforeseen risks. These are the things CEOs need to think about. That's called high low, and use AI to do that.
Jordan Wilson [00:14:25]:
You know what, Greg? I I I do have to call out the hypocrisy because I hear this all the time of of companies not even wanting to use large language models for that reason, for data security and and data privacy. And I always ask them. Right? Like, if if we're doing consults with people, I'm like, okay. Where do you store your files? Oh, you store them in a cloud system. Guess what? That same provider is already has this, quote, unquote, access to the data. So, you you know, I always scratch my head about that one, but that's beside the point.
Greg Shove [00:14:51]:
Yeah. I I think that's a general mistrust of big tech. Honestly, I think that's, you know, at the CEO level or any level. I think that's a that that's probably of some some, perception that later they're gonna find a way to take our data and either monetize it, you know, or create some advantage from it, and they'll change their even like they'll change their terms and conditions, which is hap does happen all the time. Right? And the social networks have done that. So I think, frankly, the social networks, the big big tech social has left this pretty pretty severe layer of mistrust around kinda our data. Right? Again, I don't think people understand how these models really work. Right? They're trained, and then, you know, again, you can work with your own data with these models pretty safely from my perspective.
Greg Shove [00:15:33]:
And by the way, my my point of view on this is my my data is a drop of data in the ocean of data. And so, you know, this idea that my board deck is, you know, is so, I don't know, so special or so proprietary that, you know, they they want this data. They don't listen, if I was the CFO of a Fortune 500 company, I'm not loading my board deck or business plan into, you know, into GPT. I'm getting a private version of GPT, or I'm getting GPT enterprise, or I'm getting Microsoft Copilot, which are private and and segregated, you know, instances. But, you know, for a small business, you just manage your privacy controls. Right? GPT teams. Yep. You know, turn your privacy on.
Greg Shove [00:16:09]:
Right?
Jordan Wilson [00:16:09]:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And and, hey. As a reminder to our livestream audience, thanks for tuning in. If you do have any questions, make sure to get them in now. But, Greg, I do wanna hit rewind just a little bit here and and talk a little bit more about this concept of using AI as a thought partner. Right? The way that we tell people, you know, we've done, yeah, thousands of of p live trainings as well.
Jordan Wilson [00:16:33]:
We tell people to turn ChatGPT into a consultant before you ever ask for any output. Right? How have you even done this personally? How have you or, you know, in your company maybe, but how have you used AI as a thought partner?
Greg Shove [00:16:46]:
Yeah. I mean, the way one of the ways and this kind of we started a year ago and we still do it every quarter because we have a board meeting every quarter. And I've got a great board. I have a world class board, at section, a former CEO of Time Warner and Akamai, and and, and great investors. And so what we do is we basically, ask AI to pretend to be board members before the board meeting. So when we send our board deck, which is the pre read, you know, board deck to the human board, we also share it with with AI. And these days, we focus on GPT and claw just because it's easy to upload PDFs, to those 2 LMs. And so when we do that with the AI, and then after the board meeting, we take great kinda notes in terms of all the feedback we got from the human board.
Greg Shove [00:17:28]:
We have 5 people on the human board. We compare the human board to the AI. And for the last year, Claude has basically scored 90 to 93% every time in terms of the advice or insights we get from Claude, almost match. Right? Not quite a 100% what the human board told us, and GPT is close behind. Right? Usually around 89 to 90%. So that that's just a great use case. Right? I'm using AI, and I'm asking AI to adopt a persona, so and several personas. So, you know, be an aggressive board member that wants growth.
Greg Shove [00:18:01]:
Be a more conservative board member that wants to kind of drive to break even our profitability faster. Right? Things like that. Right? Be a board member that's more focused on, developing technology value versus sales value, things like that. Ask your AI to adopt a persona and basically play a role with you. So that means I'm better prepared for the board meeting. Right? It doesn't mean I don't need the board, not yet, not just yet. And it probably means the board still still needs me. You know, we'll pay the salary.
Greg Shove [00:18:28]:
But and by the way, I asked the board to do the same thing now. When I said send the board the deck to read, I say, listen. Here's the prompts you should use. Kinda, you know, asking AI to play the role of the CEO. Right? And and kinda really I think that means we can come to that meeting a little more prepared and a little faster to get to the more kind of the meaty subject, so that you know, get to the real issues we wanna talk about. Right? And I think we can do that with any kind of meeting we have or any kind of significant decision we have coming up. Ask AI to kind of be your thought partner. Ask AI to think about it as you would think about it, and then think about someone who's not like you.
Greg Shove [00:19:06]:
So if you're detail oriented, ask AI to be ambitious and aggressive. Right? Instead of, you know, blue sky thinker. If you're a blue sky thinker, right, if you're always an optimist, like I am
Jordan Wilson [00:19:15]:
as an entrepreneur, you probably are, then ask AI to adopt a different persona.
Greg Shove [00:19:15]:
Right? To be again, this is an underutilized use case for most of us, and it I think it's most powerful when we share some of our information with AI, a plan, you know, a design, you know, anything. Right? You know, a product road map, and then ask AI to kinda talk to us about it. I I use it for medical stuff all the time. I've I've got a busted ankle. I need surgery, and I've now got I've then now got 5 different doctors. If as you know, you know what doctors are like. Right? You know, kinda overconfident and don't talk a lot because they want you out of their office in about 5 minutes unless you agree to do the procedure with them. So I got 5 doctors, 5 different opinions.
Greg Shove [00:19:59]:
These are all top, you know, top doctors at Stanford and so on around here in the you know, where I live in Palo Alto. And I'm getting kinda confused. Right? You know? And, again, I'm not gonna have AI tell me which one to do, which, you know, which procedure, which doctor, but AI does a great job. When I load up my scans and load up my MRI report, AI does a pretty good job of summarizing the different options that are available. And then when and then you can talk to AI about it. Give me the ones, you know, like rank the rank the options that get me playing soccer faster, like with the shortest rehab. Right? Give me the options that have the least amount of risk, the least invasive. AI can do that.
Greg Shove [00:20:39]:
It's hard to have that conversation with, you know, with docs. They just don't have the time. And I I think, frankly, the patience to do it. So I just think that, again, we're not gonna have AI make these decisions yet, so the AI is probably not doing my job yet, But I think, it it can tee up, I think, the options and give us a good kinda good road map to make a decision.
Jordan Wilson [00:21:04]:
Hey. This is Jordan, the host of Everyday AI. I've spent more than a 1000 hours inside ChatGPT, and I'm sharing all of my secrets in our free prime prompt polish ChatGPT course that's only available to loyal listeners like you. Listen to what Lewis, a business owner, said about the PPP course.
AI [00:21:22]:
I can tell you that when I went in, I I understood a little bit about ChatGPT. I understood some of the stuff. I was able to use some of the prompts, but what I discovered going through, Jordan's webinar was that there is so much more I don't understand that ChatGPT can do, and I really should be using it. And, if anything, I got that from the webinar. I would highly recommend this to anybody from beginner to advanced. You will absolutely learn something from this from this experience.
Jordan Wilson [00:21:48]:
Everyone's prompting wrong, and the PPP course fixes that. If you want access, go to podpp.com. Again, that's podpp.com. Sign up for the free course and start putting ChatGPT to work for you. I I wanna talk a little bit more about this, kind of internal case study that you've had of of asking your your board members, you know, some, heavy hitters there, you you know, to essentially use AI, you know, as as part of their day to day, using it as a thought partner. A year in, I think what have you learned? I mean, you gave us some great stats there. I I love that in terms of, you know, 93%. I think you said 90%.
Jordan Wilson [00:22:32]:
So what have you learned and how have even these people's mindsets on AI and large language models to be a high level thinking partner? How has that changed after a year? Yeah.
Greg Shove [00:22:45]:
I don't know. You know, I don't know how my board thinks about it specifically. It's a great question. How I think about it. And I think it in general, I think what happens is we go through this sort of, you know, the shift from, yeah, is is this useful or is it gonna hallucinate or does it really work to, oh, it's actually first of all, I think we get to this point where we realize it's pretty easy to interact with AI, and it's getting easier with voice and, you know, and sort of talking to AI. I think that is another unlock, by the way. Get get you know, get get AI on your phone and start you know, obviously, GPT 4, the iOS app's got, you know, talked conversations with AI or talked to AI. That's another kind of breakthrough because it feels more natural for people to talk to AI, particularly when you think about that thought partner use case.
Greg Shove [00:23:26]:
But I think we go through this kind of, like, transition of, oh, it's it's kinda it's pretty easy to and kinda natural to interact with it. And then this idea of I can add my data, so now we're talking about my stuff, right, in conjunction with the AI. And then I think we realize, oh, there's a moment where I got some pretty good advice. It did summarize that document well, and it not just summarized it well, but highlighted a couple things that I didn't think about. And I think that's the moment we all have to get to where we know it can summarize, we know it can draft, we know it can kinda do a, you know, do a good job with language based tasks. But how about language based thinking? And when you see it sort of identify something you hadn't thought about or highlight a risk or, you know, call out a number that is maybe you again, a metric that you hadn't considered, things like that, then you I think that's kind of the unlock where you realize, okay, there's something here for me. Yeah. You know, I'm a human.
Greg Shove [00:24:16]:
I know my shit, but, you know, I don't know it all. Right? And maybe this air AI can just be this sort of, yeah, this companion, kinda cover my bases. Because in those kinds of conversations, those kinds of meetings, you know, you're meeting with an investor, you're meeting with your banker, whatever. You're trying to get a loan. You know, ask ask your ask your AI to to pretend to be a, you know, the loan officer at the bank kind of idea, and the the kind of questions that person's gonna ask. So I just think it's again, we all have blind spots and the the the faster we expose those blind spots and move through them and make better decisions, you know, I think that, you know, we're all better off. So, yeah, it it can take a while, but when you get that first insight, when you see AI tell you something you hadn't thought of, I think you're like, okay. You know, it's kind of a light bulb moment.
Jordan Wilson [00:25:00]:
You know, one thing that I always think about and, you know, I talked about a couple times on the show before is, you know, especially when it comes to, like, oh, can AI do your job your CEO's job, or can AI really do this this task better than someone that's been doing it for for 20 years? Number 1, the answer is yes, probably. But I think a lot of people, CEOs, c suite leaders, decision makers think of AI as this almost technical implementation piece. I don't think that's it. I think it's actually change management. Right? Because I think historically for decades, business leaders have been rewarded for what they do with their own knowledge, with their own domain expertise, but that's what large language models are good at. Right? So so what would you say to a CEO that is is maybe they're hearing this and maybe they're inspired, but they're still struggling because they're like, no. A large language model can't do this. I I got rewarded.
Jordan Wilson [00:25:49]:
I'm where I'm at today as a CEO because of how smart I am. What would you say to them?
Greg Shove [00:25:54]:
Yeah. What I'd say is, first of all, as we already talked about, get hands on yourself. If you can't, you know, you can't really appreciate, I think, the opportunities or the potential unless you get hands on yourself. So get hands on yourself. That's the first thing. Second thing is, you know, assign the task to someone, head of AI, the person who raises, you know, the smart kid in the office that raise their raises their hand and says, listen. I wanna be the one to figure out AI. Find someone, probably not a technical person.
Greg Shove [00:26:19]:
I don't think the head of AI, by the way, should be the technologist. I think it should be a business person who understands workflows, understands tasks, kinda the business problems, and then understands enough about AI to see where the intersections are. And find the 2 or 3 big specific use cases inside your company organization. Could be an organization like SectionWare, you know, there's only 30 of us, but we've got, like, there's probably 10 tasks that really are big tasks that we do all the time. For example, for us, it's creating courses, it's writing scripts. So we're as concerted effort with AI to see if AI can make that task or make that job, you know, kind of better, faster, cheaper, better quality. Like, pick some sort of, you know, some, highlight use cases and try to really apply AI. That's second.
Greg Shove [00:27:06]:
3rd, deploy AI to the team, pay for it. You know, if, pay for it, especially for the privacy controls, like, you know, GPT teams, for example, is $25 a month. Maybe maybe do it for 6 months, pay for it, and, you know, get everybody kind of going. That is the hard part though, that moment. Because I think you're right. There's resistance. It's about change management. You can train them and you have to train them so they know how to use it.
Greg Shove [00:27:29]:
And after that, you've really gotta kinda reward and encourage the behavior change, and the behavior change is find these little personal use cases. Right? You're in marketing, find the way AI is gonna help you in marketing. Right now, yeah, you you know the change management, you know, kind of theory. Right? You gotta get past at least 10%, and if not 20%. Typically, change management sort of theorists will tell you past 20%, that's the tipping point, and the rest of your organization kinda kinda follows. And we're not there yet in almost every organization. Right? We're not at 20% in terms of AI adoption, in terms of everyday usage. So if you are serious about this as a CEO or a leader and you want your team, could be a 5 person team, you know, 10 person team, you've gotta get, you know, 3, 4, 5, people in that 10 person team kinda over that hump.
Greg Shove [00:28:11]:
Right? Which is they're using AI every day. You've gotta make it safe. You gotta encourage it. You gotta, let them upload their data, and you gotta do a bunch of stuff. You gotta you gotta recognize where it fails and talk about it. You gotta talk about the wins, talk about the kind of failures. You gotta get past that 20%. We just did a survey, Jordan, of a 1000 knowledge workers.
Greg Shove [00:28:29]:
8% in our survey were what we call in the AI class, and that means two things. Attitudinally, they were acceptant, you know, acceptant, of AI and and seeing its kind of power and its value. And then secondly, we tested them for their prompting proficiency. So we actually ran them through a kind of prompting exercise to see if they could really, like, you know, work with it with an AI. Only 8% passed. Right? And our audience is probably pretty early adopter oriented. Right? So, you know, that's not enough. Right? It's gotta be 10, 15, 20%.
Greg Shove [00:29:01]:
So we got a we got a few years to go. Right? And we gotta we gotta get through some resistance. And the resistance is anxiety, and anxiety is coming mostly from media, which is, you know, AI is coming for your job. And in some cases it is, quite frankly. Yeah.
Jordan Wilson [00:29:16]:
You know,
Greg Shove [00:29:16]:
80% of call center, operators in my opinion will be those 80% of those jobs will be eliminated in the next 5 years in the United States. That that's my perspective on it.
Jordan Wilson [00:29:26]:
Yeah.
Greg Shove [00:29:27]:
So there there is some real implications here. But in general, I think the anxiety is kind of a, you know, hyped up media.
Jordan Wilson [00:29:33]:
And and speaking of some of these stats, right, like I the the 8% pass out of a 1,000, that's that's pretty shocking, but not surprising. But Ted here bringing up a great point that I'm gonna turn into a question here. So saying, PwC and their latest CEO survey found that only 30% of CEOs are actually using AI. Right? There's been a couple other studies as well that said, in the mid nineties, 90% of of c level, executives say that AI is a top company priority, yet about 5% are actually incorporating generative AI across their organization. Greg, from your perspective, why is there such a disparity between every single c suite leader saying AI is the most important priority, but hardly no one is actually implementing
Greg Shove [00:30:17]:
it. Yeah. But that's like saying, you know, cost cutting's a priority, but the c CEO is still flying on the corporate jet. Yeah. I don't know why we're surprised, you know, like, c COs say what they think is important for their organization. That doesn't mean they necessarily wanna do it or need to do it. CEOs are busy. No you know, no one sat down and showed them how to use it.
Greg Shove [00:30:36]:
CEOs are being told it's not safe. Don't load it. Don't load company data into the AI. I don't think for a CEO, AI is that useful unless you can talk to it about your data, right, about your situation. So whether it be personally at home, your travel plans, your medical records, whatever it is, but all all those great personal use cases, or at work, right, it's it's likely for a CEO means you wanna talk to it about your company and your your company data. Like, you know, using just what the model knows about your business is not enough. Right? The CEO is not gonna get any insight from that. So the CEO needs to feel comfortable.
Greg Shove [00:31:09]:
I can load up my, you know, you know, you know, my board deck. Right? So I I this is not surprising. We're early. We're a year and a half in. Mhmm. You know? And, so it's gonna take it's gonna take a decade.
Jordan Wilson [00:31:20]:
Yeah. Greg, we've we've talked about a a ton in today's conversation and could probably keep going for hours. But, you know, as we wrap up today's show, you know, what is maybe that one piece of advice? So maybe, you know, a CEO listening, was kind of on the fence, and now they're, you know, convinced. They're like, alright. I gotta go all in. What is your one piece of advice or one takeaway when it comes to, you know, this concept of AI really being able to be a thought partner to CEOs.
Greg Shove [00:31:50]:
Alright. Well, only one's tough. We'll we'll we'll do 2. 2. The first one is get AI on your phone. And when you're in the car, talk to talk to GPT 4 through the the conversational kind of interface as a thought partner. It won't have your data, but you'll have a conversation with it. That'll teach you, I think, that AI, really can can can be this thought partner for you.
Greg Shove [00:32:12]:
Second 1 is anytime anybody comes to you inside your organization, doesn't matter how how big or small your organization is, they want money, they want a request for, you know, head count, they want they have a new project they want approval on, they have an idea they wanna talk to you about, ask that person what does AI think. Mhmm. If you do that, your organization will learn very quickly that you are committed to being an AI enabled organization and that that you get it. And they'll go back and next time they come to you, they're they will have asked AI as well. So they will have used AI as a thought partner. And frankly, do that yourself. Right? If you're gonna ask other employees, you know, what does AI think? Then if you're thinking about something, a decision, ask ask the same question and, you know, go to Claude. My preference is Claude is a business thought partner, GPT a close second.
Greg Shove [00:32:58]:
But, you know, I I use it every day to and then that's the question I ask. What do you think of this? You know?
Jordan Wilson [00:33:04]:
It's I mean, today's episode, I think, has been, crucial for CEOs as they start to finally, quote, unquote, figure out generative AI in 2024. Greg, thank you so much for coming on the Everyday AI Show and and sharing your insights. We really appreciate it.
Greg Shove [00:33:23]:
Thank you, Jordan. Great to be here.
Jordan Wilson [00:33:25]:
And, hey, as a reminder, everyone, yeah, that was a lot. There was so many great insights in today's conversation. We're gonna be recapping it all in today's newsletter. So if you haven't already, make sure to go to your everydayai.com. Sign up for that free daily newsletter. If this was helpful, please share this share this with another CEO. Like I said, Greg just had some great insights here. He's he's I think, you know, him and section are really helping lead, this this educational piece around generative AI.
Jordan Wilson [00:33:52]:
So today's episode was great. Make sure to share it. Make sure to check out our thanks a million giveaway, and make sure to come back for more everyday AI. Thanks y'all.