Luke Schnieder: Sounds Great.

Kristi K: Here on Business Live 360 and my podcast, Business Life After Hours.

We're exploring artificial intelligence and its transformative impac on business and our daily lives.

In studio with me is Tom Bush, our AI expert and visionary in the field.

Tom, welcome.

It's great to have you here.

Tom Bush: Thanks.

I'm super excited.

This is, a big topic, so we'll see how far we get into it.

But I'm looking forward to it.

Krist K: With AI evolving so quickly, what would you say if you could, as at this point in time, what is the definition of AI and artificial intelligence?

Tom Bush: So artificial intelligence is really, having a computer do what usually is ascribed to a human to be able to do.

Kristi K: And as we start to think about the tasks that can be done by AI and these AI robots, we continue to hear about, what are some of those examples?

And is that the same thing as machine learning?

Tom Bush: Yeah.

So, so artificial intelligence actually encapsulates a large topic.

and there's lots of different subdisciplines underneath it.

Machine learning is one specific capability.

And this is where you give it, a bunch of give the computer a bunch of information, and you train i on how to look at, say, images.

And so it can identify a dog or a cat.

Machin learning is specifically that.

And one of the the things that's got all the press right now is what's called gen AI or generative artificial intelligence that's generating new information.

Krist K: When we talk about business, obviously what we put in, we're goin to get out of this whole thing.

So how does a corporation use AI for a competitive edge?

Tom Bush: Oh, for competitive edge, yeah.

I mean we're in an age of productivity.

And, AI is definitely an accelerator.

for all of your employees in almost every aspect of what they're doing.

we see companies, for example being able to reduce training, to, you know, today a training program for a new employee.

You're educating them on all these policies and, capabilitie that they need to be able to do and maybe teaching them about scenarios that they may not encounter for another year or, you know, a year or two out, imagine putting a chat bot in play where they could just ask, what's the policy on this?

How do I solve when I encounter this type of problem?

So it's allowing for more, real time information to be disseminated to the individual when they need it versus having to do a long term training.

companies are saving billions, around process improvements.

you know, the advantage of artificial intelligence is that it can take in a large amount of data, and hold that in its mind while it thinks through a problem, which is difficult for humans to take in all of these different parameters.

Well, if you think about process improvements and, you know, producing a bottle for less, your ability to analyze how your process is running and the AI suggesting what parameter you might change to go faster, these are some of the examples that would help businesses save lots of money and go faster.

But it's really at this juncture with the AI side.

It's about the individual.

And what are they doing today that feels repetitive, redundant?

and is what I call painful meaning it's just like very tedious.

Those are things that bots could do, very easily.

Kristi K: And to improve everything from seeking process management, all of those things.

And, you know, also, I really is involved in helping with data analysis and everything from customer behavior and analyzing how consumers buy products.

Can you tell us a little bit more and dive a little bit deeper into how that works?

And you mentioned creating chat bots for certain things, describing that for us as well.

Tom Bush: Sure.

Yeah.

I mean, the ability to look at a market and understan I mean, imagine that you could and I know this is happening today.

People are analyzing Twitter, for example, to understand what's the current sentiment.

I'm sorry, it's called X nowadays.

what is the sentiment out there?

Right.

What's the topic of the day?

Right.

What are people conversing o and using that and tying it back to, well, how does that, relate to my sales for my product?

And so if I see that we're talking, you know, if it's a big topic at the moment is related to, say, music and some release of a big CD, then how does that relate to my product?

Whatever it is, how does that relate and make i so that we can start to predict when this goes up, than I likely this will go up, or if this goes down, then my stuff will go down.

Yeah.

And so I think, that's one of the cool things about, the targeting the bots on bigger sets of data is that can create correlations that w maybe hadn't noticed previously.

And then creating chat bots internally, for companies, this is definitely been an accelerator to get better access.

we've worked with local governments who, for example, have, copious amounts of rules and regulations.

And one of the things they, spend a lot of time o is answering questions on the, on the phone about certain rules or regulations and what we've, proposed to them is a chat bot that will basically allow the person calling in to either speak with an A that will be able to answer this question directly or have a chat on their website so that they can get the answer to their questio without having to call a human.

Kristi K: I think many of us, myself included, have these thoughts of fear when we think about the future of AI and robots and some of the things that we hear and read that potentially could impact the human race down the road.

If you really play it out, can you talk to us more about what that feels like, what that looks like as I kind of plays out and becomes much more, sophisticated, if you will.

Tom Bush: Sure.

Yeah.

I think there's, often I'll get a question.

We'll start locally, after I get the question of like, am I going to lose my job right?

And that specifically, I think the answer today is no, you're not going to lose your job, but your job might look different if you hold all things constant where you say, oh, my company will only ever do this.

And therefore if an AI does that, will there be loss of jobs?

The answer is possibly.

However, no company that I know of is like that.

When you optimize a certain part, they're going to grow and explore other areas.

And I think that's really the the great part about AI is it's goin to give us more time to explore, the adjacent products.

We could build the more advanced product we could build to really help us figure out, you know, if I'm a script writer, what if you could, you know, you could use AI to help you write more scripts faster.

but you still are able to put your edge on it.

But if it puts the 75%, you know, complete draft together for you, think about how many more jobs you could go do, how many more scripts you could be writing.

So I think we're about to enter an A into a time when creativity and creation is going to accelerate, because we will be able to all of that that stuff that slowed us down.

The some of the hard work part will be, done by an AI for us such that we can do even more, we can be more versatile, we can explore more avenues.

Kristi K: Oh, I love that innovation.

Creativity really can be opened up.

At that point, I absolutely hadn't thought of it in that regard.

I can't help but think, as you're talking about the timeline and how this is just going to be that snowball effect as we look forward.

How do you see this playing out, and at what point am I going to have to report into an AI boss?

Tom Bush: Yeah.

You know, yeah.

So how soon, is the world going to be taken over by AI?

Is a fun question to think about.

And, you know, in parallel, ho soon am I going to be a cyborg?

You know, how soon is that chi going to be planted in my head?

you know, th reality is, is that over time, we've been delegating more and more to computers, you know, like, so it started with the calculator, right?

We delegated our knowledge of how to execute math quickly to this calculator.

today we are definitely directed on how to drive our cars by our GPS you know, and on our cell phone.

And we have that cell phone, which is a, you know, a computer, right next to us, telling us things a lo like your next meeting is now.

Right You should go to that meeting.

So it's very interesting how we've, over time, technology has infused itself such that we are cyborg ish, already taking our direction from a computer.

Kristi K: And it's a great assessment.

It's a great perspective that we need to be thinking about.

And as you said, really, as we look ahead to the benefits of AI that certainly is one of them.

Yeah.

Tom Bush: Absolutely.

Kristi K: Tom Bosch, thank you so much for being with us here in business Life 360 and Business Life After Hours.

It has been so eye opening and enlightening.

Tom Bush: Yeah.

Thank you.

Kristi K: So in conclusion, we thank our guest expert Tom Bush for his insight as we look at today's perspective on our future.

This is truly a transformative time in our lives.

While a future world with AI may be bright, it is up to us to shape it in a responsible way.