Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Richard Curtis: It's the equivalent of Googling.
I just go on my browser, I ask it a question, it gives me the answer.
[00:00:08] Richard Gearhart: They look at the policy of the LLM company and decide, is this confidential or not? And if it's not, it's like standing on a mountaintop and yelling it to the world.
[00:00:19] Yidian Liu: Later I find out AI knows my company a bit better than I do, and that's the problem. So we stopped using that.
[00:00:25] Elizabeth Gearhart: There were already automation. So we've been partway to AI with a lot of the automation software could do well ready. And so I feel like if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?
[00:00:38] Rose Marie Iskowitz: You can use it to iterate, you can use it to research and create, but you can't let it be the end all, be all. This is Real AI Use Cases Business Owners Roundtable. Here's how real companies are using AI right now.
[00:00:53] Elizabeth Gearhart: Now it is time for Real AI Use Cases Business Owners Roundtable. So I'm going to ask everybody to give me one example of how they're using AI in their business, just one to start. And then we'll go around the table and talk more deeply about AI. So, Richard Curtis, what is one way you're using AI in your business?
[00:01:12] Richard Curtis: It's the equivalent of Googling. I just go on my browser, I ask it a question, it gives me the answer. And unlike earlier versions of AI, it gives me citations where I can actually go to the source so that if I'm quoting something, I can basically justify that it is the original source and not AI told me or Wikipedia told me.
[00:01:42] Elizabeth Gearhart: Ah, that's excellent.
So, Rosemary Iskowitz, founder of Rise Cognitive Blueprint, what's one way you're using AI?
[00:01:51] Rose Marie Iskowitz: AI is, is absolutely unbelievable in what you can create. But if I were to narrow it down to something, I would say Claude design is really pretty impressive. If you have some creative assets like logos or your branding or your color schemes, you can upload it and tell it to create literally anything. Templates for social media, slide decks, videos, you name it, anything you can think of. And it is pretty darn impressive what you get back and you can edit it from there.
[00:02:29] Elizabeth Gearhart: I'm going to have to look at that because we haven't used Claude for that yet. We've been using other programs, but we'll take a gander at that. That sounds pretty interesting. We'll come back and talk some more. So, Idian Liu, co founder of Polygon Systems, what's one way you're using AI?
[00:02:44] Yidian Liu: Yeah, we're a hardware company, so we Usually use it for very repetitive jobs such as sorting our POs from different vendors. And I personally use Genomy that's integrated with Google Drive, so you can ask them to sort out all the POS into one standard Excel form. So that can be a lot faster than I asked my assistant to do it.
[00:03:06] Elizabeth Gearhart: That's a great use too. Yeah. So, Richard Gearhart with Gearhart Law. What's one way you're using AI?
[00:03:12] Richard Gearhart: Well, we were talking about using AI in the legal profession a little bit earlier. Right. Richard was talking about lawyers, lawyers misusing AI. Well, there's a lot of other people in the legal system, the court system, that have also gotten in trouble for using AI. And so recently there was a case where an expert misused AI. Experts are used by the court and by the parties in a case to testify about technical things, regulations, stuff that the lawyers and the judges are not experts in. So they bring in supposedly neutral, objective experts to testify on these topics, pretty common in patent cases.
And so of course, an expert was caught using AI where they shouldn't have. Everything that an expert relies on to create a report for the court can be discovered by the opposing party. And so in this case, the expert created prompts that basically tried to write a report that would throw the case in favor of their client. And the other party found this through discovery. The court said, yeah, this is appropriate subject matter to find. And the expert ended up losing the case for the other side because the whole case just went down the tubes right after that came out. Yeah, it's definitely a double edged sword. And the thing is that the expert just didn't do much, just put prompts in and charged tens of thousands of dollars for this report.
So let that be a lesson to us all. We're kind of looking at that now, making sure that our experts don't make the same mistake.
[00:04:46] Elizabeth Gearhart: Thank you. And for me, Elizabeth Gearhart with Gear Media Studios.
So I use it all the time, as I'm sure you guys do. I just used it this morning.
We had the Real AI Use Cases podcast. We had it on YouTube. I had to put the latest episode on Kastos for podcast distribution everywhere.
And when you go to put a podcast up, it asks for the title, it asks for description, it asks for keywords, it asks for an image, and it asks for a transcript and all of that, and it generates a transcript. We edit the podcast in Descript, which is an AI program, and we get the YouTube video from that, we get the MP3 audio file from that, and we get a Text file from that. So we use Description for its AI capabilities. And we are thinking about hooking it up to Claude because you can have Claude tell Descript how to edit your video.
We have an intern who's really good at that kind of stuff, so she may actually do that. But then I had to get this up and going before we came out into New York today. And so I was able to put everything into, I think I used ChatGPT. I put the text file in there and said, okay, do everything I need for Castos. And it did. And then the other thing was. So talk about image generation. That's why I'm interested. So I've been using ChatGPT for image generation.
So I had put the text through ChatGPT and I said, okay, now give me an image and use these colors. And I always tell it, if you're going to use a person, use a blonde woman.
Because it never does that unless I specifically tell it. But this time I had Richard's picture, my picture, and we had interviewed one person, their picture on the thumbnail. So we're gonna see how that works out. But yeah, cut the time down. I could do it in an hour or less before we came on the show.
[00:06:40] Richard Gearhart: If you're gonna be a content creator now in podcasting or YouTube, you gotta be a data analyst because you've gotta be able to look at like all of the back end statistics about how the content's doing. And then you have to have a computer degree in order to run all the programs that do all the editing and the compiling and everything. And pretty soon, of course, there's. There's already software out there that'll generate AI movies and content.
[00:07:07] Richard Curtis: Back to something I said to Rosemary before, which is that authors have become, have had to become technicians, media specialists.
So the text of their work is the least important thing to a publisher. The image, was the person attractive?
Not. Or we can make them attractive, we can make them more articulate. And little by little, editors have forgotten what the book was about. All they care about is what the author, how the author performs and how extensive the author's media.
[00:07:47] Elizabeth Gearhart: What's their social media reach, which is all done with AI now anyway. Right?
So what about you guys? Do you have any other thoughts on AI or ways you're using it?
[00:07:56] Yidian Liu: Actually, I'm very cautious about using AI for anything that is slightly confidential, including what programs we're applying to, or my emails to my clients or some of the IPs we're developing in house. And because at the beginning I was a little bit stupid. So I did use that to edit my emails and later I find out AI knows my company a bit better than I do and that's the problem. So we stopped using the. And also if I'm seeing someone applying for a job in our company and it's heavily AI generated kind of tone, I'll be like, this person is probably not very good at independent thinking or creative production. So I would also be very cautious about whether I even want to hire this person.
[00:08:37] Elizabeth Gearhart: That's a good point.
[00:08:39] Richard Gearhart: It's a two edged sword. It's if they don't know how to use AI, then you're worried, but if they use it too much, you're worried. Right.
So it's kind of interesting balancing act that has to take place.
[00:08:50] Rose Marie Iskowitz: Yeah. Going down the road of, you know, cautionary tales with AI, I would say that it really can hijack your thinking sometimes and also get you off on a tangent that you weren't trying to
[00:09:03] Elizabeth Gearhart: go the rabbit holes. That takes you down.
[00:09:06] Rose Marie Iskowitz: I know, exactly. And I can see where sometimes it literally has a mind of its own and you're asking for developing a strategy in a certain direction and. And the next thing you know it's iterating for you to go in a different direction. So for people who aren't as mindful, that's happening. I think that's very scary too.
[00:09:31] Richard Gearhart: Yeah, I agree. And then sometimes you can spend so much time iterating with the LLM that if you just actually sat down and done it yourself, you would have had it done already.
[00:09:42] Richard Curtis: I have a question.
You mentioned that you were worried about confidentiality. Suppose you had an idea for business like your plastic particle business and you asked AI, is there such a business? Is there a patent? Can you find me the patent number of businesses like I'm trying, then I would say to myself, if I tell AI this, it's going to tell somebody else.
[00:10:12] Richard Gearhart: You shouldn't do that.
[00:10:13] Richard Curtis: So you have to basically go to the library or whatever it is and do the patent research yourself because you don't want AI squealing on your idea.
[00:10:28] Richard Gearhart: I think it's a real danger. So if we are, for example, in the medical space and we have a compound that's medicine, if I put that into a public LLM and that becomes part of the database.
And so if some other scientist is searching for a medicine that treats cancer, they could very well find that compound even before I filed a patent on it. And so it's very important that you understand what the level of Confidentiality is with the tool that you're using. But you're exactly right. We do have clients sometimes who are unaware of that. They'll put that information into the LLM and, and it could very well be that there's a disclosure there that hurts them. And courts have looked at this issue and they've ruled that if you put confidential information into the LLM, it's no longer confidential. And they look at the policy of the LLM company and decide, is this confidential or not? And if it's not, it's like standing on a mountaintop and yelling it to the world.
[00:11:32] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah, having. Having said that, I think you're right. And then that could also affect your patent rights because it could be a public disclosure before you're ready.
[00:11:39] Richard Gearhart: Absolutely.
[00:11:40] Elizabeth Gearhart: So Richard hired an AI company to implement some AI in his law firm in Gearhart Law. And I feel like some of the stuff they're doing, we don't really need AI for. It's for specifically the CRM. They were already automation. So we've been part way to AI with a lot of the automation software could do already.
And so I feel like if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Right.
And for some of the people now, everything looks like AI could be the solution when there are other solutions that have always been there that we just had to implement in the software. So we use Zoho CRM right now. There's a lot of automations you can do in Zoho. You really don't need AI to do a lot of the stuff, maybe a little bit at the end to like make two pieces of software, talk to each other or something. So I'm hearing now for a lot of companies are saying we're not seeing the ROI we thought we would see on implementing AI and it's because you're not implementing it in the right places in your company.
[00:12:40] Rose Marie Iskowitz: I think, I think too some of the integrations that AI promises, I'm not seeing it work the way it's supposed to work. I've connected my chat with certain softwares that I use for different things and it's supposed to be able to lock and create something and it's not great.
So I know we'll get there. And everything is happening so fast already. But there are a lot of things that, as you said, we don't need to have an AI solution for because it just isn't there yet.
[00:13:14] Yidian Liu: I agree. Couldn't agree more. I feel I'm wasting more hours learning about how to use that AI than the Time I actually saved from using the AI.
[00:13:24] Richard Gearhart: I think you can even say that about technology.
It used to be that you would write things down on a pad of paper and then stick it in a file cabinet. And then when you needed it, you just open the file cabinet. And now passwords and authentication.
And sometimes the technology works and sometimes it doesn't. And I think overall, it's been a Net gang, but it hasn't.
[00:13:45] Richard Curtis: There's a day will come when there will be a reaction.
Giving an analogous situation. At the dawn of the E book, of the digital era, companies were able to create books that children could read by themselves without their parents. The books sang to you. They were animated. The kid could just sit down, touch the book. It would speak to the kid. And it was great. Everybody thought, well, now I don't have to read to my kid anymore. Then one day, parents said, wait a minute, I like reading to my kid. And the kid likes to hear Mommy and Daddy read to him. And they want to read to their mommy and daddy. So suddenly the books that read themselves were rejected in favor of human values, the value of cuddling up with your parents and reading a book together. So a day will come when there will be a reaction. Probably not in our lifetime, but it will happen.
[00:14:56] Elizabeth Gearhart: I agree. Richard was just talking about that on the way here in the car. He was like, I don't want AI to do everything for me. There's some things I like just doing myself.
[00:15:05] Richard Curtis: It was a science fiction novel about that very thing. On a planet where everything is done by computer, everything is taken care of. There's not a single care in the world that is not addressed by this governing machinery.
And the kid kind of wants to go behind it and see how it works. And suddenly everything begins to fall apart. Like the wizard of Oz where they go behind the curtain and they discover it's phony.
[00:15:39] Elizabeth Gearhart: I think I agree with Rosemarie. It is getting worse. And I'm not sure it's going to get there where it does everything perfectly. But I'll tell you, I'm short. I wanted to get a desk chair for this new desk I'm putting outside so I can sit outside and do my work.
And I told it the exact dimensions I wanted.
And it kept sending me to these chairs on Amazon that were too high.
And so then I had to go in. I had to think of a clever way to look for it. So I went into Amazon and typed in a chair for a teenager, and it finally gave me adjustable chairs.
[00:16:14] Richard Gearhart: It was covered with Pokemon cartoons.
[00:16:17] Elizabeth Gearhart: So I'm not sure it's gonna get there. It seems to be getting confused and giving us wrong answers more than it was a year ago. That's how I feel. Do you guys feel that way?
[00:16:26] Richard Gearhart: Maybe we're expecting more.
[00:16:28] Elizabeth Gearhart: I think I'm prompting better than I used to. I just want to find. Do you guys feel like it's working better or worse than it was a year ago?
[00:16:35] Yidian Liu: I see in terms of writing, it definitely becomes more artificial. I can definitely see the pattern being more generated than original.
Not sure it's because too many people have having similar problems. So it neutralized the information it generates.
[00:16:53] Elizabeth Gearhart: Okay. What about you, Rosemarie?
[00:16:55] Rose Marie Iskowitz: Yeah, I would say that I do feel that it's improved. I think I can do a lot greater things, but I can also see I have moments where it's so off so not online with what I'm saying. And one thing that I like to do is I actually pit my AIs against each other. So I'll put the same prompt in a couple of different things and get the feedback and. And sometimes one is so far off and the other one is on and things like that. You can use it to iterate, you can use it to research and create, but you can't let it be the end all. Be all.
[00:17:35] Elizabeth Gearhart: Yeah. What about you, Richard?
[00:17:36] Richard Curtis: I think it's become smarter and more human every day. I had an idea. I'm not a cartoonist, but I had an idea for a cartoon. So I dictated what I wanted to. I can't remember. Maybe it was Gemini. And it kept asking me questions. Do you want it this way? Do you want it that way? And I realized I was saying please and thank you for this freaking. I always do, AI.
[00:18:04] Yidian Liu: Thank you. Because one day, AI takes over the world.
[00:18:06] Elizabeth Gearhart: So, Richard Gearhart, final comment. Is it better than a year ago or worse than a year ago?
[00:18:11] Richard Gearhart: Definitely better.
[00:18:13] Elizabeth Gearhart: You think so?
[00:18:13] Richard Gearhart: Oh, yeah. I think we're just expecting more.
[00:18:15] Elizabeth Gearhart: Is that it?
[00:18:16] Richard Gearhart: I think we're expecting a higher level of perfection.
And that's not to say that it's not off a lot still.
But I do think I feel more confident in the things that it tells me than I did maybe a year ago.
[00:18:32] Elizabeth Gearhart: Maybe I think you're right. Maybe I'm just trying to do more advanced things than it's ready for because it's frustrating as I'll get out for me these days. So anyway, that has been real AI Use Cases. Business Owners Roundtable. If you're listening to this on the radio, we've had to edit it down quite a bit. We did have a longer discussion. There is a Real AI Use Cases podcast if you want to hear the whole thing. Or you can Find us on YouTube.
[00:18:56] Speaker F: You have been listening to real AI use cases business Owners Roundtable with hosts Elizabeth Gearhart, marketing expert and PhD researcher using AI every day and Richard Gearhart, entrepreneur, business owner and intellectual property attorney specializing in innovation.
We hope you found this valuable. Join us again for more stories. Because the future of business is driven by AI.
