Artificial Intelligence Podcast: ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney and all other AI Tools

Harnessing AI for Immersive Learning with Barton Goldenberg

• Jonathan Green : Artificial Intelligence Expert and Author of ChatGPT Profits • Episode 342

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Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast with Jonathan Green! In this engaging episode, we delve into the transformative power of AI in education with our esteemed guest, Barton Goldenberg, a pioneer in customer relationship management and AI applications for learning.

Barton shares insights from his extensive experience and current projects, including innovative VR training solutions for a 200-year-old insurance company. He highlights how AI-driven immersive environments boost knowledge retention and recall, enhancing learning outcomes by making training more interactive and personalized.

Notable Quotes:

  • "VR training, particularly when it's AI-driven, significantly impacts both recall and knowledge retention. Satisfaction of the trainee goes up to about 90% because they like doing the interactive learning." - [Barton Goldenberg] 
  • "It's about moving from non-revenue generating tasks and allowing people to focus on what they do best." - [Barton Goldenberg] 


Connect with Barton Goldenberg:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bartongoldenberg/

https://ismguide.com/


Connect with Jonathan Green

AI help us learn better. Let's find out what today's special amazing guest, Barton Goldenberg. Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast, where we make AI simple, practical, and accessible for small business owners and leaders. Forget the complicated T talk or expensive consultants. This is where you'll learn how to implement AI strategies that are easy to understand and can make a big impact for your business. The Artificial Intelligence Podcast is brought to you by fraction a IO. The trusted partner for AI Digital Transformation at fraction A IO, we help small and medium sized businesses boost revenue by eliminating time wasting non-revenue generating tasks that frustrate your team. With our custom AI bots, tools and automations, we make it easy to shift your team's focus to the tasks that matter most. Driving growth and results, we guide you through a smooth. Seamless transition to ai ensuring you avoid costly mistakes and invest in the tools that truly deliver value. Don't get left behind. Let fraction aio o help you stay ahead in today's AI driven world. Learn more. Get started. Fraction aio.com. Now I'm excited to have you here because as someone who's been passion about education for a long time, I struggle to learn new things. So I was a teacher and all the way from kindergarten through graduate school, I taught every single level you can teach in my twenties and early thirties, and. Just sitting down and learning something new. Even trying to watch a one hour training video is such a struggle for me. It's like a focus thing and it's like such an interesting thing that someone who teaches and for full time loves the sound of my own voice. So I'm really fascinated by your work in that area, because I always heard this thing when I was a kid. Like some people are visual learners, some people are audio learners, some people are . Like taste learners maybe. And I didn't know how true that was. And I thought, I wonder if people are interactive learners.'cause there's a lot of things I've learned through games or when I got really interested or in a book, like how many people know the story of I think it was the USS Philadelphia from the Quote and Jaws, when he starts talking about that amazing scene, more people learned about that from the actual history book. So I wonder, I'm really fascinated by what you're doing in that field and what's your experience about people. How AI can help people learn and retain knowledge a little bit better? It's a great question. We're doing a project right now for a 200 year old insurance company out of New Jersey. And they're looking at replacing their existing training which is largely face-to-face in classrooms for their customer service reps and their claims adjusters, and moving it over to VR training. And what we are doing with them. In fact, we just prototyped the demo we're, we've built an AI avatar and what the avatar does is it has taken in their training modules and where it's appropriate, it's gone outside and gotten additional information about the insurance industry or about certain conditions that may be better explained outside than inside of what they have. And then you put the, you put 'em in, they put the trainees into an immersive environment, Jonathan and here's what we found, and I think it's pretty amazing. And it's fairly well known. So this is not like new. And I think what you said earlier on about when I'm in an immersive environment and I'm playing with games, I tend to absorb better, or I tend to learn more. Most people do. In fact, I think the extreme majority does. And the reason is they're involved in the interaction. They're a part of it, and versus learning where you're on a. Simply being taught something or you're responding to something. But when you're in an interactive mode, in this particular case, we have a, one of the modules in the AI trend avatars ask this particular avatar question. So the training can be anywhere they want. They don't, they can completely off script in the middle of the, of learning and say, listen, I just don't get it. Can you gimme a couple more examples? Or even the AI trend avatar will notice they don't get it.'cause they're stuck on something and we'll propose new examples. And I'm not gonna overwhelm you with statistics, but VR training, particularly when it's AI driven, significantly impacts both recall and knowledge retention. And the figure that I remember is about 60% increase as a result of that. Satisfaction of the actual trainer or trainee goes up to about 90% because they like doing the interactive three. Up learning, and then you get lots of different benefits of the company. Obviously, you're cutting the time to train the trainer trainee just because they're absorbing more effectively, and if you're cutting time and you don't have to do it face to face, you're also cutting costs. And then the important thing I think in at least ar, AI driven training is the confidence levels. So what we're noticing, also, PWC came up with a big study, significant increase in the confidence level of the trainee. So I think that we've all learned as we've grown up different ways, I think that the interactive, and particularly the immersive and particularly AI driven immersive, can be a very effective way to. I'm really interested in two parts of what you said. I'm gonna go down two rabbit holes. The first is for the first time ever I tried vr Last week we were at a hotel and they had where you could rent it for an hour. I've always been very paranoid, like the thought of blocking my vision. I'm like, this is when my kids will turn against me. So my kids were playing a really basic PlayStation game and it was on the TV and just watching them play, I got so dizzy I had to leave the room. And I wonder about that. So I was like, this is not for me. I can't believe it. I tried it. I go, you know what? I don't want to be, maybe it's watching, it's bad, maybe doing it. I put on the headset and I was take it off within three seconds. And I know I hear that from a lot of people. One of my son was like, my stomach hurts, but I'm not dizzy. I was like, what do you mean ? So how do you deal with that? Like that issue of the dizziness and some of the, like challenges with a new technology? Do you have them moving their whole bodies or are they sitting in a chair? Like how complicated is the scenario? What happened to you is not abnormal but you've made a couple statements yourself about watching versus doing. So one of the things is if you're trying to watch vr, just watch it and it's moving and it's in 3D and it's happening all around you, that can mess up your brain. If you're in it and you're expecting certain things to happen and you're moving according to what's going on in the vr, you tend to get much less of that sort of a feeling. Now but it's not to suggest that feeling doesn't impact people. There's kind of couple of things that are happening. So in this particular insurance company for the VR training, they're largely sitting, there's really no need to the one time they might get up is when they do, an evacuation. A medevac, so a medical evacuation helicopter. And they might get up and kinda look inside the helicopter, the and look around and see how the bed is. And so they're actually involved in the act in the viewing of that particular offering. But short of that, they're. Listening to this avatar, there's a board of a, it's a PowerPoint board or something like that. And they're interacting, they're talking, they're turning their head and talking to the avatar. They're turning their head, maybe talking to colleagues, but they're largely seated. So we've not found significant impact from the headsets. However, again I don't wanna be what you just. Apple Vision Pro, which was really a landmark shift in the type of technology that is available. Did all kinds of things with cameras and dual cameras to minimize, any sort of a dizziness or headache or a confusion. And with large extent, it has worked significantly. So I'm not suggesting everybody should go out and buy an Apple Vision Pro.'cause right now they're, they're fairly expensive. They're gonna come down and price significantly this year, this coming year. But it also has to do with the technology that's used in the headset. There's a new headset coming out from Meta that's also a very good headset and that's also built in some of this technology that stops the, the confusion that happens in your brain as you're looking at multiple things happening at once. But it's an issue. I think it would be fair to say, I hate to say it, but as you get older, it might get worse. So when you're younger, it's not an issue. Now, when I say as you get older, I'm talking seriously, seventies and eighties, most people are retired by then, so it's not significant. But I see lots of people even doing vr. Gymnastics or going to the gym using vr and there they're moving significantly, but you just, you take it, you take breaks and you take it easy. So you we're not totally where we need to be. We're definitely moving in that direction and I'm, I use VR headsets a lot. I am not worried about it getting resolved, although some people might have just some issues with multiple lookings in different ways, and that may not be solvable. That's very interesting. That's what I wondered was that it's like I used a VR headset in the nineties back when they would have him in arcade sometimes. And the game I played was very basic. It was really blocks . It's my kids now would be like, what is that? That's not a video game. But it was, and I didn't get dizzy then. And I wonder if it was because I was younger or if it was because it was really not very realistic. And so I am interested in seeing, I'm like the technology will eventually get to a point where they solve the dizziness or that. Whatever happens, but I'm very far at the end of the spectrum where certain things really bother me. Like I'm very afraid of heights. I get, certain types of motion sickness really get me and certain times don't, like everyone has their pros and cons, so I probably very far at the end of the spectrum, whereas like when I was a kid, my sister used to hang over the edge of like tall buildings to make me scared. I was like, what is happening? Every car parking lot? She would hang over there. She's I'm falling. And I was like, this is literally my nightmare. So I have . She doesn't have that. Like she's a rollercoaster person. I'm not. And I've been trapped on a rollercoaster once. So like I feel justified. Not everyone got trapped. Only my seat broke., I, but the other thing that's very interesting to me is that having taught all over the world, I taught at schools in America, schools in England, schools in Japan, when you have a large class, 20, 30, 40 people you can teach to the people that are stuck at the back of the room. People that are really far behind and the smart kids get bored. Or you could teach to the front of the room and the kids at the back feel like left behind. If you try to teach to the middle, nobody's happy. So the personalization, I think that's a very interesting and critical component because everyone asks different questions. Like when I do my coaching calls with my students, I never know what they're gonna ask me and nobody asks the same questions because everyone gets stuck at a different point. Which is why when I am watching a training to learn a process, I always wanna watch the video.'cause it's usually the thing that the one person skips over, doesn't think is important. That's where I always get stuck. There's a tiny step of wait, slow down. The thing that you think is unimportant is where I get stuck. So that's why I need that full visual part when I'm, 'cause I always get stuck there. So I think the individualized learning is really critical and especially when we look at beyond training and into education. That's like a big struggle in schools that. You are trying to teach to the front and the back and people are getting stuck at different points.'cause I taught, again, when I taught in high schools, I taught at some of the worst high schools in America where no one else would teach 'cause they were having lockdowns all the time. And I was like, yeah, that's fine for me. I don't mind. And then I've taught at schools where every kid got a laptop and I was like, whoa, this is really different. And the challenge is that people don't. Want to get negative feedback. If you say something and people think you're dumb, they'll laugh at you. We all have had that happen in school now. One of the things that was interesting is when Chatt BD came out two years ago, I knew a lot of people, I was one of them who was like, I don't wanna ask the AI a dumb question because I don't want, because the AI never forgets. And it will always remember I was the dumb one. Do you find that people, have a little bit of a hurdle at first, even though it's with a virtual avatar, they still are hesitant to say when they're stuck somewhere because of this fear. And I know it's 'cause I have it. It's I was like, I don't want the AI overlords. Remember he was one of the dumb ones at the beginning. So it's an interesting question. This two, two sides to the coin, the trainee. You can say to the avatar, Hey, Joe, or hey Mary I'm, I can't, having trouble getting my head around this. And the avatar might say, oh, let me give you a few more exercises or let me give you a different way to do this, or Let me share with you, other approaches it might find helpful. That's definitely one way and as you've currently alluded to, some learners are happy to step up and say, I still get it, and some are just concerned. But there's the other side of the coin and that is the avatar looks at you learning. And has looked at thousands, potentially tens of thousands, potentially hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people learning a very similar topic and notices when you are. Proactively prompts and says, Hey Bart looks like you might be having a little bit of trouble on this one. Can I suggest a few videos or can I suggest a couple of exercises that might be helpful? And then you're saying like, oh, yeah, that's really you. Thank you. I would like to do that. It may happen even more so from the AI trained avatar side than from the individual, although, we all teach our kids to be. Ask questions in class. It's just that they don't always ask questions in class. I get it, you get it. But the avatar has a, it's very clever and it can actually spot and identify a delayed learner and help move them along with very positive things that they can do to that trainee in helping 'em get across the challenge they're facing. We saw a couple years ago when they tried to have everyone do distance learning and learning from home, and I certainly saw with my kids that they were like. There's such a diminished, you don't learn as much through an iPad. You just don't. They're so cool. There's so many games, but, and I think you've dialed into something so critical, which is the teacher noticing and catching when you're stuck. One of the first things I learned that really blew my mind when I was, I got my first teaching certificate. They're like, when you give someone instructions, make them say the instructions back to you.'cause people will say they got it when they didn't. And as a parent, I use it all the time. I'm like, what did I just say to you? And they're like, . And so it's helped me through life and it's really exactly that part of realizing that sometimes you'll just think they've got it and they've misunderstood you. And the ability to notice that is a skill you develop over time. Or when I was a teacher, like I can tell when someone's cheating. He's I wasn't the best kid in high school. And so I'm like, I recognize a lot of these techniques. I was like, I know why someone keeps looking at the ceiling. I'm gonna look too and see what's going on. So there's a lot, there is something about especially the long you've been teaching, you start noticing different things. So having this ability to AI, I think is very clever. One of the challenges, I'm interested if you face this a lot, is that with a lot of my clients, a lot of the businesses that come to me, they go, we wanna do a bunch of AI stuff. And I go make a list and none of the list is AI stuff. It's like all automations. And what we've seen is form of definition creep. When I was younger, AI meant sentient robot, and now AI means. Makes images for you can put someone else's face in a different cartoon and smart typewriter. And it's like the definition is broadened so much and that we've seen the same thing with it. An IT person used to be who you called to fix your computer. Now it means such a broad thing. There are probably a ton of people that think you and I are a couple of IT guys. They go, they do something with computers. That's it. Everything, computers, and I've seen this merging also with cybersecurity where people think cybersecurity, it, AI automation have all broadened into one thing. And so I always say to people, okay, just gimme your wishlist of all the things that you want and what's the actual goal? And one of the things I learned from house is that people, the first time like that, he's every patient lies. And I was like, when someone tells me what they want, I usually have to ask a couple of times because it's the first version isn't what they really want. There's a little bit of diagnosing and they go, I think I want this machine. I go what's the problem you're trying to solve? What's your starting point? What's your end point? So when I explain to people what I do, 90% of what I do is asking like diagnostic questions and then drawing a diagram. And then I say, so you want when this happens for this to happen, then this to happen? And they go, yes. And I go, amazing. That's not what you described at all in your initial question, . So it's. Very much diagnostic and it's very little on the computer work. Once I figure out what the problem is, then I can solve it. But it's very much figuring out what the problem is. And sometimes it's same thing like when I go to the doctor, I don't describe my symptoms very well. When they say what does your phlegm look like? I'm like, I don't know. I'm not good at colors. I never can. I always feel like guilty when I go, I'm not sure I'm gonna give you the wrong answer. I don't know what to tell you. So in the same way. I completely understand people who are especially not super technical. So how do you when someone's describing what they want, help them to understand, here's the borders of what I do. The, I don't do cybersecurity. I don't do it. Tickets. What I do is solve problems that fit into this spectrum. Again, another great question. So I happen to be very process focused individual. So when I look at something I kind look at the flow of something. So I'll just give you an example of what you've just said and how we approached it and I think it's the right way to do it. I, there are other ways. I just think that, I know this way works. So there was a managing director of a very large corporation, one of the largest credit unions in the credit services in the world. Global corporation and I'm sure he was at an outing with fellow CEOs and executives and they were all talking about AI and how amazing it is and you gotta do it. And I knew that he didn't necessarily know what this all meant, but he took it back to the corporation and he had a huddle meeting and he said, listen guys, we gotta get into AI in a big way in everything we do. And everybody was, really quite interested and was like, why? And that's when I knew, when he answered it, I knew that he really didn't quite understand what he was saying, but it's okay. What he answered is, because I want to drive down costs and I want to increase customer experience. And actually that's a pretty good reason in my mind to at least explore whether I AI could help with either of those. So step one was to understand at. From his perspective, vision, and as you've already said, first, best guess, we'll call it like that. So then what we did is we went into the contact center of this particular large credit services agency and we looked at when somebody called to talk about their debt score or whatever it may be. It could be a call, it could be through a web form, it could be by email, it could be through. And we looked at the flow of that particular incident, going through the organization, maybe getting to an agent, maybe stopping at a chatbot with a resolution, but watched the whole flow of things as it moved through. And what we did then is we identified, I remember it distinctly, 41 different areas. Where AI could actually help drive down costs or increase customer experience. And one of the best ones is when a customer calls I remember the price was about three and a half or $4 to get it to an agent who actually picked up the call and spoke to 'em, versus about one 10th of that price if we could deflect it. And resolve it through some sort of a bot. Okay? And so there was an incentive if you really want to drive down costs to get the question answered quickly through the bot, which would also potentially drive up customer experience.'cause the customer didn't have to wait, while the music was playing and they finally got to an agent. So what we did is an identifying each of those 41 potential ai and we called them use cases. And I think that's very important. I think you can call it a problem, you can call it a use case, but it's something I can apply AI to and it's gonna have an impact then. In that particular area. And then what we did for each of the 41 use cases, we prioritized them and looked at what has the biggest impact. We've looked to put 'em on a horizon map or a timeline. And we figured out what makes sense. Then we brought in, and this is where your other points come in, who needs to play with this? Who else is in the swim lane of a process map? Is it involved in there? Is data security involved in there? Is there buyout from legal and security involved in there? And so by having this general flow chart, I. With identified areas where AI could be used and then having the swim lane where you know who else is gonna be involved to make that happen. I find that to be a very effective way of identifying AI use cases. Now, in getting to those 41, there's another kind of twist to this and I thought, I think it's worth revealing to you in your listeners. We use three sources. Source number one is almost every company today has some sort of an IT system in place. Whether it's a telephony system, if you're in a contact center, whether it's a CRM system, if you're in sales or marketing, there's different systems that you have in place. And each of those vendors today is absolutely focused on applying AI within their software. So step number one is we went to the various vendors they worked with and said, hi, tell me what's in your plans for AI and, what are you trying to do? So that was one source. The second source was the guys inside the company and we interviewed many of them and said what's the thing that you go home and say, this gotta be a better way to do this. This is like the stupidest way of doing this. And people really do. Foolish ways of doing things and they say, there's this button you have to push 16 times and never understood why, but they told us in training and Okay. Thank you. And so we identified areas that were up that, that they were really talking about cost savings and efficiency and contentment of the actual servicing agent and a happy servicing agent will lead to a happy customer. So we, there's a customer experience size, so that was the second source. So to, to look at internally what people thought and where they thought there might be areas. And then we used our own good judgment. We're 40 years in the business. We have pretty good understanding of where things could be made better from an either cost savings or a customer experience. So between the three sources, what the vendors that they used felt and what internally what people felt, and then our good, knowledge with that really helped lock in on.'cause I think the list was like 60 something initially zero went down and stuff that we really short could be worked on. And those 41 presented to what the senior leadership team in a prioritized manner and. It just happened a couple weeks ago, but I think they bought off in the first eight. And those are being implemented, will be implemented in the first quarter of 2025. I love that you brought up employee contentment. So one of the things in our world that drives me crazy is everyone says you can replace all your staff with ai. And I say to every person, I talk to, every business, they might employee ai. If you tell your staff that if someone thinks they're training their replacement. They're gonna sabotage it , right? Like your every AI pilot program will fail. I. Especially right now, if you have people who will come into the office and work from the office, they're now like worth their weight in gold because there's so many people protesting. I don't wanna work in an office and I've nev I've never worked at an office where they gave you like, not like fancy food. I worked in an office where like you were lucky if the vending machine was loaded, right? So when I worked at a big office, I one time got the view of half of a tree and I, it took me six promotions. I was like, I've made it. I can see the parking lot. And if you won't work at a place where they have like amazing chefs and like nap rooms. They're not gonna work in any office. So the last thing you want to do, and I try to explain to people this language we think about and replace people with ai. You, if you get 'em to quit, you're going be really struggling to get people to come to the office again and. Golly, of course they're gonna sabotage the campaign. So one of the things that I say, and I love the way you phrased it, I always say is let's make a list of every wishlist and let's do a motivational project first. Let's do a thing that gets employees on board so they know that I'm not, 'cause anyone who's seen office space knows, like every consultant comes in and says, fire 10% of people, okay, job done. So you don't wanna be the consultant everyone hates. And I love that you, I really think that's so important is to think how can we. Make the business as a whole better and give the customer support team a better experience. I know, 'cause I've, I worked in sales on the phones, but a lot of my friends worked in customer support at some very big companies. And the worst thing, and I'm sure this has happened to you, is where you enter in all the information on the phone tree, then you get to the person and they go I can't see any of that. They're annoyed too, , like they don't wanna re-ask you. So I think about these little things, right? That can give people, it gives both people a better experience and it allows people to do more, right? We don't need to. And I think it's really one of the flaws in our industries. We keep talking about replacing everyone with ai and it's nobody really wants to live in that world. And I always see these commercials with a robot in every home. I was like. What's inside of a robot? The rare earth minerals. I don't think enough of those exist.. There's not enough of these different like really rare minerals that like would be so expensive. It's just not a, it's not possible. It's but people forget that, right?'cause computers are exciting and we're seeing this time now where all these AI companies are now getting into nuclear power.'cause they're realizing how much energy they need and it's yeah, how are you gonna power that robot? You're gonna put a reactor inside of it now it's getting crazy. So I think that's really critical and. I like your process and it's, you have a different way of explaining than I do, and I really like that.'cause I come in and I say, just make a wishlist of everything that you want to happen and we'll see what's possible. And one of the most common ones I get is we want a chat bot. And I'm like, to do what? And then they always say to replace their customer support team. And I'm like, okay, we have a whole, let's stop that idea right now because, and I always say, have you ever, as a customer. Had a good experience with someone else's customer sort, port chat bot, and they always go, no, I've never had a good experience. I go, then I had a bad experience today. So I was thinking about switching to the Google ecosystem for my business to put all me and my employees in the same ecosystem. And it says, you get on this plan, I was looking at two terabytes of shared storage per person on the plan. And then there's an asterisk. And I couldn't find where the asterisk went to on the page, so I asked their chat Bott on the page. I go, I have three full-time employees. If me plus three people are on the plan, how much total shared storage do I get? And it could not answer me. And I was like, come on, chat bot, like you are killing me. It just kept pointing me to the page. I was like, I'm on the page., you're. Like a trillion dollar company or something, you should be able to answer this. And so I just, and then I asked the, I then copied and paste to the page and asked chat GPT and was able to answer. Me and sos I use multiple chatbots, but most people don't think that way. Yeah. So I know that sometimes the mindset with chatbots is maybe they'll just get so frustrated they'll go away. And when you're dealing with someone and they don't have the power to solve your problem no company gives a chat bot the ability to initiate Ray funds. That the chat bott can't solve your problem. So you just see I just have to get through this thing to someone who has the power. So there's a lot of frustration with that. I always try to say before we do a customer support chatbot, I what if we do a pre-sales chatbot? Let's get people who are not mad yet.'cause when you reach out to customer support, you're already a little bit upset. Let's start there. And I also say what's the problem? Because chatbots are cool. They sound really cool. Sounds awesome. I've never had a good experience with one, but I'm sure it's possible. So let's dive a little more into, and then you find out the issue is something different and this diagnosis and it's it's so fascinating to see just the way you think.'cause so many people think that what we do is like sitting on the keyboard, typing away, and 90% of it is really figuring out what problem they're really trying to solve. Because oftentimes it's kinda like when people come in, they come in and this drives every doctor crazy. You go, I think this is what I have. This is the medicine I want. And they're like let's do a few tests. Okay. You were completely wrong. And it's the same kind of thing. So it's like it's 'cause people, it's like a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. One of my teachers used to say all the time, and it's let's take a step back. And then they tell you what they actually want and you go, oh, that's so much easier than what you, that's a much easier problem to solve. I find that most people fall on like most of the things people want, it's either moving data from one place to another. Like these two, we have two softwares and the data won't move between them. And I deal with this all the time with my own tech stack. I'm constantly trying to improve it, right? To get, like when one person on my team talks to someone and then I have a copy of the conversation, I get the notes, which worked great for tonight's call. Imagine if I go, oh, I never saw the notes. It could be horrible experience for both of us. So those little pieces really matter. So a lot of it is, yeah, just. Realizing that what we do is mostly problem identification and problem solving, and I'm really an analog person, so I mostly draw everything. I have a notebook, like an erase notebook, and I'll draw my flow charts and I do everything analog. I, I sit, I, because when I was in high school, I learned that Alan Greenspan, who was in charge of the Fed, used to make decisions about lowering the rate in the bathtub. And I was like, this guy's got a lot of power. And that's where he makes his decision. So I, if he can do that, it's okay for me to do it too, where I could do it in the bathtub or sitting with my kids.'cause I sometimes just have to really think about it and let it percolate in the back of my mind. Because sometimes the problems are really, you just can't think of it right away. And then the next day it's, it comes together like a puzzle. So do you find that, what people think they want is very different from the result. Like they think they want this tool. But they actually want something completely different because the problem is very different. And how do you handle that without ' cause I never wanna hurt someone's feelings. Like when people don't know a lot about ai, I go, you shouldn't, there's an AI product released every four minutes, there's updates all the time, so it's impossible to keep up. We've almost reached a singularity with product launches and ai. So I think it's reasonable that people are a little overwhelmed because it's hard for me to keep up and it's my job. So how do you help people to navigate that and. Still make 'em feel good. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, it's challenging. I'm gonna default just to a different technology, but I'll come right back to ai. I started my career 40 years ago in the area of customer relationship management or CRM and I, I still do it but I really brought the industry forward and watched and the amount of times a person would call me and say, Hey Bart could you just come in and replace my CRM? And I would say, yeah, sure. I said, but let me ask you a few questions first, because 90% of the time you don't have to replace your CRM. It's something to do with process flow. It's something to do with data or it's something to do with, so why don't we do a small, look around and see what's going on, just an assessment, and then we'll determine whether you need to replace your software. And I remember it was Kraft Foods in Glenview, Glen Brook, Illinois, outside of Chicago, and he was totally convinced. He had a scrap of software. And anyhow, long story short, what I, what we did is I alluded to, is we broke it down by process flow, always looked at where the issue was, where he thought the software wasn't working well, and then said, okay, if we could solve this issue in the software, I think the thing would flow fine again. It's amazing. I just thought we had to throw the whole thing out, but I realized really it's something that can be solved. Bring them through what's going on and let them see for themselves that it may not be necessary to scrap it or whatever. Let's go to the AI side. It's much, much more this many more unknowns. A lot of people still don't fully appreciate what is the art of the possible? In ai and there's also tremendous fears of, it's gonna take, you've alluded to things, it's gonna take over my job, it's gonna make bad decisions, it's gonna bring in personal biases and so forth. So there's all kinds of stuff that are in people's minds. I like to again, settle'em down and talk about. What is it they're trying to accomplish? You've alluded to that. What are your goals and or problems? I'll take it in a process map. That's easier I think. But then if you get to areas where AI is really being put to use effectively, and we could use medicine as just one example where they're really, when they have a diagnosis of something or there's an issue and a doctor can look at knowledge of a million of. 5 million cases and figure out what comes closest to what you are proposing, and then can come out with something that might be of value. That is tremendously a huge stride forward in the value and the importance of medicine. And so in that case, the doctor doesn't necessarily know and doesn't even care. What AI is being used. They just know that they're gonna be going to some sort of a survey that's gonna be inferencing, some type of data that's coming in from a whole bunch of medical sources, hopefully reliable medical sources, and it's delivered to that doctor, something that they couldn't have done on their own. And that is get a better diagnosis. And I think that if you. Talk to people in the language of let's look at what you think you're trying to do. I'll give you that. Another example, I just was working with another client last week. It's a vice president of sales and marketing for a large agricultural company. And he's got a pretty big sales force and a fairly significant marketing force. And he called me up and he said we gotta get, I AI really infiltrated in this company. And his name is Jason. I said, what for Jason? He said just look at the headlines part. You know it, you're a technology guy. We gotta get going. Oh, I said, you're right. I've been telling you that for about a year. But we're not just going, I said, I know this guy pretty well. I said we're going to a place that makes sense for you. So tell me, just as an executive right now, what's your biggest frustration? He said it's the guys don't, I really can't get a good forecast still to this day. I've given 'em all the tools. They fill out the various opportunity forms. It just doesn't seem to flow to me the way it's supposed to. And I'm figuring that the AI can solve that. Maybe yes, maybe no. But if we broke down and looked at how is the forecast going, and then even used AI inside the forecast, that there's a capability to do that, to make a better forecast, to say that's not really realistic.'cause based on the last 20 years of this client's history, they've never bought this much. So let's peel that one back or. Present the forecast in a way that is more intuitive. You, it's to you, because AI can do a very good job at presenting things in a way that, quite frankly, let's just say a source code or object code software can't. Then these are reasons why you might start in an area that's of importance to you. It doesn't phase me in the least when somebody says, I gotta get into ai. I think it's great. I love it. Much more importantly is let's bring it down to something that's gonna make a difference, and whether it's in the contact center that I talked about in allowing an agent. To finish the call and not have to spend 10 minutes wrapping it up, but using AI to summarize it during the call and the call's over and it's done right. They don't even have to do their notes and so forth. Whether it's a sales guy that you know, is trying to forecast and is now able to better do a better job forecasting, whether it's a medical doctor that is looking for a solution to something and is able to tap into an enormous wealth of knowledge all these things are reasons why you use ai. Use this generic feeling of, I need ai, it's a good place to start, but it's definitely not gonna deliver you any results of that example about, I need ai, and then it turns out I just need to move the data from one place to another. It's not getting from my team to me. And that's often what I find. And one of the. I often struggle with, so when I'm designing an automation, I have to design top down. I can't, I hate left to so when I, the tools I use, I prefer ones that organized this way. But when I'm using my CRM, it has to be left or right, and I actually just switched. I was using a tool recently and this, they organized it top down. I go, Nope, I can't. It doesn't work with the way my brain works. So sometimes it's something so small. That makes a huge difference. And oftentimes the tool has that feature. You just have to learn how to change the display. It's like usually most CRMs have that. This particular one is actually not a CRM was a project manager. I was trying to force into doing something it's not supposed to do. So that's why I was like, okay, I'll get a real CRM that does left to but it's, so much of it is. Being able to express what your problem is. And it's the same thing when I first encountered mind maps. Sometimes it's hard to say, do you think it trait lines or circles? Like it's a really weird question. But once you start seeing it, they make sense. And I'm one of those people that I mind map one type of work and outline another type. Like I'm never, it's never just one thing for me. So I'm really fascinated by this . The ability to go, especially with tools, go, we can give you the version that you want to see the data and them, the version they want to input the data because definitely we have a lot of with one of the problems with computers and the admin of computers is now we want records of everything. So now the doctor spends more time typing away than talking to you, right? And so that's why now they built these ai passive listening tools that take the notes for the doctor. Now they can talk to you again and look at you and in the. Salespeople, they want to be on the sales call. They don't wanna be taking the notes afterwards. So I talk to a lot of people, they're like, yeah, they don't take the notes. And then when a second person gets the call, we don't know who talked to 'em first. It's so hard to do all of that stuff. And so often someone say, yeah, I've made a note on your file, but there's no file. So it's often moving data around and that's really one of the best areas for AI, is where it can figure out, okay, what are the non-revenue generating tasks?'cause people were in sales wanna be closing. They don't wanna be making notes, they don't wanna be forecasting. They're like, I'd rather do one more call per day than whatever this worksheet my boss wants is. But if we, that's a really critical area, and that's where I love the language you're using. And I, I talk slightly differently, but I call it like non revenue, moving from non-revenue generating, generating tasks, or what are the tasks you dread? So when I teach like entrepreneurs, I say, what's the thing you have to do every week? That you can do with the television on. So it's something you spend a couple hours a week on, doesn't take a hundred percent of your attention. So it could be 80% or below. And that's usually when I talk about one of my passion projects, which is like organization I. 'cause one of the biggest time losses of Rebos. I'm looking for a file on my computer. I don't know where it is. So that's one of the big passions.'cause it happens to everyone. Happens to me all the time. I made a vi. I like, oh, I made a video earlier today. Where is it? So that's something I'm working on, some new stuff in that area myself.'cause I'm like, there's not a good solution for that. And the other one is finding emails or email organization because often people say the same thing. I need AI to answer my emails. And I say, how many emails do you get a day? I get about 500, 500 to a thousand. I go, and that's me. And how many of them do I need to respond to? Five to six. What if we could just sort it and we split into these four categories?'cause there's four categories. There's the emails you never need to look at until you have to search for like a receipt, right? Then there's the ones you need to be aware of, but you don't need to respond to. And then there's ones that like you need, definitely needs to be top of mind today. And then the top is and then there's the final category which you actually have to respond. So for example, I get a reminder email before these calls to make sure I don't forget. I don't need to respond to that, but I do need to see it. So that's like a level two. So as soon as we start thinking, the real problem is that it's not that you need to respond to so many emails that you need AI to respond to everything. If you can just switch it to where you just see the stuff that's important, that's where the magic happens and it's when we start to talk about what's possible with ai, that's when it gets really exciting for me. It's what if you never saw an email that you didn't wanna see ever again? Imagine a world like that where you never got a phone call, you didn't want to get, you never saw a commercial, you didn't wanna see like a magical world. It's it's like when you used to search on the internet in the late nineties, you would type in a search word and you would find what you were looking for right away. And we've AI's bringing us back to that All it's done is bring us back to the nine. He's oh my gosh, I can see the answer without a bunch of ads. I forgot that was a thing. So it's so fascinating how we just used to get, like used to be, remember, used to get excited when you got an email, you've got mail. It was so exciting. Can you imagine if you had that alert on your phone now? Oh my gosh, I would kill that thing. That burden needs to be quiet. I'm getting emails every few minutes, so I'm really, I love the things you're doing. I appreciate you're spending so much time with us. I know my audience loves it. Can you tell us a little bit, your website, the type of clients you work with?'cause we have a lot of large companies that listen who are just gonna love what you're doing. So where's the best people to find you and they can find out more about what you're doing and possibly even work with you on a really cool project. So thank you first of all for the opportunity. You're wonderful and I. So ISM guide.com, information Systems marketer, ISM guide, G-O-I-D-E, period com. And I think of also importance, Jonathan, some years ago, in fact, I think it's four now. A buddy of mine who's out in the West Coast, hardcore Silicon Valley in San Jose, and I created something. Which was then called the XR, or Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality Resource Center. We've rebranded. It's called the AI and Spatial Computing Resource Center, but the bottom line is in that center. Are literally, I think there are more than 400 use cases of how companies are using some of these newer technologies successfully. So it gives you some ideas of, again, art of the possible. So I would recommend people visit that resource center and just hang out. It's like a library. Go to the library and look at what books you typically like or what you don't like. So that's one suggestion I'd like to make. We've helped global organizations. Apply leading edge technology to sales, marketing and customer service. That's our little niche in the world. And leading edge technologies for the first, I'm gonna say 20, 25 years of the company's founding. It was largely on, it wasn't even defined as customer relationship management, but it is today referred to as customer relationship management. Then I thought about, we got into something called digital communities. The ability for customers to come together and talk with each other, or the ability for engineers to come together and talk with each other. And we built many interesting digital communities for very large global corporations, ExxonMobil Craft, aaa, and others. And then I sat back I've written three books. Jonathan and I sat back and I said wait a minute. There's this whole area of social that's coming, whether it's social media or what your kids are doing with the games and working with each other and socializing, or there's many different socials that are happening. So we started all really carefully at augmenting a virtual reality just as a way to bring people together. And we've done many very interesting projects. I gave a couple in the VR and AR world. And then of course, AI is something that has always fascinated me. I was impressed with Nicholas Negroponte at the MIT Media Lab back in the, I think when I started my business. So back in the early eighties, I. I brought a client, it was the UK Postal Service. I won't forget, up to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I knew some. The Nicholas Negroponte, he's a wiz kid at the time, and he just walked through what was gonna be the future in the next 20 years. Every which, every one of which has come true. But put that aside. And so AI's been on my plate for years, and AI's been, you know it, it's gone up and down with success and failure. This breakthrough with chat GPT and the ability now to inference data the way we can. People have no idea how powerful this is. People really don't appreciate that every single thing they do in the future will be AI infused. Now, whether they like it or not, it's another question, but. It's, there's just so much value to it. So anyhow, if you are a company that is looking to apply leading edge technology in the area of sales, marketing, and customer service, and it could be CRM and it could be digital communities, it could be xr, which is augmented and virtual reality, or could be ai, would be delighted to chat with you and figure out how we might be able to work together. Amazing. Thank you so much for being here today, Barton. It's been another amazing episode of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss another episode. We'll be back next Monday with more tips and strategies on how to leverage AI to grow your business and achieve better results. In the meantime, if you're curious about how AI can boost your business' revenue, head over to artificial intelligence pod.com. Slash calculator, use our AI revenue calculator to discover the potential impact AI can have on your bottom line. It's quick, easy, and might just change the way. Think about your business while you're there. Catch up on past episodes. Leave a review and check out our socials. If you enjoyed this episode, I've got two more that I think you're going to love. Click one of these videos to dive into more awesome content, and don't forget to subscribe for even more insights on using AI to grow your business, and I'll see you in the next one.