Rob Hole, The Canadian AI Guy

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Welcome to a podcast on the future of AI in Canadian education. My name is Ryan Oliver, the CEO of Ampere and Canada Learning Code. And I'm Melissa Sariffodeen the co-founder of Canada Learning Code. Thanks again for joining me. We have a very interesting episode today. We're talking to a guy named Rob Hall who lives in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia.

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He has branded himself and is increasingly being known as the Canadian AI guy. He is a marketing agency. He runs a marketing agency where he looks to support organizations, non-profits, small groups into, getting and using and taking advantage of artificial intelligence in the workplace. And we thought would be an interesting conversation to see, you know, if that's the end goal of where where education takes you, like, what what advice would he have as he gets there?

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And we're doing this in the same week that, OpenAI announced that they have reached artificial general intelligence for AGI. I am skeptical. Personally, I think this is, this is something that is happening as they're about to launch an initial public offering, an IPO, and it is a very good sounding board, as they even said, in that, you know, AGI is a bit more of a vibe than it is an actual definition.

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But if that's the case, I think one of the things most people worry the most about is the loss of jobs. If once we reach I have this like singularity point, what do we need? Jobs where if it can replicate human intelligence entirely, right. Well, and we get into it in this conversation. But really interestingly, he talks a bit about how, you know, chambers of commerce, nonprofits, community organizations, they're not using AI to replace staff.

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They're really focused on optimizing processes, streamlining operations, and actually interesting working through really complex ideas. And he talks a bit about this like AI boardroom in this episode. Perfect. Let's jump to the interview.

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Rob is it started like with introducing your first, first and last name. You want to just introduce yourself, give us a bit of background. Sure, yes. For sure. Hey, I'm Rob, I run a company called Canadian AI Guy. I've been building websites and stuff like that for since the late 90s, so I've seen every bit of evolution on the internet.

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I've been involved with every kind of iteration of business and online and things like that. In my, personal life, I've had many jobs over the years with like operations, sales, management to somehow I always end up in some sort of executive or getting voted into being on a board and then leading it. And so I've always been in positions of leadership and as I've kind of transitioned through online evolution, business, etc., it led me to start a business called Octopus Creative, which is a marketing agency over ten years ago who still in business, and kind of transitioned into, the evolution of where AI has been going ever since.

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Well, we'll launch a bit in 2022 and, and kind of and going down that mandate of educating people and businesses on AI and the functionalities, how it works and what to do with it. Nice. Do you remember the kind of your first experience with this current evolution of AI? Like with the large language models? Like what? That, first time you used, whether it was ChatGPT or something else, like kind of what, how that started your brain thinking.

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Absolutely. I think it was the same frustration as everybody where it was like, you log in, you're like, oh, I could like, get it to like, change. I think I came across it in one of my groups, one of my agency groups. Somebody had like posted up saying, look, I can sound like Ryan Reynolds, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I'm going to run an ad like this where I sound like Ryan Reynolds.

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And look what I did. And I'm like, that's interesting, right? I'll go give it a try. This. And literally like the day it launched and tried a couple of things that was interesting, but I know the frustration read out the get go was it had a very short memory and it didn't have ways of keeping memory. And so you'd start you'd be like, okay, maybe come write me a blog or a website, right.

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Perfect. These are games, right? And then it's like starts going on a tangent about nothing to do with what it started with. And I think that's where I was like, there's got to be a better way, right? There has to be. And that's where I kind of wanted deep research fun. It was fun because I was watching agencies kind of like really hate on AI, which was probably 75, 80% of agencies.

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And I was kind of in that other 20 where I'm like, no, there's going to be a way, there's a way that we can kind of enhance this and make it better or take this, adopt it. And once we figure it out, we can then educate our audience on it and kind of grow it from there. So I think it's been an evolution.

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And that's like before it was every single six month run there would be insane changes. Now it's like, okay, two days from now, what just released. Okay, three hours from now. What just released. So it's it's fast. It's fast. You. Oh, there's so much I want to talk about. And we'll we'll get that in a minute.

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But I think one of the things is super interesting, I think, Brian, probably for you as well, like we one community organizations, nonprofits, you know, we've spent a lot of time, I think, you know, thinking through and, you know, commiserating around the challenges. And so I'm curious, your take working with community organizations. I know chambers, you know, was something that you, you know, you spent a lot of time with.

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How do you how do you see them implementing AI or not, or some of the challenges unique to them? I think a lot about like the trust of those communities. And, you know, in many cases, the vulnerable nature of these communities. Like, I'd love to get your take on that more specifically, as we dive in. It's been interesting with especially with nonprofits, I want to say with, with chambers and nonprofits, it's been an education point and even a different point of view.

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So just engaging with them, asking like, what do you want out of it? And that's commonly the questions I asked. And sometimes it's something as simple as like, I want to do this marketing thing. But actually more interestingly, they thought of interesting places to go with it that I didn't think of. And they're like, well, what if we create like a mock board and I can pre present my agenda to them and see how they react?

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I'm like, that's actually quite genius. And we've actually built this a few times now and it's called the AI boardroom. And so we've, we've done that. And so that was one example of like where you pitch an idea and then this I boardroom table of either fictional personas of your real board who can act like your board.

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And you always have that, like 1 or 2 people that are always against every idea. And so you can flesh things out and you can have like go over every objection before you walk into a meeting. So it went from just something simple as like, I just need help writing emails, or I want to figure out engagement with my membership or, or something like that into like some really niche, like, how can I get my ideas sold on the board?

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And I think that's kind of where there's some niche nuances that people are finally starting to realize that AI is really good at being like, a thought leader, you know what I mean? Like being able to pull that deep thought or be able to pull that ability to sell. Why this is a good idea to even the toughest.

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And I think that's where it's kind of transition to. And I want to see the organizations, that like chambers know that this is very important for their membership to know. And we get constant outreach on it, like, we we need our membership to know this so that they don't fail. And it's the same with nonprofits. We need to know this so that we can we can leverage our resources better not getting rid of people the better.

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Using the people to communicate with people so that the back end stuff doesn't have to get wasted, you know what I mean? And I think that's the biggest problem has been process optimization and fleshing ideas.

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In this next section, we try to nail down with Rob how small businesses and educators can can avoid the overwhelm that often comes with the conversation around. So, I what he calls, kind of this shiny object syndrome. Mel, how would you define that? Well, it's so easy to want to introduce the newest release or newest feature, like, use the next new AI tool.

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But at the end of the day, businesses and organizations need to think about what is the problem that you're solving and not just go after every new shiny tool and features.

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I'm curious, like you talk about, you know, businesses need to know this. And I feel like knowing AI right now is like you said earlier, like it's it's changing every day. It'll probably be different tomorrow. There'll be another conference in a week, and then everything will be different again. How do you stay on top of it?

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First of all, that would be question number one. Like if I'm a teacher listening to this and I'm curious, like, like just overwhelmed by the deluge, is there anything you'd like recommend? And then secondly, like, what does the things we need to know, like if you are a small business or a teacher or someone out there, like what are the things you need to know?

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So I think don't get overwhelmed by, I call it S.O.S. I've heard this a million times. I'm sure you've heard this in the agency world. Too many object syndrome, right? So don't get obsessed with, like, what I can do. I always. And I preach this big time. Like, look at your own process. Look at your own organization.

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There's a there's a book that I follow that I really like. It's you. What? And you can apply this to business. You can apply it to nonprofit anywhere. But it's all about structure, organization and proper operation of, of like any kind of business really. But you can also use it a nonprofit where going with that is there is like the task delegation chart where you look at things you really like doing that you're good at, you never change.

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And then things that you like doing but you're not good at. You have to decide, am I gonna get better at it? Things you don't like doing that you're not good at? Get rid of that immediately. How are we going to take that? That is like the first focus point we look at. Then things that you don't like doing, but you're good at, well, decide you want to start liking it or okay.

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And so I kind of reference back to that to figure out where are we going to go with this. Like what? What do I want to do. And then I look into how can I apply that. And so as far as it goes, for I know I kind of derailed the conversation a little bit there, but boiling it back into who you should follow usually I would suggest, like if there's somebody specific in AI in your niche or even just somebody who is just like a good, a good leader in your niche or your vertical or whatever, they likely are already applying it.

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You could follow examples that they give, but don't don't try to drink for the vibe. That's my job is to drink for the fire hose on this one, and I'm consuming as much like I follow probably ten different podcasts relating to I. One of them, is like, a program is literally called Every Day. From Jordan.

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I follow his stuff pretty closely. And so he pulls out the weekly stuff. I've got an AI board that runs every morning at five and pulls out everything that happened the day before for releases and everything. And so I'm watching this constantly about what can be done, what can happen now as far as that goes for implementation, when you implement your kind of on that model, like whatever you've implemented for a process, you don't need to change it unless you feel like it needs to get faster or more efficient or cheaper.

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Then revisit it when you have time, right? And when you want to have time, you should have more time because I should be helping you with process optimization if you don't know how to optimize your processes. So I just ask it. Yeah that's great. Yeah. No, I like I like the, the don't drink from the firehose because it is so overwhelming to like try and keep up with the stuff.

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That was the Microsoft conference last week. The week before that was the Google conference for AI policy was released yesterday from the federal government. Like there's just so much to absorb that there's so much. And I think like AI policy might be something that you have to kind of look at, because that might impact what rules and regulations you're allowed to implement in your business.

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So that might be like something to watch. But I don't follow like you just don't follow all the headlines of like OpenAI did this and anthropic did that. And Microsoft has got this. Like it's like your ecosystem of what you choose as kind of like the way that you choose what ecosystem your email address is. Is it Microsoft?

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Is it Google is whatever. And sometimes that changes depending on. It's like when I started I was using ChatGPT and then I got deep into Google Gemini because its context was insane and it was actually staying on top. I kinda they, they provided thinking before anthropic or before dinner answer before it he did and it was much cheaper.

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But now you can kind of see the world shifting to cloud because it's got memory. Right. So and then you see all these variants of these hundreds of other companies are saying we have the genetic stuff. And really on the back end it's all just cloud. And so that's what you're seeing a lot of the world shift to I'm not telling everyone to shift to cloud whatever again.

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But those things where it's like, look at your process, look at what you're doing with shiny objects, right? Slowly implement the things that kind of make you frustrated or very repeatable. And that's where I start heading off to AI. And then as you get more time that you can look into more complex. Yeah, I mean, it's good advice.

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Anything like AI or not to not try and do it all at once, like and take it very specific that you need it totally, I love that. Are you seeing any like, bad advice? Like what? What? You know, I'm curious. I'm sure there's lots of different takes that you're getting or clients that are coming to you or businesses and like, is there anything that you're kind of that's predominant or, that people are just getting that you would encourage them to stay away from?

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Like, obviously don't drink for the firehose. You don't have to try to do everything at once. But, you know, are people getting any small businesses, getting any really bad advice when it comes to AI that you've come across? I think I think that I don't know if it's really bad advice. I think any advice on AI is decent, but the thing that kind of makes me frustrated and I'll be honest about this is like the sleuth of like people calling themselves AI experts.

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After like a few weeks of dabbling in this or the people that were really angry about AI coming out, now they're in AI experts now they're teaching it. It's like that. Impersonally that's a frustration. But as far as that goes for a small business, I think again, you'll get targeted by an insane amount of ads that says, we'll make this, that and the other thing easier.

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I mean, if you're open to it, go ahead and try it. But what I would encourage, again, just kind of boiling back to that. So like I get targeted all day long by all these things that claim to be the best or the one or whatever. And so the one thing I always encourage is then look at what powers that system, because then you can look at where that information is handled.

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So if you are a regulated nonprofit, for example, and you're looking at implementing AI, you should probably look at where that information is being handled. If you are required to have data residency in Canada, then where is that being handled? Right. So if you're just implementing kind of blindly, some a lot of that gets encrypted and gets moved around and data residency isn't always like the most important thing.

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But again, it's like how do you get that information to. So for example, there was all this advice around, do not use Chinese AI because the Chinese government will we'll get it and they'll study it to do all these things. Yes and no. There is some malicious activities, obviously, that take place with that information. So I always encourage, never give your personal that confidential information to AI unless you have systems in place to know where it's a handled and how it's being that kind of stuff.

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And that counts for anything. You can anonymize the information so you can use that for like a scenario. Let's say you're a counselor and you're like, I have it. Let's say you're patient's name is Joe. Well, don't call them Joe. Call them Jack. Right. And you can change that to kind of help you with whatever your scenario is.

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But that was that's the biggest thing is don't just give it away. So Manus became a big thing for a while for becoming an agent, but it was handled in Asia until made. I took them over, made it, took them over. But the information is still handled in overseas. But they're starting to become U.S regulated. But again, data residency.

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What do you trust and I it made us got a bad track record for just monetizing your information. So just be aware of that. So knowing where your information is handled, who is family and why? I think it's probably the biggest piece of advice I can give for the negative aspect of AI and making sure that you don't give full and complete access to everything without changing the permissions to being only what you want it to be allowed to do.

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I, need to run, guys. I got to go. A race clouds memory.

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When you bring on someone in marketing, it can be hard to bring it back to the purpose of this podcast. Podcast? Which is which is the future of AI in education specifically. And with Rob, what we try to do here in this next section is, is really allow him to use his own personal experience where he has a son that is in the school system and that he is using AI with to helps enhance his own creativity without replacing critical thinking.

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But I will talk about that in the next segment.

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I did not ask you. So you're a you're a father. You have two kids, sir, I do, yes. Yeah. I'm curious. I am curious. So how old are they? So I got one that is, turning six next week, actually next Friday. And then I've got another one that's a year and a half. Okay, so just starting out in their school, school adventure, looking, you know, looking forward.

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I've got a 17 year old. The 14 year old, and another one is a year and a half. And so but with my older kids, I am looking at a job market that appears to be, or at least the companies are telling us won't exist anymore. And, you know, so on one hand, I'm thinking about it from my 17 year old standpoint.

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On the other hand, I'm starting to think about it from my, my, toddler standpoint. And I'm curious where you land on, like, what do you want to see, or not see with AI in schools, what is as a, as a father, as someone who is a bit of an AI expert, like, what's, what is your hope that your kids get to experience over the next, you know, 12 years in the school system, to prepare them for what?

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What might be the future of work or or otherwise. It's a floating target. I actually think it starts with the parents because it's hard for education system to keep up to date. So for my kids, I like both my kids. Some struggles they both have, like my my older son has autism and a PDA diagnosis. And it's like it's a lot for him to process things.

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So we we sometimes use the AI to kind of process his ideas because even hard for us to kind of process them you and but what's fun is being creative with it. So I've taught him the route of just using AI to enhance his creativity or give him guidance where needed, not to replace thinking, but to give him further guidance.

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And he's very much like at the why, why, why, why, why phase. So sometimes you have to dive pretty deep into a why question that you just don't have a dads figure. Like, you know what I'm going to ask? Because I don't know. So we do that sometimes. But I think the preparation on this, I mean, mostly we're printing coloring pages.

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It's honestly it's like, what's more, I want a dinosaur who's flying a plane. That's whatever. So that's easy enough to do an AI these days. But I think as far as that goes for education system, we know that the education system can be behind in every province, territory, state where regardless where you are. And I think as far as that goes for kind of where it should go based on AI, it's like I just say, as best as you can, focus on the human elements and what we can do as a society overall, like what can you do to improve humanity?

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Because if you're looking at computer based jobs, they don't they won't exist ten years. They're just not going to. I don't see it. And but something like this, like I couldn't imagine an AI interviewer with me. I would just send it off the rails because I would just. You know what I mean? Like, there's no personality and I'm sure they'll code, but it's just not realistic.

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So encouraging that social element. Encouraging what kind of human based jobs? How can we work with improving the socializing aspect? And so I think that's where even AI in the education system might need some improvement, because people are like, don't use AI, write essays. Well, stop getting essays. What is a different approach that we can go, right? Or for example, I'll let you in on one of my processes and I still call it my writing when I do it is AI, code AI to being sounding like me.

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So I give it past emails I've written. I do like voice recorded clips with it, and then I give it a sample of like a conversation and whatever. And my voice is pretty casual backyard barbecue, whatever. Right? Once I program it for that, then if I'm given a question of something to solve it, usually use my voice instead.

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I never type any more. It's so much faster. Use voice, so I'll use voice. I'll do a voice transcript or a voice input into there, and I'll say, here's how I'm going to answer this question. This is what I'm thinking. This is the different iterations, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then it will formulate it into a, well, kind of written answer.

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But it's still my idea. It's still my thoughts, it's still my. So it's a different it's a different way of approaching it instead of just say, answer this question, which I myself, along with, I'm sure every teacher in Canada is like hates that, right? But if we educate kids on how to more effectively use AI, but still using your brain to problem solve, I think that's a better approach.

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Instead of just saying, here's an essay, do it. You know what I mean? Like different approach to it. My mom is, a teacher, like a nursing teacher, did she? People had to be nurses and carrots, and she had this half. If she could see the AI way that she'd show me, I'd be like, this is AI.

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This is just like, okay, sales, self-help. I'm like, mom, you have to approach it differently. It's like it's the college's rules. Like, well, here's what you need to tell a college. I gave her some information, and so they started changing their programing based on that information, because it's just like you just have to approach it. You're not going to stop people from using AI to do this right, especially when they're forced into learning a particular path they might not be interested in, whereas interesting or something they're not really good at yet.

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Right? So then how can we challenge them, then leverage the AI to come up with maybe different ideas, and then even give them prompts that they could work with and then do reverse prompting and then maybe get the get this transcript afterwards, or what that reverse font thing look like. Just a different approach, something different. And that might work better for problem solving because it is a tool.

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It's like using a calculator after school.

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Concluding this episode, Rob outlines the shift from standard prompt based AI to a genetic AI. Autonomous agents, wearables. And he really highlights his ultimate philosophy, which is that I should be used to handle back end repetitive tasks like giving people more time to reengage with human interaction, in-person connections, and the human side of what we do.

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I think what needs to happen outside of everything, like this whole AI is going to is going to change a lot of stuff, and now we're getting into the agency part of AI agenda AI, where it is just doing things for you without you even asking or prompting it anymore. Like I'm on my other screens here. I literally have five windows open with it, handling client issues and dealing with coding and improving on the CRM and things like that that I'm building on, like it's just doing, and I'm impressed with what it's doing.

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So I know that what's going to end up happening is I'm going to lose my job eventually, right? Because eventually I won't be needed, and I know I will have succeeded when I'm not needed anymore. Right. Because it's one of those things. And so what I encourage people to use AI for is to actually become more human. And I think that's one of my deep beliefs, is using AI to become more human.

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Right? It eliminates the mundane tasks of the computer driven world, which, by the way, we created. Right. What was it like before 1900? Nobody goes free. Like it's like, what was it like before the printing press? There's all these evolutions that you look at and it's like, this is going to change. The world is going to eliminate everything, right?

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Or it's going to be like, so destructive when we go from, horse and buggy to cars, right, like a steam powered engine or whatever, you know, so these, these evolution, we are at that point with AI as well. But it's not that it's going to kill everybody's jobs in the world. It's just we have to look at it differently.

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How do you become more human. What becomes a more human element. So I'll give an example of this. Like we work a lot with chambers and we are doing that education standpoint. We're actually doing a lot of automations and AI for chambers so that they don't need to do the mundane back end stuff. And so one of the executives said, well, what what would I have staff wear after this?

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The membership engagement, all people go visit them in person, do things they wouldn't expect, like, hey, how's it going? What's what's one of the things that like in your business, maybe I can connect you with so-and-so and do that. So more in-person visits, more pick up the phone and call because you don't get that with just the mundane back end stuff.

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And you won't get that if you throw a voice. I at it either. Just won't be as personable as an actual human being who I can walk in and see. So becoming more human, I think would be my number one goal for educating people on how to use AI. Forget. Like if you're typing on a computer, it's just not going to be a thing anymore.

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Or even our conversation here. Again, one of those things, it's just I just will never do it that good. Even if it could, it just, you know, there's something wrong. It's like buying packaged food where, you know, like, if you make it at home and you spend the time, you put the love and care into it with your own fingers making everything versus buying a package, you know, like there's something not right about it.

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You know what I mean? Like it just there's a whole different love and connection to it. Yeah, I it is really interesting to me in this moment as like we are rushing into this new technology and it is so scary for so many people that so much of the response from so many people seems to be like, we have to get back to like fundamental human principles of just talking to each other again.

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And it is refreshing in that sense that like, it feels like we aren't just rushing over a cliff, anymore. It's, it's it's nice in that sense. I agree. It it seems like the one thing to continuously be taught is, is to remind each other how to talk to each other again, which is. Which is nice.

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I think maybe AI is helping with that, because if you look at it like the millennials are screwed up, they've they're they're screwed like this socially. They're screwed like me and my wife have a hard time communicating in public over the computer all day, maybe in public. Try to start a conversation with me. It's hard right, as I same thing.

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Like it's just social awkwardness and whatever. But as far as it goes, you watch the next generation Gen Zs. They seem to have had this reverse split idea, like they don't really like going out and like socially drinking. Like that's not really a thing. Like they've started this new trend. They don't really like smoking anymore. They really like.

00;26;23;17 - 00;26;48;00
So they're going down this path of like, we don't want to do the same thing. A previous generation kind of screwed up, right? Computers really screwed people up. And I think now AI and like Alpha, I mean restarting generations. How's it back to Alpha or something? Right. Back to Alpha. So. And so what I figure as our kids get older from this newest generation and past the Z's into the alphas and wherever it goes from there.

00;26;48;02 - 00;27;03;09
Is that my my theory behind this is they will actually become more social butterflies because they'll have to because I is going to be doing all this computer mundane work where even a world of messengers and things won't even exist because it doesn't need to. And you're going to be talking with AI every time you're on a messenger.

00;27;03;09 - 00;27;24;00
So what's the point? So I feel like we're going to end up back into almost like a square one of like what it was like pre 1980s. Right. So like pre pre-internet pre 1996 or whatever where you're getting into I have to talk to somebody, I have to meet somebody at a pub. Right. Like I have to like, you know what I mean.

00;27;24;00 - 00;27;48;03
Like there's, there's this social interaction that might actually become a reality again, which will be nice and a whole new slew of ways of networking, finding jobs and communications, because we know that. Now, if I was sifting through job applications, going back, you're not going to get it. It's like even if you're the most qualified, like if you have the most years and tenure, but you don't have it on your resume with a, you know, skill background, like, I got no university.

00;27;48;06 - 00;28;08;25
But do you think somebody will want to hire me for? I probably right. I got no university background. I'm all self-taught right from, you know, the get go. That's like going down a computer path. And it's one of those things where if somebody came in and they had an engineering degree and I would you want to hire that person, or would you want to hire somebody who has a skill background that pulls all these different trades?

00;28;08;27 - 00;28;26;14
You know, was I right? Likely you'd probably take the person that hasn't gone to school for 15 years, you know, 10 to 10 years worth of like, engineering degree for that. Because what are they what are they going to apply for? Real world skills now? I'm not sure to put that down. I'm not saying you don't do post-secondary, but you kind of get the gist of it where I was going to look at it that way.

00;28;26;17 - 00;28;44;16
And so we have to like it again. You're going to have to know how to network with people to get jobs. Now, I'm I'm excited, I love it. But also I hope this next generation has a chance to like, experience GeoCities and IQ and all that kind of stuff because I was like, this the really good time. But yeah.

00;28;44;16 - 00;29;06;24
Anyway, no, I think it's super interesting. Well, I'm the like more human. The other question I had, I was curious. Well, because we have this commonality of, you know, AI, Canadian AI and like the pun on a and Canadian values and, and also, you know, you're living and, you know, working and raising a family, I would say not a major tech hub, you know, in Canada.

00;29;06;24 - 00;29;33;03
So I'm curious like your take on, you know, you know, kind of the Canadian side of things like our adoption or implementation, for better or for worse. You know, what your experience is like, you know, building from and working from, you know, a smaller community in Canada. I think that's like super interesting. You know, relative to a lot of the folks we talk about, or us sitting in some, you know, larger cities in, in Canada, you know, it's it is interesting.

00;29;33;06 - 00;29;53;20
I've been doing a few presentations and my usually the smaller chambers that hire me, like my local home town that I grew up in their surrounding chambers and like I do get some, like out east and stuff like that, that kind of come up, but it's mostly like Western Canada and the little towns that I've had jobs in and things like that, who again, through my network, know me extremely well.

00;29;53;23 - 00;30;07;05
And so they're like, I'd like you to come and teach us. And what I've been finding surprising is as I go into these communities, is their own advancement on what they've been learning. And I and a couple times I've been challenged, this is what really threw me into a loop on like, hey, have you use this yet? And then somebody will show me.

00;30;07;05 - 00;30;24;25
I'm like, damn, that's pretty good. I'm like, no, I've never heard of that before. And like, you haven't, but you're the AI expert and it's like, this was two years ago or whatever. I'm like, yeah, I know, but. And so they're showing me things and I'm like, okay. And so I've managed to kind of somewhat stay ahead on on that aspect because I'm focused on trying to get the core basic.

00;30;24;28 - 00;30;41;19
You don't have to teach people the basics anymore. It's not like, here's where you go to log into ChatGPT. They're like, what do you think? If we create a custom gem in Gemini that has the following, like prompt, and here's the prompt engineering event. And so they're like coming to me with questions. I'm like, I didn't expect you to know that.

00;30;41;22 - 00;31;05;19
And I'm getting a lot more of that. So I think as far as that goes for, for Canadians and, and business and, and things like that, they're getting smart. They're educating themselves, which is great. Is there room for improvement? Certainly. I think as far as that goes for tech hubs in Canada, I know there's a lot of stories and things like that on there, but I think we have a lot of resilience and and I think that's what adds the personality to it.

00;31;05;19 - 00;31;40;05
So I think as far as it goes for the training side, the tech hubs, etc.. Yeah, I'm really hoping to see that we somehow embrace adding like an AI data center or something. And then maybe that creates a whole subset of jobs. We have really good power grids. So I couldn't see that not happening. And then when you do that, then all of a sudden those big players that set up that kind of data center will typically fund, like an education program at like, you know, Nate in Alberta or Sait or VC it or, you know, you name the tech hub, they'll typically set up some sort of program they sponsor because they

00;31;40;05 - 00;32;06;14
need to create the people that can maintain the data center to do the things. And yeah, I think there's a lot of bright people out there that we have that potential. I now question is investment. How do you motivate it? And we know that the American economy is a bit of a juggernaut. So how do we attract Canadian based innovation or still leveraging maybe some of that American technology?

00;32;06;14 - 00;32;25;12
But having Canadian Ford Focus, I mean, that's that's an open ended question. That's hard to answer. I'm curious. Just as a just a final question, just to wrap up here, like, is there anything right now you are seeing in AI that really excites you coming up, whether it's a wearable, you know, everything is agents, agents, agents right now.

00;32;25;12 - 00;32;43;28
But, I'm curious if there's anything you want to leave us with that when you you see it come in and are. It's getting excited. You said it. So there's agents, right? Really. And so that's that's the big thing. And that's where I'm like really breathing and playing and encouraging. And that's actually the number one question I get asked these days.

00;32;44;04 - 00;32;59;29
So there's there's lots, lots of stuff with wearables and things like I'm wearing one right now. This is plod not clod but plod. And so I, it's my AI transcriber for like everything. Right. So I use this when I go to the doctor's office and things I as I think everybody should have some sort of AI wearable for life.

00;32;59;29 - 00;33;26;08
It's a, it's a, it's a hacking life. So you don't forget things very forgetful. It's, you know, whatever that hacks about. But I think the number one thing that's kind of going on right this minute, and I have contractors reaching out, I've got, you know, nonprofits reaching out. I've got everything. Everybody reaching out, wanting something to simplify their business life and just as simple going into ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude saying, can you help me with this?

00;33;26;08 - 00;33;43;29
Can you write this blog? Not good enough anymore. They want them to actually do the work and then just say, prove it back to you yet does this a good. Yeah. And then actually have a go do the work. So actually acting like an employee and not a consultant. So that's been the number one transition. And that's going into in the genetic process.

00;33;44;01 - 00;34;02;05
My only caution behind the agents section is kind of like what I'm saying. What information is being handled, if you don't mind it being public doesn't matter. Like marketing assets. Yeah. Go ahead and indentify it. It's going to become public domain anyway. Right. There's nothing secret behind it. And even like business process in itself, there's nothing secretive behind it.

00;34;02;05 - 00;34;19;14
Because I can disseminate any business I can. I can speak AI onto your business and say reverse engineer this for myself, right? And it will probably do a pretty good job. So as long as you don't mind it not being a secret and then yeah, go ahead and give it agency, especially if it's mundane. And so I think that's the number one transition right now.

00;34;19;14 - 00;34;37;08
There's hundreds of platforms that exist. Most of them are powered behind the scenes by Claude just being aware of where that information is. And I think you can get it to do what's called orchestration, where it manages every aspect of your business. And I think that's you'll see in the coming 2 or 3 months, been talked about for a year or two now.

00;34;37;11 - 00;35;00;12
I think it's actually a reality today. I'm physically, literally doing that. And there is hundreds of other companies and agencies doing the same thing. So I think that's probably going to be the number one transition. The number one thing business owners are going to want, teacher is going to want anybody is going to want at this point for the next in the next six months of what they expect from I, it's going to be like, how did we do this before?

00;35;00;14 - 00;35;18;05
Actually, can I, can I give one more little, little ending story? Okay. So last week as I with my team and my agency, my work frequently my team has is asking me questions because there's a lot of processes that set up here. You know, when I try to get it mapped out, there's still a lot in Rob's head.

00;35;18;07 - 00;35;40;24
And so frequently my team is like, okay, I need to wait for Rob Dan's. I got to wait for Rob to troubleshoot this one. And so I know that's a failure on some aspects, especially the recurring stuff and all that should turn into a process and say, here you go. But a lot of what I'm doing now is, I mean, a lot of iterating with AI and like I say, Claude behind the scenes for a lot of my work, and because it builds a memory and it's got its own stuff.

00;35;40;26 - 00;36;09;17
But why don't I just give my team access to my brain? My brain is basically Claude's brain. Vice versa. We think the same, right? Because I taught it to think like me. I basically created a digital doppelganger of myself or I gang or I guess, advice, which is pretty fun. So all my projects, everything I'm working on, it knows it knows the nuances, it knows how I think, etc. and so eventually what I did was I just created a slack bot for it, because my team mostly is in slack and so and I put it into different channels.

00;36;09;18 - 00;36;30;24
Even when we get support tickets and things like that, it's already pre coming up with answers. It's tagging in my support manager, my project manager is tagging in my developer on things and it's actually engaging like a staff member, but it's helping going through what Rob would say. Like here's how we'd solve this. And it I would say about 95% of the time has been pretty accurate because it's based on the knowledge files that Claude has.

00;36;30;26 - 00;36;50;01
Right. It's pulling that information infinite through slack. So my team engages with it. And I kid you not, not even two days into implementing this, I promise you this. What? I had a small outage on Claude. They were clueless on what to do next. That's how fast they got adopted. And they were like, I'm like, just go back to what it was before.

00;36;50;01 - 00;37;12;03
Have like, we don't remember because they got so used to engaging with Claude or. And what I turn it is the name is Chase. Now like on our these my, agency manager and he's got project managers. But anyways, they got so used to it over a period of two days, amusing it eight, nine hours a day within their work and trying to get to and they amplify their work significantly because they were able to tap into Rob's brain.

00;37;12;05 - 00;37;29;12
So they every asset, every communication, everything was getting mastered as if I was doing it. And so now I just unlocked my team. You have unlimited access to me, and I don't even need to be around. And so I think that was the kind of the biggest game changer. But it was funny watching. Two days later I did an update.

00;37;29;12 - 00;37;44;27
Something happened and I screwed up the slack bot and they were like clueless. They were all sitting ducks for like an hour and a half until it was done. My sales and whatever call I was on before I came back and they were like, we don't know what to do. If my wife was in my business was like unstuck.

00;37;45;00 - 00;38;03;29
I'm like, do you know how to do this? Like, no, but this is how important has become in your business. I'm like, I know. So I think that will become the new norm as you implement agents where you don't have to think about the mundane stuff, but you might lose that feature of being able to think of those things.

00;38;03;29 - 00;38;28;10
Just the only downside to it. That's great. It's it's exciting. I think for a lot of small businesses, especially in this realm of my life, you know, and that thing about just transition and succession and growth and, you know, like, I think it unlocks a lot, you know, for us and, and I, you know, I'm excited about the ambitions and what that what that possibility is obviously, you know, with the caveats here.

00;38;28;10 - 00;38;48;21
But that's that's a great example. But thank you so much. This has been amazing. And such a privilege to chat with the community. And I guy I think a lot of fun. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Well, thanks so much, Rob, and thank you, Mel. That was a great conversation. Is, always good to reach out and get to know someone who calls himself the Canadian AI guy.

00;38;48;23 - 00;39;07;10
There's a lot to learn from from people like this who are working on the ground with people using it every day. You can check out his website at Canadian AI Guy. That's a that is, I spelled with an actual A and an actual AI. He also has a blog called the AI blog, and that is, I spelt with the E.H. and an AI.

00;39;07;13 - 00;39;26;05
You can guess which one we prefer. But thanks so much, everyone, and we'll see you next episode. AI is a proud Canadian podcast of the Pinnguaq Foundation in Canada Learning Code I am your host, Ryan Oliver, joined by Melissa Sariffodeen. This show is produced by Zac Miller and edited by Zac Miller and Kyle Gordon.

00;39;26;07 - 00;39;33;27
If you want to support, I support the work we are doing, then please consider a donation to the Pinnguaq Foundation. You can find us on Canada Helps.