Four years ago, I never imagined this… [Season 2 Finale]

[0:00]
Introduction and Season Two Finale Announcement
[0:00]Hello and welcome to episode 175 of the recognize authority And wow it’s been it’s been very fast actually to get to episode 175 I thought that it would feel slower but wow it’s been It’s been fast. Yeah. So, this is the end of season two of the podcast. So, I’m going to put the recognize authority on hiatus for a period of time. And I don’t really know how long this going to be. It’s going to depend on external factors.
[0:27]
Shifting Focus to AI: Conversation with Alistair McBride
[0:28]Now I want to tell you a little bit about that in Hawaii. In fact, I have a conversation with my friend Alistair McBride where I explain the logic and the thinking behind that. Maybe be interested in kind of the matter kind of you know the the reason behind that decision. One thing that I have been doing is I’ve been running some other podcasts in the background I think you know that already I’m Big fan of podcasting as a as AA medium and so I have had a podcast called the AI para thought leader which is at around episode 10 or so as I say this,
[1:04]
Renaming Podcast: “The AI-Powered Business Leader”
[1:00]I’ve published eight or nine of those episodes of “The AI-Powered Thought Leader” which is already recorded. It’s already actually been live streamed. That’s why Kind of does a little bit of flex us to what number is at. So I’m actually going to rename the new podcast from “The AI-Powered Thought Leader” to “The AI-Powered Business Leader” And the reason I’m doing that is because I I feel like I’ve mapped out the problem space for thought leaders with regards to AI and I will tell you more about that on that podcast.
[1:27]
Shifting Focus to “The AI-Powered Business Leader”
[1:27]I’m going to be putting the recognize authority on hiatus and i’m going to be shifting focus to to focusing more on “The AI-Powered Business Leader”. Now, I’ve already had some really great guests on there. Some people who you’d recognize from The Recognized Authority. Like Mark Schaefer, Chris Do, Marcus Sheridan, really super thought leaders and business leaders in the room right, So we’re going to be shifting focus over to “The AI-Powered Business Leader” for a while I want to focus on AI because I think that it would be crazy for me not to.
[2:03]To be frank and I’m going to explain my logic in that in my conversation with Alison McBride which is coming up next, I do want to invite you to come over and explore the new podcast it’s going to be dropping at the same release frequencies so it’s going to be going out at 6:01 AM: Every Monday morning that is at Dublin/Ireland time. So that’s going to be happening from around 2 weeks from now. It’s going to start coming in at the same frequency, And you can also find it at AI powered. Biz so the AR part business leader is at AIpowered.biz and The Recognized Authority podcast is going to remain online indefinitely. It’s not going anywhere.
[2:42]
The Recognized Authority will remain Online
[2:42]I have it on lifetime hosting so it’s it’s going nowhere I won’t be taking it down there’s 175 episodes The content is evergreen. I hope that it’s still relevant for you. That episode one episode five episode 100 episode 150. They’re all relevant to you still today. And Yeah I’m really looking to I’m really excited about the possibility of AI and I think it’s something that not enough people are talking about In the right way. I think there’s a lot of talk about the hype. And I would like to talk about some of the more eh practical Implementation issues with with implementing AI today. This is not something that’s out there in the future. It’s it’s available today and I’ve been doing some really cool stuff. I’m going to share with my listeners on The AI part business leader are going to be sharing some of the things that I’m doing and I want to continue that discussion. So, without further ado, Here is my conversation with Alison McBride explaining the new shift in focus and don’t forget that you have Hopefully if you haven’t listened to all of them you have a big Of episodes to listen to here on the recognise authority if you want more of this but I will be around I’m not going to anywhere I’m just going to be doing something slightly different for a while And see where that takes me. I’m really excited about this. So, thanks for being a listener. If you’ve listened to.
[4:03]Many episodes of The Recognized Authority if you just listen to all the episodes for a play and thank you I really appreciate your listing. I I really do appreciate every listener and everybody who takes time because The most valuable thing you can give somebody is their time and so in order to not take any more years here is my conversation with Alistair McBride.
Voiceover: Welcome to The Recognized Authority, the podcast that helps specialized consultants and domain experts on your journey to become known as an authority in your field. So, you can increase your reach, have more impact, and work with great clients. Here is your host, Alastair McDermott.
[4:37]
Discussion on Podcast Hiatus and Shift in Focus
[4:38]And I’m again here with my I guess co-host at this at this point Al McBride you’ve been, A host of this show I think maybe six or seven times now chatting them anything else with you yeah definitely, Cause what? Yeah well the reason why I want to chat with you today is I just want to discuss the fact that this is the last episode of season two of the show So, season one was 100 episodes. I hope for season two to be to be another 100 episodes but actually it’s only going to be 75. So, but this is the the last episode of this show and that the show is going to go on hiatus for, Maybe a month or two it depends on on how things go and I I just wanted to discuss that with you, Accidents tell us all about that you’re taking eh a slight change in focus.
[5:31]
Balancing AI Conversations with Thought Leadership
[5:31]Yeah, so what? I’ve been talking to people about AI for, well, pretty much last year of doing a lot of stuff for NAI. I have been giving talks, Speaking out events, going on a little podcast talking about AI. And I started another podcast called the AI powered thought leader And I was really interested in kind of that intersection of of thought leadership and AI and the the problems that that you know the like credibility and authenticity and all of those things that we talked about on this show. And that’s been running in parallel And what I realized was I’m not able to balance the two of them And right now I want to give some more focus to the AI powered show because because it it this because it’s it’s a timing issue, And, We spoke in the last episode of Bad you know all of the different things by billing authority but one of the things that I like the least about building authority is it’s never urgent so in in Parimarcial speak that it’s not a bleeding neck, Whereas right now AI is urgent and it’s something where like there’s a trend and I want to create some content and I want to talk to people about it, There’s a lot of excitement.
[6:43]Current clients and other people in your network not least myself. How shall I use that? So it’s not a hard topic and I mean I’ve heard it describe to many ways but it’s a bit like people who are resistant to the internet in you know 2002 do I really need a website it’s like well, You don’t absolutely but you’re probably going to fall behind people who have a website and that is the equipment. Somebody else there yesterday.
[7:10]
Resistance and Necessity of AI Adoption
[7:10]I think it might have been Perry Marshall was talking about, How it’s like, you know, in the in the late age is early 90s, you know, you still want to do things on paper rather than moving to Microsoft office or or like an online. Which is it, when you think about it now, it sounds crazy. Why won’t you use XL or some spreadsheet for God’s sake?
[7:31]
Implications of AI in Business and Society
[7:31]AI you’ll be beaten by someone using a hi, Yeah potentially take a huge chunk of your business even at home bloody business it’s scary stuff well that’s that’s the thing about it I I think that you know, Hey so for people who are experts and knowledge workers AI is coming for us first. So, this is kind of like the total reversal of technology in the past where we we’ve usually been kind of inoculated against it. It’s actually coming for us first and that so that’s an interesting challenge. It it’s a little bit worrying I think and you know we need to figure out. So so this is Like if I was to continue with recognise authority without focusing More on AI than I think it would be a bit like you know having a cocktail at the beach while it is as soon as we coming towards us you know I think that we need we need to focus and say okay we need to pay attention to this. And I I need to like I want to ramp up my work on the AI podcast which I’m actually going to rename which is why I I I referred to it that way. I’ll talk to you about that. So you’ve started some episodes to get the grounding on it for people the AI pound thought leader and your pivoting.
[8:48]
Renaming Podcast: “The AI-Powered Business Leader”
[8:48]What are you hoping for what are what’s the thinking behind that? Okay so I’m renaming it from the “The AI-Powered Thought Leader” to “The AI-Powered Business Leader” And so it’s not a huge change. What what I’ve discovered is and I’ve I’ve done a bad nine or 10 episodes of the AI part thought leader And what I discovered is I think I understand the space now. I think I understand the scope and the problem area. And I’m interested in it.
[9:19]So, well, I think they understand the issues that people are going to face.
[9:23]
AI Productivity vs. Credibility Challenges
[9:24]And like, you know, now, I’m going to hold this up the camera. People can’t see it. I was weighing Denmark recently and I was in a hotel, My partner was out of conference so I was I had some free time to go to the spa and also to sit in the in the reception area and write notes so I I have the the notes from the part thought leader which I’m actually going to turn into a book, And so I think that the problem areas I think are Limited in scope enough that I can say okay I I’ve got enough there on this topic, There’s some resources on it. But now let’s go and explore this other kind of wider topic. So that that’s one reason Is I I think that I understand the scope of that so yeah part of that leader, A few quick headlines there so the people can go right right so so in in general so AI is going to increase productivity that’s the positive side, Particularly automating repetitive tasks we’re going to be able to create content faster, We’re going to be able to do stuff like analyzing research like for example in the last episode we we analyze the whole bunch of data.
[10:33]It’s going to help us do repurposing And it’s going to allow us to focus on our core expertise because we’ve got more free time because we’re able to do that. The the flip side of that is, It could potentially compromise our credibility So, you know, authenticity is something that we talk about a lot in the last episode and this could potentially compromise that because we’re, you know, you can come across in authentic. If you use AI in the wrong way to write like if if you’re if you’re writing if you’re a thought leader and seen as a thought leader in your field and and suddenly you’re writing on LinkedIn Starts to talk about delving into things and in this landscape of such and such in this ever evolving world and all of these kind of giveaway AI phrases that are so obviously chappy tea that can start to impact on how people view you And and so you authenticity could be so there’s this kind of tension between authenticity and use of a like should thought leaders even use AI Now I think I think absolutely yes we should but I think that will have to yeah yeah there’s a significant, Cohort shall we say that there are an opposition to that and with good reason. Yeah. Yeah. If you listen to the to the episode I had with Jonathan Stark.
[11:44]
Ethical and Legal Considerations in AI Usage
[11:45]We talked about this quite a lot. We actually talked about the whole concept of authorship And being an author as potentially being redefined in the future because what it what does it say to Be an author to say I wrote this I spoke with Joe Casabona by this as well and that was actually several months ago on this episode on this podcast but I I I repurposed the episode over onto the don’t leave it because it was directly related but you know he thinks of saying I used AI to write a blog post or to write a book It’s like saying I used a car to run a marathon. Which I think is is a great analogy. So, you know, we discussed, you know, like where is the line when you used to like dictation For example existing content that you did create genuinely Boss your repurposing us on remixing it can you still claim to have and and it goes to claim and credit like do we credit the AI do we you know how do we claim credit ourselves so those are those are some of the issues then there’s.
[12:45]We spoke about the the legal implications and one of the things that she talked about was the differentiation between using AI to help create something That were just publishing online like blog posts or social posts and using it to create stuff that were actually selling So using it to to create potentially intellectual property that we want to put for sale then you’ve gotta think more carefully about how you use it, You can listen to that episode where they’re in Austin. I think that’s really really interesting. There’s all the ethical issues. So, for example, these AI’s tend to have all this training data, They’re trained on there are probably inbuilt biases and a very simple example of that is if you ask it to generate eh the the systems if you ask it’s generate an image of a beautiful woman it’s probably going to show you a beautiful blonde white woman Ehm probably in her early 30s something like that.
[13:37]
Addressing Bias and Privacy Concerns in AI
[13:38]The systems are now being tweaked to to stop those biases coming in but that’s that’s The inherent bias that’s built into them and there’s going to be like that’s only one simple example. There’s going to be all sorts of coast road, racial, biases in the training data. So we need to be really careful about that. Some of that training data was also stolen so we know that from from law from legal cases that have been ruled so you know if we create something That’s based on an unan a language model that was built using stolen training data you know, What’s the implications of that? So we have to be careful but systems that we’re using and then there’s privacy in terms of like if we’re like if we take a transcript of the sales call And put it in there without editing it, We may be feeding our clients or potential clients private information into the machine and it could then be used so, Says all sorts of different things. In terms of ethics and and so maybe having policies around all of that and Vetting the system that you’re using in one of the things I’ve been doing here is I’ve been I’ve installed some language models on my my local PC here you know on Windows and I’ve been testing them locally that they don’t need any internet access everything is inbuilt self contained and so all the data that they’re working on is local so there’s no training there’s no Messages being passed by. So, just just to kind of experiment with, you know, if if.
[15:02]
Scope Expansion to AI Business Applications
[15:03]Businesses want to run their own instances with which is where I see this going in the future is you know where it that it’s not feeding the machine all this training data, So all of all of this I think is really fascinating So that’s why and I I think that the the scope of thought leadership an AI I think it’s really interesting I think it’s a it’s a fascinating area But I think that Going a little bit broader and this is why I’m reading it slightly to the iPad business leader because there are those other business issues that are not just about thought leadership but are kind of about like how do we use AI practically.
[15:46]Looking at a business process and things are and so I’ve had some great conversations about that already as well with Joanna Pineda and and others about this so sorry go ahead No that’s absolutely key as you said just to to know that it there’s a huge amount of yes you need the right principles to move ahead with the stuff and and key concepts rules of home in your head but then it’s also knowing the how to.
[16:12]
Practical Implementation of AI in Workflow
[16:12]You of which programs to use lots of good idea what’s not all this sort of stuff in the practicality of and how you implement it into your your week by week workflow People actually want to know and at the end of the day right? They want that Okay, how do I make things better next week? Yeah. You know, not once half, not like a big overview. Let’s start at night but then, I I see a lot of hype and like the hypers I think the hype is warranted. I’ve said this before. A lot of that hype is warranted because the stuff is mad. It’s crazy. A lot of the fears are warranted as well. The potential downsizes are boring.
[16:51]But Hopefully if we get enough smart people pulling in the right direction and and thinking about this we’ll figure out that the negative sides of it ehm it’s happening anyway so I think that we have to we have to talk about it we have to learn about it ehm as particularly as business leaders As people who are experts people are talking to their clients we need to be literate we need to be AI literate We need to understand how these systems work. I know how to use them. So, I think all of that is super important. That’s that’s why I think it’s you know, having this kind of Like changing to this process where we’re in this continuous evaluation because this is a moving target now. It’s not like this is changing day to day It’s not it’s not something where okay this is a new technology that’s come along. We just need to figure it out. Ehm this is something that has continuously getting better So we need to have a policy or a process where we’re continuously looking at new things and kind of bring that innovation in and so that’s why I think if if you’re sitting on the beach drinking your cocktail.
[17:51]
Importance of AI Literacy for Business Leaders
[17:52]That’s a bad place to be. We need to be prepared, okay? We we know we need to look at this. We need to, We need to figure out how this is going to impact us because this is going to change Businesses. It’s going to change society. It’s going to change industries and that’s where I like I have to start this podcast. I have to you know give this podcast more focus like Because it’s just so important. It’s so important right now. It’s more important to this right now than to do this in 3 or 4 years time when it’s all settled it’s important to do it now because these are things we need to focus on now, Hanaz various people not least our friend Perry Marshall keeps saying you know hey I’m not going to take your job or your business, Someone who knows how to use AI will take, A chunk of your business potentially overnight as well. This is the time to start using these tools and be in that better position The further along understanding the key principles so that you can take advantage of that 40% faster turn around of.
[18:56]Customer response of creating a new project, creating a new product, whatever it might be. They’re able to use these tools to actually improve, Your business and that’s the whole point. So look, I look forward to exploring that with you in the future.
[19:12]
Introduction to AI Powered Business Leader Podcast
[19:12]Yeah so the the show the new show is going to be called “The AI-Powered Business Leader” And I’m going to put a link to it in the show notes on this episode so this is the last episode of season two of The Recognized Authority so my plan has come back. Ehm but I want to give some focus to the AI show for a while. so what I’m going to be doing the plan right now Is to I’m going to take a couple of weeks to build up a little bit of a pipeline and then what I’m going to do is I’m going to start dropping episodes of “The AI-Powered Business Leader” it’s on its own separate feed it’s not you know you’re going to have to go subscribe to that Podcast if you want to get it. Ehm but it’s going to be dropping at 6:01 AM: on Monday morning. Just like the last 175 episodes of The Recognized Authority have got, At 6:01 AM: on Monday morning. So, It’s going to be if you if you like this show and you like listening to me then hopefully if you’ve listened to any or all 175 eh episodes then you will go go check out the AR part business later And thanks for listening to season two. Well done.
[20:21]Thanks Al. As always and also go check out Al’s new book dealing with Goliath that will be on Amazon very very soon. That is dealing with Goliath The psychological edge in negotiation for business owners. So, I just want to give a little little shout out to you out. Cheers. Well done, my getting the book done.
[20:38]
Season Two Finale Appreciation and Book Mention
[20:39]Awesome. And so that’s a wrap for season two of the recognized authority,
[20:50]
Invitation to Explore “The AI-Powered Business Leader”
[20:45]Thank you so much for being listened I really do appreciate you giving me your your time and your attention.
[20:51]Go check out “The AI-Powered Business Leader” and “The AI-Powered Thought Leader” and I think you’ll be if you’re in this space of being a thought leader wanting to build your authority I think you will find it interesting I have had some amazing guests on so far And I’m going to continue to have great ass on so if you want to hear more from me and I will of course be talking about you know building authority In the context of AI but I think that it’s it’s just like this is just also new that we have to figure it out like we have to work out what does this mean for us for our businesses and you know This is bigger even than that it’s it’s it’s society changing and that’s why I feel like it’s so important to concentrate on this for a little bit so that’s where I’m going to be You can find me at AIpowered.biz and I will continue to be in your LinkedIn feed if you follow me connect with me I’d love to talk to you and if you have any challenges or you’re thinking about something pretty cool about AI I’d love to hear about your thoughts about that as well because I think it’s it’s just really interesting.
[21:51]For me the interesting thing right now about AI is it’s all unknown unknowns It’s a problem space that we don’t even know the problems never mind the solutions and so mapping that out and figuring that out I think is really interesting I I feel like I’ve already done that a little bit with the thought leadership space with regard to AI and I’m going to be publishing a book on that shortly called The AI-Powered Thought leader. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m renaming that podcast actually is because I feel like I’ve got a good handle on that and now I want to go on and explore some of the issues. Kinda pertaining to to the wider business kind of the wider business experience of AI. So That’s what I’m going to be doing. I really appreciate you. Thank you.
[22:31]Have a great day. Have a great week. Have a great year. And please continue Tuesday in touch. Send me a message. Subscribe to my email list. And Send me an email I’d love to hear from you. Thanks for listening to the recognized authority with Alastair McDermott. Subscribe today.
[22:49]