The Human Engagement Tool w/ Chuck Rinker | Ep. 120

In this episode, David and Gary speak with Chuck Rinker, the Founder and CEO of PRSONAS, a digital workforce powerhouse.

Links:

https://ihealthassist.prsonas.com/

https://www.prsonas.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckrinker/

___________________________________

Submit Your Questions to:

hello@thebigpixel.net

OR comment on our YouTube videos! - Big Pixel, LLC - YouTube

Our Hosts

David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

Contact Us

hello@thebigpixel.net

919-275-0646

www.thebigpixel.net

FB | IG | LI | TW | TT : @bigpixelNC

Big Pixel

1772 Heritage Center Dr

Suite 201

Wake Forest, NC 27587

Music by: BLXRR

Transcript

Chuck: [00:00:00] it's pretty obvious. I was a cattle farmer in Virginia.

David: perfect as one is

Chuck: that's how I got into human AI.



David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter, your host, and I'm joined per usual by Beanie extraordinaire, Gary Voigt. What's going on, man.

Gary: This is only, I think my third one and I have an arsenal to show off. So this is going to be a repeated

David: They look exactly the same. So the fact that you call it them different, it's a different color with a different patch that I can't read. So to me there, you just look stupid in different colors, but I'm Hey man, it.

Gary: I'm sorry. You have no sense of style, but that's okay. We'll move on.

David: I'm just going to

Chuck: I'm liking the vibe already. I'm like,

Gary: It's like this every single time, Chuck.

Chuck: what happens when three beards get together, huh?

David: that's right. That beautiful voice you're hearing right there is our guest. That is Chuck Rinker, [00:01:00] who is the founder. I think, is that right? Founder and CEO of personas, um, by new media. So that's very cool. We're going to talk AI today. Cause that's where Chuck lives and everyone else wants to talk about it.

We can either talk about AI or Taylor Swift, which one you want to talk about?

Chuck: Hmm.

Gary: Um, let's do the AI generated version of Taylor Swift.

Chuck: Now you're in the news too.

Gary: That's bad. Yeah, I was about to say, we don't want to talk about that. I know. No, we do not want to talk about that. Uh, I was just thinking because the, because the chief's one, so, uh, you know, that she's, she's in the news again, anyway, so Chuck, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for joining us.

Chuck: Appreciate you. Appreciate you having me, gentlemen.

David: So you have been, well, I want, I want to start, you've been running personas since 1999, is that correct?

Chuck: Yeah, I'm an old man, as you can tell. And you had 25 years at the helm. Yes, that is correct.

David: You got more hair than me, so you're, you're doing fine. [00:02:00] What I am most curious, I think. Is now we live firmly in the age of AI, but you have been doing that. Well, I don't want to speak for what personas is. That's your job, but I, when you're explaining what personas is, I want you to explain what it was in 1999 versus.

there's no way you're even on the same planet.

Chuck: Yeah, that's, that's a great way to start. Cause, um, um, people. If you saw me on the video, you'd realize I'm, I'm, I'm getting up there a little, but, um, AI is weird to me. And I say that as being someone who's been almost her entire career in AI because AI is not new. AI is not even different. AI is better than it was last week, last month, last year, last decade, even last century.

But I can remember back in probably the mid seventies, early eighties when pocket. Video games first came out, and some of you might remember this. Do you remember the old days, they [00:03:00] call it the Mattel football, the three rows of red blips.

David: I had one of those. Well,

Chuck: have one of those?

David: was the, I don't remember what those, was it liquid crystal display? And it was a little, there were the little football guys that were just there and they had like two movements,

Chuck: See, that was, that was generation two. Generation one were little red LEDs, little red blips. And the reason I bring that up,

Gary: that would light up. Yeah.

Chuck: but you had three of them, and then you had one on the other side. And back then, the human brain is pretty amazing. That's AI. Cause back then we were representing a quarterback, a running back, a blocker, a defensive man, and they had to intelligently move around the screen to tackle each other.

That was AI. Your brain would perceive that as football players and your brain would watch the score, but that was really AI. Our AI really, to this day, when people are like, Oh, I'm photorealistic generating and AI is going to take over the world and I've watched too many Hollywood movies and iRobot's coming and all that good stuff.

[00:04:00] The reality is, is AI is not new. It's not even different. It's just better. It's just better. So, um. So yeah, that's that's kind of where personas really lives in is what is a I mean a I since the 1970s and 80s has really been an engagement tool, a human engagement tool, and we're just better at human engagement and personas is really just trying to be on that forefront of of of how do you change the way we communicate with technology?

Okay, it's

David: So give me the 30, 000 foot view. What is personas? If I, Wanted to hire, you know, buy your product. What is it that you guys do?

Chuck: really more of a service platform. It's a personality platform. Um, Back in the day when I first started, it was, you know, you would talk to your computers through ticker tape, then you would talk through them with magnetic tape, and then you got to learn how to use a keyboard. Then we learned how to use mice and touchscreens.

Now we're starting to get where things have advanced into chatbots and now into conversational AI. [00:05:00] But what's next? If you think about it, we're becoming closer and closer to virtual reality. I'm from a persona's perspective to answer your question directly closer and closer to being able to say let's stop teaching people how to use technology.

Let's teach technology how to communicate with us for you. Trek is out there. You remember the old scene in track when Scotty pulls up his mouse and he's like, hey, computer, why isn't this thing responding to me? I mean, that that's really where we're hoping to go and it's really just boiled down to a productivity tool.

How do you make this great and wonderful blossoming of. technologies you hear out there in the space, the internet of things, natural language, parsing, uh, computer language, understanding, uh, AI, text to speech, speech to text, uh, our language, um, machine learning, generative AI, all these buzz terms, quite honestly, are just more sophisticated, um, tools that we've been developing over the years.

So how do you, how do you use that? Stuff's getting so [00:06:00] complex. So we build this personality platform and say, okay, If you want to pull all that stuff and wrap it into a personality. What makes Gary Gary? Outside of the cheesy beanie you keep referencing. I like the beanie by the way. I like the beanie. Um,

Gary: I

got a little make,

Chuck, but

Chuck: what makes Gary Gary?

It's not just that he wears glasses and he's got a More black in his beard than I'll ever dream of having again. But you know, what is his personality? What knowledge base? What does he understand? How does he communicate? Let's what languages do he, does he speak? What's his mannerisms? All that is a personality.

And if you were able to take your brand, your image, your person, whatever your use case is, and wrap it into a personality and put that into a. package. That's actually what we call a personality profile. And we've taken all those IOT pieces, all that AI stuff we hear so much about, and we've wrapped it behind what we call a personality layer.

So we create digital personalities for a variety of use cases, [00:07:00] um, healthcare being one of them, uh, airports, hospitals, trade shows. Just basically, when would you have a digital workforce?

David: What did, so, okay. So for the people who can't see the video or, or are struggling with, with what a persona is. When I've done my little bit of research, this is, I go to a website, a kiosk, something, and there is a digital avatar of a person and they're helping you accomplish a task.

Is that the gist of it?

Chuck: Yeah, there's, there's some granularity in there, but, but, but you nailed it. It really boils down to a digital assistant, a virtual assistant, a customer service agent, whatever you want to call them. But at the end of the day, there's a. Strong, strong background that I possess through conversations with lots of name dropping I can do about, you know, senior vice president of Disney Imagineering and being a director where for Madden franchise and EA sports and all the stuff I did with our, our government [00:08:00] in the simulation world to, to, to train troops and all, but at the end of the day, we respond to humans and humans respond to humans in a very intimate bonded way.

And if you could take a human. And turn it into a, uh, a member of your workforce, whether that's just a personal venture or a professional venture, a commercial venture. That's what we do. It's basically, um, quite honestly, and I hate to be so rudimentary about it because it's too, too granular to say, but Basically, it's Siri with eyes and ears is what it really boils down to.

Um, um, and we'll get into conversations around why avatars people, I was the number one question we get is what we call why personas, you know, why does it matter? Well, I got conversation, I got Siri, I got Alexa, I got Cortana, I got chat bots. Why do we need to put a face to it? And that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a whole science in and of itself, but there are many, many, many valid reasons we could spend [00:09:00] hours talking about why personas.

David: So I have, here's my nerdy question. I'm sure I'm going to have several of these cause this is fascinating. Tell me the difference between a persona and say, 2003, right? I'm going up to a kiosk and I am talking. Let's say I have a full keyboard in front of me. So where that has to make sense. And I type, you know, so let's say this is a healthcare persona.

I'm trying to paint the picture for you. They're here to, to get you checked into a doctor's office. Again, making up a scenario and I type into the prompt. I like cheese. What does the persona in 2003 do with that response versus one in 2023?

Chuck: that's an awesome question, and that is a particular use case that we deployed. Matter of fact, we're just going live with the national health system in London right now with one of our units, and that's exactly what happens. You walk, not you ask for cheese, but you walk through the front of the hospital and there's, you know, they're so [00:10:00] overstaffed and there's such a burnout in the health care sector in the U.

S. In Europe, probably worldwide, that patient needs help. They're in an unfamiliar environment, so they can walk up and they'll say things like Um, I need to fill my prescription, or I came in for a blood sample, where do I go? And she'll be able to point you in directions, all that good stuff. She'll say, if you say how much is parking, she can tell you how much parking is.

But it's all done just as if there was a live agent standing there. Um, I wish it was running, but that's kind of the physical representation right there of one of the units. Um, And so it's really meant to be almost like a digital employee. Now to your question about the cheese, um, just like anything, if I ask Gary now watch, he's probably going to prove me wrong.

And I say, you know, what is the what's a good question? What is the highest sampling rate you can get off of a Roland GS8 for recording your home studio? That's a pretty [00:11:00] specific piece of information. Do you know that, Gary?

Gary: Uh, is it one 44?

Chuck: not close and it's 92 kilohertz. But that being said, I'm just a little music geek to, um, the point is, is that that's very specific knowledge.

Now, is it relevant for me to teach my digital employee, my digital persona? That's there to help patients to respond to the phrase, I like cheese. If your patient experience wants you to, we put that in her, her cranium, her craniums in the cloud, like a lot of brains are right now. Um, so we can, we can tell her what she responds to, but you train her with a piece of knowledge.

I can't walk up to Siri right now and say, say, Hey, Siri, my kid broke their arm. I'm in London. Where do I need, what, where do I take my kid for a broken arm at the Princess Alexandria hospital? Siri won't know that. But our avatars do. So the point I'm trying to make, uh, David, is that we train these digital personalities just like you would onboard a new [00:12:00] employee.

You're there to take the burden off your staff, not to replace the staff. That's the number two question we always get. Aren't you just taking people's jobs? No. We're basically saying We've got a productivity tool like a laptop, but it's got eyes and ears and it's more. It's a productivity tool. So we're trying to take the repetitive mundane task off of your day to day operations as a health care professional or retail.

You mentioned retail. We mentioned, you know, airports, other places. So the ideal here is that if I can take 20 or 30 hours off your plate. Realistically, probably 5 to 10 hours per employee off your plate. What would that person do? What would that employee be able to do now? They would be freed up to perform at a higher level and to accomplish things.

As good as our AI is these days, it's not perfect and it's not, it's not nearly, nearly good enough for the general purpose replacement of a human. They're very, they're very good at specific tasks. So if I can return [00:13:00] those hours to you, then your staff becomes highly productive on focusing the high value transactions that only you can do with your customers and or patients.

So that, that's really what we're doing here.

David: One of the things I've found really interesting about the newest AIs, the generative AIs, chat GPTs, all those is when you say, I like cheese out of absolutely nowhere, they'll run with it. And it's, it, it, it becomes both a liability and an impressive, like I was playing. So open AI opened up their, uh, ability for people to create their own GPTs.

That's what they call them. It's basically their own chat bot. And. There are now, of course, hundreds of them. Most of them are useless, but I was playing with one. I had a landscape one and I was playing around with it. And so at first I was like, Hey, just give me a good backyard. Tell me this. Tell me that.

And it was, it was saying, and then I went all of a sudden I said, which one's the best Avenger. Right. Just to see what would [00:14:00] happen and what was impressive about it. Cause if I would have asked Chachi BT that itself, it would have gone waxed poetic for five paragraphs about which Avenger is the best, because it's prepared to answer any question, but this one was a bot about landscaping.

And what it was really impressive to me was it says. Well, I don't know much about Avengers except to say maybe you like the, this trait of Thor or that trait of Iron Man and maybe we could put those traits in your backyard. I was like, wow, it took, I was trying to derail it and it took me and pointed me back, used what I said and put me back on the rails.

That is something.

Gary: Nice segway to

David: it's just, there is no, like, in 2003, your bot would have said, I'm sorry, I can't help you with Avengers, right? It would just ended it and said, that's the end of it. This one is like, I'm smart enough to understand what you're trying to do. You're [00:15:00] trying to cheat. I'm going to take you back and I'm going to take that and I'm going to flavor my response.

That was very impressive. Do you, do you guys use the generative stuff? Are you playing with that? I know it's, it's new. That stuff's a year ish old, at least to the public. Are you guys using any of those yet? Are you still in your own world?

Chuck: Short answer is yes. The longer granularity is playing exactly to what you're referring to, which is our especially pushing the healthcare. We can't afford to. Let the computer make the final decision that that decision, um, not only could have ramifications in health care, but even with a brand, it could come off and generate something you don't necessarily.

Wanted to generate. So the knowledge, when you're, when that, um, gen, when that, uh, generative AI took the GPT you created and came up the response, it had a knowledge base behind it, and that knowledge base was a general purpose knowledge base. We actually use generative AI to create [00:16:00] responses. But what we do is work with the patient experience teams or the patient brand teams, and we say, okay, what do you want to, you've got an empty brain here.

You've got an empty piece of gray matter. Do you want to pull in some general purpose data? You could, that's not rocket science is it is kind of rocket science, but the point is you, you saw that you can do that. And some of them are programmed for that. So it's not really a matter of what AI is better than the other.

It's really a matter of what is the knowledge base? What is the data that you're feeding it? And then we're very sensitive to. The outcomes of that data because of the marketplace we have in the ramifications if they're wrong. So typically we will look at that data. We will vet it with the patient experience team.

And then we go through a pretty extensive process. We call it active learning where we generate the responses. We let the patient experience team vet them on a regular basis and then we meet with them once a month and say, here's how our character is responding. Here's some information. Here are some things [00:17:00] that your patient population or your customer population has asked about.

Like, what is your favorite Avenger? Then the patient experience team or the customer experience team can determine how they want that digital employee to respond. So it becomes a very regimented digital employee that is trained specifically to represent your brand or your health care information or your information.

So basically we really. Tighten down the screws on those rails so you don't get off of them too bad, um, um, just because the term hallucinations come to mind, you know, when in the, in the world, we don't believe. AI is self governing enough right now. There's a lot of governance and compliance issues, um, that we're willing to open that up to our clients.

So, so we do that. We do that really in ourselves.

David: that's really refreshing. Actually. I work with a lot of [00:18:00] startups and they all want AI and they all want to say that they're using AI cause that's where the money is. I get it. I get it. But I had a guy, um, who wanted, he was doing FinTech financial technology and he was just jazz. This was several, six, eight months ago.

So chat GPT was really in the news, but even more nascent than it is now. And he was like, I want to put this in there. I want, I want our app to use chat GPT. And I was like, no, you don't. Because I think it's going to lie to your people and give them financial advice and tell them to buy a stock that doesn't even exist.

And that liability you're putting on your company. Is just not worth the investment money you think it is and and there's so many people who just think I've got to put this in my app even when it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever So it's nice to hear especially in a health care scenario that Well, hold on.

We got to be smarter about this because I can't have it make you Oh, you have ebola sir. You need to go. [00:19:00] Oh my gosh. What you said ebola what i'm out of you don't want that

Chuck: absolutely not. No. Anecdotally you're, you're, you're preaching to the choir and I'm glad to hear you, you point that out. We were at HIMSS, the healthcare information management convention. I was a speaker there. And after the, um, Uh, speech on AI I gave a gentleman comes running up to me and he was with a, I'll say a large pharma.

I won't mention it because I don't want to get sued and literally goes, Oh, this is killer. Um, can you hook up to a chat GPT and I go can and do no, we don't. And his immediate response was, well, you're just not a scalable solution. Then I don't want to talk to you. You're not scalable. And I'm going. Excuse me?

You really know what you're talking about? So, so, so no, there's, there is that common mentality that just because a guy carries a C suite title and believes that generative AI is the solution to all the world's problems, it's um, it's generating a certain percentage of its own problems too. So, so I think we're, we're, we're, [00:20:00] we're hell bent on trying to regulate and govern, um, the growth of the AI space, especially as it relates to healthcare and personal health and engagement.

Yeah.

Gary: Chuck, I had a question, but it's not directly related to this conversation about AI. It was more of a, how did you get into this? Because earlier you mentioned something about, um, video games and simulations. So I'd like to know a little bit of the backstory of how you started the company, like what brought you into it from what background?

Chuck: Yeah, it's pretty obvious. Um, I was a cattle farmer in Virginia.

David: perfect as one is

Chuck: that's how I got into human AI. Yeah, no

David: next question. That's answer. That's a complete and utter answer. I'm done.

Chuck: But that the truth is said otter. he said uttered look

David: Oh my

Gary: Uh, he didn't even try to and he did.

David: I didn't even try to, I'm that cheesy. The puns just come

Chuck: That's pretty funny no, but I'll honestly I did I grew up a cattle farmer and never been on an airplane till I was 19 and My dad, we were outside of D. [00:21:00] C. about an hour and a half, and my dad used to, uh, uh, farm part time and cut hair part time, and he used to cut the hair of, uh, um, one of the seniors down at Navy Federal Credit Union.

And I, I tend to get a little tear in my eye when I tell the story, but he's down there, and I, um, um, my family still runs the farm I grew up on. Uh, my sister, my youngest sister runs it, but in any sense, dad's down there talking to Admiral Scoggins and said, uh, you know, I need you to do me a favor. And I was only 15 at the time, going on 16, he said, my son's too smart to be a farmer.

He's shown a real aptitude and computers and texts have given him a job. So I started working for the military. Um, NAVA federal and financial systems immediately went over to another contact he had in a targeting system for the simulation world. And this was like, you know, a 16 year old thinking I was, you know, a real life Splinter cell, you know, doing black ops work with the government and stuff like that.

So he got me into the whole simulation world. At the ripe old age of 15, 16, and I'm never really looked back. 

AD: [00:22:00] BigPixel builds world class custom software and amazing apps. Our team of pros puts passion into every one of our projects. Our design infused development leans heavily on delivering a great experience for our clients and their clients. From startups to enterprises, we can help craft your ideas into real world products that help your business do better business.

Chuck: The underlying thread, and I mentioned this earlier, that's how I got into this is really that AI is not new.

And from creating believable simulations for uncle Sam, all the way through believable simulations through sport gamers. And now all's we're doing is, uh, we kind of jokingly call it personas with a purpose. What is a better purpose? What is a something we can do? That's not strictly for the entertainment value.

I'm a hardcore gamer. I still play games. But the point is, is, is, is where can that engagement take? And when you spend your entire career learning how to engage [00:23:00] humans at a communication level, not replace humans but communicate with humans, there really is, um, What I call my biggest problem in life, which is every time I turn my head, you know, left or right, I see another shiny object you can chase because there's so many use cases for improving, uh, that human experience, um, with all the technology that's at our disposal.

So that's short answers, probably not that short of an answer, but that's how I got into this space,

Gary: What made you take the leap to start your own company?

Chuck: had some visions in my head, you know, as much as it's, it's great and wonderful to, um, Uh, be at the helm of, of, of, of the sports titles and, you know, have your office littered with 12 TV sets in your part, half of your job is, you know, you're being paid to watch college football games, um, and make sure that that whole slogan EA had, it's in the game.

That was true. That was true. We copied fonts. We copied grass. I mean, uh, the grass types and all that point is, is as much as that was fun. [00:24:00] At the end of the day, I was still implementing someone else's vision. I was still implementing, um, um, other people's goals. And I started my own thing, um, with a business partner who was in the healthcare space already.

And, um, basically said, okay, well, what, what, what do we see as a potential? Where, where can this technology go? And so that quite honestly is, um. Uh, part of the reason we spent, of course, it didn't hurt. I had a 12 month old baby that at EA I was probably working 78 hours a week. And so, uh, it didn't help that I wasn't seeing my, uh, oldest daughter Gabrielle as much as I wanted.

So, um, um, there was a lifestyle change, uh, needed at the time as well.

Gary: Okay.

David: So I want to pivot back because I'm still fascinated by A. I. I'm done with Gary's questions. I want you to pontificate. It's a two pronged question. How, five years from now, [00:25:00] and I specifically want five years because I don't want to go future casting way out there. Five years from now, what does the A. I.

in personas look like today? And then brought more broadly, what does the world look like with AI as it will be like, how, how will it change? Will it, will we be using it all the time? Or do you think it's just going to live in a little chat bot? Where do you think it's going? As someone who's been in this for so long?

Chuck: Um,

Gary: just because we've been promised so much previously from the meta verse and from, you know, the whole blockchain and NFTs and Bitcoin and all

David: Hey, Meta is no longer doing that. They're going for AGI now. They're, it's no more just, I'm prefacing his answer to be not, you know,

Chuck: I'm going to preface the answer for some of the business geeks out there. We use Gardner as a consultative partner. And Gardner, if you're all familiar, has this thing called the hype cycle. And there's always, um, This whole world of, uh, of hype, you know, you build up this [00:26:00] massive hype, you know, all we're going to put people out of work and we're going to have, uh, uh, you know, um, uh, guaranteed base salaries for all because there's going to be no more jobs, the robots are going to be doing all the jobs, all that good stuff that you read.

I don't believe that. I don't believe that in a heartbeat. Um, um, And then you have this, what we call the trough of disillusionment, which is where we're starting to approach. I think probably within three to five years, we're going to be hitting that trough. There's so much hype around generative AI and what is possible and what's potential.

And yes, it's going to be a catalyst to creativity. It's going to be a catalyst for productivity. It's going to be a catalyst to financial success. And for the love of God, I can say, if you're not on the bandwagon and you're not utilizing it to increase the productivity of your team, then you're going to be the company that's working with typewriters when everybody, every other company in the world has laptop computers, and that's the best I can say it there.

So it's not that it's going to change the world. We're just going to, we're going to move the bar higher. There's going to be an expectation. Now we're going to have a hire. We're going to be less dependent on the [00:27:00] mundane and the repetitive daily task. And I think in a perfect world, I'll be the eternal optimist here in five years.

I think it's not going to take away all the jobs people think it's going to take away. I think it's going to displace some of the jobs. I did a talk at, uh, 2019 InfoComm even pre COVID about this very topic and that you really are only going to be able to automate a certain percentage. I think it's going to elevate.

people's job satisfaction because people are going to now be focused on high value engagement. People are going to feel more utilized. People's salaries are probably going to go up that stay in the space. And yes, you're going to, you're going to take away some of the, um, Um, I'm lower paying jobs, but you know what?

We don't have people working on manual typewriters. We don't have as many, um, um, um, let's just say, you know, we don't, we don't have chimney sweeps anymore. We don't have, you know, there's about as many, uh, meter maids if, if that's a politically correct thing to say now, but my point is, is we are going to replace some repetitive mundane jobs and that's going to be [00:28:00] horrible.

And some people are going to lose their jobs. But in five years, I think we're just going to elevate the barn productivity and you're either on the bandwagon or you're going to get left behind.

David: I just can't wait for the day I can replace Gary. I mean, he You've tried already.

company already. I did. I actually, this is, this is a true story. I went to got one of those bots. Like I was telling the chat, GPT bots, someone had made an icon creator. Sorry. No, excuse me. Logo creator. And so I'm like, well, I've been looking forward to get rid of Gary.

Let's just see how it does. And so I preface this. I'm the one that does the branding and stuff like that for big pixel.

Yeah. Gary does all of our branding. If you've seen any picture from big pixel, it comes from Gary. All of that's hot air. What's really important is AI. So I was like, all right, let's, let's replace Gary. So I said, all right, our colors are orange and a deep Navy.

It's almost black. And we, we have a square is clearly right. And we want to be professional and a little whimsical. [00:29:00] So I type all this in and put it into the bot. And I mean, it was so close to replacing Gary. It just was just so close. No, I'm, I'm giving grief. That was, it was so bad. Like, I don't even know.

What was happening? Like it was bad and we should put Gary, we should put in the show notes, a link or a screenshot of the things it made for me The generated logos you made

Gary: to replace me. We'll

Chuck: going to jump in there because my brother's an artist as well. Him and I playing a little band together and he's a great artist as well. And he's Like, oh, I'm not even going to do art anymore because of all this generative AI stuff. It's just, it's frustrating me. Take the Gary's of the world. Gary's got a creative component to him.

You can just look at him and tell, look at this, look at the, um, the long boards he has on his back wall. Um, he, he, he's, he's got a creative spirit. So the point is,

David: is true. Blow hard.

Chuck: no, but if the point is, if, if you're, if he's using generative AI instead of David using generative AI, he's just going to [00:30:00] get concept to paper quicker.

And then he's going to use his creative juices to take that bar and raise the quality of that piece that degenerate AI is doing. I've used it to generate lyrics for a song. I've used it to even create chord progressions, but at the end of the day, I still sit down with my little setup and my little acoustic guitar and run through it and tweak and polish it and make it that much better.

So just like. People can claim Photoshop. Oh, well, shit, I'm not an artist anymore. I got Photoshop. Well, it's just up the bar. And I'll tell this anecdotal. It's not even anecdotal. It's true story. Look it up on the internet. I'm not making this one up. Back in the early days when the stethoscope was first created, a lot of the healthcare professionals, got all up in arms and saying, Oh, this is going to take doctors jobs away.

The stethoscope is not as sensitive as a human ear. You're not going to get accurate diagnosis. These stethoscopes are going to kill people. They're literally going to kill people and put doctors out of business. Did the stethoscope put doctors? No, it raised the bar. So the [00:31:00] point here is just like I mentioned earlier, I love AI obviously.

Um, but this is going to make the Gary Gary's of the world. That much more creative and it's going to make Gary, instead of sitting behind his desk for 12 hours, coming up with his initial logo concepts and have three concepts to show you, now he's going to have 15 concepts in three hours to show you that type of thing.

So it's a productivity tool. I think

David: Someone explained to me that AI is the power tool of the next generation. And I love that it made sense because if you give Gary for with a modicum of talent that he has, you give him the tool. And it goes way further than if you give me the tool who has even less than

Chuck: bingo. Yeah, absolutely. You said that a lot more succinctly than I did.

David: I will say, so I was playing with it for the first time. I was playing with Photoshop's AI goodies. I was, I was making a thing, uh, for my family and I took a photo that we had taken. It was my kids when they were little and they were on a Ferris wheel. And I was going [00:32:00] to put this up and, and, you know, up on some thing up on the internet anyway, um, I realized in the behind the scenes, just like everything else at first, there's a dude behind my kids.

Well, I didn't want that. So I just wrap it around there and poof, that guy's gone replaced by a beautiful sky, right? That looked completely. And then I realized, well, if I wanted this right aspect ratio, my daughter, who was. You can't see what I'm doing, but she had her arms out, but it was cut off pretty quick because it was the bottom of the photo.

I needed the bottom to be about an inch longer to get the aspect

Chuck: Oh, yeah.

David: And then, so Photoshop adds, very realistically, her arms extending out as though, because her shirt was started to go that way. Now, if you stared at it really close, it looks a little off, but this picture wasn't going to be that large.

So there's no way in a million years you would have known that this, her arms were never in this photo. I was so blown away by just a simple thing that in Photoshop, again, modicum of talent that I have less than Gary, that [00:33:00] I could never have done that. Gary could have, I could have given him and say, Hey dude, can you get this right?

And he would have done that. It would take him a long time to invent Yeah. To Chuck's point, this is exactly what he was saying. It, I could have done that in Photoshop and it would have

Gary: taken a while. 

Chuck: Well, that's not even

Gary: time, taking that, you know, amount of time away and having three possibilities generated in under a minute that would take all that work, then I could focus on the more important parts.

And that, that's a

Chuck: But even, that even extends outside of AI though. That's just evolution. I mean, let's put it this way. Um, I'm a big Disney fan. I like to take my kids to Disney probably six times a year and we drive, sometimes fly, but let's say we drive down there. It's nine and a half hours driving. So even outside the AI realm, Before the cars were popular, let's say 1930s, and I wanted to go from North Carolina to Florida, you would say that's impossible.

I can't get down there. That would take me two weeks over, over, you know, horse drawn carriage or whatever. But you know what? I get there in nine hours [00:34:00] now because we have a car. It's not even AI. That's just productivity in general. So that's what I'm kind of getting at. These are just catalysts. These are just productivity tools.

They're amazing tools. They're amazing productivity tools, but it's really just up in the bar. Up in the bar.

David: I, some, there's a podcast, the verge that I love. Um, it's a tech podcast I talk about all the time. They, they said that the internet, and this is true. This is happening right now. The internet is going to be flooded with C plus content. It's readable. It's okay, but it's not going to blow anyone's socks off.

And if you're, but the problem is there's a lot of people that all they can make is C plus content. There's a whole flood of these people that whether that's art, whether that's writing, whether that's music, all those C plus artists, they're going away. I mean, and we all know these people. I mean, Actors, how many C plus actors are there out there?

You know, I'm not saying they're going to lose their job, but that's a good example. There's tons of them and those guys are going to lose [00:35:00] their job. And that scares people because there's a lot of those people out there. Those people are going to have to get another job somewhere and do something else.

But if you're a B plus person or even a B minus person. You're probably fine for a while. Maybe eventually it goes up to the B minus territory, but it's never going to be, I don't think like people ask me all the time. And we've mentioned this on the podcast before, but are you worried about your job? We do computer programming.

Of course, they're right in our wheelhouse. I said, what they're very good at is the what, but what humans are good at is the, is the why and the how. I'm sorry. I said that

Chuck: I

David: we're going to edit

Chuck: where you're going. Yeah.

David: It was, there was the, what AI is really good at is the how the what and the why is us, and that is when I say I need to build this, the AI doesn't know what I need to build, but once I do know, boy, it can spit out some code real nice.

And that's huge. And I said, I was like, I'm not worried about my job. Cause that's where we specialize. We specialize in the what and the why the how. [00:36:00] We're getting faster at because, and Sundar, which I said, the average programmer today gets 6 percent faster with the use of AI tools. I think it's actually probably closer to 10, honestly, because it's amazing.

Some of the stuff is written for me. I'm like, that would have taken me two hours to go and figure out what, because, you know, obviously I don't know how to do it. If I'm bringing the bot in, I figure it out, write it down and get it. And so. Amazing, amazing stuff.

Chuck: Absolutely true. Absolutely true.

Gary: I think also to go back to your point of the C plus people and the B minus people, the C plus content can replace C plus people, but at the same time, those C plus people can use. The generated content to elevate themselves to the B level. You know what I mean? So

David: you say that if you're a C plus person, no, there's

Gary: let's say you're a highly motivated C plus person.

David: then you're not a C plus person. That's my point. If you're a C plus person, you're going to lose your job because you do not have the ambition to be that B and you're not going to do what it [00:37:00] takes. If you're a C level football player, you're not going in early in the morning to train.

You're doing the Well, to, to play the diplomat right between the two of you, I used to teach animation and I did play a little college ball on the basketball. You're going to find that, um, Gary's actually correct that you can take a B, a C plus guy and make them a B. The problem is when you improve the tool set and what's at his disposal, all the C has become the B.

Chuck: So instinctively, now they're middle of the pack again, so they drop back to the C world. When I used to teach animation, um, we always said, you know, you can, you can teach someone how to use 3D Max, or at the time, you know, uh, Autodesk, um, didn't own everybody. Um, but you can't teach them good principles of animation.

You know, just giving someone a good tool, an animation tool, doesn't make them an animator. But giving an animator that might historically be a 2D [00:38:00] hand drawn animator that's keyframing manually, and you give him a digital tool where he can now keyframe and expand into the 3D realm, what he produces, It's absolutely more amazing, but then everybody with that skill set has access to that new tool.

And that's what I alluded to about this five year question you gave me is that if you're not on the bandwagon of looking at it as a productivity tool in rolling out this within your organization or even your personal life, then yes, the C plus companies. are going to become B plus companies. And if you don't adopt this new productivity gain that you're going to get out of the next generation and current generation of AI, you're going to remain a C plus company.

So you're going to be left behind. So once everybody goes up there, then every B plus C plus company is now going to be a B company. And, and you're going to be back at the middle of the pack. So that's, that's kind of how I look at it. I don't know if that's saying the same thing, but I think that's kind of between where you two gentlemen were

David: when I think there's a, the really [00:39:00] crazy thing is the people who are a plus now, they're not going to be. Whatever would be above that. Like the, the bar is now raised the best of the best. We'll get even better into levels that we don't understand now. And that's, what's going to change the world. Probably not AI itself, but what people can do because they have AI again, if I can think I can build the house with or without a power tool, dude, that house that you can build now with a power tool is crazy compared to what you had to do.

Use the hammers, right?

Chuck: Yep. Good analogy. Yep, a

Gary: Well Chuck, usually we wrap it up with a question, um, what are the top three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur, new business or startup, but you're in a unique position to answer this question, including the use of AI. So what would your top three pieces of advice for any entrepreneur, new business, startup or current small business in the ways of utilizing AI to their advantage for success?

Chuck: great question. And I know you told me to, [00:40:00] uh, read the notes and I didn't think through this well enough, but, but there's a couple of mantras I've lived my career about, um, half jokingly, but half seriously, we just say, do what you love. The money will follow. Don't, don't chase the almighty dollar chase a passion because what we find is if you're passionate about number two pencils, you're going to sell a boatload of number two pencils.

Um, if you're passionate about AI, do that, get so you're motivated to succeed at whatever you do. So it's kind of the first one I always tell people is do what you love. The money will follow. Don't try to make a bunch of money and hope that you're going to enjoy your weekends in retirement because there's too many, uh, use cases where people don't make it to retirement anyway.

And, um, um, then you're, frustrated for five days out of the seven. So find something you're happy with and do that. Um, The second one is probably do the impossible and I, I use that phrase not lightly and not, um, so, so, um, ambiguous as it may sound, but, um, I always remember it's on the front of my desk, you know, Walt [00:41:00] Disney's famous quote, he says, it's always fun to do the impossible.

Because everything Disney pulled off, and he's a big, I'm a big follower of what he's done, and people don't realize that most of his awards and success are actually for technology, it's not for creativity. Um, he always had that phrase, you know, let's do the impossible. It's always fun to do the impossible, because things are only impossible when you haven't done them yet.

Um, you know, things that were 10 years ago impossible when I was playing my little Madden football game, and I said, hey, you know, I'm going to see photorealistic characters running on a field, and this guy named John Madden's going to have all these, um, NFL football players running around in photorealistic fashion.

You know, I never thought in a million years we'd be at that point. That was impossible when I was playing my little Mattel LED game. So do the impossible, set your goals for that. The old adage, you know, how to eat an elephant one bite at a time. You'll get there. Just, just pick something that's not in the box, you know, pick something that's not been done.

That, that, that's a real motivational thing in a career as well. The third [00:42:00] and final is probably a little controversial because you can overdo it. And I use the word pivot. One word pivot. What I mean by pivot, especially if you're pursuing a career and especially if you're going down the AI path, things change on a weekly basis.

Yes, you got to have conviction. Yes, you got to have focus. Um, but pivot things change so fast. Um, and again, I go back to Gardner because we use them a lot. Um, you'll find that. Tech CEOs that don't pivot are out of business in 24 months. Tech CEOs that see the market, try it, learn from it, fail, then go, let's try it this way.

Oh, let's try it this way. Nope, I'm going to pivot again. Let's try it this way. They'll eventually figure out what, what they need to do to succeed. So, so don't be afraid to change. Don't be afraid to rethink and question yourself. Don't, don't, don't, don't be so regimented in your, your approach. Don't be that politician that's afraid to say, Oh, you pivot.

That's a bad thing for a politician. That's an amazing, awesome [00:43:00] thing for an innovator and, uh, uh, someone going down a career path.

Gary: Excellent. Excellent group of answers there. So if anybody else wanted to learn more about you or about your company personas, how could they find you?

Chuck: Um, if you're interested in the health care, we like to send people to I health assist dot com. That is a passion play. We mentioned passion, um, that we're going down for health care and helping patients. Um, but the personas personality engines under personas dot com P. R. S. O. N. A. S. Um, that's an easy one to find.

I hesitate to do this. Um, I shouldn't say that. That sounds condescending. I didn't mean it that way or negative. I actually love LinkedIn. I'm not a Facebook fan. I only TikTok on personal stuff and Facebook on personal, but I love LinkedIn and some of my best contacts and my best relationship to built them through LinkedIn.

You can find me on LinkedIn, but please, for the love of God, don't use this as a video. A mechanism for calling [00:44:00] up and telling me how you can change my HR practices and how you can save me a ton of money with, um, you know, uh, I.

Gary: the worst thing about LinkedIn.

Chuck: I hate that, but, but it's a, it's a, it's a great network and it's really a good network.

So I do like linkedin. Um, I, I do, I do tend to correspond a lot to linkedin.

Gary: To scare David, I get at least five emails a day from LinkedIn telling me all these wonderful creative director positions that are just waiting for me. So

David: Oh,

Gary: fun of me, uh, the more these emails start to look better and better. No, I'm just kidding.

David: that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, it's fine. Go for it, man. Well, we're going to AI from them too.

Gary: true. That's true. We're going to add all those links to our show notes and in the description below the video. So anybody wants to get to know more about you or your companies, just click below.

Chuck: Awesome.

David: Well, thank you so much, Chuck, for joining us. This has been a lot of fun.

Chuck: Appreciate it, gentlemen. Always entertaining.

Gary: I probably could have gone off on another hour and a half tangent of animation and Disney [00:45:00] with you. So maybe in the future, we'll have you back on and just

Chuck: it'd be fun. I enjoy these conversations. Yeah, Disney is definitely, you know, from a musician's standpoint, that was good. Who influenced you? Well, I like Keith Richards as a guitarist, but, um, when it comes down to business and how I run my business, I used to open up my weekly company meetings.

With, I called it the weekly wisdom of Walt and I would come up with a quote from Walt and talk about how that applied to our business ventures. And everybody's like, Oh, there goes Chuck talking about Walt again. But yeah, he was pretty amazing fella.

Gary: All right. Well, I think that wraps it up for this week. See you guys.

Chuck: All right, gentlemen. I appreciate it.

David: Thank you guys very much. We will be back next week. Have a good one,

Chuck: Y'all take care.

OUTRO: Hi, I'm Christy Pronto, Content Marketing Director here at BigPixel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the BizDev Podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Shoot us an email, hello at thebigpixel. net. The BizDev Podcast is produced and presented by BigPixel. See you next week. [00:46:00] Until then, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Threads, YouTube, and LinkedIn.