AI Keeps You Up. It Won't Get You Ahead. (Richard Webbe)

# Richard at AIO IRL [00:00:00] **Richard:** welcome, everyone. Thanks for coming. It's, um, it's an interesting perspective that I like to put on new technology. Having been involved in new technology for many, many years, it's good to get context and go back and... I think someone was telling me earlier, everything that's old is new again. [00:00:14] Sean and Sean and... Everyone's called Sean today, by, by the way. So, and it was funny, back in the, uh, late '90s, I was asked to go to the UK and talk to companies, and BT, and Cisco, and a bunch of others about how the internet was gonna change business, and no one could get their head around it. And, and, uh, um, Dave and I were with a reasonably large customer today talking about their exact problem about how they get into AI and what it means. [00:00:40] The problem is, everything's too AI-led, in my opinion, right? It's a tool. It's an underlying value. So what I used to do in the UK, uh, for three years, every week, I get a new business or a new group or a new channel partner, and they'd come in, and we'd talk about what your business problems are. Where's your challenge? [00:00:59] What are you [00:01:00] trying to achieve? And then we would color in with what the technology that's available underneath would help those people or those companies achieve that. So who here actually uses AI a bit for personal productivity? Yeah, anytime you do a ChatGPT, every time you redo your resume on ChatGPT, right? [00:01:18] And, uh, so it was a- about 30% of us put their hands up. The big confusion with AI at the moment is what it's for, and it is for so many, many different things, and it's so disjointed. But everyone talks on one track when they really mean another track. So those people rewriting their emails on ChatGPT, it's just personal productivity. [00:01:40] It's not a bad thing. It's a great thing, right? But here's the funny thing. I sat with a, a sales friend of mine who was working in one of the big data lake companies in Melbourne, and I said to him, "How are you going and how's AI going?" He goes, "Oh, Richard, it's great. I put in AI the name of the customer, then I put in their company, and then I get all the research from the company and all the business value [00:02:00] and everything they need, and then I sh- tell, tell the AI about my products, and I put all that together, and then I say, 'Write a proposal using those KPIs for that company and that person, and get it-- and send it off.'" [00:02:12] And he goes, "It's just great." He was fired about a week later, right? And not because he was doing that, but because he was doing that. So let me explain. He thought he was getting some competitive advantage and doing great things by being targeted. How many other thousand salespeople are doing exactly the same thing, right? [00:02:31] So AI doesn't come back with the truth. It comes back with what I would call the sum net average or the average opinion of what is fact. It doesn't necessar- it's not-- It's artificial stupidity if you apply it the wrong way. It's not artificial intelligence, right? So that's personal productivity for a salesperson. [00:02:48] And the, the reason I use the salesperson as example, it doesn't give them any competitive advantage. It doesn't help them sell better or anything like that. Only the human factor can do that, the one that triages it. [00:03:00] I mean, Aristotle said many, many years ago, the definition of intelligence is knowing how much you don't know Right? [00:03:07] It's a different view on how we do things. So AI at its core is just a bunch of facts that are recontextualized. Imagine a whole lot of moving Venn diagrams, if you know what a Venn diagram is. And as they move and as the market changes, they move, so the answers change. That's generative AI, right? It's getting a bit smarter and a bit better. [00:03:26] But it's not actually going to replace a creative human being who thinks about, "Well, you know, if I get that there and I put that with that over there and I do that, that'll be really cool. That'll work well." Just like, thank you. Good timing on that. It's my time to stop talking. So that's exactly how it works, and that's exactly what happens. [00:03:45] So we now need to break AI down into multiple factors and multiple definitions, and the first one is, of course, the personal productivity. Kelly's got some great examples of company and personal productivity for it, and that's great. So we sit at home, we use it. I, uh, [00:04:00] had a friend going overseas. They didn't know where they were gonna go, what they were gonna do. [00:04:03] I'm going to Rome. I've got two days. What's a good agenda for me? And bang, bang, bang, away it goes. What a greater way to use it, right? But if you're running a business and everyone's doing the same thing, it doesn't work, right? If everyone has the same hook, value proposition, stick, whatever, you are no better off. [00:04:21] All you're actually doing is keeping up with everyone else. So the first thing is AI will help you to keep up, but it won't help you to stay ahead or get ahead, and it might not necessarily help you grow your business Maybe from an efficiency point of view, but if everyone else is doing... Do you see where I'm headed? [00:04:36] It's a circular conversation. So those that don't use AI will probably die on the vine. Same as the person who kept using the fax machine when everyone else was emailing. Same as... But you, you, you know, you get on with those things. And a funny thing, my father, he had a ad agency in Melbourne for many, many years, and he was a very good entrepreneur. [00:04:54] And he rang me one day and he said, "Richard, have you seen how cheap these fax machines are?" And I went, "Yeah, they've come down..." 'Cause, you [00:05:00] know, I don't know if you knew, only very big companies could afford a fax machine, along with the Bureau of Meteorology and those big drums, and they cost 40 or 100 grand. [00:05:07] Then they suddenly came down to between 500 bucks and $1,500. And he said, "I'm gonna put a sign outside my company, and I'm gonna let people fax things for 50 cents." I said, "That, that's a good idea, but they're so cheap. Isn't everyone else buying a fax machine?" So he managed to pay off the fax machine for people who hadn't bought one yet, but after that, of course, it wasn't a profitable business. [00:05:28] So you've gotta think how things go. So with the internet, right, people who didn't adopt the use of online... Now, what does, what did the internet do for us? What was the online? People went, "Oh, I can show web pages." It wasn't that. It was basically cheap, low-cost, informative data delivered wherever you want. [00:05:45] Now, the first wave of business value that came from the internet was probably around people like realestate.com or PayPal or eBay or something like that. We had information and access to things that were happening, and we could buy those things. So it was the first sort [00:06:00] of commercial acceleration of modern technology in recent times. [00:06:04] We can go back further to other things like fax machines and typewriters. And then, of course, the next phase was that, is the social media aspect. So I don't know about you, but I buy all my shirts and jeans off Facebook now, right? I don't bother to go... 'cause it's about the clicks, how many clicks you wanna do, how much time you wanna waste doing research. [00:06:22] So, you know, in years past we'd hear about, "Oh, geez, there's some really good shoes, you know, you could buy." So I'll go to that website, and I'll go to some other websites, and I'll check it out, and I'll go, "Okay, I wanna buy those shoes," and that's a long process. Now on social media, I get these great little one-minute clickbait ads that actually make me feel like I'm gonna look really cool in those shoes. [00:06:42] And before I can think much better, I've got my credit card out. Oh, no, I don't have to, 'cause it's, uh, in my Apple Pay phone. So all I have to do is click the side of the button twice and, you know, a week later, my girlfriend says to me, "Did you buy another pair of shoes?" I said, "Pretty much." Right? So that's the second wave of commerce [00:07:00] related to a transitioning technology. [00:07:02] Well, the third one is coming now, and some of you may have seen it. Think about this. It's all about the buyer's journey. I heard someone earlier talking about user experience and stuff like... And m- you know, our friend here on FMCG will understand. It's the buyer's experience and how quick it happens, whether it's business to business or retail. [00:07:19] So now I would go into, say, ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, and I go, "I wanna go on a holiday to Italy." And then an Italian travel company in English appears at the bottom in the search. And I just read it. It says, "Oh, we've got..." And I just click, and I've bought. So no webpage, right? No research. I'm a bit trusting of the AI 'cause it tells me a few things. [00:07:46] So that click to buy that appeared early in the days for people like realestate.com, PayPal, and all of that for the information, and then it would get into social media with Facebook and stuff like that, now is appearing in AI, and people are very trusting of AI [00:08:00] 'cause they think it's a bit smarter than them, right? [00:08:02] So it's, it's done all that research 'cause basically we're all lazy. That's why we use it for productivity tools, right? And, and it goes from another step from there. So you need to think about how it's progressing, and the trick is: where am I gonna get competitive advantage, both for me as an individual or my business? [00:08:19] And what you have to do is you have to create kind of a circular reference with the generative AI, and that is where it checks the latest market information and then come back and adjusts how you do business, and then goes back to the market again. Now that's... It could be months of work for a business, but if you set up your, uh, agents correctly to get you this information and bring it in, that can be a few seconds. [00:08:41] So you see where the differences are, the dynamics. So you've kinda got how efficient I can be and quickly I can actually get quotes and things like... That's great. That's good customer service. But remember, while you're doing that, everyone else can do it, right? And pretty soon everyone will catch up, right? [00:08:57] Then the next phase is: how can I actually [00:09:00] understand the market and be more efficient and then respond to market changes 'cause I'm pulling data in? And so all these companies that you may or may not have heard of, like called, like Snowflake or Databricks or stuff like that, they're arranging company data, so it's really easy to pull it in. [00:09:15] And with some of the agents, you can point it at your email, you can point it at your OneDrive or your, uh, Apple, you know, your Apple online drive. And so now it knows where to mine the data. So really when we're talking about AI, there's three or four key things you wanna focus on. You wanna focus on what you're trying to do. [00:09:31] So what is the problem? What is the problem I'm trying to solve? It's not tech for tech's sake. It's what's the problem I'm trying to solve, you know? If you did an analysis on yourself and you're running a quoting business for a service organization, you may spend 90% of your time doing quotes. You don't wanna do that anymore. [00:09:49] And I know a friend of mine set up a company called Buildxact, which sets up the link using AI tools between someone like Bunnings and the builders. And so when the builder goes to a quote [00:10:00] on doing a renovation and that, it can happen in a few minutes, and Bunnings will even tell him when the stuff is ready. [00:10:06] So it's very connected supply chain, right? And then you take that step forward from being, having the right data and having the right information, being able to access that, and having smart agents. I mean, you know, David's got a story that I tell, which I'll tell of him. When we were setting up our business, he set up his agents, and he gave them personalities. [00:10:25] Marvel Comics DC Comics, sorry, I've gone for the other one. But with Buddy, Dave and I were working on a contract, and he had several of his agents arguing with him saying, "Don't do business with this person," me, "because he's too casual and makes too many silly jokes." Am I correct? [00:10:47] **Dave:** Right into the story. [00:10:48] **Richard:** Well- [00:10:48] **Dave:** But, I mean, essentially, it didn't have the context. The, the, the AI didn't know enough about our relationship, didn't know our text messages, didn't know... So when, who is this random guy that is saying, "Let's do business with you," and can you trust him? And [00:11:00] I was like, "Look at these messages." [00:11:00] And it's like, "Oh, okay, cool. That, that makes sense now that, that you got that sort of rapport with him." And so the context is what matters there, because if it doesn't know things, it just is guessing based [00:11:11] **Richard:** on its knowledge. And exactly. So that's the key point. Where's your data and information coming from, and is it relevant in context to what you're doing? [00:11:18] And so we say as you go across the spectrum of AI, personal productivity, am I gonna start to get my accounting firm to link with my pricing and check the market and what the current market rates are, and when-- what's the dollar gonna do? Then you start to get very sophisticated in your own business, and it means better decisions and moving forward and more competitive advantage. [00:11:37] 'Cause information, because of AI, is gonna become completely democratized. That is, people who make money out of transferring information, unless it's in your head, they're not gonna make much money on that anymore because everyone's gonna have access to it. It'll be mined and become common knowledge, and I don't really know how the legal industry or the copyright industry is gonna protect us from that.[00:12:00] [00:12:00] But the biggest thing that I say with AI, and I'll leave you with this as we listen to some other people talk about it, is what's the question? So when you're sitting there in your business, don't think about AI. Think about, "What does my business do? Where's my value proposition? What's my supply chain look like? [00:12:16] And in my process of the whole cycle of seeing a need, addressing that need, helping a customer, providing it, and then invoicing them, where in that cycle am I held up or not going well? And where am I making bad decisions because I don't have the right information?" So it democratizes information. It provides it available for everyone, but everyone seems to be, at the moment, getting confused between personal productivity AI and the AI that you'd actually put with a bunch of agentic agents inside your business that are managing those things for you. [00:12:49] And if you're in, in the way of most decisions, maybe it's a good idea to step out of the way, set up an agent with the right parameters, and let that make the decision, and you focus on the next step of [00:13:00] that. That'll be it from me for now, setting the scene. You gave me that look, so- [00:13:05] **Dave:** Well, you said you were wrapping up. [00:13:06] I thought you were done. Thank you, Richard. Um, great, great points around establishing what the problem is you're solving before you actually try and work out which tool you need to solve it. [00:13:17]