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Short on time but curious about how intelligent technology and AI are reshaping the enterprise world? Fear not, my friend. The Intelligent Enterprise is your short, sharp pause from the chaos of business as usual.
Every other week, Creative Thinker and Business Strategist, Tom Stoneman, meets with a business leader for a simple, real-world activity outside of tech, to talk about what’s going on inside it. It could be a coffee, a walk, some DIY, who knows? But it’s a chance to take a break, reflect and get to the heart of a single challenge in enterprise transformation with the help of leading experts in digital transformation, change management and workplace innovation.
From AI implementation strategies to debating the next wave of tech leadership trends, this is a show for CIOs, CTOs, and anyone navigating the fast-moving world of enterprise solutions.
The Intelligent Enterprise is brought to you by Digitate, creators of Ignio, the award-winning AIOps platform that keeps tech running smarter, faster and more autonomously. Join us for a coffee, run, or maybe even a dog-walking session, and get the inside scoop on what’s next for the enterprise world, by getting outside of it.
MUSIC:
You're joining the Intelligent Enterprise.
We're talking with our Gen Z friends.
It's going to be an awesome episode, maybe this will be one you can send.
We're talking with Ritu.
We're talking with Ryan.
We're talking with Renad.
And hosted by Tom.
Tom Stoneman:
Hi, I'm Tom Stoneman, and this is The Intelligent Enterprise, a podcast where we get inside big ideas by getting outside of them. We're back with Ryan Bascos, Renad Morrar, and Ritu Bhalodia, three young professionals at Digitate, and three of the more candid guests we've had on this show.
In this series, we're discussing what AI looks and feels like for younger generations just entering the workforce. In part one, we heard about their first encounters with AI and what they think the generational gap looks like up close. Today, we get into their work, what AI means for their careers, how their supervisors are pushing them to use it, and where each of them has decided it doesn't belong. Let's get back into it.
For you, and Renad, I'll start with you. Is there a skill that you learned that was just hard to develop in college or something early in your career that you wonder if AI is going to make it obsolete or not valuable?
Renad Morrar:
I mean, definitely. So I went to school for software engineering, and I've seen AI be a great tool for coding. I do have to say, though, even though it's impressive for creating code, it's still flawed in some way. But I do think by time full coding will be taken over with AI. You're not going to really need to go to school for it or work too much, work too hard to obtain this skill on your own, rather than you're going to have it full access in a few seconds.
Ritu Bhalodia:
I also feel the same because I went to school for software engineering as well, and now AI can give you a response within seconds. So I think it does make it a little bit our skills less valuable, but then I think it makes different areas more valuable, like really knowing the meaning and the intention behind what code you're writing and how it fits into the infrastructure and all the system design.
Tom Stoneman:
How do you feel about ... So you're working along and you're using AI to assist you. Do you feel your work is less valuable when it's done? How do you feel about what you did?
Renad Morrar:
I think for me, so if I use AI for a task, you still need to tell it exactly what to do and exactly what you need. It's not like you can just be like, "Okay, do this for me," and it'll give you exactly it. You need to also word it properly. So I don't feel like what I've done is less valuable because I still need to go through the process of explaining to AI what exactly I need it to do. Not just that, but I also need to proof it still because I still find some problems here and there with it.
So at this point, I don't feel like what I've done is less valuable because I still have to go through the work of proofing it and explaining exactly what I need from it.
Tom Stoneman:
I think right now at least ownership is still there, right? Do you feel ...
Renad Morrar:
In some way, yes. It does make things quicker and complete things quicker for you, but you still need to be careful with it as of right now.
Tom Stoneman:
Right. It still feels like your project?
Renad Morrar:
Yeah. Especially when I'm coding, because sometimes I do personal projects and I do code a lot, I'm not only relying on what ChatGPT or Claude is giving me. I do go back within it, I make my own changes. I still need to do these things.
Grace Heerman:
I'd love to know how your supervisors regard AI. Are there parameters that they give you for what's acceptable and what isn't? Or is it a thing that you have to manage for yourself and determine for yourself at work?
Ryan Bascos:
I guess I can answer a bit on this one. I think my managers and my supervisors, they want me to use AI more than I do. So there are some times where I'm trying to solve a problem in code, I'm trying to work through it in my head, trying to figure it out, just like what school taught me to do. And my managers are like, "No, just talk to the bot." And then I'm like, "Okay, I'll talk to the bot."
So I type in my prompt, I say, "Hello, I have this situation here. Here's some background context on the information." And they're like, "No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't say all that. Just put the error in and then just press enter." So they want me to do less work and use the AI more often than what I instinctively feel like I should do.
Because what I've though of the AI in the past is a collaborator, like what Ritu said, where it's we're working together on something. Or even in the case of the mindset that I got from Renad is that we go from a direct developer creating the code ourselves to more of a creative director because we're telling the code what we want from it, but we're not actually going into the weeds and typing every single line.
So the way I thought of how AI should be used was different from how my supervisor though it would be used. I thought it would be treated like a person because it does do the functions of another person. It talks like a person, but my supervisors, in order to save time and to make work more efficient, they say use it more like a search engine where you can, instead of giving background context, you can give it the error directly. You could just say, "Here's the error log." And then without any other context, without any other explanation, the AI will look at your code and it will look at the error and then it will tell you the solution to that error without you having to give any additional information at all.
So in that case, I suppose the point here is that in order to make my work more efficient, I have to think of AI differently than how I would've thought of it in the past, like how Ritu and Renad were talking about how they used it, and I would have to unfortunately dehumanize the AI. I'm sorry if an AI is listening and they're our AI overlords and they're offended by that, but that's the way I've been taught, unfortunately.
Tom Stoneman:
Every episode we hear from our guests about how they recharge away from screens and tech. We were curious if that kind of intentional disconnection is something this generation thinks about or whether tech might be more integrated into their relaxation times. Ritu answered first.
Ritu Bhalodia:
Yeah, I would say it's pretty important for me to get some time in a day to disconnect from screens. Technology is such a big part of my life since my work involves being on a laptop all day. And then over time I've developed this habit of turning to my phone to scroll as a way to unwind, which is not good. And I've realized it can be really exhausting sometimes constantly staring at the screen on hours on end. And so I'm trying to be more mindful of stepping away and maybe going outside for a walk, or just having some kind of a mental reset. But it does definitely take ... I have to be mindful about it and go and do that instead of just turning to my phone.
Renad Morrar:
I think it depends on your lifestyle. So for me, in my case, I go to the gym every day. I lift weights. So when I do that, I make sure my phone, I throw it in my gym bag until I'm done with from the gym and then I'll pull it back out to check it. So in something like that, it is important for me to step out of the screens and the technology at least for a few hours. Or when I read, I make sure it's an actual book and not on my phone or on a Kindle.
But I do have to also admit that before I sleep at night, I do doom scroll on TikTok until I fall asleep. So I have a bad habit of doing that too, but I feel like I have the best of both worlds, I guess. I do have time where I am disconnected from technology and then I do still have a bad habit of it too.
Grace Heerman:
Yeah. Ryan, what about you?
Ryan Bascos:
Okay. This is going to sound so bad, you guys, but I don't take time away from technology as a priority at all. So I'm connected to some sort of electrical device a majority of the day.
And I'd say the biggest times where I'm really separated from it are when I'm taking my daily walk, because after lunch I like to take a walk around work. But even then that's not necessarily time away from technology itself. It's more like time away from everything. I have my thoughts about work. I take time away from work to relax and walk. It's not necessarily an anti-technology thing. It's an anti-work thing where I get to clear my mind. Even then sometimes I'll have some sort of YouTube video essay playing in my head or playing on my headphones as I walk. So even then, it's not necessarily a disconnection from all technology.
And what I do do for separating myself from the screen itself is I think there's this rule that my eye doctor told me. It's either every 20 minutes or every two hours you stare at something far away for 20 seconds in order to reset your eyes. Now, I know 20 minutes and two hours is kind of a big difference, but it's basically when my eyes get tired, I suppose. So in that case, for the sake of my eye health, I do separate myself from the screen. But in terms of separating myself from technology, I don't see that as necessarily a priority.
I will do some things outside of technology. I'll go over to the mall and just walk around a bit even with nothing playing my ears. Or I take judo classes now and that's like you definitely can't use your phone in judo class, but the reason why I do those things is not necessarily to separate myself from technology.
It's just other things that I do that happen to be away from it.
Grace Heerman:
That's really honest. That's an interesting answer. So do you feel like it's ... Going back to childhood really quickly for all of you, do you feel like being separated, having tech free time was something that your parents instilled in you or not necessarily? Was that not really a big value?
Ritu Bhalodia:
I would say growing up I had more of a disconnected lifestyle and it was just natural for me. I remember coming home from school, I would just do my homework really quickly and then I would immediately go outside to play, or go on my bike, or go to the pool or something. So back then for me, being active was just normal and I feel like we didn't have this level of technology at our fingertips. Whereas today it's just so incredibly easy to get distracted and unintentionally spend so much time looking at a screen.
Renad Morrar:
I think for me growing up, kind of like what Ritu said, technology wasn't what it was today. When I was younger, it was just like those desktop computers you would have and that was it. So it wasn't like you had the iPhones or anything like that. So even technology was still there in some way, I mean, for me, I would be done with school. I would do homework. I would hop on the computer, but at the same time, it wouldn't be for hours and hours. My parents did a good job with making sure we had time outside.
So I had a good mix of both where in a way there was that technology time, but I also had a lot more time outside and playing with my sisters and stuff like that. As to now, you actually see, I feel like less outside time for kids because technology is just way bigger than it used to be.
Ryan Bascos:
Yeah. I think I lived an opposite life to these two because technology permeated every second of my childhood. I am not going to lie. As far back as I can remember, I had this big TV in the living room and I just watched cartoons all day. I'd be the chubby kid on the couch eating ... I would get a big bowl of Trix or Fruity Pebbles. I'd eat that and watch Johnny Rest on the TV for hours, literal hours. And when I'm not doing that, there's Adobe Flash games on my desktop computer and then I play video games based on the cartoons that I was watching on the TV. So it's just back and forth between different technology.
And then my mom got an iPad and, oh my gosh, it got so much worse. I played Minecraft so often, man. And it's all because my parents, they immigrated here from the Philippines, so they spent a lot of time working. I was in between babysitters, especially when I was growing up. So they did spend a lot of time out of the house and they didn't necessarily get me to go outside as often. So I did spend so much time indoors just on technology. So I guess that really informs why I don't see pushing away technology as a priority in my life, but that's just the way I grew up. And honestly, it was a lot of fun.
Grace Heerman:
Cool. I love that. Love that perspective.
Tom Stoneman:
You going to ask me?
Grace Heerman:
Yeah, Tom, please tell us. Is it a big priority for you? Or is it harder than it used to be to step away? Or how do you feel about it?
Tom Stoneman:
Big time, yeah. Yeah. I mean, pretty clear, none of this was around when I was younger. I don't think I really got ... When you were talking about desktops, I was thinking that was my first introduction too, was into early desktops. Who cares, right? I mean, it's work and you go home and it's out of my mind. And then I worked at NVIDIA for a long time, and that was back then too, the games, it was all about games. So then I got into games and then laptops came out and they were powerful enough to run games and then that changed everything. So now I'm doing that.
And then you were talking about doom scrolling. So now I find myself quite often doing that. So going through the TikTok videos because they're just like, "Oh my God, what's next? What's next?"
Renad Morrar:
It traps you in a way.
Tom Stoneman:
Completely, right? But then I'm worse. I'll actually go on YouTube and seek out these park ranger, two-hour park ranger things and just leave that run and then fall asleep and wake up at 2:00 in the morning and the thing is still going and I'm like, "Oh God, this is not good for me." Anyway.
Grace Heerman:
We're all victims to it.
Tom Stoneman:
Yeah.
Ryan Bascos:
Oh, yeah. I actually want to talk about that a little bit more, like what you guys said about doom scrolling and how it hooks your brain. I actually noticed this when I was on Instagram. Instagram, there are so many different little panels, so many little buttons, like knobs and bells and whistles that you could mess with. You could get stuck in the app for hours and it will feel like five minutes past and you'll realize just how much of a stranglehold it has on your brain.
I'm really intimidated by Instagram, but it's one of the ways I keep up with the world. I keep up with some of the people I know, my family. My dad, whenever he posts on Facebook, it also pops up in Instagram. So there's a push and pull there. So on the one hand, I want to stay connected, but on the other hand, it's a really dangerous, genuinely harmful thing for your brain because it has that dopamine trap. I just want to send the message out there: be really careful with all of that scrolling because you have to stop the damage being done to your brain before it's too late.
Tom Stoneman:
Yeah. It's built to be addictive.
Ryan Bascos:
Exactly.
Tom Stoneman:
I mean, like what you were talking about at work, I'm the same way too. I'll be doing stuff and then to get away from ... Sometimes we go for walks. And so then if I'm out walking or doing any kind of exercise, then I ... Well, okay. If I'm on a stationary bike, I'll watch stuff. But for the most part, but when I'm sitting at my desk, if I'm sitting there and doing stuff and I need a second to get away, I do the exact same thing. I pick up my phone, which is not doing anything. It's just more digital stuff.
Grace Heerman:
And to bring it back to AI too, we've had conversations on recent episodes about how even engaging with GPT or Claude, or whatever, is becoming addictive too in some ways. I mean, there's always another response. There's another, "Do you want me to do this next?" There's another question to answer. It seems like it's designed in a way probably to keep us hooked.
Tom Stoneman:
All right. Let's look at the future. I think it's coming faster than we all though it would. So Renad, I'll start with you. Is there something you really don't want AI to do for you even if it could? Some kind of line you've drawn that you never want AI to be involved in?
Renad Morrar:
I think I definitely wouldn't want AI to completely communicate for me. I might use it to help me organize my thoughts, or find a better way to word something, especially professionally, but I wouldn't want it to have full conversations or responding to people for me. I still want to communicate with people using my words instead of going to AI, "Okay, here, this is what this person said, what should I say back?" I don't want it to do that at that level of communicating when it comes to communicating with someone.
Tom Stoneman:
Agree with that one. Ryan?
Ryan Bascos:
Honestly, currently at least, right now, I see AI as more of just like any other software tool. If I need a search engine, I have Google, but AI also acts as Google. Or if I need some sort of drawing engine, because you could prompt AI and it'll make a drawing for you, right? Oh, it's just a substitute for a different tool like Blender or Crita that you could use for drawing instead. So me personally, I don't have that much of an attachment to it. It's sort of like my personal attachment goes as far as it would to any other technology.
Grace Heerman:
When you think about your career in the future, do you have fears around the way AI could impact your career? Or does it change the way you think about your future at work?
Ryan Bascos:
Yeah, to some degree. Okay, thinking with common sense, you would think that, oh, AI is so much faster and more efficient than a human. So you would think, oh, a company would probably want to optimize their budget by just using the AI instead of a human. I think we've seen that trend with people in the creative industries, I think. I've heard that a lot of artists have been laid off, for example, but I don't know if that'll be necessarily the case in all industries. It's a pattern we're seeing, but I don't know if it'll be the norm. The reason I think this is because of something I learned in high school about the invention of the cotton gin.
Back when slaves were in America, they were farming cotton and they had to pick cotton out of the cotton plants. The inventor of the cotton gin created it as a way to reduce the amount of human labor required for cotton harvesting. But in the end, it ended up actually getting more people into the cotton industry.
And I'm thinking it's possible something similar will happen with AI where you'd think that AI would optimize the people out of the equation, but it's also possible that companies would realize that AI can make their work far more efficient, so they'll hire more people to use the AI. It's either they'll hire more people or they'll hire the same amount of people and get more work done. So for that reason, I'm not entirely convinced that AI will steal our jobs and completely invalidate the human value, the value of a human employee.
Tom Stoneman:
Yeah, it's funny when you were talking about the creative side. I still have a lot of friends in the music industry and they're scared. Everybody's scared because royalties are a mess, nobody knows if they're going to get paid. But what's really amazing is there are people who are starting to use AI as a collaboration tool, just like you would in software. So instead of just thinking of it as the enemy that's just going to replace me, they're using it to create things that you could never do before. So you can have a piece that has a different sound for every note infinitely, or things that there's no way any synthesizer would ever be fast enough to do. So there are ways around these things, but it is scary.
How about you, Ritu, on the same question?
Ritu Bhalodia:
I think for now, I agree with what Ryan said as well, that it is a powerful tool but it still needs humans to manage it or we still need to prompt it to do exactly what we want it to do. So for now, I don't think it's changed what I'm aiming for, but maybe we'll see how it evolves over time and how it changes in the future, and that might be a different question that ...
Renad Morrar:
Well, since I am in the technology industry, there is in the back of my head that, "Okay, yeah, coding is going to be taken over fully at some point." So in my head, sometimes I feel like, "Okay, maybe I need to pivot a little bit for the future," which isn't quite a bad thing because it also helps me look at what else am I good at? So for example, since AI is going the way it is and in my head, "Okay, so coding isn't something that I should only be focused on." So I'm thinking other things like product management maybe in the future, or entrepreneurship, or something like that. So something that can also that I can have both of. So in career-wise, that's the way I'm thinking about it because in the back of your head it is something you're going to be worried about in the future, the way it's going now.
Grace Heerman:
That's great. I think that relates to what Ryan was saying at school about writing essays with ChatGPT. It's like you could do it, but ultimately the output won't be as good anyway, and you're still going to have to ... The challenge is in differentiating yourself from it. There's still value in that, and that'll still be your differentiating factor.
Tom Stoneman:
All right. Now the bonus question here. So we ask everybody this, and Ritu, I think we'll go ahead and start with you. Is there anything you can think of that AI will be able to do in the future, near term, long term, doesn't matter, that's never been done before? Anything?
Ritu Bhalodia:
I think it would be really cool if it was applied to the science and healthcare industry, specifically solving problems that haven't been solved so far. For example, maybe cancer, it could be helpful to at least maybe predict science earlier on or even provide a better treatment plan for specific individuals. And I think that would be really cool and really helpful for us.
Tom Stoneman:
Ryan?
Ryan Bascos:
Okay. I don't want to get too political, but this is just an idea I had where AI can have a role in government. Because every human being, they're going to have their own personal background and interests that would conflict with the majority, or conflict with every individual demographic that they have to manage. But an AI would have a more an objective conclusion to make about what to do with policy.
But the problem is somebody has to control that AI, somebody has to prompt that AI, and somebody has to create the inner workings of it. So we're going to have some bias somewhere. Let's say an AI is used in government. We might see a suspicious favorability of that AI towards Silicon Valley because they're the ones making it.
So it's not a perfect concept, but I do think there is some universe out there where in the future we do see some sort of AI having a role in government. It's going to be terrifying, but if the proper case is made, I'm hoping some people will at least give it a chance.
Tom Stoneman:
Cool. And Renad, since you want to be an entrepreneur, don't give away your big idea, but ...
Renad Morrar:
I think something that we already see a little is AI combined with robotics. But I think in the future we're going to see that on a bigger scale, especially when it comes to services and physical work. So for example, maybe one day you have an AI-powered robotics team helping with construction. Or you go into the beauty industry and a robot can perform a facial or makeup application. Or maybe even have an AI personal trainer at the gym.
Ryan Bascos:
A personal trainer with no muscles.
Tom Stoneman:
Well, you could have muscles, right? Face muscles.
Renad Morrar:
You can, yeah.
Tom Stoneman:
I mean, by then, maybe you could grow them, right?
Renad Morrar:
Yeah, exactly.
Tom Stoneman:
The people at the beginning of their careers have the most at stake in how AI technology develops, and yet theirs are rarely the voices we hear in these conversations. We're grateful to Ryan, Renad, and Ritu for coming on this show and offering the perspective of newer employees, not executives, founders, or industry analysts. What came through was something refreshing, genuine uncertainty, curiosity, and in at least one case, reluctance. But underneath it all, a generation that is paying attention and taking it seriously.
Thank you for listening to The Intelligent Enterprise, a podcast where we get inside big ideas by getting outside of them. I've been your host, Tom Stoneman. Please remember to follow the podcast and leave a comment or review wherever you get your shows. See you next time.