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AI is not here to think for you — it is here to assist your thinking. Ralph and Terry break down why being the human in the loop is the most critical AI principle for professionals, share a free Microsoft AI certification path, and set up the most powerful story of the series: one professional who went from help desk to Head of AI in 18 months.
The Leadership Sovereignty Podcast, hosted by Ralph E. Owens II and co-hosted by Terry Baylor, is a career acceleration platform
Leadership isn’t just a skill — it’s a career strategy for professionals seeking growth, influence, and promotion.
Hosted by Ralph Owens, Chief Information Officer, and Terry Baylor, CEO of a healthcare technology startup, the podcast delivers practical, real-world leadership strategies you can apply immediately. Each episode focuses on increasing visibility, navigating corporate dynamics, preparing for promotion, and leading beyond your title.
Expect short, high-impact conversations designed to help you think, act, and position yourself like a senior leader before you’re given the title.
You’re not just an employee. You’re the CEO of your career.
New episodes are released bi-weekly.
Balancing AI assistance with
human judgement, especially with
sensitive tasks, right?
Again, if this AI is not the
replacement for you to think
right?
We want to make sure that we,
we, we drive this point home.
It isn't it does not think for
you, it just assist you in your
thinking process, right?
There's a difference.
You can't just give in and lean
totally over reliant upon AI for
all of your judgement and
decisions.
You can't do that.
The way you need to use it is in
a way that actually assist you
in your thinking process so that
you can be more productive and
effective.
I mean, any thoughts there too
look?
And I don't, I don't want, I
don't want all my Bible friends
to take this too far out of
context.
OK, but I'm just going to use it
as an example, right?
The Bible says a multitude of
council right now, typically
we're talking about mentors and
coaches and parents.
And but you know what?
There is a level of counsel that
you can get from Jennifer AIIAI,
and we talked about it.
Come on.
Right.
You're prepping for an
interview.
That's counsel, right?
You are trying to find.
Look, my, I'm going to tell this
story, man.
And Ralph, we definitely have to
bring some over.
So Shamika has gotten into
making cinnamon rolls.
Brah, if I could scale, Cinnabon
would be in trouble.
That's all I'm going to tell you
right now.
My gosh.
My God.
So Shameek was like, so you go
make a song.
I was like cinnamon rolls,
cinnamon rolls, cinnamon rolls,
cinnamon.
So there's a hidden joke there,
y'all?
Because Jerry makes that song up
for everything that should be.
You had me singing 11 time.
What?
Was it cobbler?
It's the cobbler, man.
I'm telling my wife is a master
is a master man Baker.
I mean, she is just I'm and I'm
not.
I mean, she is mean, bro, mean.
So anyway, she's making I'm a
witness.
She's making the cinnamon rolls,
right?
And this is only her second time
making them.
And so, you know, when it comes
to baking, I mean, she's like, I
am about the golf swing, right?
The nuance, the detail, the
micro steps, right?
And so she and she was saying
this is probably the most
intricate thing that she's ever
baked because of all the steps
and the rising of the yeast and
all this kind of stuff.
Well, what happened is, man, I
was in dude, I was trying to get
her two factor done.
I'm bothering her and the
ingredients got mixed out of
order and so there's something
that's supposed to happen with
either the yeast or the
reactions and all this kind of
stuff.
And all I know is that the dry
and the wet got mixed out of
order.
My wife got with the assistant
and was like, can I salvage my
mixture?
And so she went to Gin AI on
that.
Can she salvage her fixture?
Can she salvage the mixture?
And it was amazing that it gave
her steps on how to salvage it.
I said, look, I don't know.
Now, me personally, I was like,
look, I don't know anything
about, you know, how this is
supposed to go, but I believe
the inputs are going to be worth
it on the outputs.
That's all I was saying, man.
Ralph at the end of it, bro, it
was amazing.
I said, babe, I'm be honest with
you.
I don't know nothing about the
dries and the wets and mixing
them, but this stuff is amazing.
But she was able to go get
counsel on how to move forward.
This was baking.
This was real time bro.
So what I hear you say, what I
hear you saying is that there's
a biblical concept in being able
to go get counsel.
Yes, the Bible says there's
safety in it.
There's safety in it.
Safety, right?
And what what is counsel?
Counsel is, is wise knowledge
based on experience, right?
And the, the ability for this
tool to be able to give you
counsel on because to Terry's
point, right, let's use this
example.
Shamika, his wife is a master
Baker.
Does she know how to chop wood?
Probably not right?
We all can't be experts at
everything, but this tool can
give you an abundance of counsel
on many different things, right.
So it's it's just man, it's just
a fantastic story.
And yeah, tell, tell Sister Pale
I'll be.
Oh my God, what they mean?
Bro, I'm not even go.
I'm not even go play with you.
That sound like some some some
good stuff with some coffee
there to me.
Hey, hey.
I have to admit you saw me this
morning.
I have to go.
It was so good.
I said let me go, get me some,
let me go.
That's.
What I'm saying?
Sir, I have to top it off.
That's what I'm talking about.
That's a great story, Terry.
Thank.
Thanks for sharing that.
And so and, you know, just on on
the whole ethical
considerations, just don't be so
over relying on it, right?
Understand that it's here to
help you through your thinking
process.
It's not here to think for you,
right?
Maintain a good balance between,
you know, automation and a human
touch, right.
I was at a conference this week
and the term, because
everybody's talking about AI,
right?
The term that they kept using
and they kept hammering home was
human in the loop, right?
That means no matter what
process that AI is doing, there
has to be a human interaction in
it to make sure that it has the
right outcome.
And you want to always be the
human, right?
You want to make sure that
you're, that you're driving the
conversation and that it's only
helping you.
So, so let's talk about keeping
your skills fresh, right?
You know, we, we kind of, we've
mentioned before the tools that
we like to use, you know, things
of that nature.
But I think, Terry, I think you
got a great example of something
that you have no.
Yeah.
So initially, man, I had signed
up Shamika and I to actually go
through this class and it was
actually designed to get women
involved in AI and it was by
Microsoft.
They have a initiative called
the Microsoft a reactor.
And man, and you know me,
anytime there's a challenge,
right?
I'm, I'm all for it.
And so I, at least when it first
rolled out, they were like, Hey,
the most 100 aggressive learners
here, you guys are going to get
a free testing for AI99900.
So if you guys go through this
class, you will have the ability
to test and get your AI900
certification and it's through
the Microsoft Reactor, Ralph, I
believe I shared that link.
So make sure we add it to those
resources.
And seriously, what it is, man,
it's about a six to eight week
course and it's A at this pace
is self pace.
You can go out and you know, go
through the classes.
So I have Noah signed up for it.
And so he's through the second
week now.
And this is coming from scratch,
right?
Noah knows very, he knew very
little about Azure, very little
about the micro ecosystem from
a, from a Azure standpoint, no,
he's very technically inclined.
You know, he's built his own PC
and I learned some things from
that experience.
He does animations, he does 3D
graphic creation.
And so he's very tech,
technically savvy, and so I'm
interested in how he kind of
performs through this process.
And so I've been talking to him
about, Hey, how was the class
son?
He was like that.
It, it makes sense.
I'm learning.
So he's through Week 2 right
now.
But yes, they Microsoft has some
wonderful initiatives out there
to get you trained up.
And this is, this is how to how
to create generative AI
platform, right?
And how to, how to leverage
Copilot in that in whatever
form, you know, based on
whatever it is you're trying to
create.
Yeah, that's one of the, that is
it's, it's strong.
That's all I can say.
And like I said, Noah 17 and,
you know, he's, he's grasping
the concepts so teaches you, you
know, the basis of Azure and
cloud, you know, infrastructure
first.
So it's a great like technical
foundation for where we are
today.
Oh.
Man, that's fantastic, that's
fantastic.
So just a, a, a quick note, what
we've decided to do is to create
an AI toolkit for anyone who
wants it for free.
If you go to
leadershipsaudi.com/AI, you can
download this toolkit And, and
what we'll do is we'll make sure
that that toolkit contains that
course that Terry talked about
and any other courses that we
have that we'd like to share
along with links to the tools
that we actually like to use.
You've heard us mention Copilot,
you've heard us mention Gemini
and a ChatGPT, and they were
also going to include some
templates, prompting templates
so that you could just copy and
paste and kind of fill in your
own information.
That'll get you a head start on
being able to use Gen.
AI today, right?
You won't have to wait.
You can get started, you know,
immediately.
So just want to make that
resource available to anybody.
Again, the whole purpose of why
we're here is to help you level
up your career right now.
At this point in history, Gen.
AI is an advantage that you can
take advantage of, a tool that
you can take advantage of right
now to level up on your career.
So we encourage everybody who's
listening to to go out and
download that resource.
So, Ralph, can I, can I tell you
something right?
So Ralph, Ralph has said
something, right?
He said it a couple times.
He said this time in history.
So let me take you guys back a
few years.
This is maybe 2003.
I think that's when the iPhone
came out that that was a 2007.
That was a moment in history,
right?
And I had a friend leading up to
that, probably I met him.
We're really kind of reconnected
around like 98.
And he kept telling me, Terry,
we need to get some Apple stock
because it was down to like
$70.00.
I was like, Oh yeah, Because he
knew I was Apple guy, man, that
time in history happened, man.
And you know, it got past me.
There are technical shifts and
you know, in the in the techno
fear is what I'll call it that
change their, you know, VM Ware
was one of those things, right?
Virtualization, right.
Virtualization is really what
led to what we are in the cloud
today.
It is.
It did.
That was a monumental shift,
virtualization.
Now we don't.
We didn't think.
We didn't.
We didn't talk about that
anymore.
It's not even conversation
anymore.
I, I, I talked to somebody the
other day who had VM Ware and I
kind of looked at them like they
were strange.
Like really?
Exactly.
But back 2007, Ralph 2008,
that's really when we connected.
It was the center of the
universe for technology.
And we saw it, real, real world
life scenario.
Terry and I saw it and we we
knew that it was the future and
chased this and it opened up all
kind of doors and opportunities.
Where we are today, look, we
were rolling out man 50, we were
what, 50-60 web servers over a
weekend, man.
We we were timing them out that
orchestrator anyway, we just see
you guys could tell we getting
on our techno geek.
But again, but that was a moment
in time and that moment in time
for US opened up so many
opportunities, right.
Rav goes off to California.
I end up being an infrastructure
director.
I end up being able to move to
Houston twice because of what I
mean with that stuff.
Yeah.
But we're at a This is another
one of those moments in time
where if you get it and you're
not it, it hasn't passed you by.
It's still early.
It's super early still.
Early, super early, right?
You go out and get AAI
certificate, kind of like what
Terry was talking about in that
course.
You get AAI certificate right?
Now, I guarantee you that that
is going to help increase your
salary, right?
Because most people are not
paying attention to this.
It's they, they, they just think
it's a buzzword that's going to
go away, right?
They, they're building, they're
building a, a date AAI data
center here in Texas.
What is that called?
A Stargate project.
They call them super data
centers, right?
For those who don't know what a
GPU is, a GPU is like a special
processor, right?
This thing is supposed to have
hundreds of thousands of GPUs in
it all working together, you
know, to to to, to, to move AI
like the largest shift in AI on
the planet, right?
Like these people are not
putting this money into this
stuff because it's cool.
They understand the future in it
and if you want to be able to
leverage that, you got to get
started now for.
Sure, for sure.
Got to get thank you for
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Sovereignty Podcast.
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