Eli Davis: Welcome everybody to artificial intelligence, real talk, AI with Eli.
I am very excited to have somebody who I have been getting, trying to connect with for a very long time.
You have a young man kinda around my son's age, you know, so this is a very interesting topic or conversation that I want to have.
He's also an industrial engineer.
That's the same thing my son is as well.
He went to school for industrial.
So I'm very excited and very happy to have Zach Kinsler.
Am I saying your name correctly?
Zach?
Zach Kinzler: Yes, perfectly.
You nailed it.
Eli Davis: And this is a little bit about Zach.
So as an AI educator advocate and host of the Smarter Campus Podcast, where he explores how AI is transforming learning in higher education, with a background in industrial engineering and business analytics from the University of Sandy Aigo, Zach works closely with students, educators, and institutions.
Through Bootle Box to brew, to bridge the gap between AI and education, passionate about empowering students to leverage AI for the academic and career growth.
He's dedicated to fostering meaningful conversations that shape the future of learning what's going on.
Zach?
Zach Kinzler: Thank so much for being here.
I feel like I have nothing else to say.
You kind of nailed I'm currently Inman Montana.
That's the only thing.
I was left out there so.
Eli Davis: Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Zach Kinzler: Yeah I'm in Bozeman, Montana.
I don't know, I've been in ai.
I like to say like before AI was cool, I used to like mess around with like predictive sports algorithms and that turns out it's ai.
But I've been in gen AI since came out.
My, I'll never forget the date chat, GBT came out my like best friend in college.
We were sitting in the front of an engineering class and like punched me and was like, Hey.
Look at this, and Chad, GBT just did our thing that he was doing on the board.
And then from that moment on, I just used it for every single little thing.
And then I realized like one thing led to another and I was like, I should probably talk to people about this.
This is crazy.
Like I'm doing all my schoolwork with it, but like learning.
And then I kind of realized that a lot of kids were doing all their schoolwork with it and not learning.
I was just like, wow, this is weird.
So then I just taught myself a bunch of machine learning stuff.
I worked for a small startup was worked as an ML engineer, was super not great at that, realized they're like humans a lot more than I like computers.
And I just kinda started interviewing college kids going on podcasts and then that's how I landed.
My job at Poodle Box and I don't know, I love my job.
I just get to jump on Zoom calls and help teachers, faculty, students, people just use AI and learn.
And I get to like have cool conversations like this with people from all over.
So it's yeah.
Eli Davis: with that.
What have you learned about working with people and introducing them or to further getting them to explore artificial intelligence and education?
What some of the themes or trends that you see?
Zach Kinzler: There's a lot, themes and trends I would say, but like some of 'em is like excitement, right?
A lot of people want.
They wanna learn.
They wanna know.
And it's, 'cause the thing is it's a bunch of really smart people most of the time.
You know, like these PhD faculties or college students or things like that.
It's like these kids, students, everyone, most of the people that wanna learn like that want to know.
There's like this excitement, but this like overwhelming energy.
Right.
I kind of describe it as.
You know when you have a to-do list and you have 50 things to do, but you can't even do one of them 'cause you're so worried about getting all of them down at the same time.
Like that's where those super excited people are.
And then the like, the not so excited people that scared is it's really the same feeling in my opinion.
One's just like excited and the other one's like scared, but it's both in that like, there's so much going on.
I have no idea what to do.
And there's a lot of like, misconception, right?
Like people are really good at reading the top of an article and like thinking they know, and then taking that back to a university and then like influencing others with that.
There's a lot of misunderstanding about security.
Like one thing that I always preach to people is that like, chat, GBT doesn't care about your social security number or your, like, proprietary information.
And that's a huge misconception in my opinion.
It's like.
They wanna know why you think and why you do what you do.
So then you can predict it's just a giant predicting machine.
And then the other kind of common trend with faculty and universities is that they think we're way behind.
Like I talk to so many people that are like, oh, you know, we're way behind.
And it's like, everyone's behind.
I'm behind.
I read this stuff every day and I'm behind and it's like.
I dunno.
I think the conversation needs to be opened more.
That's like a trend that I've been finding.
It's like if the people that were really excited in a good way talk to the people that were really excited in a bad way and actually talked about it instead of just like telling the other one that they were wrong, I think everyone would kind of land in the middle more.
But it's changing.
So in the last, I would say six months, like holistically, I've seen a change of, like, even if you're like, I hate this stuff, you realize it's time we need to like talk about it.
you need to talk about why you hate it and you need to explain like the people that hate it aren't just saying they hate it.
They're saying I hate it for like x, y, and Z reasons.
And even that's, I mean, that's the thing I tell people is like, it does the world, it does yourself, it does society no good.
If you just bury your head in the sand and say, this sucks, I'm not using it.
Like if you're going to say you don't like it.
So explain to me like you don't like it because of the security, or you don't like it because of the environmental impact or limiting creativity.
'cause usually once those conversations get going, they can find ways into liking it so that they can kind of do use it right.
Eli Davis: So, so, do you think that people say that they don't like it because they haven't used it?
You just are unaware of the possibilities or they've used it and just like, yeah, this is not for me.
Zach Kinzler: So like so many different reasons.
I mean, a lot of the creative side of things like the creatives industry is they're kind of just think it's disruptive in a. in a way that it's gonna kind of take away the art and what they've dedicated their life to really and fair.
I totally honestly agree with a lot of that.
Like I work with some comic stu students that do like graphic design and stuff like that, and there's a lot of scarcity around.
I don't have to do this anymore.
You know, like this thing is better than me at doing this in a hundredth of the time and hundredth of the cost.
And then like those people I've realized it's like they kind of fight it, right?
And they're like, I'm not gonna use it.
But then everyone I've talked to about that, it's like you gotta educate people and being like, you gotta use this stuff.
'cause what I always say is like AI's not gonna take your job.
Someone that knows how to use AI is gonna take your job.
And like those people.
Yeah, I can make great graphic design with chat GBT right now, but like, I don't, And someone that's really good at graphic design can probably make a hundred times better, a hundred times faster than I can with chat GBT.
But then even some, get some faculty that faculty really still like, don't believe in it and they believe that it's just cheating and it's ruining education and.
Those same faculty are usually the ones that kinda live and die by white papers is what I like to say.
Like where they say if it's not published, and then those are the same faculty that still use AI detectors.
So I usually have a good conversation with them about how like there's, here's 20 white papers that prove like why those don't work.
And if that doesn't work, like the one thing is every time you put.
Something into an AI detector, it's more than likely using AI to detect if it's using ai.
So if you're gonna like do that, it's kind of like a, what do you know what I mean?
Like, but yeah, it's so many varied reasons and whys, but I think they're all kind of converging a little bit, which is good.
Eli Davis: Okay.
So, we had a little conversation before and you said that you were doing some work in Africa.
Zach Kinzler: yeah.
Eli Davis: Yeah.
So, you know, I have been lucky enough to go to Fulbright to have two Fulbrights in Africa Ghana and Nigeria.
And I am just really interested in how you are bringing artificial intelligence to to Africa.
Lemme just let the audience know here.
One of the things that I learned when we went to Africa, it was that Africa had a jump when it came to landlines and cell phones in rural Africa, they didn't have many landlines.
Landlines was a scarcity, but when the cell phone came.
Everybody was able to get a cell phone, you know what I mean?
Because landlines were no longer needed.
It was a satellite and they were able to have access.
So, and that was a huge jump in the with the access to information that, africa had.
So, do you read any of Y Noah Harri?
He
Zach Kinzler: I should though send it to me.
Eli Davis: Yeah, I will.
He has two books.
One is called Sapiens and one is called nexus, and his Nexus book is all about information.
He, you know, he antagonized, he says that artificial intelligence is really good, but he also says that it is, we need to make sure that we use it in a particular way because it has this ability to create information, you know.
So, with that, what kind of information is being created in Africa?
With Bootle company, Buddha Bot.
Zach Kinzler: I would like to say one thing I learned recently from my friend Davey, I'm not even gonna attempt to pronounce his last name in Rwanda.
He said he taught me that.
Like Africa holds, I think 17, 18% of the world's population but holds about 0.3% of AI's training data.
So for everyone listening, like what that means is that there's a lot of people in Africa doing a lot of things, but AI knows nothing about it.
And when you're asking AI questions, it's gonna be biased and it leaves out.
African information most of the time, African languages.
So really, I mean, how I got introduced to Africa is just, I did some LinkedIn coaching before I worked here, so I would like help people like post on LinkedIn and like how to use that to get a job and stuff like that.
And a school in South Africa reached out to me and I just went and did a class there.
And when I was doing a class there one of the students reached out to me and I had did some one-on-one work with him.
And then I started working here.
And I was like, Hey, Juan Dele, like try using Bootle Box.
'cause I was trying to get students to use it in the United States.
Like, wouldn't even touch it.
They wouldn't look at it.
They're like, this sucks.
It doesn't do my homework for me.
Gave it to Juan Dele, then of left for 3 weeks.
Didn't really talk to him.
Then came back and he had designed drones.
He had put used Plexity into chat GBT to understand like how to explain this to people in rural parts of Africa.
Another kid named Tomi had started like a graphic design company with Bootle Box and like was like selling the things.
And then this kid named, who's like a great friend of mine now like was using it to help with this 3D, 3D printing business.
And it was like a light bulb to me.
I was just like, I couldn't give it to these US kids for free.
And they were telling me it's crappy and I give it to these kids and they're like.
Oh, I'm so sorry.
I shared it with all my friends and I was like, no, that's amazing.
And then they just did all this incredible stuff and then that was kind of what got me excited about it.
'cause I'm from Montana.
I've never met anyone from Africa.
I don't know any, I'm traveled to Africa.
But it was like a passion, still passion of mine.
Now it's something that I'm like working.
I presented at the AI.
Invention in Kenya three weeks ago about AI and like, pretty much all that we're doing in Bootle Box is, I'm pretty much just giving it out to kids for free and kind of just keeping 'em a part of the conversation.
Every Friday and Tuesday, once a month, the third, Friday and Tuesday of the month I hold like a leadership council with all my students from around the United States and the world, and pretty much, I think we have about 25 kids from Africa now, and they'll just hop on.
They get to talk to kids from the US, from Australia.
They have students from all over the world.
But I mean, the thing I always like to say is the meetings on Fridays are at 3:00 PM Eastern and that's about 1:00 AM Ghanaian time, and I think midnight South African time, They never miss the meeting.
The kids in Africa like never missed my meeting, and I have about 30%.
Like showing up rate from kids in the United States and it's just, all I'm doing is I'm giving it out to students and they can work collaboratively.
I don't speak any African languages, but I've been told Bootle Box is really good at African languages.
And what the students there have used it for is like, you know, this is a new concept to me.
It's like.
In Ulu, which is a native tongue of South Africa, which there's 13 of apparent, I've recently learned.
They, there's no word for like a robot, right?
Or like for artificial intelligence.
So it's hard to teach people in like rural areas, like what that stuff means.
So they've used Boole Box to create stories in ulu that can kind of explain.
I'm actually speaking at a webinar on Thursday this week to a bunch of South African professors.
I work with, I work with a school in Rwanda and a student in Rwanda, who's a good friend of mine now, Kenya.
We work really closely with a few students and Ghana.
Starting a few conversations in there with, actually I met a person at a conference last week and he's working a lot with students in Africa.
And 'cause I didn't really realize that the, until I started doing this, like you said, once the cell phone became modernized, most people in Africa have a cell phone.
And it's really this AI thing, I mean.
It needs to be talked about that, you know, the training data is not the same, right?
There's less representation of African training data, but like from what I've seen, like the rest of the world's gonna, like these kids in Africa are doing crazy cool stuff and they're just gonna continue to do crazy cool stuff and I just want to like.
help and be the tiniest bit of catalyst into giving someone an opportunity if they didn't think they could have it before.
And it's something that I'm gonna continue to do forever regardless of where I'm at, company wise, things like that.
Bootle Box is doing everything they can to support students in Africa, and it's something that I'm gonna do cry forever 'cause it's super cool and it's something that I, yeah.
Eli Davis: Okay, cool.
That's what's up, man.
What made me, what came to my mind was I have a really good friend I call it 73, because we were both born in 1973, you know, Sade Collins, and she has a school in Cameroon.
So I'm going to most definitely send this podcast to Sade so she could, you know, start to you know, reach out to you.
I can send you her information, you can reach out to her.
She's a little skeptical about artificial intelligence.
I tried to put her on a couple years ago, you know, when it I was like come on, Sade, come on.
73. And she's like, I don't know.
You know, just fearful.
asking her son about it.
You know, he was like, yeah, it is just this little thing that you could just, you know, some people are doing some bad homework with, you know, but you know, so, but this is a really good place for you to explain what Boodle Box is.
I.
Zach Kinzler: Yeah.
So high level brutal box is a conglomerate of all the large language model providers in one place.
So what I mean by that is you can use chat, GBT, quad, Gemini, perplexity, and a few that if I say most people aren't gonna really know what they are but you can use chat GBT four oh within Bootle Box and it's safe.
Meaning no models are used to train on any of our data that we provide.
So like I said, when I said like one of the, we were talking about worries of teachers and stuff, everyone in the world is really worried that say open AI is gonna take my proprietary student data.
Like I said, like they don't really care about your student data, but even if you did upload student data in Bootle Box, it's completely secure.
I mean, obviously disclaimers based on your university's policies and things like that, but were FERPA compliant.
My joke is all of the acronyms that I don't know what they stand for, but that need to be clicked for higher education.
Were all of those things.
And then as well as that, it's environmentally friendly.
So we have this technology that we've created called, token reduction technology.
So high level, what that means is since we are super safe and we don't care about training models on any of your data, we inherently can use large language models more efficiently than they can use themselves.
So we use about 80% less tokens per call.
So it's like 80% better for the environment.
And then as well as that, everything's collaborative.
So if you've ever used Google Doc or anything like that, you can do that within Bootle Box in a chat GBT chat.
So me and Eli here could be asking each other questions and then we could call chat GBT into the conversation and it could understand what me and Eli were talking about.
And continue.
You can have up to 500 people in a group chat.
I don't know why you would ever do that.
Seems super hectic and aggressive, but you can and then.
Really, it's an AI literacy tool.
So this is one thing that I'm really excited about for like students in Africa.
starting conversation.
'cause there's similar beliefs like that in like Barbados, Jamaica, stuff like that.
It's called a coach mode, which what it'll do is it will give you recommendations on how to use AI while you're using ai.
So it's like, if I asked chat GBT, write this email.
I didn't give it any more context.
It's gonna write me an email, but then at the bottom it's gonna say you should provide the person you're writing it to, the tone you want, all of that.
So Bootle Box is all about equitable access to ai, so you get unlimited access to all of the paid models in a very affordable environment.
Affordable AI education.
So it's like it will teach you how to become fluent in AI by using it.
And that is how we as humans learn, is by doing.
So it's an AI fluency, AI literacy.
I like to, I'm trying to think of a better tagline for this.
So anyone listening, if you have any recommendations, let me know.
It's like the people's ai, so we give you affordable access.
A collaborative, secure environment that allows you to become AI literate instead of AI reliant, which is necessary for the future.
Eli Davis: Real quick.
That's a real cool like you just wrapping it up, just like super, super amazing and super dope, you know?
It's very interesting.
You know, I'm old school and I pledge the fraternity Omegas High five way back in 1995.
And if you do the math, that's 30 years.
Zach Kinzler: Yeah.
Eli Davis: So we just had our 30 year anniversary.
And one, quite a few of 'em are some successful, very successful people.
And we we're sitting there and one, Quan Dorsey Quan was like hey man, we gotta get these people onto a Ai Eli.
You gotta introduce 'em to 'em.
And I'm sitting there and you know, it was kind of some reluctancy.
Next thing you know, I showed Del Quan a couple of things.
One person came in there, another person I put up AI and video and how it can read the room.
And I had those fellas hooked, you know, I'm absolutely hooked.
So, yeah, the benefit of artificial intelligence is just, is for me.
And even with my creativity, you know what I mean?
it is, it's an extension.
there's no way that I would be able to play the guitar.
The way, you know, I can make no sound like I can, you know, playing the guitar, but I need that guitar to create that sound, you know what I mean?
And I was thinking about creative people like what if somebody did some creative art and then put it into artificial intelligence and started to assist and modify and use that as part of it too.
You know, I think that is absolutely amazing.
Okay, so, so, because I don't want to take too much of your time, but I do want to talk about your podcast.
You said Yeah, go ahead.
Go ahead.
Zach Kinzler: The one thing I will say on the last point is like.
I use it for cooking.
I'm a huge cook, and like using chat GBT for cooking is like my favorite way to get people to like, realize how cool it is.
You know, it's like, go take a picture of your fridge and be like, yo, what can I whip up with all of this?
And it'll blow your mind.
But my podcast, I have a podcast called Smarter Campus Podcast.
I interview students, faculty, teachers from all over the world.
I post them about once to twice a week.
It's on all platforms.
I'm on LinkedIn Zach Kinsler.
I post videos.
Two to four times a week about like making complicated things simple.
So I take AI buzzwords and kind of just like explain to them what they mean.
'cause like a big thing in my opinion is the average person nowadays is often confused by all of the technical jargon that's thrown around.
And that technical jargon really isn't that complicated.
But people just act like it is.
So I try to.
Take what's complicated, explain it to people simply, and then my podcast is a lot less of me talking And a lot more of me just asking some educator like, tell me about yourself.
How's life been for the last three years?
And they kind of just, it's cool.
like I know a lot of the folks on LinkedIn that people follow, like I've interviewed all those.
Big ed tech guys like Jason Golia and Don Winkle and people.
But I try to interview just like very normal professors that don't talk about this stuff too much.
'cause it's very, I don't know, it's insightful.
And everyone's struggling and everyone's doing well at this time, is what I would like to say for, if you're listening to this, you're like interested in ai, like you're already 95% ahead of the general population.
Eli Davis: Yeah.
Yeah.
That's one of the things that I try to get people to understand.
I you were earlier in the conversation you said that we are all behind.
You think about starting something at a foundational level, you know what I mean?
And only being, having access to this kind of artificial intelligence, these LLMs.
It is only been a couple years, you know, and it's going to be around, you know what I mean?
It's going to be around.
They got so many different things.
So, one of the cool things that I've just listening to you and we are thinking, I'm thinking about Bootle Box.
And I'm thinking about kind of in the K 12 setting, university setting, college setting.
Said that they you have the ability to collaborate within ai collaborate on a meeting and then bring artificial intelligence into it and it can understand all of what's going on in the collaboration.
Zach Kinzler: Yep.
Eli Davis: you know how transformative that would be for if a school did that used artificial intelligence?
You could have whoever is the principal or the curriculum coach, reading specialist problem solving team whoever you wanted to do, whoever you wanna put in charge of that.
Then use artificial intelligence to.
Assist with bridging the intellectual gap that is there for teachers, especially early teachers or teachers coming into the profession at a later age, but are still new inside of education.
You have the ability for using something like Bootle Box to be able to collaborate, use artificial intelligence, modify how artificial intelligence is going to disseminate information and based off of.
Your culture
Zach Kinzler: Yeah and like the other thing I'll say too is like the coach mode we just added last week is like so good at helping people use it.
Like I use it all the time and I, like I said, I'm like, I would argue I'm really good at using chat GBT and Claude and all of the things to do what I want them to do.
And like I still learn things now where it's like, whoa, okay, cool.
That is probably a better way to think about it.
And.
The thing I like to say is, regardless of what people will tell you, like AI's been around forever.
It's like it hasn't like it has been, but that is such like a subset of human beings that like actually have played with this stuff.
It's like you were at the exact same place that everyone else was three years ago.
Like I know it might feel like you're a little late, but just go use it.
Like go use Bootle Box and you'll learn how to use it while the coach mode, but like, you know, go use something else.
Go use anything because like.
It is the worst it's ever gonna be right now.
Eli Davis: Yep.
How do they find Bootle Box?
Zach Kinzler: I like to say search noodle box with a B 'cause Boole box is hard to think, but really just like, I'm sure my information will be somewhere on this podcast.
Reach out.
Just search Boole Box.
But call me on LinkedIn.
You'll probably hear about me some somehow on link if you're on LinkedIn.
I love blabbing about AI and education.
But just reach out and if you ever wanna talk about, that's the other thing I like to say is like, if you're ever overwhelmed or anything and you just wanna like tell someone about it, I love listening to like, why people are interested in this stuff.
'cause it's, I don't know.
It's cool.
But thank you so much for having me.
This is so fun.
Eli Davis: Oh.
Yeah, man.
This is was amazing.
Okay.
So.
Alright, so we're about to go ahead and close.
Wrap on up.
Do me a favor, and this is specifically for those people who are in engineering who do not really see how they can use artificial intelligence.
Do you have some tips for them?
Zach Kinzler: like go ask it to explain a really complicated subject that you learned at one point.
Like, you know, say if you're mechanical engineering and you learned about.
Structure is a chemical composition.
Like go ask it and then you understand it really well.
So what I'm about to tell you, it is very important that what you're asking it to explain, you understand very well.
Go ask it to explain something you understand very well.
Like you're five years old and it's gonna do a great job.
And then go do that with something you don't understand and it's gonna really help you grapple what you're doing.
And then that'll help you kind of, I really disagree.
People are like, it's bad at math.
it might be not perfect at math right now, but it's better than I am at math and I'm really good at math.
So like, don't bury your head in your sand and think it's not gonna be good at everything soon.
And the best way to see that is like, go have it explain something super complicated that you understand, like your five.
Eli Davis: Thank you for the information.
All right, everybody, we're getting ready to go ahead and close out.
Thank y'all for listening to Artificial Intelligence, real Talk, AI with Eli, with the guests, Zach Kinsler.
I appreciate it.
And you know, if I had some claps or something like that, I'll
Zach Kinzler: Sure.
Eli Davis: real cool man.
I really appreciate you.
All right.
Okay.
So, you know where to reach Zach.
He said that he is most definitely in LinkedIn.
And you know, and if you just want to go ahead and reach out, you could just Google him and Boole box.
I googled him as a matter of fact, and it came up with quite a bit.
So, all right.
Peace out everybody.
One line.