Like all things in tech, AI is a tool that can be used for good or bad. Today we talk with Chase Friedman, managing partner of Alpine Anchor, about leveraging AI to improve processes, outputs, and profitability.
Creators & Guests
Host
Mario Zaki
During my career, I have advised clients on effective – and cost-effective – approaches to developing infrastructure that fosters productivity and profitability. My work has provided me with a broad-based knowledge of business from the inside, with an expertise in areas that go beyond IT alone, ranging from strategic planning to cloud computing to workflow automation solutions.
What is UnHacked?
When Russian hackers break into your business’s computers, what will they find and how much will it cost you? How long will it take you to recover? Can you recover? Here’s the sad truth: 97% of breaches could have been prevented with basic security measures; but once you’ve been hit… you can never get UnHacked!
UnHacked is a weekly cybersecurity podcast for SMB business owners and leaders that helps them sort through the overwhelming security costs and recommendations, and focus on the best practices that give the highest ROI.
Welcome everybody to episode 42 of Unhacked. Guys, Unhacked is a bit of a deliberate misnomer. We talk about, preventing breaches because here's the sad truth. 97% of the stuff we read about in the headlines is preventable with basic security measures. But once you get hit, man, it's just kinda too late.
Justin:There is no such thing as getting unhacked. So, we lure you in with a title that really means nothing. I'm Justin Shelley, CEO of Phoenix IT Advisors. I keep businesses protected from Russian hackers, from government auditors, and, goddamn, the the attorneys that come up afterwards with the class action lawsuits. We work with clients in Texas, Nevada, and Utah.
Justin:And I am here today with my usual cohost, Mario, and we've got a special guest, Chase, today. Mario, real quick, tell everybody who you are, what you do, and who you do it for.
Mario:How are you guys? As you know, Mario Zdaki, CEO of MasTec IT. We are in New Jersey right outside of Manhattan, and we do support for anybody who wants to give us their money.
Justin:A specialist, I take it.
Mario:Exactly. Now we we work with medium to small, small to medium sized businesses, keeping them protected, working smoothly, and we specialize in giving CEOs peace of mind and help help them sleep better at night.
Justin:Love it. And, Brian's, AWOL again this week. We're gonna hope he makes it next week. And that said, though, we've got, we've got somebody to fill a spot. Brian, you better hurry back.
Justin:You might get replaced. Today, we're sitting here with a guy who who thinks he knows some stuff about AI. Now I don't know. I've I probably nobody has heard of AI yet. It's this new trend.
Justin:Nobody's really talking about it, but it's it's starting to evolve and develop. I've got I wish that was true. It's like all you hear about anymore is AI, and we're gonna dive into it today. And I brought Chase here to help us out with that. Now, Chase, you are also kind of in the Dallas area.
Justin:Yes?
Chase:So BMW. Going on almost ten years.
Justin:Okay. Alright. Well, I I bounce around. I've I'm home based in Dallas. I've got stuff going on, like I said, in Nevada and Utah, but we're gonna have to get together one time and grab beer or whatever and talk face to face even as much fun as it is over the, you know, the the computers.
Justin:Oh, I love it.
Chase:Whatever your vice is.
Justin:Oh, I forgot. Bourbon.
Chase:Oh. You wanna bowl? Let's go bowl.
Justin:Oh, now now you're speaking my language. Alright. I've got all those vices. So, Chase, let me give you a little bit of an introduction, and then I'm gonna turn you loose and tell me a little bit more in your own words about what you do. But, what I pulled off off of your profile here, Visionary managing partner of Alpine Anchor, cutting edge com company dedicated to elevating businesses to the summit of their industries.
Justin:I noticed that you kinda play on the, Sherpa walking up the mountain to, which well, I mean, which which one of the seven great mountains is it that's
Chase:All of them.
Justin:All of them. Okay. Alright. I didn't wanna make any assumptions. You know?
Justin:Anyways, passion for leveraging automation, analytics, and AI. I mean, this this is the word of the day. This is what everybody's talking about. So I think you're a great fit for the show. We're gonna talk about it, and we're gonna kinda bring it home with what we always talk about, which is cybersecurity because as technology evolves, which it does, sometimes we kinda think after the fact, oh, shit.
Justin:I forgot. We just opened up everything to the bad guys, including our bank account. So, Chase, tell me a little bit about what you do, who you do it for, and and maybe even a couple of client success stories if you've got them.
Chase:Yeah. Well, Justin, thanks for having me on the show. Mario, good to meet
Justin:you. Nice meeting you, Chase.
Mario:Thank you for hopping on.
Chase:Yeah. Looking forward to replacing Brian. But if he hops on, you know, mid flow here, we can, we can poke him a little bit. But Yeah. Yeah.
Mario:Well, you're gonna have to shave your head if you wanna be a regular. You know?
Chase:Like got some hair up here still.
Mario:You took you took the hat off before, and I'm like, oh, you know, on the from the sides, it looks like you fit in perfectly.
Justin:Supposed to be bald. We'll rename the show after us.
Chase:Well, guys, I've I've built a career off of interpreting, right, the the business requirements, the business process, the technology, the people involved. Right? And what I've learned is that nobody knows what they're doing. They're all making it up. I'm making it up.
Justin:Oh, god. That's so true.
Chase:And everybody Googles it, but now everybody chat chippy tees it. Right. But, I've landed a number of really great success stories on basically, taking the process. Process. Right?
Chase:Making it more efficient. And that's before AI really came around. Right? We leveraged automation between CRMs and ERPs to move significant, volumes of these transactions. And so that's where I kind of, cut my teeth, deploying Salesforce for enterprise grade companies, lots of SMB, little bit of nonprofit.
Chase:Right? And got a really good, like, over the course of the last eight years, basically got thirty years of education in back to back Zoom calls even before Zoom was cool. But, yeah, that's where that's where I effectively learned, like, hey. Here's how we can can connect these things in a way that makes sense. Right?
Chase:And, leverage your time and your money, right, and your resources to do things faster, better, stronger. And so what I'm focusing on now as I exited my last company, right, I'm building out a platform that does the same exact thing. Right? We're just adding in this next API, and that is AI. Okay.
Chase:But in thinking about client success stories, you know, there's there's a lot of them. Part of those success stories start with the process. One client, right, that I'm, that I worked on walked into the door. Hey. Show me the process.
Chase:Oh, I can't. It's all in our heads. Right? So okay. Well, what are we Mhmm.
Chase:What are we doing? You know, you wanna send me a lot of money, but y'all can't even explain what it is you do. So for so for one client, right, basically stepped into the door. The Salesforce world is is broken. They they didn't do it right.
Chase:It needs to be reimplemented. We reimplemented it, scoped it, architected it, reimplemented it. That client is still a client today, and this is seven, eight years later. And then we connected it to their ERP system. We're moving contractual data back and forth.
Chase:We're moving data from Stripe. So a whole lot of automation and integration. They are a a very well known cybersecurity nonprofit. And, obviously, they are barely stepping into the AI world, but had a lot of fun, hanging out with them, continue to do so. Another one that, I love to think about or talk about, right, are are, the ones where there's really no technology in place.
Chase:It's kind of the like, well, we built a business off of Excel sheets. Right? So, those are a lot of fun because you can step into the world of technology and me maybe being as good as I am or maybe I'm terrible. I don't know. Right?
Chase:But I can step into that world with a well defined process. Right? And now I can make it 10 times more efficient. Right? 20 times more efficient.
Chase:I hate when people are like, well, I made it 37.35% more, you know, more better.
Justin:Why did
Chase:you make that up? I don't know. You know?
Justin:It's math. You wouldn't understand it.
Chase:Yeah. Like, they they ran Google Analytics, and it said I made money. You know? But what I found is that when you have that that solid process that makes money, right, that does this thing, that delivers on this value, then you apply technology to it. You really can achieve some really, really cool and interesting things.
Chase:So, yeah, those those clients are are still around today. That's kind of where this Alpine anchor thing came into play. Right? My goal with these clients isn't to just get in there, make some money, and then walk away. My goal is to get in there and push them more and more up to the top of that mountain.
Chase:And I'll I'll leave it with this. Right? But, got to spend many years at Texas a and m University where I gave them too much money. I got too many pieces of paper. Right?
Chase:But, got to take my last company to be a a twice twice over winner of what they call the Aggie one hundred. It's really just like.
Justin:Oh, nice.
Chase:Top 100 Aggie companies. I got to see and interact with a lot of people in that room. That totally get the process side. Right? They scale their business very quickly.
Chase:You know? And they did it without well, some of them did with VC money. Right? But they nailed the process. They killed it.
Chase:They got into a market that was underutilized, under whatever. Right? And they were walking away with 275% growth trajectory pass over the last five years, you know, audited financials, you know, so they couldn't really I mean, I'm sure they fudged some of it, but for the most point, for for the most part, they did it. And that's what I wanna do. So with Alpine Anchor, right, we're building out a platform where you can take AI, not understand what it does, click to deploy it, and do it in a way that makes sense coming from somebody that's been in the enterprise space leveraging security.
Chase:Right? All of these, like, it's not a POC. Right? Like, this is ready to roll for an enterprise, but I wanna do it for SMB. Right?
Chase:I wanna focus on the companies that deliver lots of value, to their to their clients, to their customers. Anyway, that's what I'm up to these days.
Justin:Alright. Well, that sounds like a lot. Now do you fancy yourself a coder? Are you writing code?
Chase:I am. I Okay. I'm sure there's people that know me that are like, yeah. Whatever. I got to build back in the day, I was translating Fortran, into, vb.net to build out some of the first inter Internet connected apps.
Chase:That was a lot of fun. We were automating HVAC, not Wagyu, Wago. It's a German, programmable logic controller, and they had it connected to the Internet. And I was like, this is so cool. Let's do it.
Chase:And everybody's like, I don't know what you just did, but we're gonna sell it for a lot of money. And I was like, I was like, oh, that's how the world works. So That
Justin:is how the world works.
Mario:So who's like, like, who's like the ideal type of customer that would walk into your door Yeah. You know, email you, you know, whatever whatever way of your communication requirement is.
Chase:It's, you know, that's something that I've been unpacking as it relates to this new venture. Right? Because it's very different than maybe your traditional, sales pipeline. Right? My the person that I'm looking for are the owners of the business, right, where they've got too many people, right, or their process isn't well defined, right, or they've got too much technology or maybe not enough.
Chase:Right? But, ultimately, it's the person that's trying to scale their company to make more money, right, to get more value, right, but do it with less. So that's the person. In in a vertical space, we're really looking for, legal or, law firms. Right?
Chase:Commercial real estate insurance. Really, the easiest way for us to think about it is basically, anybody that has some regulated degree or the bar. You have to pass this big test to be certified, licensed, whatever. Because the reality of the world is those aren't going away anytime soon, and they happen to make a lot of money. So they have a lot of money to spend, but that's where we're looking.
Mario:Got it.
Justin:Alright. That's, that's a lot, Chase. That's a lot. I'm trying to figure out how to, like, respond and summarize and say something intelligent. I'm just gonna move on.
Justin:That no. Interestingly, though, we're we're going after a very similar audience, which I do love to hear because there's there's so much room for collaboration in a lot of this stuff. I absolutely love when you're talking about process improvement, and I don't think you use that term. That's kinda what I distilled it down to. But I think that's kinda the the really the key to everything.
Justin:You know? You have to work efficiently, and you've been doing that for a very long time. If, dude, if you're working in Salesforce and programming that, if I had a hat, I'd take it off to you. Hats off. That's that's some serious stuff.
Justin:Writing code is serious stuff. And, really, AI is just kind of an iteration of what you're already doing. Correct?
Chase:Yeah. That's actually the the best way to think about it. I myself have written more code in the last six months than I have in my entire life. So that, you know, the guy that's been the coder his entire life is like, well, I bet it was really, you know, really I don't can we cuss? Are we cussing on the show?
Justin:Oh, hell, yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Chase:Well, that's really shitty. Well, it's not documented. Right? Well, it doesn't work. And Right.
Chase:Problem with that statement is it doesn't matter. Right? Because I can iteratively improve it. This is what some folks are doing in GitHub or in Azure DevOps. Right?
Chase:It's because the the coding process is asynchronous. It's all text files. I mean, variations of text files. Right? I can leverage AI to iterate on it and improve it.
Chase:So it doesn't matter that it's good. It's what matters is that it's possible or it can be done. Yeah. Right. That it works.
Chase:Yeah. Absolutely.
Justin:That's a key component. Okay. So let's let's just go ahead and define AI. And I do this because it's it's the term that's getting thrown around by everybody on the planet. And, usually, what people mean when they say I, AI, Jesus, is chat GBT.
Justin:Like, it can write a report for me in high school. Great. What is and I'm gonna throw this Mario, why don't you you start and then Chase come in and correct him if he's wrong. No pressure, Mario. What exactly is artificial intelligence?
Justin:Explain it to an idiot like me.
Mario:I I mean, honestly, your guess is as good as mine at this point, but it it it it's they've with lately, what they've have is they have machines, you know, computers that are now being able to start thinking like human beings. It is analyzing certain things coming up with intelligent it's not guesses, but, you know, it it it analyzes it on the fly, and it ends up producing what a, you know, smart human being would eventually produce in matter of seconds.
Justin:Okay. That's a great way to explain it, non technically. Now, Chase, I'm gonna punt to you. Give us a little bit more of a technical breakdown of what that how it's done. Because you're right, Mario.
Justin:It is. It's like we're we're trying to make computers act, think, behave like humans. Right? Because then we can replace humans, and we're gonna come back to that later. But, Chase, what's what goes on behind the curtains?
Chase:Yeah. I'm sure, OpenAI, Sam Altman's team would rip me to shreds, but, you know, generically speaking, the goal is to interpret the question right in in a way that makes sense to everybody. And the way that I like to think about it is that it's ultimately just pattern recognition. Right? Yeah.
Chase:They cook that is into decision trees. Well, if yes, then that's right, like traditional logic. And then what about now there's multiple questions to answer and there's multiple answers to these questions. How do I figure out, like, what's the right path to take? The first version that many like, the world saw of AI was that predictive text on your phone with iPhones and Androids.
Chase:Right? It would guess that you were gonna type this word. And that's where, like, that whole thing again, the people that wanna rip me to shreds, throw it on LinkedIn, tell me I'm an idiot. But, when you take all of, like, the really technical stuff out for just a second, it's really all just recognizing the pattern, predicting what that next letter is or that next decision. Right?
Chase:And then do that over large amounts of datasets. That's why we see all this talk about NVIDIA blowing up these h one hundreds. Right? Those those things are basically like human brains, and they can process it infinitely faster than we can. So then you apply the large dataset.
Chase:You give it a problem statement. Right? And now I can predict what it thinks would be the answer to whatever question you come up with.
Justin:So it's interesting these the way you both described it because the human brain, Mario, going to you, is designed for pattern recognition. That is what we do all day long. People talk about their their gut, their instinct, their whatever. That's just subconscious, subliminal not not subliminal, subconscious, messages. Like, our our brain is looking out at everything that it sees whether we're aware of it or not and looking for patterns, looking for dangers, looking for threats, and making predictions.
Justin:So, I I love that description, Chase, and it is exactly what you said, Mario. We are teaching computers to be human, which scares a few people. Correct? And now let's, let's kinda pivot and talk about, because we as humans have been able to hallucinate for a long time. Oh, it turns out these computers are doing the same thing as we teach them to be human.
Justin:So now let's talk about what a hallucination is. And this time, Chase, I'm gonna start with you. What is a hallucination in the world of artificial intelligence?
Chase:I I have not, had the opportunity of taking any mushrooms, but I'm just imagining, like, as you're describing that, like, well, let me give a mushroom to a computer. What would that do? But, I think, for anybody that's in a been in a self driving car and it does something like, oh, or like a fast stop. Right? Or it it just kinda freaks out.
Chase:Right? Like, those are the very first hallucinations that a large population set has seen. You know? It's just automatically breaking. Well, it's hallucinating something that's a car is in the way, a person's in the way, or it hallucinates that the person isn't there when they actually are.
Chase:Right? And we've seen some, you know, tragic responses to that. You take out the the driving scenario. Right? A hallucination is just an incorrect prediction.
Chase:Right? If you think about when you're driving and somebody is looks like they're gonna come in front of you and you respond to that, well, you're you're hallucinating. Not in like the I took some mushroom sense, but, like, I think he's going to do x. Mhmm. But then he does something else, and you respond to that x, that's the hallucination.
Chase:So we see a lot of this. It's really easy to, connect it to human hallucinations. Like, I think I should do this. Well, some people I I don't I don't love the alert the word hallucination because it implies, like, I took something. Right?
Chase:I, like, took some drugs, and now I'm hallucinating. It really is just an incorrect prediction. If we tried to task Chat GBT with predicting the price of Apple tomorrow, well, they have some hallucination controls. But ultimately, right, it's just gonna make an incorrect prediction because it has doesn't have enough data. And that's what we see happening when you're in the chat GPTs.
Chase:Right? It's just this is just what it thinks. But it moves so fast. Right? It like, to the next letter, to the next word, to the next token.
Chase:Right? It doesn't stop to think, and that's why I've seen some of these reasoning models pop up. But
Justin:You know, a couple of couple examples I've heard of, one from an attorney, and one from, you know, in the health care space, attorneys will use it to try to find case studies, right, and and take those to court. And then they find and they're great, you know, perfect example. It applies perfectly, and it's true because AI said, except that it isn't.
Chase:You know?
Justin:And then I want that. You got disbarred or whatever? That was like
Mario:yeah.
Chase:Oh, yeah. I know what you're talking about.
Justin:And then you've got in health care, you know, it is fascinating because it can be used to, diagnose diseases and and prescribe treatments or at least aid in that process, which is great until it's not. So now we've got potential problems because we've got these computers that we're trying to teach to be human, but they're not. So it it brings up some problems that we've illustrated how and I'll you know, for either one of you guys, how do we prevent this? How do we get ahead of this? Because it is something that's happening right now as we speak.
Mario:Get ahead of what? I'm sorry.
Justin:These hallucinations. How do we how do we make sure that when we put something into an AI machine, a generator, whatever platform you're using, and it spits something out that just looks spot on. Yeah. But it's wrong. Like, how do you know?
Justin:How do you fix it? How do you how do we prevent this from becoming a problem that kills people or disbars attorneys or, you know, like, keeps you put in jail. Like, this is this can be bad.
Chase:Yeah. It can be really bad. It can be really scary. Right? But if if I came to you, Justin, and said, you must tell me, right, what the price of Apple will be tomorrow to the dollar.
Chase:And if you get it wrong, then something bad happens. Well Mhmm. You're gonna try to guess. Right? None of us are stock brokers.
Chase:Right? And then something bad happens. Well, that's what you're describing. So what you end up doing is reducing down the question, reducing down the context, reducing down the number of options. Okay.
Chase:Right. And and that's what I found works really well, especially in these chat, chat rooms, chat bots. Right. Is just break it down to the most simple question. It goes back to the process.
Chase:Right? What's the what's the what's step one? Right. Don't don't ask for an answer for this this 10 step process. Ask for the answer of the step one.
Chase:And so what I found really works works really well even in building out these agents, right, with these skills and these apps that we're working on is just break it down to the most like, the dumbest thing. Right? Like, how do I create an email? Oh, okay. Yeah.
Chase:Like, I can tell you how to do that. Right? The moment that you try start trying to say in fact, this is something that I was doing, literally this week. Like, I gave it the entire problem statement to create a site to site VPN connection Azure because that was my requirement. I'm not a networking guy.
Chase:Like, I know how to get my my, my home network working with Ubiquiti. But, naturally, it hallucinated because it doesn't know every single feature inside of Azure. Anyway, when I started breaking it down, hey, tell me this one thing. Okay. Yeah.
Chase:Actually, that makes way more sense. You know? The hallucinations are reduced when you reduce the size of the problem.
Justin:I like that. That's, that's a great great point. Mario, did you have any input on this one?
Mario:Yeah. I mean, it's what I am what I was gonna say is that, you know, what it's doing is the work of what a human being will do. Right? In in but it's doing it at a much faster pace. So, you know, in in Chase's example, create me, like, a step by step direction.
Mario:A human being is gonna be able to do it, but a human is gonna probably say, take an hour, two hours, five hours to take care of it. You know? It will do it in a matter of a minute. And in just like a human, it's not predicting the future. It cannot predict the future.
Mario:So it can't tell you what the price of Apple is gonna be tomorrow or what's gonna happen tomorrow. But it's scanning the network, things that have already been applied, and it's bringing everything, you know, super fast, making it an like, an intelligent, you know well, I don't know what the word I'm looking for, like, an intelligent documentation of everything that it found, just like a human would do it, but it would be at a much faster pace. You know? And and, you know, I know we're probably gonna talk about it, but that is why, you know, like Chase was talking earlier, you know, companies that have a lot of employees and they owner wants to reduce it, you know, with technology like this is what's gonna help it because he can this machine or this AI can do whatever human whatever a human being is doing, but it'll do it on a much faster pace.
Justin:Are you are you trying to say, Mario, that, somebody's job might be at stake here? Are are we gonna be delving into the world of South Park? They took our jobs. And oh, god. I'm gonna embarrass everybody with this, but, have either of you seen the South Park episode where the aliens and, I mean, no.
Justin:They're where their future. There are people from the future, I think, come back in time, and they're working for pennies because they can invest it and then whatever. I'm not gonna get too far into South Park, but it is it's where I get most of my intelligence, unfortunately. Nerd. So, Chase, one of the things that caught my attention on a in a recent episode of your podcast, which is called The Junction.
Justin:Just a quick plug for you there. Although I hear you're coming out with a new one, so we'll talk about that more later. But, 50% of jobs will be replaced by AI by the year 2027. A, I'm calling bullshit. I want you to back that up, and I know you were deciding another source, so that's fine.
Justin:B, that was something you said or or cited about a year ago, and I wanna know if there's any updates to that. And, c, this is a multipart question if you can't tell. If 50% of our jobs go away, how screwed are we? Guys, discuss.
Chase:Yeah. I mean, I think the headline is still valid, but I think it's as we start to understand more and more how all these things work, right, it's it's that they're not going to be replaced. It's that they're just they're they're going to be replaced in a different way. Right? And the way that I liken it is is now I can take a portion of this person's job and I can automate it.
Chase:But you have 10 people doing it. Now you only need one. Right? So it's it's a reduction of requirement a reduction in the requirement of of resources. Right?
Chase:And so what we're gonna see is lots of companies basically reorganizing, rebuilding themselves. And all of those people that lost their jobs, I would encourage them to read, the book called millionaire fast lane. Right? We're gonna see a lot of one to five person businesses spin up and take tons of market share from these bigger companies that just have too much overhead. Right?
Chase:They can't fire people fast enough. They can't let them go. They can't retrain them. They can't whatever. Right?
Chase:But I can write code. I've written more code. Right? Like I said, in the last six months than I have in my entire life. Right.
Chase:Like, I don't need 30 coders. I don't need $10,000,000. You know? I don't need any of that. Well, there's people out there that are smarter than me that have better ideas.
Chase:And all of those people that are about to have a ton of free time, you know, the first thing they're gonna do, hey. I need to make money. Hey. I can't get a job. Oh, I should start a business.
Chase:So I think that's where we're going.
Justin:Okay. Mario, thoughts?
Mario:I like that. You know, it it it is you know, we we do see it a lot already. You know, we for example, being in IT and stuff like that, we work with, like, companies, and it's all about, like, SEO and blog posts and stuff like that. You know, I actually attended a, a workshop a few weeks ago about somebody you know, how they said that they could create a hundred posts, in a matter you know, instead of whatever, whatever time, they could create a hundred posts and have it automatically post to your LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, all that stuff in under ten minutes. And, you know, Justin, as you know, like, in the marketing group that we're in, they have, like, a whole department based just around, you know, SEO and marketing and stuff like that.
Justin:Right.
Mario:This stuff could easily be done, in in a matter of minute. And I imagine being able to do about three posts per day for the entire month in just ten minutes. You know? In in you know, like, just Chase is saying, like, you can have a company that has one to five people, and they in one day, they can service the service, like, a hundred different customers and and and and collect all the money.
Justin:So let's let's actually take that point right there and talk about the future of AI, both short term and long term. And and this is a great way to debate this, because here's the thing. While I agree that that can be done, I also feel like the content that gets generated, number one, at least today can be sniffed out as AI. You don't even have to hardly look at it. Right?
Justin:And it's it's terrible. I hate reading that stuff. I get I get fooled by it sometimes. I'm not gonna lie. And it it'll take a comment.
Justin:Maybe it's a some post I'm looking at, some video, some picture. I don't know. I always go to the comments, and it's always like fake, fake, fake, fake, fake. AI, AI, AI, AI. So, yes, let I mean, let's let's talk about right now with with AI the way it is, how valuable is this AI generated content for SEO, for social media engagement, and and stuff like that?
Justin:Either one of you guys' thoughts
Mario:on that? At the moment and I agree. Yeah. And the thing is the beauty of AI is that it's getting better every day.
Justin:Right? Absolutely. You know? Yep.
Mario:Because it is learning. And the the beauty of it is that at very minimum, I think right now where we are today, we use it as a starting tool or at least a tool that will help you get to wherever you wanna get to just a little bit faster. You know? I don't think it's at the point where it's completely eliminating a lot of jobs, but I think it's kind of making people's jobs a little easier, a little faster, you know, better service, you know, like in in the I our IT field. Like, you know, when we need to do something, yeah, we throw something in chat.
Mario:GPT says, write me a PowerShell script that will do this, you know, and it will do it. It's making my technician's job a little easier and is able to provide a service faster, but it's not necessarily replacing any of my guys at the moment.
Justin:Okay. Chase?
Chase:I think that the economic impact is going to not be talked about because people that have access and understand the technology in a way that can be leveraged, right, they're not gonna be on LinkedIn saying, hey. I posted three times a day. It was all AI while I was on the beach playing with my kid. Right? Like, we're just not gonna see it.
Chase:We're gonna see it in, you know, like, layoffs. We're gonna see it in this new company. You're you're starting to see some of these on LinkedIn where they're one to five people, and they've got $10,000,000 in, annual recurring revenue. Right? We're gonna see more of those.
Chase:And so I don't think the the economic impact is detrimental. Right? But it's effectively giving people the tools to build out big, big companies that provide a lot of value. Dare I say, a trickle down effect. But effectively, anybody today can build a multimillion dollar business and not need any kind of investment.
Chase:They don't need to build out a team of developers. They don't need to go offshore anymore.
Mario:Right.
Chase:So I think it'll be really interesting because I that's that's what I see now. The teams that we're working with, they're one to two people. They've got a four person office. Right? They've got a process that works, that makes money.
Chase:And, traditionally, you'd go raise some money so you could speed up that growth. Right? That you could market more, all that stuff. Right, you'd have a team of developers that can develop it faster. Well, I don't I don't need the that anymore.
Chase:And the people that I work with, neither do they because I'm gonna provide that kind of technology for them. So, I mean, the economic impact, you know, it's it it can be scary to see lots of these layoffs, but ultimately, it opens up more time for people to build the types of things that we're talking about.
Justin:Okay. So that I I'm glad you went there because that's kinda what my crystal ball says as well. We we hear all this scary bullshit. Alright. 50% layoff.
Justin:50 per and and listen. The news right now is backing it up. Great big tech companies are laying off just ridiculous numbers of people. Alright? And and I think there's a shakeout.
Justin:There's gonna it'll take some time for this to settle down. But in the end, I think what we're really gonna end up with is just any other advancement in technology where you're able to leverage what you have, do a better job, do it faster, do more of it. Right? I don't think that that's going to I mean, look at the industrial revolution. We're just doing another version or another iteration of that.
Justin:That's what we're dealing with. Right? So we're gonna have more wealth creation, more job opportunities, better output, better availability of products and services. We're gonna this is my belief. I think we're gonna do, like, live better lives as a result.
Justin:Now, of course, there's scary stuff. There's unknowns. There's there's threats. You know, and now we need to we need to soon get to the security aspect of this because this is a podcast about cybersecurity. But as far as just productivity, I'll I'm gonna use an example of, you know, one of the most recent things I did with AI, which is I'm I'm preparing to do a podcast.
Justin:Right? Jesus. We're on the podcast. I'm preparing for a webinar.
Chase:He's gonna make another one, y'all. Yeah.
Justin:No end to the number of podcasts I can create. So I'm I'm prepping for a webinar, and and it's something that I've been talking about on this podcast, the subject of the webinar is, for over a year now. But for me to go ahead and and prepare the bullet points and the, you know, the slide deck for it takes a shit ton of research and preparation. But in about, five to ten minutes, I did punch it into an AI engine, and I'm like, hey. Give me a good title for my webinar.
Justin:And it gave me a few things. I found one. I'm like, alright. Hey. Why don't you throw some bullet points out there at me?
Justin:And I I did this accidentally, Chase, the way you said to do it. I didn't say write a webinar. I said, what's a good title for my webinar? And I already knew what I wanted to talk about. And I'm like, hey.
Justin:What are what are some bullet points? Hey. Can you give me some examples of, you know, how I can back that up? And so it's going out and it's pulling all the research and it's building the the just the, you know, top to bottom, what I should talk about in what order, and I can tell it to rewrite and and and expand or or consolidate or whatever. But I did probably about a full day's worth of research and preparation in roughly ten minutes.
Justin:Now that's not to say that I can then just read this thing word for word and have any kind of engaging content. I will use those bullet points just to make sure that I'm staying on track, kinda like I I'm doing right now. I've got a document that I'm I'm going over, but I'm not reading it. Right? So because I've got the experience, I've done the the research over the last years, you know, of my career, I could get in front of a group of people, and I can talk way more intelligently than I would have, but it's about a subject that I already know.
Justin:I'm not relying on AI for the actual intelligence. I'm just using it for some of the the workload. You know? So that's that's what I love about it personally. And now we've gotta talk though about some of the security implications because anytime, like I said in the beginning, when we when when technology grows and progresses, the bad guys find a way to exploit it.
Justin:They they find a way to to steal. Ultimately, they're stealing our money. You know, however they do it, they're getting out our money. So, Chase, what have you seen in in your career, where AI specifically has become a threat, and how do we deal with those threats?
Chase:You know, I think I get, like, at least, like, 10 to 15 automated phone calls, 20 text messages. Like, the the hot thing right now is that I just submitted my loan application, and we could talk
Justin:to
Chase:you and save you $85,000 I think what we're going to see, just to continue on what you're talking about is more targeted like, hey, Justin, I know you just bought a car, you know, and more information about you that's already available on the Internet. Right? They're gonna use that to make more, more complicated phishing attacks. Right? So I think part of the answer here is, education.
Chase:Right? Teaching our parents, moms and dads, the old people. Right? Like, don't answer that phone call. In fact, I basically never answer the phone anymore.
Chase:You know? So in thinking about security, it has some level of it is training. Right? Education. Hey.
Chase:We're gonna we're gonna get it from every single direction because it's it's just never gonna end. Right? I don't see necessarily the government moving anytime soon to, make a change here unless you, heard the state of the union the other night. Maybe that happens. Maybe it doesn't.
Chase:But, you have a we have generations of the population that don't even know, you know, like, how to log in to their email. You know? Those are the people that we should be worried about. When you get more into, like, SMB space, right, it's the traditional frameworks, the NIST frameworks. Right?
Chase:SOC two, all that stuff. If your organization isn't hasn't doesn't have a, you know, a tight security policy and have those things implemented and you don't follow those guidelines, you're gonna get hacked. And that's it. You know? I'm gonna see AT and T got hacked.
Chase:They have all of the Social Security numbers, you know? Giant organization that supposedly is locked tight and boom, everybody's Social Security numbers on the Internet. You know? I think you're gonna get hacked. It's gonna happen.
Chase:Right? So it's how do we deal with that? How do we train people to do it well? But you guys know this more than me. All I can tell you is if you think it's bad now, it's gonna get worse.
Chase:So Mhmm. Prepare for the worse and educate frameworks, compliance. Right? Nobody loves nobody loves the word compliance. Going through SOC two is, you know, a lot of documentation.
Chase:But then you get audited to ensure that you're actually doing it. That's the point. Right? That you're actually Yeah. Secure.
Chase:If you're not, then you're gonna get hacked. But I know you guys know this better than I do. Mario, I'm curious what, you know, what are you saying? What do you think on this front?
Mario:Yeah. No. I I completely agree exactly with everything you just said, Jace. I mean, in in our world, we always say, you know, it's it's those low hanging fruits, the ones that, are going to be, you know, it's it's going to happen not you know, if it happens, it's when. But, you know, you take the proper precautions.
Mario:And like Justin says, you know, you you do everything you you you're supposed to do. You'll be 97% of the way there. You know? Nobody's gonna be ever a %. Nobody's gonna guarantee you to be a %.
Mario:But, you know, with technology and with every tool out there, there's gonna be those bad guys because these this is their jobs. They're not this isn't those guys sitting in the basement of their mother's house in their in their underwear just trying to, like, cause chaos. They this is actually somebody's job, and it's their job to, you know, write that code and test this and buy this and, you know, do that. It's gonna happen, but, you know, with you know, just like everything else, if you take the proper steps, you know, you will you you know, you you're you wanna deter them or make their life a little harder where that they move on to that low hanging fruit that I've helped them.
Chase:You remind me of, this actually happened. This is a real life scenario. My aunt in law I think I didn't say that. Right? My aunt in law got a, what there was a password drop on the Internet, used, Suddenlink, which is now optimum or something else.
Chase:Right? Their email has been trashed forever. I remember when I had it in college, like, there's no security. You know? Mhmm.
Chase:Guy logs into her email, sends her sends an email to herself saying, I've hacked your email. Send me a bunch of money. Right? And she's freaking out because she doesn't, you know, understand, like, the technical pieces behind an actual email. Sent off $250, created a Bitcoin sorry, a Coinbase account.
Chase:Right? And, like, he's going through just resetting all of her passwords because she's the same password. I mean, it's, like, basic it's a basic security deal. You know? And we can have the best security policies setting up that VPN site to site connection, but you're never gonna get around somebody being like, oh, yeah.
Chase:My password is one two three four five. Please log in for me. You know? So I don't know the answer to that. That's why we hire guys like you to come in and solve those problems because, you know, I I can barely set up a VPN deal.
Chase:But, yeah.
Justin:I mean, you already said it. The it's education. Right? We've we've put things in place, but a lot of times and what's really tragic about the world of cybersecurity is that we do all this stuff behind the scenes. We set stuff up.
Justin:But unless the people are properly educated, and I would argue a very strong culture put around it, a culture of security minded, security awareness, none of it matters. None of the technology matters because it takes one click, it takes one phone call, it takes one password given out. We can they can undo everything that we put in place. Right?
Chase:Yeah. Well, I and then it's too late. Right? My my aunt-in-law, they were steps away from her Fidelity account. I'm like, you give me the username and password right now, I'm gonna lock you out of your account.
Chase:And they were just steps away. I'm like, you know and and that's when it's too late. It's like, oh, yeah. Security. You know?
Chase:And Right. No. Maybe no fault to them, but, that's what's unfortunate is, like, when you only care about it after the fact. So part of the challenge, right, being like, hey. This is important because of x, y, and z.
Chase:And stories like that, I think, are really impactful. Yeah. You know, she her retirement counts on there, and she could've lost all of her money. You know, thankfully, there's some I'm sure Fidelity has rules in place. But
Mario:Yeah. And it's it's a lot of pea and a lot of times, it's all avoided. You know, it can be avoided if you do it. If you do the work, you are annoyed in the process of doing it. Like, nobody likes two FA, you know, but you have to do it.
Mario:You know? And and that's not even bulletproof itself, but it's so much better than without it. You know? Like, in in your example, if she had two FA and all that stuff, chances are he wouldn't have been That
Chase:would have happened.
Mario:You know? But, you know, I'm gonna quote Justin again. If if it's not annoying you, then you're, you know, you're not doing it or or whatever I butchered your quote,
Justin:Justin. Because the way to say this is security isn't a giant pain in your ass. You're doing it wrong. Exactly. That's the actual Exactly.
Chase:I love it.
Justin:Alright, guys. Good stuff. As promised, we were gonna keep today's episode right at thirty minutes or less. We are coming up on that mark right now with forty three minutes and change. My math isn't very good, but, anyways, we're gonna go ahead and and move to wrap this up.
Justin:Guys, let's go ahead and assume that somebody only listened to this part of the podcast. We're gonna distill it down to your number one key takeaway. What is it that is the most important thing that people need to understand about artificial intelligence, the responsible use of it, the secure use of it, and how can we make their lives better? Mario, I'm gonna let you go first.
Mario:Yeah. I mean, for me, I I think it's something that people need to understand that it is not perfect. It is getting better, but it is a tool. It's not you know, just like any other tool you get from, like, your hardware store, you have to know how to use it, and you have to use it properly and make sure it's doing the job that you want. You know, you whatever you like, if you're if you have a rewrite an email for you, you know, and tell it to redo a grammar, you have to still read it.
Mario:You know? You can't just blindly say, do this for me and done. I I'm finished. It it's supposed to make your life a little easier. It's not supposed to replace you right now.
Mario:That's my key takeaway.
Justin:Okay. Chase, thoughts.
Chase:Yeah. I would I would say for those that are scared, you need to know that this is decades in the making, not, you know, not like overnight. Right? People have been working on this literally for decades before, you know, maybe before they're even real these real computers that we use every day. But instead of being scared of it, right, everybody should be thinking about how to leverage it for their own benefit.
Chase:That's that's the only way, right, that you're gonna walk away from this and not be the guy that lost his job and now can't get another one. And so for for those people, right, that are in that spot or have a bloated business, right, I would say you need to leverage this, but to do it in a secure way. Find the platforms that are SOC two compliant. Right? Not just the mom and pop shops that have just iterated their technology, not just the platforms that roped in AI.
Chase:Right? But I would say if you if you don't wanna be leveraged out of the job, right, you gotta leverage AI to to be the thing that you want it to be.
Justin:Yeah. Okay. Alright, guys. And my key takeaway for my fellow South Park fans is the AI took our jobs. It's happening.
Justin:It's real, but I really do believe my crystal ball says that this is going to be something that makes life better. It makes our economy better. It makes our businesses better. We do need to learn about it. We do need to use it responsibly, efficiently.
Justin:And and, we've got guys like Chase to help us out with that. You know, Mario and I also dabble in this space, but, Chase, I really love that, you know, you're you're really digging into processes and improvements and streamlining. And, I I think that is the future of not just AI, but technology in general. So thank you. Thank you for being here.
Justin:Mario, as always, thank you for being here. Guys, we're gonna go ahead and wrap this up. So say goodbye, and we'll see you next week.
Chase:Alright, guys. Bye, guys. Good luck out there. Ciao. Take care.
Chase:You too.