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AI First with Adam and Andy: Inspiring Business Leaders to Make AI First Moves is a dynamic podcast focused on the unprecedented potential of AI and how business leaders can harness it to transform their companies. Each episode dives into real-world examples of AI deployments, the "holy shit" moments where AI changes everything, and the steps leaders need to take to stay ahead. It’s bold, actionable, and emphasizes the exponential acceleration of AI, inspiring CEOs to make AI-first moves before they fall behind.
Andy Sack (00:00)
is don't just view AI as a tool. View it as an alien intelligence that affects every aspect of your business.
This is AI First with Adam and Andy, the show that takes you straight to the front lines of AI innovation and business. I'm Andy Sack and alongside my co-host, Adam Brotman, each episode we bring you candid conversations with business leaders transforming their businesses with AI. No fluff, just real talk and actionable use cases and insights for you.
Welcome, Adam. Today we're going to be talking about do we mean when we say AI First? What is AI First?
We've encountered in lots of our conversations with business executives, a range of understanding of AI, but also a range of understanding of what does it mean to be AI first. And we've made distinctions. I think today we're going to try and share them with our audience. So to tee the conversation up, this is going to be a short episode. And we just want to highlight really some of the
tensions that we see in the market of what we see when talking to business executives. And I think on one side, you've got executives who are, who sort of old school executives who see business through business light and business first perspective. And they're like, ⁓ AI is a tool. It's an efficiency tool. And I know what we need to do to fix our business. you know, they have three things that they're trying to accomplish in the next six months to address.
their business opportunity. On the other side, we see AI and this opportunity to start for executives to start moving into being AI first. And I don't think we've really defined it sufficiently about what we mean when we say AI first, because it's supposed to enable that business first to actually blossom and flourish and actually outperform those businesses that don't adopt an AI first approach to business.
So I'll tee it up there. Adam, what do you have to say about this business first versus AI first, or how do you want to define AI first for our audience?
Adam Brotman (02:21)
Well, we first started out talking about the term or using the term AI first before we knew what it meant. In fact, we actually wanted to understand what it meant. so, because there was this concept of being digital first or mobile first, we wondered what it would look like. that's when we started using the term, we're like, well, what does it mean? And it probably means like really leaning in. And now you and I have started to really hone in on what that means compared to.
Other people who are even, I'll call it AI forward or AI fans, right? I don't know what the other term is, but I think you've done a nice job, in the last couple of weeks in our private conversations about pointing out like, it's interesting. Someone can be a big believer in AI and its power and its capability and still not be AI first because they still come at it as if it's just a tool to be deployed in certain times versus
a future of work, way of thinking, an entire change management for an organization. We definitely believe in the latter. We've now come to say AI first means you wholeheartedly sort of surf the capabilities of the AI as something that's going to push the whole organization forward. If everyone's using it multiple times a day for micro solutions and specific ideas, then you're going to outperform.
And you're going to have a competitive advantage. And that's different than someone who doesn't go as far as that and just sees it as an amazing tool for, you need to fix X, Y, Z. Why don't you bring AI to the table to help you with that? ⁓ I've got this idea for the strategy. Why don't you use AI to help you optimize that? as a versus bringing AI to the table upstream from that. And I think it said upstream almost.
circulatory system sort of aspect that you and I think about AI as what we mean by AI first.
Andy Sack (04:17)
I think that's the distinction that we're trying to make. think that sort of if we view AI first as a spectrum of belief at the sort of the first tier of spectrum, it's viewing it as a tool and it is a tool. It's a, it's the best tool that's ever been invented, but that's really the, when you think of it as a tool that really limits your understanding of what AI is and it really views AI, contains AI to really an efficiency play. And I think we view AI as much more than that. We view AI as
as an alien intelligence that can actually help you not just with efficiency, but actually have more strategic thinking, have higher quality insights about the strengths and limitations of your business, as well as process those strengths and limitations and come out with different outcomes.
And that, think, is the purpose of today's episode, from my perspective,
is don't just view AI as a tool. View it as an alien intelligence that affects every aspect of your business.
comments from you?
Adam Brotman (05:20)
I'd say concluding comments are, ⁓ it takes a certain level of courage to be AI first in the way that we're talking about it because it means you're actually sort of trust falling a little bit to the AI to really try and incorporate it into your company, your whole company's workflow in a way as opposed to just a tool. Cause it doesn't take courage to use a
a tool to help you do something better if the tool helps you do it. And that's great. But it takes courage to actually get out. If you're a CEO, for example, and get out in front of your whole company and say, I actually believe this is a tool and a technology that is and can be helpful at more than just helping you with individual tasks, but can help us with everything. So I really want the whole company leaning into it across as much of the decision-making
that we're doing as a company and for every functional leader as possible. That takes courage because then you're really like you get, you get that sort of deer in the headlights look from your company. And in which case it's like, what do mean? Like, how am going to use this 10 times a day? Like I'll use it when it makes sense, but I won't when it won't. Right. And the answer is no, you really should try to develop a muscle to use it all the time. And, and that requires a certain level of training, a certain level of governance and gets into the whole playbook that we espouse.
but I'm glad you brought up this difference because it'll help our audience think about, I just using AI as a tool or am I actually changing the way I work with AI, which is what we encourage companies to do.
Andy Sack (07:01)
Yeah, we view AI First as the future of work, not just as an efficiency tool. Hope you enjoyed this mini episode, perhaps our shortest episode, but maybe our most succinct. And with that, thank you for listening to AI First with Adam and Andy. For more resources on how to become AI First, you can visit our website, form3.com. You can download.
Adam Brotman (07:12)
you
Andy Sack (07:23)
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