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GVPOD is the podcast of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. President and CEO Bridgitte Anderson talks to leaders in the business community about the challenges and opportunities they experience, as well as issues impacting our region.
Bridgitte Anderson (00:04):
Welcome back to another episode of GVPOD, Greater Vancouver's Premier business podcast, where we delve into the challenges and opportunities facing our region. I'm Bridgitte Anderson, CEO, and President of the Greater Vancouver Board of Trade. In today's episode, we continue our series on the future of work and mental health in the workplace by diving into a pivotal topic that has captivated conversations in the business community, the media, family dinners, and virtually everywhere and our daily lives, over the past year. Today we're turning our focus to artificial intelligence or ai. More specifically, we'll explore how employers can prioritize employee wellbeing in the rapidly evolving age of ai. We've all heard of Chat GPT, and hopefully most of us have tried it by now, but there are countless other AI tools that are having a profound impact on the workplace. As these tools become more integrated into our daily work, it's crucial to discuss how we can harness them for the betterment of our teams and operations. Joining me to unpack this topic is David Hobbs, founder and vice president of Operations at TTT Studios, a Vancouver based digital consulting and software development studio that aims to empower every user and organization by creating custom software that improves their lives. Welcome, David. Nice to meet you.
David Hobbs (01:29):
Oh, Bridgitte, it's a pleasure. That was a great introduction. I like that.
Bridgitte Anderson (01:33):
I'll thank the team for that.
David Hobbs (01:35):
Well deserved, well deserved.
Bridgitte Anderson (01:36):
So let's start from the beginning. What is TTT Studios?
David Hobbs (01:41):
So TTT studios. I mean, we are basically a studio that creates software that empowers users. We use project strategy and research to basically solve problems, and usually we use technology as an output from solving those problems. Sometimes a whiteboard will solve the problem, so it's not always technology, but we're really focused on understanding what a user's difficulties may be and the best way to solve that.
Bridgitte Anderson (02:13):
Technology has been a fascinating topic for a very, very long time, but I'd say particularly so in the last couple of years, people talking about this AI revolution that we are in the midst of. So maybe from your perspective, what does that mean for the workplace? God knows, we've heard a lot of stories about, Hey, AI is actually going to take away everybody's job, how it's going to make us feel more disconnected, but companies are going to be way more efficient. So from your perspective, what does this AI revolution mean for workplaces?
David Hobbs (02:46):
So first off, I'm excited about ai. I mean, I'm lucky I work in that industry and it's very comfortable for everyone around me as well. We go into peaks and valleys when it comes to AI and technology, and right now GPT kind of inspired a lot of people and it kind of energized people on potential on what it could do, and it's very, very exciting. But we've been there with facial recognition. We've been there with a number of things. I'm really excited about the future on what it can do, but I'm bullish about the potential that we're going to be able to do mundane work that people don't necessarily want to do and leave the creativity to the humans, and let's let the AI handle all of that brainless work that no one wants to handle.
Bridgitte Anderson (03:34):
I mean, clearly that has been one of the benefits of chat GPT, and I think I've heard it used as a verb. Now I'm going to chat GPT that. So I think it's now in the lexicon, but you plug something in there whether you're looking for an outline for a presentation or a thank you letter to a client or something like that, and then you only need to spend a few minutes really refining what those messages are. I see what you say that it really is taking some of the mundane tasks out of somebody's job responsibility and letting them be more creative. You wrote an article that I was reading and you were talking about the importance of a human-centered approach in this AI integration. So what does that actually mean? Is it talking about just that taking these kinds of AI developed products and being able to put a human lens on it, but what else does it mean?
David Hobbs (04:26):
Well, it involves starting with the perspective that humans are the most important and how can we use AI to benefit them? So humans needs humans experiences. How can we improve that using ai? We're not looking at replacing work that sometimes happens. Sorry. I mean, there's times where it can replace work automation and there's a lot of very technical things it could definitely replace, and I think that's a good thing because I don't really want to send some people into a dangerous situation where if a machine can do it, fantastic. I think AI allows us to really get inspired. How many times have you sat around and said, I'm not sure how to write this article, or I need to get started? I think if it is being used as a starting point, not as an end point necessarily, that's great. GPT is super powerful for doing that. We've gotten very good, we were very experienced here at TTD studios on how to use the tools. We've been using them for a long time. We're very capable of asking the right questions. Sometimes it's about asking the right question to get the right output, but I really see it as a way to start a conversation and not necessarily end a conversation.
Bridgitte Anderson (05:44):
And I see that, but I also, in the back of my mind, I sort of have this red light flashing going, hang on though. Hang on. Technology is great, but you need some guardrails there too. So what to mind for you about some of the most important guardrails that are needed when it comes to AI in the workplace?
David Hobbs (06:03):
Reading the terms and conditions of a subscription now is so important, and they're costly changing, but it is really important because how these AI engines get smarter is by using your data in essence, and do I want our private company data being shared out there? Again, we have experience. We know how to make sure everything's locked down and it's not being used for public consumption, I'll call it, or to benefit the company that's providing the engine for this. So we make sure that all of our clients are locked down as well. We've got a really good control over that. But in general, you do need to be careful. You do need to watch out for that. So reading the terms and conditions, Googling maybe a question of, Hey, is this a good tool to use and what are the benefits and what's the cost? Because it might not have a financial cost, but there's a cost. People are putting these out there not to necessarily, they're benefiting from it somehow and how are they benefiting from it? So it's good to be aware of those situations. So you could lock it down.
Bridgitte Anderson (07:06):
This series is really focused on the future of work and mental health in the workplace. And when I think about the technological advances that I've seen even, let's even just take the last four years just prior to the pandemic, it really has been so quick. There is a stress for people, I would say, when they're trying to keep abreast or ahead of these technological advances. So what kind of impact does this or AI have on people's mental wellbeing in the workplace?
David Hobbs (07:41):
Oh, it totally can because a fear around it. There's a fear of not knowing it, not understanding it. Scared to ask sometimes and whatnot. If you can champion it, it's so useful. I'm going to go back. I mean, I started off my background. I was actually TTT Studio's first engineer. I'm so glad I'm not now a lot better people doing the coding now than I was. But when I first started coding and this gray hair is earned properly, it was a long time ago, you'd run into a bug and that bug, you'd have to look it up in book. It's like, I don't know how to fix this. This is really hard. So it would take me two weeks to fix a simple bug, and then the internet came along and suddenly I could look up things on Stack Overflow where there's other websites because you're not running into a problem that other people have.
(08:24):
And suddenly that week turned into maybe a few hours now, I could just kind of run into a bug and say, okay, ai, can you help me solve this? And can you explain why it didn't work? And bang, it solves it for me. So if you know how to champion the software or the AI tools and whatnot, and if you understand them, if you play with them, if you get creative with them, they can so help you. And it is wonderful, but you don't want to rely on them mean. So I'm going to go back the other way, and as a business owner, our people are so important to us, and we're talking about being human-centric and people-centric in the land of ai, and you really have to spend a lot of time with your employees. Again, I'm lucky my employees thrive on this, but I do talk to other people in construction and mining, and there's a genuine fear. Even education, there's a genuine fear of some of this. And sitting down as a manager and you spending a lot of time and understanding what the tools are, sitting down as a manager with that person trying to understand what their fears are, what their goals are, what their problems are, and trying to empower them to find tools that might help those problems, sit down with them and really try to champion them and resolve that fear.
Bridgitte Anderson (09:45):
That's such a good point about the fear, but I'd say even for business leaders, there is some fear there because you're trying to figure out what you don't know and you don't know because you don't know. So brand new and then thinking about, well, okay, I got to figure out what it is that my business needs. I have to figure out what my people need, and then I need to figure out some maybe technology solutions. So how does a business leader sort of take that first swipe at the approach? And I'm thinking those businesses, and there are still quite a few out there that have never even experimented with chat GPT.
David Hobbs (10:19):
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. No. Again, I think what you still have to ask for a business leader and even down to your team is what problems do you have? Because
Bridgitte Anderson (10:28):
If you, and what problems are you trying to solve, right? Yeah,
David Hobbs (10:31):
Exactly. Maybe hey, AI is not just GPT, it's facial recognition. There's so many things that artificial artificial intelligence is basically, Hey, solve a problem for me and make a decision for me is really what it is. So how do I have a problem? What problem do I have? And therefore, what tool can I use? If I can ask questions like that? I could even use GPT, this is my problem. Do you suggest any tools that I could use? It will really, you have to jump in the pool. No one knows how to swim until they're in the water. So I think you really have to get your feet wet.
Bridgitte Anderson (11:04):
David, I think you've just hit on something there because I would say a decade ago, business leaders are saying, yeah, what problem do I have and what tool, that's the key word. What tool can I use to solve this problem? And maybe a decade ago was a good old fashioned Excel spreadsheet, and maybe now it's some other tech or AI tool. So I think having that mindset is probably a really good place to start and creating some interest and excitement among your teams about using new tools that they've never maybe been exposed to.
David Hobbs (11:35):
Well, I think there's an apprehension to people that don't use them every day, and that's understandable and whatnot. However, we are using them every day because everyone has an iPhone, everyone has an Android device. Maybe they're not using them for what they're capable of. I'm really excited about iOS 18. So the next operating system that's going to come out. Apple kind of got caught flatfooted when it came to GPT and large language models when they first came out. I say that with a grain of salt. You know what? They're doing a lot of science. It's not like they didn't really know what was going on, but GPT kind of came out as a surprise of how successful it was or how capable it was. Well, again, you can ask questions and get answers and very good questions and very good answers out of it. But when it comes to actually doing some actions, some automations on my phone, some tasks that need to be done, I think Apple has a very good history of trying to solve some of those.
(12:30):
And I think if we realize, Hey, we're actually doing some of those things on our phones right now, and if iOS 18 introduces some of those GPD, I'll call it Siri on steroids, because Siri, when it came out, Hey, this is great. I'm picturing Iron Man sort of esque conversations with my computer, and then it kind of did things wrong. It was limited. So again, it goes to my fear of, wait a second, this doesn't work. If I can't believe in this, there's a problem. Adds to my fear. Well, I'm really hoping that iOS 18 comes out with some really strong cases that are simplistic for people that will empower them. And if they're using that on their phones every day, hey, guess what? Find other tools that will allow you to kind of jump deeper into the pool.
Bridgitte Anderson (13:11):
Yeah, that's a really important point. Looking at the work that's been done at your organization, at TTT Studio. So what are some of the good lessons learned and being able to adapt AI solutions and really ensure that your team is embracing them and you're really thriving?
David Hobbs (13:34):
For my company or for a general company?
Bridgitte Anderson (13:36):
For your company based on the experience that you've had.
David Hobbs (13:39):
Yeah, I mean, again, we're really lucky because gung ho to try everything in anything. So we've tried a lot and we've experimented with quite a bit. I mean, one of the things that I'm going to tell a quick story of something that we did that was kind of cool. I can't talk about a lot of projects that we're doing because of NDAs and whatnot, but when the iPhone first came out, so this is again, we're going to talk about ai. So facial recognition is part of the AI platform. Yeah. And when the iPhone with facial security came out, it was exciting. It was new. Everyone was using it. Guess what? My other founder, there's two founders, Josephine and my brother Chris, we arere twins. Guess who could open up my iPhone?
Bridgitte Anderson (14:18):
Oh, of course. Identical twins.
David Hobbs (14:21):
Exactly. So what we used is we kind of had that problem. It's like, okay, well wait a second. Security is a problem when it comes to iPhones. So we actually wrote our own basically platform for facial recognition. That took twins into consideration beforehand. And I'd like to say that our technology was working better than my mom. She's pretty good at telling who's who, but at the same time, this would get us, so we started at a different standard than the general use would. So again, we are ready to jump in and really do a number of things with ai. So
Bridgitte Anderson (14:53):
Yeah, I think your mom maybe didn't want to hear that, but there's probably a little truth to that, right, David? No,
David Hobbs (14:58):
She'll accept it. She'll accept it. She's a lovely lady. So
Bridgitte Anderson (15:02):
Going back to the fear and how you really get your team to embrace it. Look, instead of having the glass half empty, thinking about the glass half full, what has been your experience in your own organization or working with clients in the opportunities that it presents for individuals to upskill? Because you are right that there are jobs that we're not going to need to do or tasks that we're not going to need to do anymore, but there's opportunities to grow and learn
David Hobbs (15:29):
Big time, big time again. I mean, I want the AI to benefit us so that we can spend more times with our families and more times on the holidays, there should be as long as the work is getting done, me do it from wherever, let me control things. So I want to teach people that there's a benefit for using this. I mean, we do have a lot of people that come in and again, I bring it back to what is your problems? Is it inefficiency? Is it something doesn't exist and you just don't know how to answer that problem? What is your problem right now? And we have a process at TTT Studios that we go through to really deep dive and understand people through a discovery process really step by step. And we're actually, here's a little secret sauce. We're using some AI to speed up that process so that people can get answers even faster. And it's one of, we offer that as a discovery or, but more, we call it the North Star. It's a quick deep dive for company's problems. Come in, talk to us. We could maybe share some experiences that we've had with other technologies. We can share some tools that we've used. I'd love to have people reach out and kind of start a conversation.
Bridgitte Anderson (16:37):
So what are some of the tools that you have found most helpful besides chat GPT? Because there really is so much more than that.
David Hobbs (16:45):
There really is so much more. I mean, for us it's definitely copilot and projects like that. So copilot, Microsoft gets confusing because they like to call everything copilot. But for us, we use copilot as part of a GitHub resource, and it's for programming, and it really helps you develop code faster. There's a lot of mundane things that go into code, and we want to not worry about creating a boring form. What we want to do is answer a problem, make it useful for the user, but also make it delightful. And by using tools like GitHub, sorry, copilot speed through it, now let's improve it. Let's make it a really useful and delightful experience for our end users. So I would say highly love copilot.
Bridgitte Anderson (17:29):
We've been talking a lot about sort of the business owner's perspective or the employee's experience, but the other kind of partner in all of this is where government is in creating the landscape for businesses to thrive in this new age. So what would you say where the role of government is and where are the gaps and how government need to step into that?
David Hobbs (17:51):
I mean, first off, I'm going to give a huge shout out to the government. We have some great partners on our IRAP team and whatnot that really help us, and they take all of this very seriously. Security is on their minds and whatnot. They treat facial recognition to them is the same as treating. If you're collecting facial recognition, which again is an AI component, they treat it like DNA, you have to go through a number of steps before you're able to do a bunch of things. So I think they're taking it very, very seriously. I think it's an impossible task trying to, someone's going to put out a tool that you would love to lasso back, but it's hard to bring the genie back in. So I think the government's going to have a really, really hard time unless they shut everything down, but that's not possible.
(18:38):
So I think they're doing all the right things right now. I think we're just going to have to stay on top of it and see changes as it progresses. I mean, a GI, so a GI is basically when a system that can think for itself, that's all the Skynet and all, it's really the core to the fear that everyone has. Thank you to all those science fiction novels and everything, and it's becoming science fact a little bit now, and we're getting closer and closer. We'll have to treat it when it comes and it is going to come, it is going to happen. And I think that people are, no one wants to be the dawn bringer of the end of time. So there are guardrails. I sure hope anyways in most cases, but I believe strongly that there are guardrails that are being put on these things, and I think we're just going to have to treat it one step forward. And did we step in anything? No. Okay. One more step and let's see what happens. And the government has an impossible job.
Bridgitte Anderson (19:34):
So when you think about the workplace and ai, where do you think that is going to go? How is AI going to evolve in the workplace, particularly around employee wellbeing and culture in the workplace? Where are we headed next?
David Hobbs (19:52):
I hope it's all about empowerment, and I hope it's all about, again, solving problems and making things easier so that workers can be creative. I really think that a lot of the tools are, I use the word delightful because that's something that we focus on at TTT, because anyone could create a form, but you know what? That you hand a baby an iPhone and the baby just picks it up and it's like goo, goo goo, and it's delightful. I think if we can use those AI tools in the workplace to make employees lives delightful, if we can create a system where we can have a four day work week, there's a number of things that I think AI could be used to empower, empower an office space.
Bridgitte Anderson (20:36):
In this series, we are talking about the 48 workweek, and one of the concerns is around productivity. How do you ensure that you still have really productive workforce? But I think one of the messages is really being able to leverage technology to ensure productivity and wellbeing.
David Hobbs (20:54):
A hundred percent. The negative side to that is when you are looking over your workforce, am I using the technology to kind of be the king that overlooks and make sure things are getting done? It's really hard. It's easy for me because everyone on our team gets things done on a responsible time. And again, I've got very little problems with there, but I could understand in some situations where expectations are set up and technology is the only way to kind of oversee that and make sure that things are the punch, the clock is being punched appropriately and whatnot, and results are happening. I hope technology doesn't make that kind of a 1984 situation. Again, I'd love it to see it so that if we can make it some way delightful and empowerment, but we shall see.
Bridgitte Anderson (21:37):
So some free advice then to business leaders who are listening in on this podcast as they are embarking on their AI journey in their workplace, what actions ensure success?
David Hobbs (21:51):
Play, play with tools, play with things. Get familiar yourself. You don't have to be an expert. It always makes me think back to my grandmother. I remember my grandma was like in her late eighties and she picked up computer programming, and I was like, what? That's crazy. That's awesome. He goes, yeah, I didn't know anything about it. So I picked it up and I started playing, and I think everyone should just play. I really hope that the iPhone, like I say, the new iOS and Android operating systems come up with more powerful ai because if we could bring that fear level down of the unknown in everyone, I think it becomes a much more powerful tool.
Bridgitte Anderson (22:28):
David, I like the picture you're painting for the future. Thank you so much for this conversation. This has been fantastic. David Hobbs, the founder and vice president of operations at TTT Studios. David, thank you.