In this episode, Mike sits down with Chris McKay, founder of Maginative, to unpack the urgent need for AI literacy, especially in underserved and underrepresented communities. They discuss how AI is reshaping work, education, warfare, and daily life, and why just knowing what AI can do isn’t enough. From building chatbots to reimagining classrooms, this is a candid conversation about the world we’re already living in and the future we’re co-creating. Chris reminds us that the most powerful tool isn’t the AI itself, but the questions we ask of it.
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ABOUT THE GUEST
Chris McKay is a reporter, educator, and strategist on a mission to make AI accessible and actionable for organizations ready to embrace the future. He is the founder of Maginative, a platform operating at the intersection of AI media, enterprise strategy, and education. Chris covers the AI revolution from the front lines, spotlighting key trends, breaking stories, and interviewing pioneers shaping the next wave of innovation. Behind the scenes, he advises Fortune 500 companies on responsible AI adoption using Maginative’s proprietary USAGE framework and AI Maturity Index. Whether leading workshops for executive teams, publishing in-depth analysis, or quietly building the next big thing in enterprise AI, Chris is helping leaders make smarter moves, faster.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Mike Steadman (00:00):
Welcome to Frontline Voices, a podcast brought to
you byStanford University's Hoover Institution,
where we explore leadership, service, and
real-world solutions to some ofour nation's most pressing issues.
(00:21):
I'm your host, Iron Mike Steadman,a member of the inaugural class
of Hoover veteran Fellows anda Marine Corps veteran.
Every time I open my laptop, I see a newheadline about the so-called AI bloodbath.
Some are warning us to brace formass layoffs and disruption,
which we are already seeing.
Others are painting a utopian picturefilled with opportunity and innovation.
(00:44):
The truth it's hard to separatethe signal from the noise.
Which is why I sat down with Chris McKay,founder of Maginative,
an AI literacy platform that provideshigh-quality, in-depth AI news and
analysis as well as tailoredAI training and education.
Chris is one of the sharpestminds I know in the space,
(01:04):
especially when it comes to AIeducation and entrepreneurship.
In this episode,we explore what AI literacy really means,
how it's reshaping the future of work,and why community, not code,
is the key to navigating this nextwave of technological change.
From the ethics of AI in warfare to howyoung people in developing nations can
(01:26):
leapfrog barriers through access andeducation, this is a conversation for
anyone who wants to be part of buildinga more informed, inclusive future,
not just bracing for it.
As always, I hope you enjoy today's showand look forward to hearing your feedback.
Chris, my brother, thank you for makingtime to come on Frontline Voices today.
>> Chris McKay (01:47):
Mike, it is an honor to be here.
Thank you for having me.
>> Mike Steadman (01:51):
So the interesting thing is I've been thinking a lot about
artificial intelligence andhere, let me set it up for you.
So two weeks ago I startedworking on a chatbot.
Okay.
>> Chris McKay (02:03):
Yeah.
>> Mike Steadman (02:04):
Last week I closed four clients with that chatbot and
I wrote about it in a coupleentrepreneur groups that I'm a part of.
And I just remember after it happened,I got to the end of the week,
cause it happened so quickly, right,two weeks ago, start working on it,
start sending people tothe link to test it.
Then I went live with it for a week and
at the end of that weekI closed four clients.
(02:26):
And I remember, you know, it'sNew York City Tech week here last week.
And I remember sitting at a restaurant andjust kind of taken back by it all,
just how quick everything had happened.
And I was just sitting with it and I wasin my world and I'm like looking around,
looking at the restaurant andI just feel like I'm living in the future
a little bit like I have done thisthing that seems so crazy, and
(02:48):
I want to talk to somebody about it.
And I didn't have anyone around meto immediately talk to me about it.
And I asked the bartender,I said, you know, hey,
do you ever mess around with AI?
And she's like, I use chat,GPT, et cetera, et cetera.
But that's pretty much it.
And I was like, man,I gotta talk to somebody about that.
Because I'm seeing all these articlestalking about, you know, the layoffs
(03:09):
are coming, you know, the reduction of theworkforce due to artificial intelligence.
And when I saw the work you're doing withImaginative, and I saw a couple of your
videos online talking about AI literacy, Ijust thought it was a perfect opportunity
to get you on the platform andtalk about it to our listeners.
>> Chris McKay (03:25):
Well, first of all,
I love the fact that you're gettingyour hands dirty and you're building,
because I think if you are an entrepreneuror just interested in creating, now is
the most exciting time in history as farconcerned where you want to be building.
The technology is so fascinating,it's almost magical, as you said.
(03:47):
And the access is there.
It's much more accessiblethan it was before.
And we have an opportunity to reallytransform not just aurali, but
society as a whole.
And my hope, my prayer is that weinvest in the right technologies in
the right people to make thisas accessible as possible,
(04:07):
to change lives across the world.
>> Mike Steadman (04:11):
Take us back.
How did you get into this space,first of all?
And then I want us to bring us up tospeed on how you define AI literacy.
>> Chris McKay (04:18):
Sure, so I own an agency.
I started imaginative 10 years ago,the Digital Agency and we worked at
the intersection of education,digital technologies and design.
Right, and I love that because for me,
education was that thing thatbrought me out of a farm in Jamaica,
where I was born, to the heightsof my career professionally.
(04:42):
And so I look at education asthis great equalizing force.
And the more we can make thataccessible and available to people,
the more we give them a chance andan opportunity.
And so I've spent a lot of my careerworking with school districts,
universities, technology companies withinthe education paradigm at all levels,
From K through 12,all the way to postdoctoral programs.
(05:06):
We have designed curricula, we have lookedat building tools around making technology
more accessible in the classroom.
It's something that I'mdeeply passionate about.
And throughout that time, I,
of course, really learned about productdevelopment and product design.
And design thinking was something thatwas around during the peak of my agency
(05:27):
days where we realized that Design wasn'tjust about how something looked, but
how it functioned andthe problem that it was solving.
And specifically, human centereddesign was going to change everything.
And so I had an opportunity to reallywork with great companies with great
teams to build greatproducts over the years.
(05:47):
And then I came across a bookcalled Life 3.0 by an Act Tegmark,
I remember reading that book.
That's the first time I actuallysaw the company named OpenAI.
If you haven't read that book,it is an amazing read.
It starts off as fiction, but what I lovedabout it is that it has this level setting
glossary at the front whereit just defines terms.
(06:07):
So when I say super intelligence orwhen I say AI or AGI,
we're on the same page because we'reworking with the same definitions.
And we may not necessarily needto agree on the definitions,
but at least we can understand where theother person is coming from because we're
working from the same baseline.
But I loved it because it really lookedat the opportunity with AI technology and
(06:28):
what it could mean forsociety, but also the dangers,
how it would change things likethe future of work or things like equity.
And so for me, it was important that Iwasn't just sitting on the sidelines.
I was taking an active role in termsof the future that I wanted to create.
And so, fast forward, two anda half years ago, we founded Magnetitude,
(06:50):
an AI literacy platform.
And our goal is to reallyaccelerate this AI's future.
But we want to do so responsibly.
We want to support the companies and
the people that are really workinghard to make AI more accessible and
as beneficial as possible tomostly as many people as possible.
>> Mike Steadman (07:08):
Three years ago, I was at a veteran entrepreneur event put on
by the Institute of Veteran andMilitary Families in New Jersey.
And the head of IVMF was there, andthere was a panel on stage, et cetera.
And one of the thingshe talked about was AI.
This was three years ago, and he said he'sbeen having a lot of conversations with
leaders at Fortune 100 companies, Fortune500 companies, because these are a lot
(07:29):
of the big donors to the Instituteof Veteran Military Families.
And the thing that was always keepingthe thing that was keeping them up at
night was AI.
Now, this is three years ago, this isbefore ChatGPT was a household term.
A lot of us, he was saying AI, butwe didn't know what it really looked like.
We hadn't experienced it yet, et cetera.
Fast forward to today now, Claude ChatGPT,LLMs, right, there's all this language,
(07:53):
and at times it feels kind of slightlyoverwhelming, but we're in it now.
And yet you, you know, even from the verybeginning of this interview you mentioned,
I feel like you came from a verykind of positive mindset.
Right.There's like the doom and
gloom kind of people, and then there arepeople like yourself that are trying to
(08:14):
force us to reimagine whatright looks like with AI and
how have you managed to kind of keep that?
>> Chris McKay (08:21):
So I'll, I'll probably reframe that a little bit.
I think you have the doom andglobe, the doomers and
then you have people thatare probably AI Utopia.
They think AI is going tosol of humanity's problems.
I'm probably somewhere in the middle.
I think of myself as a bit more rational,
a bit more pragmatic interms of the opportunity.
(08:41):
For me, AI is a technology.
It's a very powerful technology.
One that I think will be a lever anda force multiplier for
every single industry.
Just like electricity or the Internetreally changed how work happened.
It changed jobs, it changed lives.
I think AI is going to do that at a muchfaster rate and at a much larger scale.
(09:06):
And so when you think ofthe history of technology,
you recognize that technology in andof itself is not good or bad.
That isn't to say that you can'thave devastating consequences and
outcomes because of a technology existing.
However, if we have an opportunity touse something like AI to make healthcare
(09:27):
more accessible to more people aroundthe world, or to bring education
into the pocket of any child anywherein the world with a personal tutor,
or to bring financial literacyto more corners of the world,
that's an opportunitythat we have to take.
It's a chance that we have to reallyredefine how our world works.
(09:50):
And I think, yes,there will be challenges,
there will be problems to solve, butif we move forward with optimism,
but at the same time learningfrom the mistakes of the past and
minimizing the risks,minimizing the downsides,
the hope is that this can be a reallypositive outcome for humanity.
>> Mike Steadman (10:13):
You know,
one person who I look up to has reallyhelped me kind of shape my thinking.
There's a couple people,number one guy named Christopher Lockhead,
he's the founder of Category Pirate,Tim and Eddie Yoon, and
they write a lot about category design andchanging the world in these new markets,
creating jobs before that didn't exist.
That's really what we do.
But when it comes specifically to AI,it's also been will I own from
(10:36):
the Black Eyed Peas, andhe founded a company called FY.
I think it's fun, you'd ideas orsomething along that lines.
And, you know, I was listening to himspeak at the, I think it was at MIT or
something and YouTube, right?
Access to education, okay?
So me and my living room in Harlem, I canwatch all these amazing presentational
AI and he was saying, what doesmusic look like in the world of AI?
(10:59):
Who says an album ora track has to be one song?
What if it's playing 24 7?
And he just came hit that with,like, that imaginative mode.
And that's really kind ofgrounded me in terms of, like,
I don't have to accept the past.
I can create a.
A new kind of future.
But I've been leaning in.
I read Cointelligence by Ethan Molik,right,
(11:21):
it was a podcast on earn your leisure.
Her name is X With Tay, which wassuper helpful, but outside of that,
I found myself really havingto kind of dig around,
find people like yourselfto stay at the edge.
Because when I built that chatbot andI shared that into my group,
I realized I was operating in the edgeof a space that a lot of people weren't.
>> Chris McKay (11:41):
Yeah.
So here's the realityof where we are today.
I think the bottleneckin society is literacy.
If you think of what happenedwith the mortgage crisis and
the lack of financial literacy andhow it devastated so many communities,
in fact, if you think that toCovid just a few years ago and
(12:03):
what the lack of health literacy did,misinformation and
disinformation wrecking communities,especially black communities,
minority communities,literacy is a massive problem.
And so when you think of AI andthe risks that we have today,
we need to bring more voices to the table.
(12:24):
We need to ensure that our peopleare educated, they're informed,
because the impact that it will have,not just positive, but
also negative, the potential fornegative outcomes is very real.
And so for me, we need our lawmakers andour policymakers to be informed.
We need our business leaders andour entrepreneurs to be informed.
(12:46):
We need our consumers to be updated and
educated in terms of howto use this technology.
And we have already seen use caseswhere people may have been scammed or
you have had even deaths that havehappened because of AI technologies.
And so.So for me, it is very near and
dear to me to say the focus on AIliteracy is something that as a society,
(13:07):
we should be invested in heavily.
>> Mike Steadman (13:10):
What are some assumptions that people need to have,
though, with regards to literacy?
Because when I hear the term literacy,I think of reading, writing.
Right.And you think about these early models.
Right.
If you can't communicate if youcan't write, if you can't read,
you're going to be so far behind.
And that's not to say literacy doesn'tmean something kind of in the future, but
like that's one of the things thatkeeps me up at night currently.
(13:32):
Right.Because I'm a prolific reader.
Right.I tinker, I play around, but
I'm always reading.
And I had already written my first book,so when it came to programming at that
bot, I had already kind of had someideas and a way to conversate, whatever.
But I think about people that aren't likespending time on the old school craft of
like reading and writing.
>> Chris McKay (13:52):
Yeah.
So when I,when I say the term AI literacy,
it's not just the direct term of readingand writing in the traditional sense,
it's one understanding the technology,not in the technical levels.
Because of course literacy and AI literacywill be a spectrum for most people.
You don't think of how a computer works.
(14:13):
You don't think of what's happeningwith the GPU and the cpu.
You have a car that you're driving, youdon't think of how a car actually works.
Most people don't actuallyknow how their car works yet
still the car is very useful for them.
Your computer can be something thatyou use to make a lot of money on
a professional basis, on a day to day,without knowing how it works.
And so I think the first misconceptionis thinking that you need to
(14:38):
understand technically how AI worksin order for you to leverage it.
What I will say is it's not aboutthe answers to the questions
that you need as much as you needto know what questions to ask.
And one of the coolest demos thatI saw with AI years ago was when
(14:59):
I saw chatgpt speaking inPatwell to somebody in Jamaica.
No, Patwell is the spoken languagein Jamaica, it's not written.
And so there are a lot of people thatprimarily are talking Patwell that
may not have gone to school andgot tied into the education system.
And so they're left out of the economy andknow in their pockets they have a tool
(15:23):
that can understand them, that they cantalk to and it will understand them.
That is so powerful to me and that isthe opportunity with AI, the fact that you
can bring more voices, more people intothe conversation, into the economy.
I think this is going to change somany lives all across the world.
>> Mike Steadman (15:43):
You just gave me an insight because back in 2012 I was
a platoon commander in Helman Province,Afghanistan and
I did not speak the language there,okay, we had to carry interpreters
everywhere we went in the hostileenvironments, and we had the.
You know, trust that the interpreterwas translating the right thing.
Now I had great interpreters,
(16:04):
love my interpreters, they were inthe thick and thin of it with me.
But when I think about now, that kindof empathy, that understanding we had,
situations go sideways.
What would imagine what would havehappened if I had a translator that was AI
that allowed us to speakthe same language?
>> Chris McKay (16:19):
Yeah, it's, it's a powerful idea to think that you can have
computers that can understand us inwhatever language we're speaking, and
that we can understand them becausethey can speak back in our language.
And it's important, I think,to also recognize that
the technology is more accessible todaythan it ever has been, even today itself.
(16:45):
OpenAI reduced the cost oftheir most frontier model,
the O3 Pro, by 87% in months.
Like this idea that we can have frontierintelligence accessible to anyone,
maybe from a mobile device, andthat we can keep on iterating with open
source technologies to pushto make it more available.
(17:08):
That's just,it's an amazing opportunity for us and
it's something that I couldn'tbe more excited about.
>> Mike Steadman (17:14):
So we know education, right?
There's, I mean, I had a previousconversation about public education.
Okay.
And you know, the beauty of the world thatyou and I operate in, in entrepreneurship,
we can make pivots,we can shift super quick.
Okay.
But the classroom still looks very similarto how I look, you know, 1910, et cetera.
One teacher up front,bunch of kids in the back.
(17:35):
How worried are you about our currenteducation kind of process of being able to
keep up and actually teach andimplement this stuff?
Right.
>> Chris McKay (17:44):
I think it's an important question to ask.
I, I generally don't approachthe future being worried.
I am generally a believer that humanitywill solve its problems over time.
And this is certainly a problemthat we see increasingly both from
just a resource investment standpoint andan roi or
(18:06):
kids are not learning as wewould want them to learn.
They're not having the experiences that wethink of when we think of what education
should look like.
But I think we're also starting to seethe opportunities where technology
has been introduced in someclassrooms in responsible ways.
And I'll caveat that by saying we won'tget it right all the time, we won't
(18:29):
get it right maybe initially, but whenyou have a more literate community and
society, it means that wecan ask better questions and
we can inquire about howthings are being done.
Ideas will come from anybody and maybe theperson that is going to solve the model
for education isn't even in educationtoday, but because they have access to
(18:51):
technologies like AI, they'll be able tobuild a solution or propose an idea and
need a startup company, and they'll beable to solve the problem that we have.
What I have chosen to do is to leveragetools and technologies to teach my kids.
I have two kids, 5 and 6 years old, and
I've seen how they haveembraced technologies.
(19:13):
And they're AI natives.
They talk to the devices andthey expect the devices to respond.
At one point they asked me whythe car wasn't driving itself.
And I did chuckle because I think ofthe world that they live in where
they can just say commands andthe world responds to them.
But I also see that they'relearning in a much different way.
(19:35):
If they have a question, they can justask it and they can get an answer.
But with all of this comes this burdenof responsibility that we have to
ensure that the technologiesthat we're building,
that they are not biased,that they have the right information, and
that we're ensuring that it'saccessible to as many people as we can.
(19:57):
And so while I look at the future andthings like education and
I'm excited to see where AI isentering into the classroom and
we're looking at things like Duolingo and
how that is gamifying learning andthe insights that we can get from it and
what Khan Academy is doing with Khanigo,I'm excited.
(20:18):
I don't think we have necessarilysolved any of the main problems about
the classroom of yesteryear, but100%, that old model has to go.
I don't see a future where we're going tobe able to educate kids and help them to
become autodidacts if that's the modelthat they're they're using moving forward.
>> Mike Steadman (20:39):
And that's what I was hitting at earlier when I talked about
reading, testing, experimenting.
Right.You sums it up perfectly.
A world where you can be an autodidact,right.
Where you don't have tohave all the answers.
Right?You have.
Everybody has an opportunity tocreate specialized knowledge.
Right.Each of us has the ability to create our
own worlds.
That's really kinda where we're at.
(21:00):
But yet, when I talk to someuniversity professors here,
locally in Harlem, et cetera,they always push back on AI.
You know, they're like, we don't wantit in the classroom, or X, Y and Z.
And I,I've sparred with them at coffee shops.
So what is a historypaper in the world of AI?
You know, maybe you can create a wholemovie on a topic and you can guide it.
(21:22):
So maybe you're not necessarily writinga paper, you're writing a script, but
that requires just a certainlevel of imagination.
And so when you have people that are soused to legacy systems,
they're not incentivized to change it.
But the world is acceleratingat a rapid rate.
>> Chris McKay (21:38):
It is, but, but there's an argument for
conservatism and an argument for progress.
Progressivism.
I was in Morocco a few weeks ago andI was moderating a panel with a professor.
And similarly he, he was veryadamant about the role of AI and
(21:58):
how it was ruining his students brains.
And I listened to him because I thinkthat's what is important now more
than ever.
Listening to dissenting opinions,
listening to peoplethat disagree with you.
Now I do think when it comes to education,this idea that how do you teach things
like critical thinking when the answer isgoing to be readily available to everyone?
(22:22):
How do you get people to think creatively?
How do you get them to envision.
These are things that I don't thinkwe know the answers to as yet.
But they're questions thatwe increasingly have to ask.
I understand a lot of the concerns thatprofessors have because of course,
the model of education,of grading students and assessing their,
(22:45):
their, their, their knowledge,all of that will have to change.
All of those locks havebeen unlocked now with AI.
And so how do we move forward?
I, I think it's important that we don'tnecessarily just rush into a future
of unknowns because the collateraldamage could be significant.
And so we have to be thoughtful.
(23:06):
So I welcome professorsthat are willing to say no.
And I encourage more debate becauseI want them to ask the questions and
challenge technologists as tohow they want to solve and
answer those questions to pushthe technology to get better.
Because sure,there are real issues with AI today.
(23:28):
You have issues around hallucinations,you have issues as to whether or
not this is something that willnecessarily scale beyond a certain level.
And so I, when I say I'm very pragmaticin terms of my approach to AI,
it's also in that optimism to say, yes,
I am hopeful that AI willcompletely transform education.
(23:50):
But I understand that it's not goingto be just an easy road to say, hey,
everybody should just startusing these tools today, or
every classroom should startadopting these tools today.
Because we don't understandthe ultimate outcomes.
And I'll give you just an example.
With one of the modelsthat Claude had released.
(24:13):
No, sorry, with one of the modelsthat OpenAI had released,
they spoke about the fact that theirmodels are starting to become and
mimic humans a lot more closely.
And when you're talking to an AI,you can interrupt it,
you can just cut it off mid sentence andinterrupt it to correct it.
And for kids, they will learn thisbehavior, but they may also think that
(24:38):
it's okay to do that socially with otherhumans, which would be a massive issue.
Right, and so there are sometimesunintended consequences to technology
that we don't even think aboutuntil we see it in the real world.
We've seen that with social media,where, yes,
you were thinking of connecting everyone,and then all of a sudden you had this
(25:00):
voyager society where everybody wasjust kind of following other people.
And it completely changed how peoplewere behaving in the real world.
But also online bullying changed with.
With the era of social media.
And so I do think we have to be thoughtfulabout even the questions that we don't
know yet to ask.
And just be mindful that therecould be side effects to this rose,
(25:25):
the future that AI will bring for us.
>> Mike Steadman (25:28):
You talked about imagination.
Well, being in New York City,
I get the privilege of beinga advisor to Cornell Tech, right?
So I get to be there,part of their venture studio and
meet the little founders, et cetera.
But the reason I want to do that is I wantto see how people who are operating at
the edge we're building andthinking about, you know, AI.
(25:50):
And just in the past semesterof doing that right,
my OODA loop is spinning because no longeram I just sitting here pontificate.
I'm watching.
So I'm able to get thatfeedback loop going.
I'm able to learn kind of in real time.
And it just feels like we're allkind of building a future together,
like nobody really knowswhat right looks like.
So, you know, like you mentioned before,
(26:13):
those definitions and stuff is shapinghow do you navigate in this world.
>> Chris McKay (26:18):
So there are a couple of things that I've tried to do over time.
One, I've tried to alwaysreassess my priors to not be so
opinionated or fixed in my opinionsthat I refuse to change this idea,
that if I see compelling enough evidence,I should be able to reassess
(26:39):
whatever assumptions I made previously andchange my mind.
This flexibility is important for me.
There are things that I believetoday that I may not believe in.
A few years may not completely believe.
There are things that I believe today thatI probably didn't believe in the past.
And so I do think having that flexibility,that mental flexibility,
(27:03):
is something that has served me well.
I try to speak to peoplethat are passionate
about whatever it is that they're doing.
I find that people will share a lotin terms of maybe the challenges,
but just their experience.
And that feels to me so contagious.
And that helps to ground me inthe reality of what I'm doing.
(27:26):
Another thing that I do is Ialso grow myself in the reality
of the work that I'm doing.
My wife works in a pediatricemergency medicine ed department,
and the work that she does literallysaves lives on a daily basis.
And so sometimes when I'm thinking,I'm going to write this article,
(27:47):
this isn't to diminish the workthat I'm doing by any means.
But there is something very humbling whenyou realize that there are people all
across the world doing allthese different types of jobs,
having all these different experiencesthat ultimately will shape this future
that we'll have collectively together.
It isn't going to be written and
built by one individual inSilicon Valley or in New York City.
(28:12):
The future of this worldbelongs to all of us.
And so getting out there,meeting people and being flexible and
open mentally to change has been somethingthat has served me well, of course,
with AI andbecause everything is changing so quickly.
On a more practical note, I read a lot.
I consume a lot of research papers.
I have select people that I followon social media platforms because I
(28:36):
see them doing the work anddoing the research and sharing content.
And that community has been super helpful.
And so there's one thing I can recommend.
If you can find a community that you canbe a part of, where you can learn and
exchange ideas, it is contagious.
And before you know it,you'll be doing the same thing.
>> Mike Steadman (28:57):
One thing that Chris taught me over in Category Pirates was
a lot of people right now are treatingAI like a bolt on, like it's an add on,
instead of treating it like a foundation,like a soil.
So, you know, co authoring a book withyou, co founding a startup with you,
like really bringing it into beinga core part of the conversation, right?
But the only reason I know that andI think like that and
(29:19):
I practice like that is becauseI got that education loop going.
I read I'm invested in communities,et cetera.
And it goes back to how I startedthis conversation though,
is I worry about the peoplethat are not in these spaces.
You know, the people that are working,let's say a minimum wage job at retail,
and then one day you look up andnow it's harder and harder.
We've got a whole generationof college graduates now
(29:41):
that are still living athome with their parents,
still unemployed because they can't getjobs in this kind of current workforce.
And so how do they navigate this space?
How does the everyday American, you know,that may or may not be as tech savvy,
you know, that really doesn't havethat kind of autodidact mindset yet.
How are they surviving and thriving inthis rapidly changing AI driven world?
>> Chris McKay (30:06):
I think it's an important question to ask and to keep asking.
I think we all havea responsibility as people on
the edge to really keep promoting andspreading the information.
But it is that adoptioncurve with any technology.
You're going to have those people that arejust so excited and fanatic about it, that
(30:27):
are going to be on the bleeding edge, thatare going to adopt it and maybe they're
going to start companies and they're goingto keep pushing the frontier forward.
And then that will alsoreached down through society.
The computer didn't start offas an iPhone in your pocket.
It started as massive mainframes andentire buildings.
(30:48):
And little by little,
that technology became better because ofthe people that were passionate about it,
that wanted to derive value andmaybe drive businesses from it.
And so I think encouraging culture ofentrepreneurship is going to be key.
Culture of innovation will berewarding for us as a country.
(31:09):
If we can have policies that encouragepeople to take risks to start companies,
maybe there's a company to befound around somebody that's
bringing this education to the massesin ways that aren't being done
today to creators that may be ableto simplify the technical terms or
(31:29):
the complex issues and challenges andbreak it down to anyone.
I think the world isn't shortof the need for great ideas.
There are a lot of problems to solve and
ones that AI will solve orat least will help us solve.
But what I'm most excitedabout is that right now,
(31:53):
today, somewhere in the world is a boy ora girl that may have an idea.
And we don't know their name as yet.
And they're going to change the entire.
History of our world.
And I think that is the most.
Fascinating thing about being alive.
When I was growing up, the richest.
Man in the world wasBill Gates at one point.
(32:14):
And I used to think, man, Bill.
Gates is so rich, how will anybodymake more money than him, Right?
And yes, somebody did.
And I think that is amazing about, andjust how diverse and complex our world is,
we have to believe in the next generation,we have to believe in each other.
We have to believe that the future.
(32:35):
Will be brighter than it is today.
It's not a guarantee, but if we.
Work together, it's something thatwe can hopefully ensure happens.
>> Mike Steadman (32:44):
I was reading something online, and maybe it was online,
it was a podcast, and there's so muchcontent these days, it's hard to keep up.
But I read somewhere that a lot of thirdworld countries are a lot more optimistic
about what's possible with AI thana lot of us are in this kind of more
developed world.
Do you know why that is?
>> Chris McKay (33:08):
I don't know if I necessarily believe that, but
I can assume that it's true.
But I will say the opportunity fordeveloping countries
is where they can leakcertain technological eras.
And so if you think of mobile.
With countries in some part of Africa,
(33:28):
they didn't have to go through in theirfinancial system, they didn't have to.
Deal with traditional banks.
And everything that happened,our own whole banks were set up and
clearing hosts, etc.
They went into digital currenciesvery early with things like M Pesa.
And so it was super easy for them to besending money with their mobile phones.
(33:48):
And I think with AI, the opportunityis that they won't have the legacy.
Systems of the past that a lot.
Of companies in the developed world willneed to solve for and to get around.
Meaning they can be more nimble andthey can be more agile.
The questions that they may be asking.
And the impact that they will see fromthe technology is likely going to be much
(34:11):
greater earlier than fordeveloped countries.
And if you think about it,it makes sense, right?
Somebody who maybe is a B ora C performer,
if you give them a tool like ChatGPT orClaude, and
they're able to use it to augmenttheir work by just asking prompts.
They can probably getclose to an A performer,
(34:34):
maybe even outperform an A person, right?
But the person who is already reallygood at their job, they're going to.
See all the errors, they're going to.
See the issues with the models and.
It will take time forthe models to get there.
So I think especially fordeveloping nations, it's important for
them to have an AI strategy as countries.
(34:57):
But if you're there and you're thinking.
Man, what can I do?
Start by downloading the apps, get the.
Free open source models, start askingquestions, start learning how to prompt,
start learning.
About the opportunity and that youcan use AI to solve problems in your
very own world, in your small universe.
And see how AI can do that and then scale.
>> Mike Steadman (35:20):
One thing I'm starting to see with a lot of universities is
they're starting to offermore online courses.
Now there were some that have been doingthis for years, but now, you know,
Harvard is leaning a lot moreinto their online products.
Right.
I just finished up a course atUC Berkeley that was offered online.
So we're going to be able to create these,
provide access to theseworld class institutions.
(35:42):
And now you're going to start see builderscome out the woodworks, you know, because
there are some people that have beentrying to make a way out of nothing and
then now all of a sudden theyhave access to this education.
And for me, that's the more exciting part.
But at the same time, like you said, thisbrings down a new level of complication
because what happens to ourtraditional university system?
You know, for myself, I've longthought about pursuing a PhD, but
(36:05):
what is the purpose of a PhD in the worldof AI when you can create new knowledge
right then and there?
You know, where I don't have to teach inthe classroom, I can do a podcast, right.
I can launch a substack.
And so it's just challengingour understanding of the world.
And again, it creates opportunities,
but it also causes some chaosin traditional systems.
>> Chris McKay (36:28):
It does.
I don't envy the school leaders,
the educators, the policymakers.
The pace of change and the impact.
That this technology is going to have.
And already is having is incredible.
And the time that they have torespond to it is yesterday.
(36:53):
And so a lot of the work thatwe're doing with companies,
with school districts, with institutions,is to help them to process all of this.
One, how do they quicklylevel up their staff and
their faculty and then how do theythink of delivering education?
What is the role of the teacher movingforward, or will their work change?
(37:16):
What is the role of a student?
What is the role of school?
These are very real questions that a.
Lot more families are going to startasking when you have access to so.
Much information right at your fingertips.
>> Mike Steadman (37:30):
Now, I am a military veteran So I do got to bring this topic up
is right now there's a lotthat's happening in Ukraine.
Drones are all over the place.
You think about what's happening insome other parts of the country.
Right.And now we're going to be bringing AI into
warfare.
I have to assume some ofthis keeps you up at night.
>> Chris McKay (37:53):
Yeah, is a complex topic, I've followed very closely.
Companies like Andy Rogue, Palantir,
the defense industry hascertainly shifted a lot.
The promises that companies made yearsago about not using AI in warfare and
(38:16):
to support the military,they've all walked back.
And this isn't to say that it's.
A good or a bad thing.
It's just to show that the, the dialogueacross the country has changed.
What I will say is having somany family members that
are either currently inthe military activity or retired.
(38:40):
War is a horrible thing, butthere's a very real need for the military.
We have to be thankful for anybody thatdecides to serve in our military and
to defend our way off life.
Because it is threatened on a daily basis.
And the safety andthe beauties that we're able to enjoy
(39:04):
are sometimes on the backs of people thatsacrifice everything to give it to us.
And so if there's an opportunity forus to use technology to make that better,
to make that experienceinsignificant in terms of the impact
that it has on soldiers' lives andtheir families,
(39:27):
I think that's something thatwe have to explore, all right?
And again, it's a situation where we haveto encourage debate and dialogue because.
One person won't have all the answers.
But the only thing that you can.
Do is to inform more people about.
The technology, the potential,the dangers, and
(39:48):
then get more people toparticipate in the conversation.
Because when you thinkof the fact that you can
have a war happening where thingslike drones can be deployed.
And the human lives don't haveto be put at risk as much.
That's a good thing, right?
When you think of cybersecurity anddefending our nation's top secrets and
(40:09):
how we can leverage AI to potentiallyhelp with that, that's a good thing.
And so there are lots of pros to AI and
it's a no brainer to have AIused in military and defense.
It is, it is not a question as towhether or not it needs to happen.
It will, and it already is happening.
And the companies like Palantiran andAnduril Scale and so on, no,
(40:34):
Meta apparently is also doing some workwith the military, it's important that our
best minds and our best technologies arebeing put to use to protect our country.
And with that said, of course,if you have a technology this powerful,
it will be misused inthe hands of the wrong people.
(40:54):
And so how do we minimizethe impact of all of that?
I think there are multiple approachesthat you're seeing government leaders,
state policymakers try to address,but it's a very real threat,
if our adversaries get access toa technology this powerful before us,
what does it mean forour way of life and our society?
(41:16):
Those are questions that we have to ask.
And the military hasthat responsibility and
burden to us even before the civilians do.
And so, like many of the things withAI technology, my hope is that we're
able to solve and answer a lot of thesequestions in a way that is beneficial
to our society and one that willminimize the harms that it could cause.
>> Mike Steadman (41:40):
So I'm going to put a disclaimer here because we are having
a conversation.
So this is a very humancentered conversation.
I, you know,I operate in the dual use space, right?
I help support dual use founders,et cetera.
But I would be remiss if Ididn't admit that, you know,
there's a term mutual issue ordestruction, right?
And there's all these kind of memes andstuff online with Sarah Connor.
(42:03):
You know, watching us build technologyis going to destroy ourselves.
Now, we can joke about it,we can laugh about it, but
we also know as humanity majors,right, art imitates life.
There's stuff that we saw in movies andstuff 30,
40 years ago that's startingto come to fruition.
And when I think about the tankentering World War I, the machine gun,
the Gatling gun, and what that did to theamount of casualties we start to sustain,
(42:28):
and I see drones in Ukraine and whatnot, Iwonder what drones are going to look like.
Here.
And what happens when we have local, youknow, we got protests taking place in la.
What happens when protesters that.
Not the good protesters, Right.
The bad ones.
Right.The ones that want to cause chaos, etc.
What happens when they start leveragingsome of these new technologies, you know,
(42:51):
and are we now giving them the power thatthey need in their hands to be able to
build these things, et cetera?
Because it's only a matter of time forthe dark Web version of ChatGPT and
some of these othertechnologies are built.
And I do think we gottahave these conversations.
>> Chris McKay (43:04):
Exactly, and again, that brings me back to AI literacy,
because the dangers are certainly real.
Right, and so to ensure that we canprotect the future that we all deserve,
I think we have to leanback to our morals and
the principles that we believe in andempower those as much as possible and
(43:26):
empower the people that support thosewith the technologies that can help that.
Now, these may change over time.
And that's why we exist asa society to engage in dialogue.
And our democracy is one thathopefully can survive and
can be perpetuated in conversations anddebate around the future that we want,
(43:49):
because to your point, yes,the technology is super powerful, and
yes, it is getting increasinglyinto the hands of our adversaries.
That's the reason that was the thinkingof limiting access to chips, for example.
So maybe this software you could control,but maybe if you can limit the hardware
(44:10):
and the access to the hardwareto run these technologies,
you could somehow have control over them.
But again, you're seeing people find ways.
Whether it's through smuggling,life finds a way.
And so these are questions thatwe'll always keep on asking.
The stakes are only getting higher asthe technology becomes that much more
(44:31):
critical to our everyday lives andto society as a whole.
>> Mike Steadman (44:36):
I started this conversation referencing,
you know,someone three years ago who was saying,
hey, this is what's keeping Fortune 100,Fortune 500 CEOs up at night.
You operate a lot more in this spacenow than I could only imagine.
What does that answer look like today?
What's keeping people up at night?
>> Chris McKay (44:57):
I think two things.
I think there's this real fear around
business leaders that they'regoing to miss the boat.
They see the speed at whicheverything is changing.
They see the technology,they see the impact in their real world.
(45:18):
And I think many companieslook at an existentialist
threat to their futurewith AI technologies.
Not that AI itself will replace them ortheir company, but that maybe another
company is going to come out andjust completely blindside them.
And I think professionals are alsowondering what the future of work will
(45:42):
look like.
Will it be an AI model that somehowjust takes their job and it disappears?
Will it be somebody elsethat's using AI tools?
There are a lot of people inthe workforce that are not yet
close to retiring that are going to haveto go back and learn new technologies and
learn a completely new way of working.
These are all very hard problems to solve,but that we have to start working towards.
(46:08):
And I think, of course,governments are thinking,
what does the balance of powerlook like when certain countries
have access to AI technologythan other countries don't?
I think AI itself presentsthis magnificent future,
but it's also this fear, almost fomo,
(46:29):
that if you don't get on the boat,if you don't act,
if you don't do something today,it'll be too late.
You'll be the dinosaur that people readabout in the future because you waited too
late to respond.
>> Mike Steadman (46:45):
I wonder too if there's some, what's the word I'm looking for,
hubrisness going on too.
A lot of people don't reallyunderstand these technologies.
They're not playing with it themselves.
Right.They're just jumping on buzzwords.
We need an AI strategy.
We need this.
And it's like you haven't even paid$20 for Chad GPT yet, you know?
>> Chris McKay (47:03):
Yeah, there is some of that.
I do think there is some of that,often think that agency is
what's missing with most leaders andprofessionals.
They'll read the articles,they'll watch the videos, but
that, that, that, that hurdle,that inertia to, to go and
(47:27):
actually build a bot like you did,to go and write some code or
to, to use one of these tools andthey don't hit a final step.
And so that agency is, is, is lacking.
And so if, if I could encourage one thingfor anybody listening to this podcast,
create an artificial sense of urgencyto just go out and start doing things.
(47:49):
It won't be perfect, but I use AIin my day to day life all the time.
The cool guy comes and he's lookingat a new system and I whip up.
Out my phone andI point chatgpt to it and I'm like, hey,
we're having a problem with the pool.
This is what's happening.
What do you think?
And it comes up with solutions.
And the pool guy is like, whoa,how can it do this, and I'm like,
(48:12):
aren't you using ChatGPT?
And he says no.
And, and so now you have onemore person that's using it.
Right?My, my daughter comes and she,
she's working on like addition andsubtraction and I asked Chat,
I asked Claude to build a game forher to practice and she goes and
she plays it and she has fun.
And I'm like, man, no, she wants touse it to build things on her own.
(48:37):
And so get that sense of urgencyto use AI in your day to day life.
Solve the problems that you have.
That way you can start understanding whatit's good at, what it's not so good at,
where it should be used.
Because the one thing I'll say if I,if I can leave you with something,
because AI can do somethingdoesn't mean that it should.
(49:01):
And increasingly the questionsthat we'll need to ask won't
be around what AI can do,but what AI should do.
And it will be up to all of usto decide that as a society.
>> Mike Steadman (49:15):
Well, Chris, I appreciate you making time to share your
insights and pontificate and spar withme on some of these kind of hard,
heavy topics that reallynone of us have figured out.
But, but again, you're leading onthe cutting edge and we have listeners and
viewers tuning in from all overthe country, all over the world.
I would love for you to talk a little bitmore about the work you're doing with
(49:36):
maginative and how people can follow you,where they can find you to stay up to date
on the research andarticles that you're putting out.
>> Chris McKay (49:43):
Sure. Thank you.
So maginotive.com go to maginative.comif you want to stay up to date on
the most important stories in AI.
Our goal isn't to cover the noise,it isn't to cover the rumors.
It's to provide a space for especiallybusiness leaders and professionals.
If you're trying to stay up to datewith what's important, go there and
(50:04):
that will help you to level up veryquickly in terms of what's happening and
where, where you need to pay attention.
We have videos that we put out onYouTube covering important conversations
with leaders, with technologists,with humanists, because we want to have
more conversations around the role ofAI where it will fit into our society.
(50:27):
You can find me on LinkedIn,you can follow me on X.
I have a course on LinkedInaround AI adoption.
If you're thinking about how AI canmaybe accelerate your business or
course provides the usage framework,
which is a pragmatic way foryou to think through AI adoption.
And we have our AI maturity matrix thatwe're working on with LinkedIn also in
(50:49):
the coming months.
So some amazing resources are out there.
If you engage with me online and you havea question I'm more than happy to answer,
I can point you to podcasts,to free resources online.
The point I'm making is that there'san entire community out there of people
like me that are sharing contentthat you can learn from.
(51:10):
And the hope is that as you learn,you'll also join the community and
you'll start sharing.
And because to your point,Mike, we're all in it together.
So join us at imaginative,join the movement, join the community,
let's push the literacy as high as we canin our communities, in our personal lives,
in our families.
It is your responsibility.
You're here listening to this podcasttoday, go ahead and download the app or
(51:33):
take that technology,have a conversation with your friend,
have a conversation with your spouse oryour family member and
talk about how we can use this technologyto do something, anything in your life.
>> Mike Steadman (51:46):
Awesome.
Well, thank you, Chris.
I'll be sure to include a link toeverything you just talked about in
the show notes.
And for all our viewers, especially thoseveterans out there that are interested in
the Veteran Fellowship program,please head over to Hoover.org/VFP and
apply today.
And if you haven't subscribed to FrontlineVoices on your favorite podcast hosting
app, make sure you do so.
(52:06):
Until next time.
Peace, love.
Have a great rest of your week, everyone.
>> Chris McKay (52:09):
One love.
[MUSIC]
Welcome to Frontline Voices, a podcast brought to
you byStanford University's Hoover Institution,
where we explore leadership, service, and
real-world solutions to some ofour nation's most pressing issues.
(00:21):
I'm your host, Iron Mike Steadman,a member of the inaugural class
of Hoover veteran Fellows anda Marine Corps veteran.
Every time I open my laptop, I see a newheadline about the so-called AI bloodbath.
Some are warning us to brace formass layoffs and disruption,
which we are already seeing.
Others are painting a utopian picturefilled with opportunity and innovation.
(00:44):
The truth it's hard to separatethe signal from the noise.
Which is why I sat down with Chris McKay,founder of Maginative,
an AI literacy platform that provideshigh-quality, in-depth AI news and
analysis as well as tailoredAI training and education.
Chris is one of the sharpestminds I know in the space,
(01:04):
especially when it comes to AIeducation and entrepreneurship.
In this episode,we explore what AI literacy really means,
how it's reshaping the future of work,and why community, not code,
is the key to navigating this nextwave of technological change.
From the ethics of AI in warfare to howyoung people in developing nations can
(01:26):
leapfrog barriers through access andeducation, this is a conversation for
anyone who wants to be part of buildinga more informed, inclusive future,
not just bracing for it.
As always, I hope you enjoy today's showand look forward to hearing your feedback.
Chris, my brother, thank you for makingtime to come on Frontline Voices today.
>> Chris McKay (01:47):
Mike, it is an honor to be here.
Thank you for having me.
>> Mike Steadman (01:51):
So the interesting thing is I've been thinking a lot about
artificial intelligence andhere, let me set it up for you.
So two weeks ago I startedworking on a chatbot.
Okay.
>> Chris McKay (02:03):
Yeah.
>> Mike Steadman (02:04):
Last week I closed four clients with that chatbot and
I wrote about it in a coupleentrepreneur groups that I'm a part of.
And I just remember after it happened,I got to the end of the week,
cause it happened so quickly, right,two weeks ago, start working on it,
start sending people tothe link to test it.
Then I went live with it for a week and
at the end of that weekI closed four clients.
(02:26):
And I remember, you know, it'sNew York City Tech week here last week.
And I remember sitting at a restaurant andjust kind of taken back by it all,
just how quick everything had happened.
And I was just sitting with it and I wasin my world and I'm like looking around,
looking at the restaurant andI just feel like I'm living in the future
a little bit like I have done thisthing that seems so crazy, and
(02:48):
I want to talk to somebody about it.
And I didn't have anyone around meto immediately talk to me about it.
And I asked the bartender,I said, you know, hey,
do you ever mess around with AI?
And she's like, I use chat,GPT, et cetera, et cetera.
But that's pretty much it.
And I was like, man,I gotta talk to somebody about that.
Because I'm seeing all these articlestalking about, you know, the layoffs
(03:09):
are coming, you know, the reduction of theworkforce due to artificial intelligence.
And when I saw the work you're doing withImaginative, and I saw a couple of your
videos online talking about AI literacy, Ijust thought it was a perfect opportunity
to get you on the platform andtalk about it to our listeners.
>> Chris McKay (03:25):
Well, first of all,
I love the fact that you're gettingyour hands dirty and you're building,
because I think if you are an entrepreneuror just interested in creating, now is
the most exciting time in history as farconcerned where you want to be building.
The technology is so fascinating,it's almost magical, as you said.
(03:47):
And the access is there.
It's much more accessiblethan it was before.
And we have an opportunity to reallytransform not just aurali, but
society as a whole.
And my hope, my prayer is that weinvest in the right technologies in
the right people to make thisas accessible as possible,
(04:07):
to change lives across the world.
>> Mike Steadman (04:11):
Take us back.
How did you get into this space,first of all?
And then I want us to bring us up tospeed on how you define AI literacy.
>> Chris McKay (04:18):
Sure, so I own an agency.
I started imaginative 10 years ago,the Digital Agency and we worked at
the intersection of education,digital technologies and design.
Right, and I love that because for me,
education was that thing thatbrought me out of a farm in Jamaica,
where I was born, to the heightsof my career professionally.
(04:42):
And so I look at education asthis great equalizing force.
And the more we can make thataccessible and available to people,
the more we give them a chance andan opportunity.
And so I've spent a lot of my careerworking with school districts,
universities, technology companies withinthe education paradigm at all levels,
From K through 12,all the way to postdoctoral programs.
(05:06):
We have designed curricula, we have lookedat building tools around making technology
more accessible in the classroom.
It's something that I'mdeeply passionate about.
And throughout that time, I,
of course, really learned about productdevelopment and product design.
And design thinking was something thatwas around during the peak of my agency
(05:27):
days where we realized that Design wasn'tjust about how something looked, but
how it functioned andthe problem that it was solving.
And specifically, human centereddesign was going to change everything.
And so I had an opportunity to reallywork with great companies with great
teams to build greatproducts over the years.
(05:47):
And then I came across a bookcalled Life 3.0 by an Act Tegmark,
I remember reading that book.
That's the first time I actuallysaw the company named OpenAI.
If you haven't read that book,it is an amazing read.
It starts off as fiction, but what I lovedabout it is that it has this level setting
glossary at the front whereit just defines terms.
(06:07):
So when I say super intelligence orwhen I say AI or AGI,
we're on the same page because we'reworking with the same definitions.
And we may not necessarily needto agree on the definitions,
but at least we can understand where theother person is coming from because we're
working from the same baseline.
But I loved it because it really lookedat the opportunity with AI technology and
(06:28):
what it could mean forsociety, but also the dangers,
how it would change things likethe future of work or things like equity.
And so for me, it was important that Iwasn't just sitting on the sidelines.
I was taking an active role in termsof the future that I wanted to create.
And so, fast forward, two anda half years ago, we founded Magnetitude,
(06:50):
an AI literacy platform.
And our goal is to reallyaccelerate this AI's future.
But we want to do so responsibly.
We want to support the companies and
the people that are really workinghard to make AI more accessible and
as beneficial as possible tomostly as many people as possible.
>> Mike Steadman (07:08):
Three years ago, I was at a veteran entrepreneur event put on
by the Institute of Veteran andMilitary Families in New Jersey.
And the head of IVMF was there, andthere was a panel on stage, et cetera.
And one of the thingshe talked about was AI.
This was three years ago, and he said he'sbeen having a lot of conversations with
leaders at Fortune 100 companies, Fortune500 companies, because these are a lot
(07:29):
of the big donors to the Instituteof Veteran Military Families.
And the thing that was always keepingthe thing that was keeping them up at
night was AI.
Now, this is three years ago, this isbefore ChatGPT was a household term.
A lot of us, he was saying AI, butwe didn't know what it really looked like.
We hadn't experienced it yet, et cetera.
Fast forward to today now, Claude ChatGPT,LLMs, right, there's all this language,
(07:53):
and at times it feels kind of slightlyoverwhelming, but we're in it now.
And yet you, you know, even from the verybeginning of this interview you mentioned,
I feel like you came from a verykind of positive mindset.
Right.There's like the doom and
gloom kind of people, and then there arepeople like yourself that are trying to
(08:14):
force us to reimagine whatright looks like with AI and
how have you managed to kind of keep that?
>> Chris McKay (08:21):
So I'll, I'll probably reframe that a little bit.
I think you have the doom andglobe, the doomers and
then you have people thatare probably AI Utopia.
They think AI is going tosol of humanity's problems.
I'm probably somewhere in the middle.
I think of myself as a bit more rational,
a bit more pragmatic interms of the opportunity.
(08:41):
For me, AI is a technology.
It's a very powerful technology.
One that I think will be a lever anda force multiplier for
every single industry.
Just like electricity or the Internetreally changed how work happened.
It changed jobs, it changed lives.
I think AI is going to do that at a muchfaster rate and at a much larger scale.
(09:06):
And so when you think ofthe history of technology,
you recognize that technology in andof itself is not good or bad.
That isn't to say that you can'thave devastating consequences and
outcomes because of a technology existing.
However, if we have an opportunity touse something like AI to make healthcare
(09:27):
more accessible to more people aroundthe world, or to bring education
into the pocket of any child anywherein the world with a personal tutor,
or to bring financial literacyto more corners of the world,
that's an opportunitythat we have to take.
It's a chance that we have to reallyredefine how our world works.
(09:50):
And I think, yes,there will be challenges,
there will be problems to solve, butif we move forward with optimism,
but at the same time learningfrom the mistakes of the past and
minimizing the risks,minimizing the downsides,
the hope is that this can be a reallypositive outcome for humanity.
>> Mike Steadman (10:13):
You know,
one person who I look up to has reallyhelped me kind of shape my thinking.
There's a couple people,number one guy named Christopher Lockhead,
he's the founder of Category Pirate,Tim and Eddie Yoon, and
they write a lot about category design andchanging the world in these new markets,
creating jobs before that didn't exist.
That's really what we do.
But when it comes specifically to AI,it's also been will I own from
(10:36):
the Black Eyed Peas, andhe founded a company called FY.
I think it's fun, you'd ideas orsomething along that lines.
And, you know, I was listening to himspeak at the, I think it was at MIT or
something and YouTube, right?
Access to education, okay?
So me and my living room in Harlem, I canwatch all these amazing presentational
AI and he was saying, what doesmusic look like in the world of AI?
(10:59):
Who says an album ora track has to be one song?
What if it's playing 24 7?
And he just came hit that with,like, that imaginative mode.
And that's really kind ofgrounded me in terms of, like,
I don't have to accept the past.
I can create a.
A new kind of future.
But I've been leaning in.
I read Cointelligence by Ethan Molik,right,
(11:21):
it was a podcast on earn your leisure.
Her name is X With Tay, which wassuper helpful, but outside of that,
I found myself really havingto kind of dig around,
find people like yourselfto stay at the edge.
Because when I built that chatbot andI shared that into my group,
I realized I was operating in the edgeof a space that a lot of people weren't.
>> Chris McKay (11:41):
Yeah.
So here's the realityof where we are today.
I think the bottleneckin society is literacy.
If you think of what happenedwith the mortgage crisis and
the lack of financial literacy andhow it devastated so many communities,
in fact, if you think that toCovid just a few years ago and
(12:03):
what the lack of health literacy did,misinformation and
disinformation wrecking communities,especially black communities,
minority communities,literacy is a massive problem.
And so when you think of AI andthe risks that we have today,
we need to bring more voices to the table.
(12:24):
We need to ensure that our peopleare educated, they're informed,
because the impact that it will have,not just positive, but
also negative, the potential fornegative outcomes is very real.
And so for me, we need our lawmakers andour policymakers to be informed.
We need our business leaders andour entrepreneurs to be informed.
(12:46):
We need our consumers to be updated and
educated in terms of howto use this technology.
And we have already seen use caseswhere people may have been scammed or
you have had even deaths that havehappened because of AI technologies.
And so.So for me, it is very near and
dear to me to say the focus on AIliteracy is something that as a society,
(13:07):
we should be invested in heavily.
>> Mike Steadman (13:10):
What are some assumptions that people need to have,
though, with regards to literacy?
Because when I hear the term literacy,I think of reading, writing.
Right.And you think about these early models.
Right.
If you can't communicate if youcan't write, if you can't read,
you're going to be so far behind.
And that's not to say literacy doesn'tmean something kind of in the future, but
like that's one of the things thatkeeps me up at night currently.
(13:32):
Right.Because I'm a prolific reader.
Right.I tinker, I play around, but
I'm always reading.
And I had already written my first book,so when it came to programming at that
bot, I had already kind of had someideas and a way to conversate, whatever.
But I think about people that aren't likespending time on the old school craft of
like reading and writing.
>> Chris McKay (13:52):
Yeah.
So when I,when I say the term AI literacy,
it's not just the direct term of readingand writing in the traditional sense,
it's one understanding the technology,not in the technical levels.
Because of course literacy and AI literacywill be a spectrum for most people.
You don't think of how a computer works.
(14:13):
You don't think of what's happeningwith the GPU and the cpu.
You have a car that you're driving, youdon't think of how a car actually works.
Most people don't actuallyknow how their car works yet
still the car is very useful for them.
Your computer can be something thatyou use to make a lot of money on
a professional basis, on a day to day,without knowing how it works.
And so I think the first misconceptionis thinking that you need to
(14:38):
understand technically how AI worksin order for you to leverage it.
What I will say is it's not aboutthe answers to the questions
that you need as much as you needto know what questions to ask.
And one of the coolest demos thatI saw with AI years ago was when
(14:59):
I saw chatgpt speaking inPatwell to somebody in Jamaica.
No, Patwell is the spoken languagein Jamaica, it's not written.
And so there are a lot of people thatprimarily are talking Patwell that
may not have gone to school andgot tied into the education system.
And so they're left out of the economy andknow in their pockets they have a tool
(15:23):
that can understand them, that they cantalk to and it will understand them.
That is so powerful to me and that isthe opportunity with AI, the fact that you
can bring more voices, more people intothe conversation, into the economy.
I think this is going to change somany lives all across the world.
>> Mike Steadman (15:43):
You just gave me an insight because back in 2012 I was
a platoon commander in Helman Province,Afghanistan and
I did not speak the language there,okay, we had to carry interpreters
everywhere we went in the hostileenvironments, and we had the.
You know, trust that the interpreterwas translating the right thing.
Now I had great interpreters,
(16:04):
love my interpreters, they were inthe thick and thin of it with me.
But when I think about now, that kindof empathy, that understanding we had,
situations go sideways.
What would imagine what would havehappened if I had a translator that was AI
that allowed us to speakthe same language?
>> Chris McKay (16:19):
Yeah, it's, it's a powerful idea to think that you can have
computers that can understand us inwhatever language we're speaking, and
that we can understand them becausethey can speak back in our language.
And it's important, I think,to also recognize that
the technology is more accessible todaythan it ever has been, even today itself.
(16:45):
OpenAI reduced the cost oftheir most frontier model,
the O3 Pro, by 87% in months.
Like this idea that we can have frontierintelligence accessible to anyone,
maybe from a mobile device, andthat we can keep on iterating with open
source technologies to pushto make it more available.
(17:08):
That's just,it's an amazing opportunity for us and
it's something that I couldn'tbe more excited about.
>> Mike Steadman (17:14):
So we know education, right?
There's, I mean, I had a previousconversation about public education.
Okay.
And you know, the beauty of the world thatyou and I operate in, in entrepreneurship,
we can make pivots,we can shift super quick.
Okay.
But the classroom still looks very similarto how I look, you know, 1910, et cetera.
One teacher up front,bunch of kids in the back.
(17:35):
How worried are you about our currenteducation kind of process of being able to
keep up and actually teach andimplement this stuff?
Right.
>> Chris McKay (17:44):
I think it's an important question to ask.
I, I generally don't approachthe future being worried.
I am generally a believer that humanitywill solve its problems over time.
And this is certainly a problemthat we see increasingly both from
just a resource investment standpoint andan roi or
(18:06):
kids are not learning as wewould want them to learn.
They're not having the experiences that wethink of when we think of what education
should look like.
But I think we're also starting to seethe opportunities where technology
has been introduced in someclassrooms in responsible ways.
And I'll caveat that by saying we won'tget it right all the time, we won't
(18:29):
get it right maybe initially, but whenyou have a more literate community and
society, it means that wecan ask better questions and
we can inquire about howthings are being done.
Ideas will come from anybody and maybe theperson that is going to solve the model
for education isn't even in educationtoday, but because they have access to
(18:51):
technologies like AI, they'll be able tobuild a solution or propose an idea and
need a startup company, and they'll beable to solve the problem that we have.
What I have chosen to do is to leveragetools and technologies to teach my kids.
I have two kids, 5 and 6 years old, and
I've seen how they haveembraced technologies.
(19:13):
And they're AI natives.
They talk to the devices andthey expect the devices to respond.
At one point they asked me whythe car wasn't driving itself.
And I did chuckle because I think ofthe world that they live in where
they can just say commands andthe world responds to them.
But I also see that they'relearning in a much different way.
(19:35):
If they have a question, they can justask it and they can get an answer.
But with all of this comes this burdenof responsibility that we have to
ensure that the technologiesthat we're building,
that they are not biased,that they have the right information, and
that we're ensuring that it'saccessible to as many people as we can.
(19:57):
And so while I look at the future andthings like education and
I'm excited to see where AI isentering into the classroom and
we're looking at things like Duolingo and
how that is gamifying learning andthe insights that we can get from it and
what Khan Academy is doing with Khanigo,I'm excited.
(20:18):
I don't think we have necessarilysolved any of the main problems about
the classroom of yesteryear, but100%, that old model has to go.
I don't see a future where we're going tobe able to educate kids and help them to
become autodidacts if that's the modelthat they're they're using moving forward.
>> Mike Steadman (20:39):
And that's what I was hitting at earlier when I talked about
reading, testing, experimenting.
Right.You sums it up perfectly.
A world where you can be an autodidact,right.
Where you don't have tohave all the answers.
Right?You have.
Everybody has an opportunity tocreate specialized knowledge.
Right.Each of us has the ability to create our
own worlds.
That's really kinda where we're at.
(21:00):
But yet, when I talk to someuniversity professors here,
locally in Harlem, et cetera,they always push back on AI.
You know, they're like, we don't wantit in the classroom, or X, Y and Z.
And I,I've sparred with them at coffee shops.
So what is a historypaper in the world of AI?
You know, maybe you can create a wholemovie on a topic and you can guide it.
(21:22):
So maybe you're not necessarily writinga paper, you're writing a script, but
that requires just a certainlevel of imagination.
And so when you have people that are soused to legacy systems,
they're not incentivized to change it.
But the world is acceleratingat a rapid rate.
>> Chris McKay (21:38):
It is, but, but there's an argument for
conservatism and an argument for progress.
Progressivism.
I was in Morocco a few weeks ago andI was moderating a panel with a professor.
And similarly he, he was veryadamant about the role of AI and
(21:58):
how it was ruining his students brains.
And I listened to him because I thinkthat's what is important now more
than ever.
Listening to dissenting opinions,
listening to peoplethat disagree with you.
Now I do think when it comes to education,this idea that how do you teach things
like critical thinking when the answer isgoing to be readily available to everyone?
(22:22):
How do you get people to think creatively?
How do you get them to envision.
These are things that I don't thinkwe know the answers to as yet.
But they're questions thatwe increasingly have to ask.
I understand a lot of the concerns thatprofessors have because of course,
the model of education,of grading students and assessing their,
(22:45):
their, their, their knowledge,all of that will have to change.
All of those locks havebeen unlocked now with AI.
And so how do we move forward?
I, I think it's important that we don'tnecessarily just rush into a future
of unknowns because the collateraldamage could be significant.
And so we have to be thoughtful.
(23:06):
So I welcome professorsthat are willing to say no.
And I encourage more debate becauseI want them to ask the questions and
challenge technologists as tohow they want to solve and
answer those questions to pushthe technology to get better.
Because sure,there are real issues with AI today.
(23:28):
You have issues around hallucinations,you have issues as to whether or
not this is something that willnecessarily scale beyond a certain level.
And so I, when I say I'm very pragmaticin terms of my approach to AI,
it's also in that optimism to say, yes,
I am hopeful that AI willcompletely transform education.
(23:50):
But I understand that it's not goingto be just an easy road to say, hey,
everybody should just startusing these tools today, or
every classroom should startadopting these tools today.
Because we don't understandthe ultimate outcomes.
And I'll give you just an example.
With one of the modelsthat Claude had released.
(24:13):
No, sorry, with one of the modelsthat OpenAI had released,
they spoke about the fact that theirmodels are starting to become and
mimic humans a lot more closely.
And when you're talking to an AI,you can interrupt it,
you can just cut it off mid sentence andinterrupt it to correct it.
And for kids, they will learn thisbehavior, but they may also think that
(24:38):
it's okay to do that socially with otherhumans, which would be a massive issue.
Right, and so there are sometimesunintended consequences to technology
that we don't even think aboutuntil we see it in the real world.
We've seen that with social media,where, yes,
you were thinking of connecting everyone,and then all of a sudden you had this
(25:00):
voyager society where everybody wasjust kind of following other people.
And it completely changed how peoplewere behaving in the real world.
But also online bullying changed with.
With the era of social media.
And so I do think we have to be thoughtfulabout even the questions that we don't
know yet to ask.
And just be mindful that therecould be side effects to this rose,
(25:25):
the future that AI will bring for us.
>> Mike Steadman (25:28):
You talked about imagination.
Well, being in New York City,
I get the privilege of beinga advisor to Cornell Tech, right?
So I get to be there,part of their venture studio and
meet the little founders, et cetera.
But the reason I want to do that is I wantto see how people who are operating at
the edge we're building andthinking about, you know, AI.
(25:50):
And just in the past semesterof doing that right,
my OODA loop is spinning because no longeram I just sitting here pontificate.
I'm watching.
So I'm able to get thatfeedback loop going.
I'm able to learn kind of in real time.
And it just feels like we're allkind of building a future together,
like nobody really knowswhat right looks like.
So, you know, like you mentioned before,
(26:13):
those definitions and stuff is shapinghow do you navigate in this world.
>> Chris McKay (26:18):
So there are a couple of things that I've tried to do over time.
One, I've tried to alwaysreassess my priors to not be so
opinionated or fixed in my opinionsthat I refuse to change this idea,
that if I see compelling enough evidence,I should be able to reassess
(26:39):
whatever assumptions I made previously andchange my mind.
This flexibility is important for me.
There are things that I believetoday that I may not believe in.
A few years may not completely believe.
There are things that I believe today thatI probably didn't believe in the past.
And so I do think having that flexibility,that mental flexibility,
(27:03):
is something that has served me well.
I try to speak to peoplethat are passionate
about whatever it is that they're doing.
I find that people will share a lotin terms of maybe the challenges,
but just their experience.
And that feels to me so contagious.
And that helps to ground me inthe reality of what I'm doing.
(27:26):
Another thing that I do is Ialso grow myself in the reality
of the work that I'm doing.
My wife works in a pediatricemergency medicine ed department,
and the work that she does literallysaves lives on a daily basis.
And so sometimes when I'm thinking,I'm going to write this article,
(27:47):
this isn't to diminish the workthat I'm doing by any means.
But there is something very humbling whenyou realize that there are people all
across the world doing allthese different types of jobs,
having all these different experiencesthat ultimately will shape this future
that we'll have collectively together.
It isn't going to be written and
built by one individual inSilicon Valley or in New York City.
(28:12):
The future of this worldbelongs to all of us.
And so getting out there,meeting people and being flexible and
open mentally to change has been somethingthat has served me well, of course,
with AI andbecause everything is changing so quickly.
On a more practical note, I read a lot.
I consume a lot of research papers.
I have select people that I followon social media platforms because I
(28:36):
see them doing the work anddoing the research and sharing content.
And that community has been super helpful.
And so there's one thing I can recommend.
If you can find a community that you canbe a part of, where you can learn and
exchange ideas, it is contagious.
And before you know it,you'll be doing the same thing.
>> Mike Steadman (28:57):
One thing that Chris taught me over in Category Pirates was
a lot of people right now are treatingAI like a bolt on, like it's an add on,
instead of treating it like a foundation,like a soil.
So, you know, co authoring a book withyou, co founding a startup with you,
like really bringing it into beinga core part of the conversation, right?
But the only reason I know that andI think like that and
(29:19):
I practice like that is becauseI got that education loop going.
I read I'm invested in communities,et cetera.
And it goes back to how I startedthis conversation though,
is I worry about the peoplethat are not in these spaces.
You know, the people that are working,let's say a minimum wage job at retail,
and then one day you look up andnow it's harder and harder.
We've got a whole generationof college graduates now
(29:41):
that are still living athome with their parents,
still unemployed because they can't getjobs in this kind of current workforce.
And so how do they navigate this space?
How does the everyday American, you know,that may or may not be as tech savvy,
you know, that really doesn't havethat kind of autodidact mindset yet.
How are they surviving and thriving inthis rapidly changing AI driven world?
>> Chris McKay (30:06):
I think it's an important question to ask and to keep asking.
I think we all havea responsibility as people on
the edge to really keep promoting andspreading the information.
But it is that adoptioncurve with any technology.
You're going to have those people that arejust so excited and fanatic about it, that
(30:27):
are going to be on the bleeding edge, thatare going to adopt it and maybe they're
going to start companies and they're goingto keep pushing the frontier forward.
And then that will alsoreached down through society.
The computer didn't start offas an iPhone in your pocket.
It started as massive mainframes andentire buildings.
(30:48):
And little by little,
that technology became better because ofthe people that were passionate about it,
that wanted to derive value andmaybe drive businesses from it.
And so I think encouraging culture ofentrepreneurship is going to be key.
Culture of innovation will berewarding for us as a country.
(31:09):
If we can have policies that encouragepeople to take risks to start companies,
maybe there's a company to befound around somebody that's
bringing this education to the massesin ways that aren't being done
today to creators that may be ableto simplify the technical terms or
(31:29):
the complex issues and challenges andbreak it down to anyone.
I think the world isn't shortof the need for great ideas.
There are a lot of problems to solve and
ones that AI will solve orat least will help us solve.
But what I'm most excitedabout is that right now,
(31:53):
today, somewhere in the world is a boy ora girl that may have an idea.
And we don't know their name as yet.
And they're going to change the entire.
History of our world.
And I think that is the most.
Fascinating thing about being alive.
When I was growing up, the richest.
Man in the world wasBill Gates at one point.
(32:14):
And I used to think, man, Bill.
Gates is so rich, how will anybodymake more money than him, Right?
And yes, somebody did.
And I think that is amazing about, andjust how diverse and complex our world is,
we have to believe in the next generation,we have to believe in each other.
We have to believe that the future.
(32:35):
Will be brighter than it is today.
It's not a guarantee, but if we.
Work together, it's something thatwe can hopefully ensure happens.
>> Mike Steadman (32:44):
I was reading something online, and maybe it was online,
it was a podcast, and there's so muchcontent these days, it's hard to keep up.
But I read somewhere that a lot of thirdworld countries are a lot more optimistic
about what's possible with AI thana lot of us are in this kind of more
developed world.
Do you know why that is?
>> Chris McKay (33:08):
I don't know if I necessarily believe that, but
I can assume that it's true.
But I will say the opportunity fordeveloping countries
is where they can leakcertain technological eras.
And so if you think of mobile.
With countries in some part of Africa,
(33:28):
they didn't have to go through in theirfinancial system, they didn't have to.
Deal with traditional banks.
And everything that happened,our own whole banks were set up and
clearing hosts, etc.
They went into digital currenciesvery early with things like M Pesa.
And so it was super easy for them to besending money with their mobile phones.
(33:48):
And I think with AI, the opportunityis that they won't have the legacy.
Systems of the past that a lot.
Of companies in the developed world willneed to solve for and to get around.
Meaning they can be more nimble andthey can be more agile.
The questions that they may be asking.
And the impact that they will see fromthe technology is likely going to be much
(34:11):
greater earlier than fordeveloped countries.
And if you think about it,it makes sense, right?
Somebody who maybe is a B ora C performer,
if you give them a tool like ChatGPT orClaude, and
they're able to use it to augmenttheir work by just asking prompts.
They can probably getclose to an A performer,
(34:34):
maybe even outperform an A person, right?
But the person who is already reallygood at their job, they're going to.
See all the errors, they're going to.
See the issues with the models and.
It will take time forthe models to get there.
So I think especially fordeveloping nations, it's important for
them to have an AI strategy as countries.
(34:57):
But if you're there and you're thinking.
Man, what can I do?
Start by downloading the apps, get the.
Free open source models, start askingquestions, start learning how to prompt,
start learning.
About the opportunity and that youcan use AI to solve problems in your
very own world, in your small universe.
And see how AI can do that and then scale.
>> Mike Steadman (35:20):
One thing I'm starting to see with a lot of universities is
they're starting to offermore online courses.
Now there were some that have been doingthis for years, but now, you know,
Harvard is leaning a lot moreinto their online products.
Right.
I just finished up a course atUC Berkeley that was offered online.
So we're going to be able to create these,
provide access to theseworld class institutions.
(35:42):
And now you're going to start see builderscome out the woodworks, you know, because
there are some people that have beentrying to make a way out of nothing and
then now all of a sudden theyhave access to this education.
And for me, that's the more exciting part.
But at the same time, like you said, thisbrings down a new level of complication
because what happens to ourtraditional university system?
You know, for myself, I've longthought about pursuing a PhD, but
(36:05):
what is the purpose of a PhD in the worldof AI when you can create new knowledge
right then and there?
You know, where I don't have to teach inthe classroom, I can do a podcast, right.
I can launch a substack.
And so it's just challengingour understanding of the world.
And again, it creates opportunities,
but it also causes some chaosin traditional systems.
>> Chris McKay (36:28):
It does.
I don't envy the school leaders,
the educators, the policymakers.
The pace of change and the impact.
That this technology is going to have.
And already is having is incredible.
And the time that they have torespond to it is yesterday.
(36:53):
And so a lot of the work thatwe're doing with companies,
with school districts, with institutions,is to help them to process all of this.
One, how do they quicklylevel up their staff and
their faculty and then how do theythink of delivering education?
What is the role of the teacher movingforward, or will their work change?
(37:16):
What is the role of a student?
What is the role of school?
These are very real questions that a.
Lot more families are going to startasking when you have access to so.
Much information right at your fingertips.
>> Mike Steadman (37:30):
Now, I am a military veteran So I do got to bring this topic up
is right now there's a lotthat's happening in Ukraine.
Drones are all over the place.
You think about what's happening insome other parts of the country.
Right.And now we're going to be bringing AI into
warfare.
I have to assume some ofthis keeps you up at night.
>> Chris McKay (37:53):
Yeah, is a complex topic, I've followed very closely.
Companies like Andy Rogue, Palantir,
the defense industry hascertainly shifted a lot.
The promises that companies made yearsago about not using AI in warfare and
(38:16):
to support the military,they've all walked back.
And this isn't to say that it's.
A good or a bad thing.
It's just to show that the, the dialogueacross the country has changed.
What I will say is having somany family members that
are either currently inthe military activity or retired.
(38:40):
War is a horrible thing, butthere's a very real need for the military.
We have to be thankful for anybody thatdecides to serve in our military and
to defend our way off life.
Because it is threatened on a daily basis.
And the safety andthe beauties that we're able to enjoy
(39:04):
are sometimes on the backs of people thatsacrifice everything to give it to us.
And so if there's an opportunity forus to use technology to make that better,
to make that experienceinsignificant in terms of the impact
that it has on soldiers' lives andtheir families,
(39:27):
I think that's something thatwe have to explore, all right?
And again, it's a situation where we haveto encourage debate and dialogue because.
One person won't have all the answers.
But the only thing that you can.
Do is to inform more people about.
The technology, the potential,the dangers, and
(39:48):
then get more people toparticipate in the conversation.
Because when you thinkof the fact that you can
have a war happening where thingslike drones can be deployed.
And the human lives don't haveto be put at risk as much.
That's a good thing, right?
When you think of cybersecurity anddefending our nation's top secrets and
(40:09):
how we can leverage AI to potentiallyhelp with that, that's a good thing.
And so there are lots of pros to AI and
it's a no brainer to have AIused in military and defense.
It is, it is not a question as towhether or not it needs to happen.
It will, and it already is happening.
And the companies like Palantiran andAnduril Scale and so on, no,
(40:34):
Meta apparently is also doing some workwith the military, it's important that our
best minds and our best technologies arebeing put to use to protect our country.
And with that said, of course,if you have a technology this powerful,
it will be misused inthe hands of the wrong people.
(40:54):
And so how do we minimizethe impact of all of that?
I think there are multiple approachesthat you're seeing government leaders,
state policymakers try to address,but it's a very real threat,
if our adversaries get access toa technology this powerful before us,
what does it mean forour way of life and our society?
(41:16):
Those are questions that we have to ask.
And the military hasthat responsibility and
burden to us even before the civilians do.
And so, like many of the things withAI technology, my hope is that we're
able to solve and answer a lot of thesequestions in a way that is beneficial
to our society and one that willminimize the harms that it could cause.
>> Mike Steadman (41:40):
So I'm going to put a disclaimer here because we are having
a conversation.
So this is a very humancentered conversation.
I, you know,I operate in the dual use space, right?
I help support dual use founders,et cetera.
But I would be remiss if Ididn't admit that, you know,
there's a term mutual issue ordestruction, right?
And there's all these kind of memes andstuff online with Sarah Connor.
(42:03):
You know, watching us build technologyis going to destroy ourselves.
Now, we can joke about it,we can laugh about it, but
we also know as humanity majors,right, art imitates life.
There's stuff that we saw in movies andstuff 30,
40 years ago that's startingto come to fruition.
And when I think about the tankentering World War I, the machine gun,
the Gatling gun, and what that did to theamount of casualties we start to sustain,
(42:28):
and I see drones in Ukraine and whatnot, Iwonder what drones are going to look like.
Here.
And what happens when we have local, youknow, we got protests taking place in la.
What happens when protesters that.
Not the good protesters, Right.
The bad ones.
Right.The ones that want to cause chaos, etc.
What happens when they start leveragingsome of these new technologies, you know,
(42:51):
and are we now giving them the power thatthey need in their hands to be able to
build these things, et cetera?
Because it's only a matter of time forthe dark Web version of ChatGPT and
some of these othertechnologies are built.
And I do think we gottahave these conversations.
>> Chris McKay (43:04):
Exactly, and again, that brings me back to AI literacy,
because the dangers are certainly real.
Right, and so to ensure that we canprotect the future that we all deserve,
I think we have to leanback to our morals and
the principles that we believe in andempower those as much as possible and
(43:26):
empower the people that support thosewith the technologies that can help that.
Now, these may change over time.
And that's why we exist asa society to engage in dialogue.
And our democracy is one thathopefully can survive and
can be perpetuated in conversations anddebate around the future that we want,
(43:49):
because to your point, yes,the technology is super powerful, and
yes, it is getting increasinglyinto the hands of our adversaries.
That's the reason that was the thinkingof limiting access to chips, for example.
So maybe this software you could control,but maybe if you can limit the hardware
(44:10):
and the access to the hardwareto run these technologies,
you could somehow have control over them.
But again, you're seeing people find ways.
Whether it's through smuggling,life finds a way.
And so these are questions thatwe'll always keep on asking.
The stakes are only getting higher asthe technology becomes that much more
(44:31):
critical to our everyday lives andto society as a whole.
>> Mike Steadman (44:36):
I started this conversation referencing,
you know,someone three years ago who was saying,
hey, this is what's keeping Fortune 100,Fortune 500 CEOs up at night.
You operate a lot more in this spacenow than I could only imagine.
What does that answer look like today?
What's keeping people up at night?
>> Chris McKay (44:57):
I think two things.
I think there's this real fear around
business leaders that they'regoing to miss the boat.
They see the speed at whicheverything is changing.
They see the technology,they see the impact in their real world.
(45:18):
And I think many companieslook at an existentialist
threat to their futurewith AI technologies.
Not that AI itself will replace them ortheir company, but that maybe another
company is going to come out andjust completely blindside them.
And I think professionals are alsowondering what the future of work will
(45:42):
look like.
Will it be an AI model that somehowjust takes their job and it disappears?
Will it be somebody elsethat's using AI tools?
There are a lot of people inthe workforce that are not yet
close to retiring that are going to haveto go back and learn new technologies and
learn a completely new way of working.
These are all very hard problems to solve,but that we have to start working towards.
(46:08):
And I think, of course,governments are thinking,
what does the balance of powerlook like when certain countries
have access to AI technologythan other countries don't?
I think AI itself presentsthis magnificent future,
but it's also this fear, almost fomo,
(46:29):
that if you don't get on the boat,if you don't act,
if you don't do something today,it'll be too late.
You'll be the dinosaur that people readabout in the future because you waited too
late to respond.
>> Mike Steadman (46:45):
I wonder too if there's some, what's the word I'm looking for,
hubrisness going on too.
A lot of people don't reallyunderstand these technologies.
They're not playing with it themselves.
Right.They're just jumping on buzzwords.
We need an AI strategy.
We need this.
And it's like you haven't even paid$20 for Chad GPT yet, you know?
>> Chris McKay (47:03):
Yeah, there is some of that.
I do think there is some of that,often think that agency is
what's missing with most leaders andprofessionals.
They'll read the articles,they'll watch the videos, but
that, that, that, that hurdle,that inertia to, to go and
(47:27):
actually build a bot like you did,to go and write some code or
to, to use one of these tools andthey don't hit a final step.
And so that agency is, is, is lacking.
And so if, if I could encourage one thingfor anybody listening to this podcast,
create an artificial sense of urgencyto just go out and start doing things.
(47:49):
It won't be perfect, but I use AIin my day to day life all the time.
The cool guy comes and he's lookingat a new system and I whip up.
Out my phone andI point chatgpt to it and I'm like, hey,
we're having a problem with the pool.
This is what's happening.
What do you think?
And it comes up with solutions.
And the pool guy is like, whoa,how can it do this, and I'm like,
(48:12):
aren't you using ChatGPT?
And he says no.
And, and so now you have onemore person that's using it.
Right?My, my daughter comes and she,
she's working on like addition andsubtraction and I asked Chat,
I asked Claude to build a game forher to practice and she goes and
she plays it and she has fun.
And I'm like, man, no, she wants touse it to build things on her own.
(48:37):
And so get that sense of urgencyto use AI in your day to day life.
Solve the problems that you have.
That way you can start understanding whatit's good at, what it's not so good at,
where it should be used.
Because the one thing I'll say if I,if I can leave you with something,
because AI can do somethingdoesn't mean that it should.
(49:01):
And increasingly the questionsthat we'll need to ask won't
be around what AI can do,but what AI should do.
And it will be up to all of usto decide that as a society.
>> Mike Steadman (49:15):
Well, Chris, I appreciate you making time to share your
insights and pontificate and spar withme on some of these kind of hard,
heavy topics that reallynone of us have figured out.
But, but again, you're leading onthe cutting edge and we have listeners and
viewers tuning in from all overthe country, all over the world.
I would love for you to talk a little bitmore about the work you're doing with
(49:36):
maginative and how people can follow you,where they can find you to stay up to date
on the research andarticles that you're putting out.
>> Chris McKay (49:43):
Sure. Thank you.
So maginotive.com go to maginative.comif you want to stay up to date on
the most important stories in AI.
Our goal isn't to cover the noise,it isn't to cover the rumors.
It's to provide a space for especiallybusiness leaders and professionals.
If you're trying to stay up to datewith what's important, go there and
(50:04):
that will help you to level up veryquickly in terms of what's happening and
where, where you need to pay attention.
We have videos that we put out onYouTube covering important conversations
with leaders, with technologists,with humanists, because we want to have
more conversations around the role ofAI where it will fit into our society.
(50:27):
You can find me on LinkedIn,you can follow me on X.
I have a course on LinkedInaround AI adoption.
If you're thinking about how AI canmaybe accelerate your business or
course provides the usage framework,
which is a pragmatic way foryou to think through AI adoption.
And we have our AI maturity matrix thatwe're working on with LinkedIn also in
(50:49):
the coming months.
So some amazing resources are out there.
If you engage with me online and you havea question I'm more than happy to answer,
I can point you to podcasts,to free resources online.
The point I'm making is that there'san entire community out there of people
like me that are sharing contentthat you can learn from.
(51:10):
And the hope is that as you learn,you'll also join the community and
you'll start sharing.
And because to your point,Mike, we're all in it together.
So join us at imaginative,join the movement, join the community,
let's push the literacy as high as we canin our communities, in our personal lives,
in our families.
It is your responsibility.
You're here listening to this podcasttoday, go ahead and download the app or
(51:33):
take that technology,have a conversation with your friend,
have a conversation with your spouse oryour family member and
talk about how we can use this technologyto do something, anything in your life.
>> Mike Steadman (51:46):
Awesome.
Well, thank you, Chris.
I'll be sure to include a link toeverything you just talked about in
the show notes.
And for all our viewers, especially thoseveterans out there that are interested in
the Veteran Fellowship program,please head over to Hoover.org/VFP and
apply today.
And if you haven't subscribed to FrontlineVoices on your favorite podcast hosting
app, make sure you do so.
(52:06):
Until next time.
Peace, love.
Have a great rest of your week, everyone.
>> Chris McKay (52:09):
One love.
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