October 17, 2024 • 67 mins
This episode shares a live podcast taping event that Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom, founder and CEO of Bloom Facilitation did as part of the Flagstaff Festival of Science. She discusses her journey of exploring artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on the work of everyday people, specifically in the context of community service and non-profits.
Sharon introduces her podcast series 'AI for Helpers and Changemakers', which focuses on how AI technologies like ChatGPT, Canva, Descript, MidJourney, and Eleven Labs are transforming various sectors.
The episode includes clips from interviews with Flagstaff locals and professionals like Diana White, Venera Bailey, Abby Chan, Amy, and others, pinpointing the challenges and advantages of integrating AI in their fields. They explore topics such as AI's role in grant writing, creative processes, fitness, and nonprofit efficiency, while also addressing ethical concerns and potential environmental impacts.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Brian AI (00:05):
Are you not sure how to feel about the way AI is suddenly everywhere?
AI for Helpers and Changemakers isa show for people who want to do
good work and help other people.
Whether you're already using AItools and loving it, or you are
pretty sure that ChatGPT is thefirst sign of our downfall, we want
you to listen in and learn with us.
(00:26):
Your host on this journeyis Sharon Tewksbury Bloom.
For 20 years, she's workedwith helpers and changemakers.
She believes that we're about to seethe biggest changes in our work lives
since the Internet went mainstream.
We're in this together.
Join us as Sharon interviews peoplein different helping professions.
Navigate what these new technologiesare doing to and for their work.
Sharon (00:47):
On today's episode, we are sharing a live podcast taping.
I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, andFlagstaff is home to the longest running
community science festival in the country.
And it's actually the 35thanniversary of the festival.
So I was really excited to beable to share a rundown and recap
(01:09):
of what I was learning on AIfor helpers and change makers.
If you want to learn moreabout the Flagstaff festival of
science and see other recordedsessions that were delivered.
You can go to scifest.org.
That scifest.org.
I hope you enjoy this recordingof our live podcast taping.
(01:30):
Elizabeth and I go way back.
Elizabeth (01:33):
That's true.
Sharon (01:34):
Yeah.
She was actually one of thefirst people I met in Flagstaff.
Elizabeth (01:37):
It may have been in this very space.
Sharon (01:39):
That's true.
we both got out here as East Coasttransplants, to serve with AmeriCorps.
So we both did service throughAmeriCorps and that's how we met.
And now we've moved on tobigger and better things.
Elizabeth (01:52):
Yeah, we were in the same AmeriCorps class.
Gosh, nearly 20 years ago now.
Oh, you remember.
That's good.
Sharon (02:02):
Yeah.
I know.
I am Sharon Tewksbury Bloom.
I am the founder and CEO of a companycalled Bloom Facilitation, and I am very
curious about AI, artificial intelligence.
And so I pursued my curiosity over thelast year, and I hope to be a leading
learner to those in the communitywho are also interested in this.
(02:24):
And one way that I've done that isI've started a podcast series called
AI for Helpers and Changemakers.
I used to have a podcast called DoGood, Be Good, and I interviewed a
lot of people here in Flagstaff whowere trying to help other people.
So you get the idea, we both startedin AmeriCorps, we're both really
interested in service and helping people.
I originally did a podcast for two anda half years about helping other people,
(02:48):
including interviewing, Kathy Farrettaabout the Flagstaff Festival of Science
and her volunteer work through that.
but I decided to revive the podcast inthis new iteration with a focus on how
are these same people, everyday people whoare doing work that they hope will help
other people or will make a change in theworld, how are they being impacted by the
(03:11):
introduction of artificial intelligenceinto their lives and into their work.
So that's really where the ideacame from and what it's about.
So that's where you're at.
Hopefully that's Whatyou want to listen to.
And I'll let Elizabeth give someannouncements about the Flagstaff Festival
of Science before I jump in any further.
Elizabeth (03:31):
I have some announcements, and then also I was going to introduce Sharon,
but she just stole all of her own thunder.
so I'm not sure if I havetoo much more to say.
But, I'll introduce myself.
I'm Elizabeth Vogler.
I'm the Festival Director for theFlagstaff Festival of Science.
And in case you all didn'tknow, it's ten days of science
(03:53):
programs, events, and activities.
And we're about halfway throughright now, so we have, through Sunday
with more festival programming.
The best way to find out about all ofthose different events and activities,
which of course are all free, iseither on your app, which you can
(04:13):
use on your smartphone of any size.
either choice or any choice.
that's really the easiest way to use it.
So all the events are free,as a part of the festival.
and so far it's been really exciting.
This is also our 35th year of theFlagstaff Festival of Science.
Pretty incredible to be aroundin the community for that long.
So we're quite delighted about that.
(04:35):
And I'd also like to just thanksome of our sponsors, not by name,
but just a shout out to all of oursponsors because the festival is free.
we rely very heavily on corporatesponsors, grants and individual donors.
just shout out to all of thosefolks, that do support us.
And we have the full listing, onthe app or on the back of that
(04:57):
pamphlet that I mentioned before.
And one other thing is, whenyou're going to festival events,
we want to hear from you.
We want to hear what you liked, whatyou, what improvements you might suggest.
and we take all of that very seriouslyas we begin to plan for future years.
on the way out, I also have a littleQR code and a link to the website
(05:18):
that you can take that survey online.
And it's real quick, but wedo want to hear your thoughts.
let's see if there's anythingthat I, that Sharon didn't mention
about herself, that I can be of anytype of, help or service at all.
Sharon's the founder and CEO of bloomfacilitation and do good, be good,
which she mentioned, and it does alot of professional facilitation and
(05:41):
organizational development, consulting.
She's also been spotlighted on VolunteerNation podcast, Authentic AI podcast, How
to Change the World podcast, FlagstaffBusiness News, and Discover Flagstaff.
And that's what I've got.
We're really happy to have Sharon here.
Sharon (05:59):
Thank you, Elizabeth.
I'll let you out of the hot seat now.
I
Elizabeth (06:04):
was really nervous there.
Sharon (06:06):
Alright, so without further ado, let's go ahead and give you a sample.
What I'm going to do is I'm goingto tell you a little bit about my
journey so far in learning about AI.
What I've learned and then you'll heardirectly from some of the people I've
interviewed and the voices of thosepeople and how they're experiencing AI.
So, as mentioned, I own two companies,Swedenbygood and Bloom Facilitation,
(06:29):
and then AI for Helpers and Changemakersis a passion project of mine, so if you
enjoy it today and you want to go findit, you can listen to it on Spotify,
or other podcast apps, or you can gothrough my website, bloomfacilitation.
com, to get all the updates.
So we are doing some speculationin my interviews on the show about
(06:50):
how AI might be used in the future.
But most of our conversations areactually about uses for AI right now.
Uses for artificial intelligencethat are impacting people on
a daily basis in their work.
And this is really a theme that'scome up a lot just in the last year.
(07:11):
is that a lot of people have beenconfronted by artificial intelligence
technologies, by AI enabled technologies.
many of the people I interview didnot seek out the opportunity to
work with artificial intelligence orto incorporate it into their work.
They really found it finding them andeither, decided to embrace it and figure
(07:36):
out, okay, what can I do with this?
What's possible now thatwasn't possible before?
Or they really had to go through theirown process of, I'm afraid of this, I'm
confused by this, I don't know what todo about this, how do I try to navigate
this time in which this really dramaticchange is happening with technology?
So that's why I really wanna have theseconversations, because I do think that
(08:00):
we're getting an interesting revolutionhappening and how people do work,
and I'm an organizational developmentgeek, so I'm really interested in
that topic, and I think it's going tomake a huge change in every sector.
This is just one example of howI've used AI and how I've, talked to
(08:23):
people in the helping fields abouthow it might change their work.
So one of the most familiartechnologies when we talk about AI to
the general public would be chat GPT.
ChatGPT is a generative AI chatbottool based on a large language model.
If we have time we'll get intosome jargon definitions for you.
(08:43):
but ChatGPT kind of jumpedon the scene late in 2022.
Most people didn't see it until 2023.
And now if you're in the workingworld it's becoming pretty ubiquitous.
And people are using it or tryingto not use it or dealing with the
implications of other people using it.
And so it's really a learning curveof everyone trying to figure out what
(09:06):
does this mean for me and my work.
So one use of it is towrite things for you.
And I work with a lot of non profits.
So many non profits come to me andthey say, what could we use the most?
We could use grant writers.
Now that's an interesting ethicalquestion of can you have Chattanooga
T write your grant for you?
(09:27):
And I often push them to say, wecan talk about that and whether or
not that is ethical, whether that'sgoing to be effective or anything.
But before we even try that, there isa great use case for it, which is put
your grant that you've written intoChatGT along with the grant guidelines
that you were provided or the rubric forscoring and have ChatGT help evaluate
(09:52):
you as a, first reader providing youwith feedback of how well does this
grant that I've written match upwith the guidelines for the grant.
So I've done this before.
I find that it does work verywell for that use case because one
thing that it's really good at isunderstanding patterns and language
(10:13):
and being able to match things.
So just like they've been using Sowhen people complete versions of AI
in resume evaluation for a very longtime, they look for keywords and they're
able to identify and sift things ina pile to say, yes, this resume is
worth a human review versus no, thisresume is not worth a human review.
So you can use some of that sameunderlying technology to say, tell me how
(10:37):
well my writing is matching the languagethat they're asking for in the grant.
I'm also exploring really funways to use AI creatively.
So we've been remodeling our house rightnow and I got interested in whether or not
I could use AI to design my own wallpaper.
(10:59):
So these two images were used,were designed by me using AI.
They use mid journey andthey're done very differently.
So the one over here was me using aprompt to A written prompt to ask the
AI, in this case I used Midjourney,to create wallpaper in the style
(11:24):
of William Morris using, sacreddatora plants and hummingbirds.
And my thinking was, I reallylove William Morris style, I
love that, style of wallpaper.
But I'm in the southwest, I'min Arizona, and I really wanted
to bring in some of the naturalflora and fauna of this region.
And that doesn't really exist,William Morris didn't do that.
(11:46):
I thought, wouldn't it be fun to seeif I could recreate that with it.
It was fun, I liked what it came upwith, but one of the challenges, if
you're doing wallpaper, is that you needto have a seamless repeating pattern.
And that's really hard todo with an intricate pattern
like a drawing like that.
then, I learned that mid journeywas one step ahead of me, and that
(12:10):
all I needed to learn to do wasadd a tag to my prompt that said
hashtag tile, and that would actuallycreate a seamless repeating pattern
based on whatever prompt I gave it.
So when I went to the roses, I knew thatby then, and so I said, okay, this time I
want, and I forget my exact prompt for it.
(12:35):
But I also took another step, which wasthis idea of collaborating with the tool.
So I love photography.
I do a lot of photographyof plants in particular.
So I took a photo that I had takenof some roses and I uploaded it
into the tool and I said, use thisphoto as inspiration and create a
(12:56):
wallpaper with a seamless repeatingpattern and with this color palette.
And so that's what it came up with.
So that's where I think it's been reallyfun for me is to figure out how could
I collaborate with the tool to createsomething that I alone couldn't do
with my limited skills and abilities.
(13:18):
And then the podcast itselfhas been a fun curiosity and a
chance to explore creativity.
So these are the tools thatI've used in the creation of the
podcast that are AI powered tools.
So chat.
gt might be familiar with.
Canva is really the latest andgreatest in graphic design software.
(13:39):
If you're talking to anyone that does anysort of graphics in the work world today,
they're probably using Canva because it'sjust burst on the scene and took over.
No longer is anyone using Photoshopor any of those other tools.
They're all using Canva.
Canva has introduced whatthey call magic features.
So this is an interesting thing, right?
(13:59):
How we start talking about.
So Canva, being that it's fun andcolorful and creative, has decided
to call its AI enriched tools magic.
Which is a whole thing.
I have a sociology minor where you cango into a whole thing about what does it
mean to start calling things magic thatactually, have the science and tech,
(14:21):
powering them and aren't actually magic.
So if you want to use a magic feature, forexample, you could give it a handout that
you've created and you could ask it tocreate a slide deck based on that handout.
So it can translate from oneform to the other using content
(14:42):
that you've already created.
It can also translateinto other languages.
So I can give it a handout and askit to translate it into Spanish.
And that's just built inas a feature of Canva.
there's amazing possibilities forit to expand, how much you can
get out of one piece of creativecontent that you've created.
(15:04):
For Descript, Descriptis my editing software.
I used to use all kinds of tools.
I was originally trained in highschool on the Adobe suite and, I've
learned lots of different technologyover the years for audio editing.
For Descript, Descript is my editing ButDescript, again, has changed the game.
I feel like I'm going to be cheesywith every metaphor possible.
(15:25):
What Descript does is if I take today'srecording and I upload it into my computer
and save it to Descript, the very firststep that it does is it automatically
creates a written transcript of the audio.
And it does so in about ten minutes.
(15:46):
That's an hour long audio recording.
And it's pretty accurate.
I used to pay for a service that wouldtranscribe all of my audio, because I
wanted it to be as accessible as possible.
So I know how hard that can be.
I've even done it myself, and ittook me hours to do it myself.
So the fact that it can practicallyinstantaneously make a transcript
(16:09):
is already revolutionary.
Secondly, if you don't want to learn howto edit audio, You don't actually have
to anymore, because Descript allows youto edit the transcript like you would
a word processing document, and it willedit the corresponding audio file to
match what you've edited in the document.
(16:32):
So you don't even have to look atthe audio if you don't want, you
don't have to look at the timeline.
It also has AI powered features,which it cheekily calls Underlord.
And its Underlord features will doautomatic adjustments if you enable them.
So for instance, it has one called StudioSound, which allows me to click a button,
(16:53):
it will automatically even out theaudio, equalize things, make things sound
better, just with one click of a button.
I can adjust that, I can tune itif I feel like it's doing too much,
or I can pull it back, anything.
I can also say, in one click,Please remove all filler words.
All the uhs, ums, anything like that.
(17:15):
It'll tell me on the day to find 120filler words, and I can say great,
either delete them automatically, orI can tell it to just ignore them and
I'll go through and check and makesure that I actually want them removed.
the abilities that it has just built in,this is like 30 a month for this software,
Allow me to run a podcast by myself,which I used to have to hire an editor.
(17:40):
and that's why I had to giveup my last podcast was I was
doing it as a passion project.
I couldn't afford it andI had to stop doing it.
So now I'm able to startdoing it again because I have
these tools at my fingertips.
I already mentioned mid journey.
That's my AI generator, thelogo that you saw earlier that
was created using mid journey.
(18:02):
In combination with Canva, soI created the background image
in Midjourney and then put ittogether with the text in Canva.
And then finally, Eleven Labs.
Eleven Labs is a voice generator.
So now we have image generators,we have text generators, you
can also do a voice generator.
So again, I used to have someone whowould be the person who announced,
(18:27):
was the, Broadcast announcer to dothe intro and outro of my podcast.
I now have Brian, who is an artificialintelligence generated voice,
who does my intro and my outro.
so I just wanted to play with it andexperiment and see what was possible.
I have also considered youcan actually create your own
(18:49):
deep fake of your own voice.
And so since I have hours and hoursof audio of my own voice, I might.
Actually, someday create a recreationof my own voice, and then I would
be able to feed it written text andhave it read it as me, in my voice,
and wouldn't even need to record.
(19:09):
it's something I'm playing withand seeing what's possible.
Alright, let's hear fromsome of our podcast guests.
Some of these people you mightrecognize, some of them either live in
Flagstaff or have worked in Flagstaff.
Diana White.
Splits time between theValley and Flagstaff.
She has worked for Moonshot up here.
And she used to be the bookseller.
(19:31):
She managed the bookstore at NAU.
so she has a love of books.
And I have a little clip from her.
Diana White (19:38):
For me, it just is a way to embrace what's coming.
And while you embrace it,you mold it, you shape it.
There are so many differentexamples of things that we've seen
in movies or things that we'veread in books that were fantasy.
(19:59):
And then somehow somebody,because they were empowered
by it, They made it reality.
And I think that's whatembracing the nerd is all about.
It's embracing the, thescience and mixing it with.
passion and humor.
And that's what I do.
(20:20):
So that's why I call myself a nerd.
I love everything science.
I love space, you name it, I love it.
And it's not that I'm so well versed andeducated in any of these fields, right?
It's just you put me in front of aTV or YouTube channel, and they're
showing a nature documentary or a spacedocumentary, I'm sucking it all up.
(20:41):
If there's a new development inscience, I want to know about
it as much as I can understandfrom my layperson point of view.
And then I want to have discussions withmy friends to see how they feel about
this, which is why I love that you do thisshow because AI is the next new thing to
either embrace or be scared of, right?
(21:01):
So I love it.
I want to know about it as, asmuch as I can understand from
my lay person point of view.
Um, and then I want to have discussionswith my friends to see how they feel
about this, which is why I love that youdo this show because AI is the next new
thing to either embrace or be scared of.
Right?
(21:21):
So I love it.
Yeah.
It's really only recently in thelast couple of years that I've
started reading science fiction.
And I think it is because of this.
feeling I have that science fiction isbecoming everyday reality more and more.
And I'm trying to figure out, okay, ifI can't always stay on top of what's
(21:43):
going on, Maybe I can get some ideasabout what might be coming from the
creative minds of science fiction authors.
And I know a few that I've liked.
I've read Cory Doctorowand his books about makers.
And he has a book called Walk Away.
And so some interesting onesabout 3D printers and abilities to
(22:07):
kind of create new places and newways of interacting on the fly.
And then I just read the book In theLives of Puppets, which is, you know,
most of the characters are robots.
And so understanding how differentrobots are interacting with each other
and how they think about humans and howthose human computer interactions go.
(22:32):
Let me just spoil for asecond that they go poorly.
They go really poorly, officially,but stick with it because
there, there's a happier silverlining in that particular book.
Sharon (22:44):
Awesome.
those are a few things I loved abouttalking about with this with Diana.
Is, she's not a technology expert.
She's not an AI expert.
She is the perfect example of someonewho's just curious, who just wants to
stay on top of the latest technology.
And is trying to stay on top of this.
we talked about how shetook a class and added
(23:08):
We talked about how she, her veryfirst introduction to artificial
intelligence was Grammarly.
Not sure if anyone here usesGrammarly, but it's a certain,
yeah, we've got a few people.
anyone who's ever felt anxious aboutwhether your spelling and grammar
is correct on things probablyembraced Grammarly really early on.
(23:28):
it's a tool that, originallywas like having spellcheck.
It could check everywhere you went.
It could check your spelling onwebsites you were filling out a form
on, or in your email or something.
So it didn't just live in yourword processing software, it
could go with you and help you.
And then, it really has evolved, andone thing that she talks about is,
it would send her weekly reports.
(23:50):
these are your most common errorsthat you've had with grammar, and
here's the things that you, could beworking on to improve your writing.
And she said that it helped herbuild confidence with her writing
and being a more professional writer.
And that she's learned since thenthat, Grammarly was an early technology
that started to incorporate usingartificial intelligence to improve
(24:12):
its service and be able to, do, havemore features and serve more people.
And that's been interesting because onechallenge that's come up in a few of my
interviews is for teachers and professors.
to a group of students who are tryingto navigate this world in which their
students can use AI to write theirassignments and to write essays.
(24:34):
And I talked to a professor at NAU, noton the podcast, but just in life and
in my friendships, who was mentioningthat there was a real controversy
because a student was punished if theywere told that they were going to be
suspended or, have disciplinary actionbecause they had written their paper
(24:54):
using AI, because it had been flaggedusing a software program that was
meant to detect AI in people's writing.
But it turned out that the studenthad used Grammarly to check
their grammar on their paper.
Grammarly is AI.
It's using AI, so it got flagged.
(25:14):
correctly by the AI detection software,and that's starting to show the nuance
that we're getting into now, where it'snot always black and white, but what
does it mean to have AI assist you inyour writing, and can the education
system actually monitor this, or isit too blurry now, where those lines
(25:36):
are and what tools people are using.
Alright, we'll go to our next guest.
The Naira Bailey.
The Naira does not live here in Flagstaff.
I've met her through mywork with nonprofits.
She's a consultant who'sbased in California.
Thenera Bailey (25:51):
I thought it was interesting when you talked about
disrupting and dismantling systems,I hear a lot of fear around AI
disrupting the ways we're doing things.
And for me, I'm thinking, well,let's not assume that's a bad thing.
Like some things need to be disrupted.
Some things need to be dismantled.
(26:11):
So I think sometimes themainstream narrative.
This is a dangerous technology.
It's disrupting things.
But then I often talk to smallnonprofits or things that say you
didn't have resources and powerand the ability to get things done.
And this is disrupting the technologyin a way that actually allows you to
(26:32):
have access to expertise and resourcesthat used to only be available.
To larger organizations or systems.
I think the only way I had heardabout AI being used with college
kids cheating on papers, I wascoming at it from that narrative.
How are we going to knowanybody knows anything anymore?
(26:56):
Hadn't thought, why would I need it?
I'm not writing a degree.
I don't need to cheat on a paper.
Like what, where would be my use fora full, And so to talk a little bit
more about like how a smaller spacewhere we would use it, one of the
prompts it gave was, or the, in theworkshop, he talked about if you just
(27:20):
needed a way to summarize very quicklynotes from a meeting for those of
us who like, and, or fit in tons ofmeetings, I think of my clients who
Administrative assistant in a nonprofitthat has like 12 meetings in a day.
And that admin staff are like, justtrying to keep their head above water.
(27:44):
And where these like otter programsor different or chat GPT or Microsoft
copilot, can you summarize these notes orcan you transcribe the zoom or can just
that little amount of saving of time.
It's a commodity you can't replacefor those of us who don't make
(28:07):
a ton of money in non profit.
Time is something that we reallyneed to value a little bit more.
That's not cheating on a paper.
That's valuable.
For me, that was mind blowing.
I didn't think about volunteerboard, getting a note summary quickly
after the meeting, how quickly thatwill move movements forward, right?
(28:31):
Like when you're trying to create change,the ability to get the notes out quickly.
Sometimes that's the biggestimpediment to progress that.
Someone can't take the note andthey're just so busy that you just
never know what's happening next.
No one wrote it down.
Someone can transcribe the Zoommeeting automatically and everyone
(28:52):
gets it immediately after.
Like that keeps progress moving forward.
That's that kind ofdisruption of the system.
That's a quick answer.
Small changes where AI can really havea benefit or like the social media
things where like you have a wonderfulpicture from an event, but you are
not the creative person in my company.
Sharon (29:13):
So I don't know if you've been in an online video call meeting
lately, but you may have encounteredan artificial intelligence note taking
app, trying to join your meeting, orhappily being invited to your meeting.
This was one of my firstways in which I was.
in the workplace and in which I had myfirst AI faux pas in the workplace was
(29:36):
trying to embrace the note taking apps.
she mentions an app called Otter.
I now use, almost exclusively,one called Firefly's AI.
And basically, you invite it to yourmeetings and it comes and it records
the meeting, it creates a transcript,and it can even identify It can do
sentiment analysis of the meeting, itcan use, commands that you say in the
(30:01):
meeting to create an action list basedon what people said in the meeting.
So there's lots of extra features thatyou can add beyond just a transcript.
It often usually does a summary as well.
So I've been using Fireflies extensively,but when I very first started using
a meeting note app, I invited it.
(30:23):
I didn't know how to dothe settings, honestly.
I was, learning.
I didn't realize that it wasset as a default to invite
itself to all of my meetings.
And, I had to actually disablethat if I didn't want it.
That wasn't Fireflies, by the way.
That was an earlier one.
which is one reason Iswitched to Fireflies.
Because Fireflies is much betterabout consent and actually asking
(30:46):
for permission to join your meetings.
So this other software I was using calledFathom, it invited itself to my meetings.
I went to a closed meeting of, otherbusiness owners who were going to
basically a mastermind session.
They were just there to talk to eachother and get ideas from each other.
The whole thing wasn'tbeing recorded by anyone.
(31:07):
It was supposed to be a private meetingwith just a, a small group of people.
And unwittingly, I invited this person.
This robot interloper into our meetingthat automatically was recording, too.
And so I tried to get it outof the meeting and apparently
I had no control over it.
(31:27):
I couldn't get it out of themeeting, I couldn't do anything.
We had to shut down theentire meeting to get it out.
And so this is one of those faux pas, youthink about some of the early things we
saw where people had, devices in theirear and they were walking around talking
on the phone, people thought they werecrazy, they were talking to themselves,
people using, phones in restrooms, allthese things that happened when we started
(31:49):
introducing this technology into ourlives, that was one for note taking apps.
So now I know to set the defaults theother way and I just intentionally
invite it only when I want to.
And also a lot of these services havechanged so that they will notify people,
there will be an AI note taking app cominginto your meeting, do we give consent
(32:10):
for that, and allow that to happen.
though, I want to expand on the factthat Venera, she and I talked further
about this, we're both frustrated bythe fact that non profits are often the
last to embrace the latest technology.
And so one thing that she said is, bythe time we embrace it as nonprofits, it
usually has a big price tag added to it.
(32:34):
right now is when everything is freebecause things are being tried out
and they're still being worked out.
And so a lot of times nonprofits,they come in late to the game,
they end up spending a lot of moneyon technology that doesn't work
as well as the latest technology.
And, it's really frustrating.
Okay.
I think that's one thing that Iwant to do is help educate people
(32:55):
about the actual risks and theperceived risks of the technology.
And one of the risks that wehear a lot is about privacy.
And, just like I said with the notetaking app, it's being recorded.
Also, when you upload things to chat2pt,there's a real question of what happens
to that data that you're sharing with it.
(33:17):
We can talk about what they say ishappening to it, but I think it's a pretty
open question right now because it's anew landscape and people aren't really
able to promise what's happening to that.
but this is where I feel like non profitsoften hear about these risks and concerns
in mainstream media and other places andthey adopt more of a fearful mindset.
(33:38):
Whereas really what they're askingfor instance, the grant example I
started with, it's something that'sgoing to be publicly available anyway.
It's something that they would literallybe publishing on their website, so it's
content that they actually are perfectlyfine with sharing with the world and
putting out there, and there's nointellectual property concerns, there's
no concerns of people's individualpersonal data, and so they're, they're
(34:02):
often, where their concerns lie doesn'tnecessarily apply to the exact situation.
Still a good reason not to, uploadall your client data into these
systems, but there are toolsthat still have a way to be used.
Alright, another local, Abby Chan.
I apologize in advance, Abby was actuallythe first person I interviewed when I
(34:23):
was having some issues with my phone,
so her audio is not great.
But, she's so wise, and Istill want to hear from her.
Abby Chan is the founderand CEO of Evolve Flagstaff.
she's a registered dietitian who doesamazing nutritional consult, counseling,
and is just a great person to go toif you want help with your health,
(34:48):
particularly as it relates to nutrition.
Abby Chan (34:52):
I want to make sure we also talk about Smart devices, consumer
tech that's coming into the space.
Cause I know I mentioned that I had heardabout a product that I think was unveiled
at the big convention in Las Vegas,where they had a tray that could measure
the calorie content in the food on it.
(35:13):
And it could also measure aftersomeone had eaten some of that
food to see the difference.
So.
Certainly that raised alarm bellsin my brain, but I'm curious what
you've been seeing out there in termsof actual products and wearables and
things that are in your space andwhere your head is at on those items.
(35:39):
Yeah, there's a lot of tech out there.
There's a lot of options.
We could spend so much money and somuch time diving into all these things.
And It first comes down to lookingat, and even when it comes to
health in general, and lookingat, let's say labs, for example,
right, they are a snapshot in time.
So we don't want to base someone'shealth on just one lab job.
(36:03):
We want to look at what are thetrends, what's the difference.
And I think that's a beautiful thingabout tech is that it can give us trends
and it can give us aspects of, are wemaybe going in the right direction?
But they could also be anywhere from 25to 90 percent inaccurate, depending on
the device, depending on how old it is,depending on the sensors in it, depending
(36:23):
on what data it's then compiling.
I've actually been doing my own personalresearch on myself, where I've actually
worn two devices for the past month, oneof them being the, A faceless one that
it doesn't have any numerical data onit and you have to use an app with it.
It's more focused on recovery basedthings and giving a little bit more data
(36:45):
there and compared to an apple watch.
And one thing that I love about theone that doesn't have a face is that it
doesn't buzz at me and tell me that Ineed to move or shame me into moving.
You need to get up now.
Or have you closed your rings?
And there's a lot of ways youcan disable those things, but
it's actually really challenging.
I have to walk clients through often.
How do we disable these notifications?
(37:08):
How do we decrease that amountfor you to close your quote
unquote rings and all of that?
And so I think they can be reallyproblematic because for a lot
of people, if you're more Okay.
Let's say on the anxiety spectrum, maybeeven more in the obsessive realm of
things, numbers are something that once wesee them and hear them, they can live rent
(37:29):
free in our heads for a very long time.
So that could be your body weight.
That could be caloric amounts of food.
That could be how many calories you'regoing to burn during a certain exercise.
Like all of these numbers really don'ttell us a lot about our body weight.
How do we actually feel in our bodies?
If one of these devices tellsme you're totally recovered
today and you're doing great.
(37:50):
But I'm like, I am so soreand I am not moving today.
We need to look at listening intoour bodies and maybe using this
as some other information as well.
But I think there's yeah.
So many fitness devices outthere, depending on where you
wear them and how you use them,the accuracy will be variable and
also the, the Time and length.
(38:11):
So that's also an interesting aspectwhere buying into something and being
in the whole system of it costs money,it costs money and it costs time.
And so that's one of the things wherewe have this data and we think it's so
valuable and we base our lives around it.
But then if it goes away, what do we do?
Oh, we have to listen to our bodies.
(38:31):
Oh my gosh, that's so hard.
So I think there's some things there,and even from the plate aspect, the
example that you gave from a one on oneindividual level, from a consumer level,
I don't think it's very helpful and great.
I think that could end up againsaying, here's the calories
amount that you started with.
(38:51):
Here's where you, whatyou should be eating.
Oh, you ate too much.
And then inherently,something's going to feel.
Bad, guilty, shameful.
But, from my clinical perspective,as someone who works with eating
disorders a lot, I don't liketo use a lot of serving sizes.
I don't like to give out a lot of mealplans or exchanges, or a lot of really
strict things, because we're, I'm tellingpeople that we don't want to don't
(39:12):
want to count as much, and we don'twant to rely on these numbers as much.
So that could actually be a reallyinteresting tool from a provider
standpoint for the provider to have thedata to where someone doesn't have to
measure and weigh things, but maybe theprovider can get the data on the back end
and see, oh, how are we actually doing?
So I think it's all going todepend on how are we using this?
(39:33):
Are we using this froma place of one metric?
And, um, and not the only metric?
Are we using it from a place thatis actually to improve our health?
And also, are we still able to listeninto our bodies and continuously ask
the question of why am I using this?
And why do I feel like I haveto continuously use these
(39:53):
things and not trust my body?
Sharon (39:55):
Yeah, so when we first started talking, Abby and I, it
was because I had been listening tothese other podcasts about the latest
technology that was coming out.
And the consumer electronics show thathappened in Las Vegas every year, at the
last one, one of the products that wasdebuted was something called a smart tray.
(40:21):
So it was a tray that could somehow,Judge how many calories were on
a tray, or what type of nutrientswere in the food that was on a tray.
I wasn't there.
I don't know how it does that.
But, we were philosophizing around, okay,there's all of this, technology starting
(40:41):
to become what they're calling multimodal,where, the wearable devices like our
watches, the refrigerator at your house.
They're starting to make the Internetof Things, where they're putting the
Internet into all of these things.
now, when they put the Internetinto it, that sometimes also
comes with them putting artificialintelligence, into it as well.
(41:04):
And how does that impactpeople in their daily lives?
I was actually surprised.
I thought that she was going to becompletely against smart trains,
and I could see, like, all theways in which this could go poorly.
But I like that she did also have areframe for me of, maybe there is a
setting in which this would be reallyhelpful to allow the provider to get
(41:24):
the access to data without needing torecreate those, behaviors that are a
problem for the person with the eatingdisorder who's getting the help.
that one was a hypothetical.
That's not an exact situationthat she's dealing with today.
She did talk in our episode more about,how she is working with people today
who are using tracking devices, and shesaid that she's doing an experiment with
(41:47):
different types of tracking devices.
there's a lot of science out there around,how it impacts someone if they have a
watch versus a heart rate monitor versusa step monitor, and the different kinds
of devices, how that can impact you.
in terms of the behavior changeyou're making, also it'll impact
(42:08):
your mental health, and, someinteresting work being done there.
So she's doing an experiment on that forherself, and had some great things to say
on the episode about what people need tobe thinking about when this, is gonna be
hyped more and more, because everyone'sin this sort of AI arms race right
now, from a consumer tech standpoint.
(42:29):
And so they're starting to put thistechnology into things to say that
it's new and different and worth moremoney, so you're gonna start to see
lots of products that have AI in them.
Whether they do, or whether it'smore AI washing, it's definitely
a technology that's being rolledout in a lot of consumer products.
And that can impact people's health.
(42:52):
I will give a shoutout real quick.
I don't actually know I don't know whichtechnology this uses, but, my mother
is an early adopter of technology,and she's obsessed with all Apple
devices, and so she loves going to theApple store and taking all the Apple
classes, and she's got an iPhone, anApple watch, and an iPad, and a laptop
(43:17):
that's, whatever those Apple things are.
One thing that she taught me is thatbecause she and her friends are now
in a category of health, she's hadfive surgeries in the last year.
She just turned 80 this last year.
So she has certain concerns,like being a fall risk.
So she wears her AppleWatch with her all the time.
(43:37):
And she actually taught me how youcan make it more waterproof somehow.
And she wears it in the shower.
Because she wants it to bethere as a fall detector if
she were to fall in the shower.
And she has actually had a fall with iton and it did do what it was supposed
to do of letting, her be able to vocallycall for, an ambulance if she needed it.
(44:00):
And notify her loved one that, theremight be a fall detection, detected.
it is really exciting to me because,Some people were here when I said
that I actually got my start here inFlagstaff as an AmeriCorps member.
When I was an AmeriCorps member,I was working with senior
services, and I recruitedvolunteers for homebound seniors.
And trying to help people stayindependent as long as possible,
(44:23):
and stay safe in their homes, waslike a huge part of what I did.
And I love the ways that some ofthis technology could be incorporated
and to help the community.
So that way people will livemore healthy, safer, independent
lives, the way that they want to.
Alright, another Flagstafflocal here, this is Amy.
She is the owner of the only B Corpthat I know of, which is a company that
(44:50):
is also committed to sustainability.
I said all that, and I realizeI don't have hers queued up.
Alright, so I'm quickly just going tonote something that I learned from Amy.
which is that there is a real concernin this, the amount of compute that
is needed for this new technology.
(45:10):
It does still use energy.
there's a huge, there's been a hugeincrease in the amount of energy that's
needed for all of this technology.
that is impacting the environment.
That is a risk to our environment.
and so that's something thatwe need to be really aware of
and have as part of our plan.
and then we'll have a conversationas we're moving forward.
when we're seeing all these greatuse cases for using artificial
(45:32):
intelligence, there's the questionof what, what are the risks and what
are we, what are the trade offs?
What is happening, as thepotential pitfalls for that?
So she's really tuned into that.
Though an example she gave ofhow she is trying to use it, she
mostly uses ChatGT, and she'sbeen using it as a research tool.
for instance, she creates sustainablebelts, and she's been trying
(45:57):
to create them with as low of alife cycle of waste as possible.
So she's been trying to researcha new type of plastic that she
could use for the belt bucklethat would be fully recyclable.
And so she used Chachi Petit tohelp her narrow down what potential
manufacturers were within the southwest U.
S.
(46:17):
And then she was ableto follow up with that.
call those manufacturers and try tochange her process of making the belts.
So it was a great example of for a lot ofsmall business owners, a lot of creatives.
It's basically allowing them to havea virtual assistant who's really
good at research or really good atsynthesizing information, analyzing data.
(46:40):
Alright, let's see if I've got Julie's
I have started talking to a few peoplewho have expertise in technology.
In Julie's case, she has yearsand years of expertise in data
analysis and in machine learning.
(47:02):
But she said that she's really on thesame path we are in terms of learning
about the new generation of AI tools.
Julie Alig (47:10):
I learned way back in graduate school when I was getting
my doctorate, I learned a lot ofquantitative tools and machine learning.
And a lot of those are subsumedtoday into what is referred to as AI.
(47:32):
And so I've been doing thisfor a while, but The difference
is the generative part of it.
So the generative AI, that's very new.
And I'm right there with everyoneelse learning how to use Claude,
ChatGPT, Gemini, and others.
(47:53):
Generative AI is really the newkid on the block, it's the exciting
thing that's bringing in a lot ofnew possibilities, putting all of us
trying to learn as much as we can.
How is generative AI changingwhat's possible right now
with data and with your work?
(48:14):
It's the sort of thing that,
it's such a change.
It's been such a transformationthat I don't even know how much of
a change it's going to end up havingbeen, if that kind of makes sense.
I heard, I can't remember who saidthis, but it's like the internet, sure.
(48:38):
It's like electricity.
When electricity wasdiscovered, people had no idea.
They couldn't even conceiveof what would be possible.
Um, it was that profound a transformation.
I think this is goingto be on par with that.
(49:02):
I also think we are very faraway from that being our reality.
Sharon (49:10):
So that's interesting to me as to people who are a little bit more knowledge
in this area, what are their impressions.
I feel like a lot has happened in a shortamount of time, and there's been a lot
of change, but does that feel like thatto people who are on the inside as well?
a little bit after we finish thenext clip, I'll show you some of
(49:31):
the places I've sought out learning.
And one of, a big one of those is MIT,and I took an online course through
MIT about artificial intelligence.
And it was a little frustratingbecause They hadn't updated the
course since chat GT came out.
(49:52):
And so I learned a lot abouthow we got to this point.
Like I learned a lotabout machine learning.
I learned a lot about predictivealgorithms and, I learned a lot
of interesting information aboutartificial intelligence as a field and
all the ways that could be used, butit was just starting to touch on AI.
(50:12):
And the early statements from theprofessors at MIT were Oh, it's still
far off that's gonna, make a big impact.
yeah, there's a few developments thatmight be noteworthy, but you don't need
to worry about them yet, This was supposedto be a course for business people,
business owners, to understand what theyneeded to know about AI, like what were
the implications for business owners.
(50:35):
And it just felt really out oftouch, and I've noticed that they've
just scrambled to try to updateeverything since then, and now they
have their courses just on generativeAI and how it's impacting business.
Alright, we have one more clip.
This is hot off the audiopresses, if you will.
this episode just came out today, andit's one I've been looking forward to
(50:59):
for a long time, because I've met, Dr.
Mahabali, at Online Open Facilitators,and she works for the University of Cairo
in Egypt, and she was actually givinga presentation at the event I went to
about inclusion, and particularly sheco facilitated with a student of hers
(51:21):
who is blind, and they were talkingabout how some of these tools could make
things more accessible for students whoare blind or have other disabilities.
So I really wanted to interview herabout that, but we actually went
off on a lot of different topics.
And, here's just one of thethings that we talked about.
Maha Bali (51:38):
The term artificial intelligence is problematic because
there's no intelligence here at all.
And a lot of the hype makes you starttalking about artificial intelligence
or generative AI, especially as ifit has sentience and it doesn't.
Of course it doesn't.
The other misconception that I think isthe main one is because it can respond to
human written prompts with human writtenlanguage that looks pretty grammatically
(52:02):
correct and is kind of a slightly friendlytone, I think people started to sort of.
Start to feel like they might bedealing with a human and say things
like please and thank you And I'm like,why are you saying please to the AI?
It's you say please to yourfridge to open the door.
Like you don't do that.
You don't say please to youroven That's just a tool.
You say please to MicrosoftWord to open a file.
You don't do that So and Idid a Twitter poll on this.
(52:25):
I'm like 70 percent of peoplesay please I'm like why?
I mean I'm a polite person, but this isnot a person that I'm talking to, right?
I mean you can say please to yourdog if you want, but not to AI.
The biggest issue is I thinkthat just people believe it.
Yeah, well, I, I, problempeople believe it.
I'll, I will say I am one of thosepeople that says, please, to my ai.
(52:46):
I do have a very specificreason for that, which is that.
My understanding is it is learning naturallanguage, so I should use things like
please and thank you because it's learningfor me how, like it's reflecting back the
way to write based on how I'm writing.
And if I wanted to use those terms,I want it to reflect that back to me.
(53:09):
It's not that I think that I'mtalking to a human, it's that
I'm teaching it the right way.
way that I want it to write.
It comes back to the issueof us teaching it for free.
Right.
For free, they're doingsomething with our data.
So they're benefiting from that andthen selling it to us for money.
the pro version of it, right?
So that's another issue.
(53:30):
Um, I think people, so, so the otherthing I was starting to say is that people
believe it because it sounds credible.
It's difficult to notice subtlehallucinations where it goes off
on a tangent and says somethingthat's completely untrue.
You need to be a very, very, uh,meticulous and a good expert in the
thing that you're asking it to do inorder to notice those hallucinations.
It's more likely to make mistakes.
Sharon (53:50):
Alright, so that's just a tiny clip, but we get into some really
interesting conversations about howShe started using ChatGT when it
wasn't even available in Egypt yet.
They were able to use a VPN to, make itseem like she was joining from the U.
S.
so that she could try it outbefore it was actually available.
And how, people talk about thebias that's in these tools.
(54:12):
certainly there is bias and there'ssort of obvious bias that we think
about in terms of how it learnsfrom the data it was trained on.
Much of that is information thatwas on the internet, it was fed
to it through companies that aremostly based in Silicon Valley.
it has a profound bias towardsEnglish and towards, Western,
(54:36):
Western society's views of things.
so we had a really interestingconversation about how well does
it understand Arabic, how does itunderstand, Egyptian culture, she
pointed out, for example, likeit was trained on ancient Egypt.
So if you ask it things about ancientEgypt, it knows all about ancient
Egypt, but it has no idea that Egypt,still exists and still has a vibrant
(55:01):
culture today, or what Egypt today.
it was interesting that by the endof our conversation, we realized
that There was a profound way thatthis was impacting everyday people
who are starting to use these tools.
It meant that if you were someone likeme, who was closer to the place where
(55:23):
these tools originated from, I findmyself slipping into that feeling often
that, wow, it really understands me.
It gets me.
it's so accurate all the time.
Wow, it's so good.
And I say that, I have friendsthat say that, a lot of
people I interview say that.
Talking to her, she was saying,it's wrong all the time.
(55:44):
It makes these stupid errors all the time.
She's like, how does it not know X?
How does it not know this?
Why is it changing something from theArabic calendar to the Gregorian calendar?
I didn't tell it to do that.
so she's saying all of these thingsthat to her seem very obvious
because of where she lives andwhat she deals with every day.
I don't know.
And I said, that's an interesting biasI hadn't even thought about is that
(56:06):
because you're in a culture and in alanguage that it wasn't trained in,
its lack of skill and the fact that itactually isn't as far along as a lot
of people think it is more evident.
Whereas those of us who are closerto it in terms of what it was trained
on are more likely to give it morecredence and give it more, trust.
(56:30):
Thanks a lot.
Than those who weren't.
those were all the clips that Iwanted to share from a podcast.
I do have other episodes.
I hope to be coming out soon.
So Ariel Strong is a local scientist,and she also won a second place in
the recent moonshot competition forentrepreneurs with her Fireflight company.
(56:54):
And she and I are actually meetingtomorrow and, we're hoping to
have her on the podcast soon.
So she is using AI aspart of, fire detection.
The other contest winner fromMoonshot, oh, now I'm going to
forget the name that was there.
Feel free to shout it out to me.
but they also are using AIin fighting fires in Arizona.
(57:17):
So there's actually agrant that came out through
There's a grant that's basically tryingto put money into wildfire detection and,
fighting wildfires and trying to help withtechnology that goes in that direction.
both of these companies that are bothbased here in Flagstaff are able to be
(57:42):
part of that and are trying to scale upcompanies that could, do faster detection.
I know Ariel's company works on drones.
The other company I believe workswith, using mapping from above.
There's a new institute starting at NIUfor doing this type of mapping and having
(58:02):
more sensors that can actually detect,fire starts earlier in remote areas that
you wouldn't be able to see the smoke yet.
some really interesting usecases for that right here
locally in a big problem we have.
All right, this is just one moreuse case I'll mention, is it can do,
not only can it transcribe audio tovideo, but it can also, You can also
(58:24):
transcribe your handwritten notes.
like Kathy and I met bothbeing volunteers at Rudin.
I was talking to the park manager there,and we were both like, don't tell the
volunteer mansion that ChattanoogaGBT can transcribe cursive handwriting
because they've had volunteers workingfor decades, literally, to try to
transcribe all of those documents thatwere part of our local history archive.
(58:49):
I do journaling on a daily basis, andI like to take my journal outside.
I'll just take a picture with myphone using the ChatGT app and
have it transcribe my notes for me.
If it's something that I think of whereI'm like, oh that's a great idea, I
should turn that into a blog post orI should turn that into an episode.
it allows me to actually have lessscreen time, but still capture that.
(59:15):
So a few things that I recommendthat have been helpful in my journey.
If you're looking forbusiness or for marketing.
Definitely Kinsey with, her podcast,Authentic AI, and her business.
She does some great resources,and I learned a lot from her.
This is the course that Itook with MIT and CSAIL.
(59:36):
Like I said, they now have some additionalcourses that are specific to generative
AI, if you're interested in that.
And then, I love podcasts, so Ilisten to a lot of podcasts, and
these are some of my favorites.
Me, Myself, and AI is from BostonConsulting Group at MIT, so they
(59:57):
tend to talk more about business anddifferent sectors and how it's impacting.
Black Box on the top right, that's moreabout the real concerns, and it was
really raised by our keynote speaker onFriday about the idea of explainability,
and that many of, she mentioned the termblack box, and that a lot of these AI
(01:00:17):
tools are, working in a black box sothat the everyday user of it, or even
some of the people working on it, don'tknow how it came to the conclusions
or the outputs that it came to.
that dives deep into that,into the whole series.
And then AI for Creatives is really great.
It's the one that inspiredme to start the wallpaper.
(01:00:41):
AI for Humans is annoying,but surprisingly helpful.
Alright, while I keep up this slideabout some risks and hazards, I
also want to give you a chance,does anyone have any questions
since we're about to wrap up here?
I know I went through a lot of differentuse cases and things, it was a smattering
to just whet your appetite to learn more.
(01:01:03):
Yeah.
The episodes we talked about are livenow, so all of those are live now.
I'm trying to release a newepisode every other week or so.
so there's seven episodes thatare up right now, and you can
find them at blimpfacilitation.
com or at, in Spotifyor other podcast apps.
(01:01:31):
Any
Audience (01:01:32):
other questions?
Yes.
Sharon (01:01:42):
Yeah, that's a great question.
this was really, one thing I did learnfrom that MIT course was how the ability
for, us to move towards natural language.
in the past, you had to learn acomputer language in order to program
the computer to do what you wanted.
I know I took an HTML class when I wasin school and I could, program, this
(01:02:03):
really basic website about Care Bears.
It's very embarrassing.
Hopefully it doesn't existanymore on the internet.
but now, what really allowedeverything to jump forward is
that they made it so that You canactually just use natural language.
You can talk to it like you would talkto an intern or an assistant and use just
regular, instructions and it can interpretthose and give you your response.
(01:02:29):
I will say that this was part of myconversation with Maha is that as
long as you're speaking English andyou're using regular language like
business language or the languageof, common news jargon, things like
that, it does a really great job.
Yeah.
If you start speaking in a differentlanguage or something it wasn't trained
in, it's not going to be able to followyour prompting or instructions very well.
(01:02:53):
So you don't need any particularprompting classes or any
particular syntax to use with it.
Does that make sense?
Does that answer your question?
Yeah.
And one thing I like about it is, I'llgive one more use case since you all don't
seem to be running off, so that's great.
my A family member, I won't outwho it is actually, was in a
(01:03:16):
custody battle for his child.
Really negative, bad situation where hewas fighting with the child's mother.
And it had gotten to the levelthat they had to have court orders.
And the court had said, you're notallowed to talk to each other anymore.
You have to put everythingin writing and it has to go
through a court supervised app.
(01:03:40):
And So I realized, hey, this is agreat use case for ChatGPT, because he
had to follow specific instructions.
he had to say in the subjectline what the topic was.
He wasn't allowed to do more thana certain number of sentences.
it was strict to teach them how to speakto each other without creating conflict.
So we actually did what'scalled custom instructions.
(01:04:03):
We were able to customize ChatGPTwith the instructions from the court.
And we said, here's how we have towrite, please, anything I tell you,
write it according to these instructions.
And so he would actually use thevoice note feature, and he would just
speak out loud to it, and then itwould translate his voice note, and it
(01:04:23):
would translate it again into what wascompliance with the court's orders.
And then he could sendthat off to his, ex wife.
Didn't sound anything likehim, but that was the point.
The point was to sound exactlylike they wanted it to.
And it worked really great.
So I think there's weird use cases.
(01:04:44):
Yes?
It's interesting, the AIs, most ofthe AIs, so we say it generally, but
we're talking about the main ones,like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot.
Most of these have been trainedwith similar instructions, which is
(01:05:04):
to try to be friendly and helpful.
So they tend to interpret whateveryou say also in that context.
They tend to, be a little bit locations.
And that is a bias that comes in.
for example, I asked, Chachi Petitto help me prepare for this podcast.
I was like, what kind ofreactions might people have?
(01:05:27):
What might they want to know about?
And at first it was really positive.
people are going to love this.
This is a great idea.
You should do, this, and this.
And then I said, You and I knowthat this is a fantastic idea.
It's going to be great.
But there might be a few peoplewho might have concerns or
negative feelings about it.
Could you give me some examples of whatthey might think about this podcast?
(01:05:50):
And it was like, oh sure, and then it gaveme like 20 responses of, they might think
that, you're a sellout, or it's a, gonnatake over the world, or you're just part
of the problem, like all of these things,and it was funny, it was like, it's bias
was so positive, but the moment thatyou turned around and gave it an excuse,
it could go into a different direction,so I don't know if that answered your
question, but it doesn't do great at,I don't know, I use Fireflies and it
(01:06:15):
does do sentiment analysis, And thosegenerally seem to be fairly accurate.
It tells me what percent of theconversation was positive, what
was negative, and what was neutral.
Audience (01:06:26):
Oh,
yeah.
Sharon (01:06:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
AI for Humans does a lotof experimenting with that.
they're comedians, andthey also are gamers.
And their whole thing istrying to create characters.
And they use a lot of the, they'llcreate characters using AI, both
create the voice, but also havelive chatbot characters that, and
they give it a whole backstory.
(01:06:59):
And so some of them are really rude,some of them are angry, so yeah,
they can go all directions, yeah.
that's how to find me online.
facilitation.
com, you can listen to all theepisodes directly there, or find them.
(01:07:19):
or feel free to let me knowand I'll have to hand you a
business card if that's easier.
if you do have any recommendationsfor people you think that I should
interview on the show, I'd love to know.
But otherwise, I really appreciateyou coming and learning and being
part of the learning journey with me.
Brian AI (01:07:35):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of AI for
Helpers and Changemakers.
For the show notes and moreinformation about working with
Sharon, visit bloomfacilitation.
com.
If you have a suggestion for whowe should interview, email us
at hello at bloomfacilitation.
com.
And finally, please share thisepisode with someone you think
would find it interesting.
(01:07:56):
Word of mouth is our best marketing.
Are you not sure how to feel about the way AI is suddenly everywhere?
AI for Helpers and Changemakers isa show for people who want to do
good work and help other people.
Whether you're already using AItools and loving it, or you are
pretty sure that ChatGPT is thefirst sign of our downfall, we want
you to listen in and learn with us.
(00:26):
Your host on this journeyis Sharon Tewksbury Bloom.
For 20 years, she's workedwith helpers and changemakers.
She believes that we're about to seethe biggest changes in our work lives
since the Internet went mainstream.
We're in this together.
Join us as Sharon interviews peoplein different helping professions.
Navigate what these new technologiesare doing to and for their work.
Sharon (00:47):
On today's episode, we are sharing a live podcast taping.
I live in Flagstaff, Arizona, andFlagstaff is home to the longest running
community science festival in the country.
And it's actually the 35thanniversary of the festival.
So I was really excited to beable to share a rundown and recap
(01:09):
of what I was learning on AIfor helpers and change makers.
If you want to learn moreabout the Flagstaff festival of
science and see other recordedsessions that were delivered.
You can go to scifest.org.
That scifest.org.
I hope you enjoy this recordingof our live podcast taping.
(01:30):
Elizabeth and I go way back.
Elizabeth (01:33):
That's true.
Sharon (01:34):
Yeah.
She was actually one of thefirst people I met in Flagstaff.
Elizabeth (01:37):
It may have been in this very space.
Sharon (01:39):
That's true.
we both got out here as East Coasttransplants, to serve with AmeriCorps.
So we both did service throughAmeriCorps and that's how we met.
And now we've moved on tobigger and better things.
Elizabeth (01:52):
Yeah, we were in the same AmeriCorps class.
Gosh, nearly 20 years ago now.
Oh, you remember.
That's good.
Sharon (02:02):
Yeah.
I know.
I am Sharon Tewksbury Bloom.
I am the founder and CEO of a companycalled Bloom Facilitation, and I am very
curious about AI, artificial intelligence.
And so I pursued my curiosity over thelast year, and I hope to be a leading
learner to those in the communitywho are also interested in this.
(02:24):
And one way that I've done that isI've started a podcast series called
AI for Helpers and Changemakers.
I used to have a podcast called DoGood, Be Good, and I interviewed a
lot of people here in Flagstaff whowere trying to help other people.
So you get the idea, we both startedin AmeriCorps, we're both really
interested in service and helping people.
I originally did a podcast for two anda half years about helping other people,
(02:48):
including interviewing, Kathy Farrettaabout the Flagstaff Festival of Science
and her volunteer work through that.
but I decided to revive the podcast inthis new iteration with a focus on how
are these same people, everyday people whoare doing work that they hope will help
other people or will make a change in theworld, how are they being impacted by the
(03:11):
introduction of artificial intelligenceinto their lives and into their work.
So that's really where the ideacame from and what it's about.
So that's where you're at.
Hopefully that's Whatyou want to listen to.
And I'll let Elizabeth give someannouncements about the Flagstaff Festival
of Science before I jump in any further.
Elizabeth (03:31):
I have some announcements, and then also I was going to introduce Sharon,
but she just stole all of her own thunder.
so I'm not sure if I havetoo much more to say.
But, I'll introduce myself.
I'm Elizabeth Vogler.
I'm the Festival Director for theFlagstaff Festival of Science.
And in case you all didn'tknow, it's ten days of science
(03:53):
programs, events, and activities.
And we're about halfway throughright now, so we have, through Sunday
with more festival programming.
The best way to find out about all ofthose different events and activities,
which of course are all free, iseither on your app, which you can
(04:13):
use on your smartphone of any size.
either choice or any choice.
that's really the easiest way to use it.
So all the events are free,as a part of the festival.
and so far it's been really exciting.
This is also our 35th year of theFlagstaff Festival of Science.
Pretty incredible to be aroundin the community for that long.
So we're quite delighted about that.
(04:35):
And I'd also like to just thanksome of our sponsors, not by name,
but just a shout out to all of oursponsors because the festival is free.
we rely very heavily on corporatesponsors, grants and individual donors.
just shout out to all of thosefolks, that do support us.
And we have the full listing, onthe app or on the back of that
(04:57):
pamphlet that I mentioned before.
And one other thing is, whenyou're going to festival events,
we want to hear from you.
We want to hear what you liked, whatyou, what improvements you might suggest.
and we take all of that very seriouslyas we begin to plan for future years.
on the way out, I also have a littleQR code and a link to the website
(05:18):
that you can take that survey online.
And it's real quick, but wedo want to hear your thoughts.
let's see if there's anythingthat I, that Sharon didn't mention
about herself, that I can be of anytype of, help or service at all.
Sharon's the founder and CEO of bloomfacilitation and do good, be good,
which she mentioned, and it does alot of professional facilitation and
(05:41):
organizational development, consulting.
She's also been spotlighted on VolunteerNation podcast, Authentic AI podcast, How
to Change the World podcast, FlagstaffBusiness News, and Discover Flagstaff.
And that's what I've got.
We're really happy to have Sharon here.
Sharon (05:59):
Thank you, Elizabeth.
I'll let you out of the hot seat now.
I
Elizabeth (06:04):
was really nervous there.
Sharon (06:06):
Alright, so without further ado, let's go ahead and give you a sample.
What I'm going to do is I'm goingto tell you a little bit about my
journey so far in learning about AI.
What I've learned and then you'll heardirectly from some of the people I've
interviewed and the voices of thosepeople and how they're experiencing AI.
So, as mentioned, I own two companies,Swedenbygood and Bloom Facilitation,
(06:29):
and then AI for Helpers and Changemakersis a passion project of mine, so if you
enjoy it today and you want to go findit, you can listen to it on Spotify,
or other podcast apps, or you can gothrough my website, bloomfacilitation.
com, to get all the updates.
So we are doing some speculationin my interviews on the show about
(06:50):
how AI might be used in the future.
But most of our conversations areactually about uses for AI right now.
Uses for artificial intelligencethat are impacting people on
a daily basis in their work.
And this is really a theme that'scome up a lot just in the last year.
(07:11):
is that a lot of people have beenconfronted by artificial intelligence
technologies, by AI enabled technologies.
many of the people I interview didnot seek out the opportunity to
work with artificial intelligence orto incorporate it into their work.
They really found it finding them andeither, decided to embrace it and figure
(07:36):
out, okay, what can I do with this?
What's possible now thatwasn't possible before?
Or they really had to go through theirown process of, I'm afraid of this, I'm
confused by this, I don't know what todo about this, how do I try to navigate
this time in which this really dramaticchange is happening with technology?
So that's why I really wanna have theseconversations, because I do think that
(08:00):
we're getting an interesting revolutionhappening and how people do work,
and I'm an organizational developmentgeek, so I'm really interested in
that topic, and I think it's going tomake a huge change in every sector.
This is just one example of howI've used AI and how I've, talked to
(08:23):
people in the helping fields abouthow it might change their work.
So one of the most familiartechnologies when we talk about AI to
the general public would be chat GPT.
ChatGPT is a generative AI chatbottool based on a large language model.
If we have time we'll get intosome jargon definitions for you.
(08:43):
but ChatGPT kind of jumpedon the scene late in 2022.
Most people didn't see it until 2023.
And now if you're in the workingworld it's becoming pretty ubiquitous.
And people are using it or tryingto not use it or dealing with the
implications of other people using it.
And so it's really a learning curveof everyone trying to figure out what
(09:06):
does this mean for me and my work.
So one use of it is towrite things for you.
And I work with a lot of non profits.
So many non profits come to me andthey say, what could we use the most?
We could use grant writers.
Now that's an interesting ethicalquestion of can you have Chattanooga
T write your grant for you?
(09:27):
And I often push them to say, wecan talk about that and whether or
not that is ethical, whether that'sgoing to be effective or anything.
But before we even try that, there isa great use case for it, which is put
your grant that you've written intoChatGT along with the grant guidelines
that you were provided or the rubric forscoring and have ChatGT help evaluate
(09:52):
you as a, first reader providing youwith feedback of how well does this
grant that I've written match upwith the guidelines for the grant.
So I've done this before.
I find that it does work verywell for that use case because one
thing that it's really good at isunderstanding patterns and language
(10:13):
and being able to match things.
So just like they've been using Sowhen people complete versions of AI
in resume evaluation for a very longtime, they look for keywords and they're
able to identify and sift things ina pile to say, yes, this resume is
worth a human review versus no, thisresume is not worth a human review.
So you can use some of that sameunderlying technology to say, tell me how
(10:37):
well my writing is matching the languagethat they're asking for in the grant.
I'm also exploring really funways to use AI creatively.
So we've been remodeling our house rightnow and I got interested in whether or not
I could use AI to design my own wallpaper.
(10:59):
So these two images were used,were designed by me using AI.
They use mid journey andthey're done very differently.
So the one over here was me using aprompt to A written prompt to ask the
AI, in this case I used Midjourney,to create wallpaper in the style
(11:24):
of William Morris using, sacreddatora plants and hummingbirds.
And my thinking was, I reallylove William Morris style, I
love that, style of wallpaper.
But I'm in the southwest, I'min Arizona, and I really wanted
to bring in some of the naturalflora and fauna of this region.
And that doesn't really exist,William Morris didn't do that.
(11:46):
I thought, wouldn't it be fun to seeif I could recreate that with it.
It was fun, I liked what it came upwith, but one of the challenges, if
you're doing wallpaper, is that you needto have a seamless repeating pattern.
And that's really hard todo with an intricate pattern
like a drawing like that.
then, I learned that mid journeywas one step ahead of me, and that
(12:10):
all I needed to learn to do wasadd a tag to my prompt that said
hashtag tile, and that would actuallycreate a seamless repeating pattern
based on whatever prompt I gave it.
So when I went to the roses, I knew thatby then, and so I said, okay, this time I
want, and I forget my exact prompt for it.
(12:35):
But I also took another step, which wasthis idea of collaborating with the tool.
So I love photography.
I do a lot of photographyof plants in particular.
So I took a photo that I had takenof some roses and I uploaded it
into the tool and I said, use thisphoto as inspiration and create a
(12:56):
wallpaper with a seamless repeatingpattern and with this color palette.
And so that's what it came up with.
So that's where I think it's been reallyfun for me is to figure out how could
I collaborate with the tool to createsomething that I alone couldn't do
with my limited skills and abilities.
(13:18):
And then the podcast itselfhas been a fun curiosity and a
chance to explore creativity.
So these are the tools thatI've used in the creation of the
podcast that are AI powered tools.
So chat.
gt might be familiar with.
Canva is really the latest andgreatest in graphic design software.
(13:39):
If you're talking to anyone that does anysort of graphics in the work world today,
they're probably using Canva because it'sjust burst on the scene and took over.
No longer is anyone using Photoshopor any of those other tools.
They're all using Canva.
Canva has introduced whatthey call magic features.
So this is an interesting thing, right?
(13:59):
How we start talking about.
So Canva, being that it's fun andcolorful and creative, has decided
to call its AI enriched tools magic.
Which is a whole thing.
I have a sociology minor where you cango into a whole thing about what does it
mean to start calling things magic thatactually, have the science and tech,
(14:21):
powering them and aren't actually magic.
So if you want to use a magic feature, forexample, you could give it a handout that
you've created and you could ask it tocreate a slide deck based on that handout.
So it can translate from oneform to the other using content
(14:42):
that you've already created.
It can also translateinto other languages.
So I can give it a handout and askit to translate it into Spanish.
And that's just built inas a feature of Canva.
there's amazing possibilities forit to expand, how much you can
get out of one piece of creativecontent that you've created.
(15:04):
For Descript, Descriptis my editing software.
I used to use all kinds of tools.
I was originally trained in highschool on the Adobe suite and, I've
learned lots of different technologyover the years for audio editing.
For Descript, Descript is my editing ButDescript, again, has changed the game.
I feel like I'm going to be cheesywith every metaphor possible.
(15:25):
What Descript does is if I take today'srecording and I upload it into my computer
and save it to Descript, the very firststep that it does is it automatically
creates a written transcript of the audio.
And it does so in about ten minutes.
(15:46):
That's an hour long audio recording.
And it's pretty accurate.
I used to pay for a service that wouldtranscribe all of my audio, because I
wanted it to be as accessible as possible.
So I know how hard that can be.
I've even done it myself, and ittook me hours to do it myself.
So the fact that it can practicallyinstantaneously make a transcript
(16:09):
is already revolutionary.
Secondly, if you don't want to learn howto edit audio, You don't actually have
to anymore, because Descript allows youto edit the transcript like you would
a word processing document, and it willedit the corresponding audio file to
match what you've edited in the document.
(16:32):
So you don't even have to look atthe audio if you don't want, you
don't have to look at the timeline.
It also has AI powered features,which it cheekily calls Underlord.
And its Underlord features will doautomatic adjustments if you enable them.
So for instance, it has one called StudioSound, which allows me to click a button,
(16:53):
it will automatically even out theaudio, equalize things, make things sound
better, just with one click of a button.
I can adjust that, I can tune itif I feel like it's doing too much,
or I can pull it back, anything.
I can also say, in one click,Please remove all filler words.
All the uhs, ums, anything like that.
(17:15):
It'll tell me on the day to find 120filler words, and I can say great,
either delete them automatically, orI can tell it to just ignore them and
I'll go through and check and makesure that I actually want them removed.
the abilities that it has just built in,this is like 30 a month for this software,
Allow me to run a podcast by myself,which I used to have to hire an editor.
(17:40):
and that's why I had to giveup my last podcast was I was
doing it as a passion project.
I couldn't afford it andI had to stop doing it.
So now I'm able to startdoing it again because I have
these tools at my fingertips.
I already mentioned mid journey.
That's my AI generator, thelogo that you saw earlier that
was created using mid journey.
(18:02):
In combination with Canva, soI created the background image
in Midjourney and then put ittogether with the text in Canva.
And then finally, Eleven Labs.
Eleven Labs is a voice generator.
So now we have image generators,we have text generators, you
can also do a voice generator.
So again, I used to have someone whowould be the person who announced,
(18:27):
was the, Broadcast announcer to dothe intro and outro of my podcast.
I now have Brian, who is an artificialintelligence generated voice,
who does my intro and my outro.
so I just wanted to play with it andexperiment and see what was possible.
I have also considered youcan actually create your own
(18:49):
deep fake of your own voice.
And so since I have hours and hoursof audio of my own voice, I might.
Actually, someday create a recreationof my own voice, and then I would
be able to feed it written text andhave it read it as me, in my voice,
and wouldn't even need to record.
(19:09):
it's something I'm playing withand seeing what's possible.
Alright, let's hear fromsome of our podcast guests.
Some of these people you mightrecognize, some of them either live in
Flagstaff or have worked in Flagstaff.
Diana White.
Splits time between theValley and Flagstaff.
She has worked for Moonshot up here.
And she used to be the bookseller.
(19:31):
She managed the bookstore at NAU.
so she has a love of books.
And I have a little clip from her.
Diana White (19:38):
For me, it just is a way to embrace what's coming.
And while you embrace it,you mold it, you shape it.
There are so many differentexamples of things that we've seen
in movies or things that we'veread in books that were fantasy.
(19:59):
And then somehow somebody,because they were empowered
by it, They made it reality.
And I think that's whatembracing the nerd is all about.
It's embracing the, thescience and mixing it with.
passion and humor.
And that's what I do.
(20:20):
So that's why I call myself a nerd.
I love everything science.
I love space, you name it, I love it.
And it's not that I'm so well versed andeducated in any of these fields, right?
It's just you put me in front of aTV or YouTube channel, and they're
showing a nature documentary or a spacedocumentary, I'm sucking it all up.
(20:41):
If there's a new development inscience, I want to know about
it as much as I can understandfrom my layperson point of view.
And then I want to have discussions withmy friends to see how they feel about
this, which is why I love that you do thisshow because AI is the next new thing to
either embrace or be scared of, right?
(21:01):
So I love it.
I want to know about it as, asmuch as I can understand from
my lay person point of view.
Um, and then I want to have discussionswith my friends to see how they feel
about this, which is why I love that youdo this show because AI is the next new
thing to either embrace or be scared of.
Right?
(21:21):
So I love it.
Yeah.
It's really only recently in thelast couple of years that I've
started reading science fiction.
And I think it is because of this.
feeling I have that science fiction isbecoming everyday reality more and more.
And I'm trying to figure out, okay, ifI can't always stay on top of what's
(21:43):
going on, Maybe I can get some ideasabout what might be coming from the
creative minds of science fiction authors.
And I know a few that I've liked.
I've read Cory Doctorowand his books about makers.
And he has a book called Walk Away.
And so some interesting onesabout 3D printers and abilities to
(22:07):
kind of create new places and newways of interacting on the fly.
And then I just read the book In theLives of Puppets, which is, you know,
most of the characters are robots.
And so understanding how differentrobots are interacting with each other
and how they think about humans and howthose human computer interactions go.
(22:32):
Let me just spoil for asecond that they go poorly.
They go really poorly, officially,but stick with it because
there, there's a happier silverlining in that particular book.
Sharon (22:44):
Awesome.
those are a few things I loved abouttalking about with this with Diana.
Is, she's not a technology expert.
She's not an AI expert.
She is the perfect example of someonewho's just curious, who just wants to
stay on top of the latest technology.
And is trying to stay on top of this.
we talked about how shetook a class and added
(23:08):
We talked about how she, her veryfirst introduction to artificial
intelligence was Grammarly.
Not sure if anyone here usesGrammarly, but it's a certain,
yeah, we've got a few people.
anyone who's ever felt anxious aboutwhether your spelling and grammar
is correct on things probablyembraced Grammarly really early on.
(23:28):
it's a tool that, originallywas like having spellcheck.
It could check everywhere you went.
It could check your spelling onwebsites you were filling out a form
on, or in your email or something.
So it didn't just live in yourword processing software, it
could go with you and help you.
And then, it really has evolved, andone thing that she talks about is,
it would send her weekly reports.
(23:50):
these are your most common errorsthat you've had with grammar, and
here's the things that you, could beworking on to improve your writing.
And she said that it helped herbuild confidence with her writing
and being a more professional writer.
And that she's learned since thenthat, Grammarly was an early technology
that started to incorporate usingartificial intelligence to improve
(24:12):
its service and be able to, do, havemore features and serve more people.
And that's been interesting because onechallenge that's come up in a few of my
interviews is for teachers and professors.
to a group of students who are tryingto navigate this world in which their
students can use AI to write theirassignments and to write essays.
(24:34):
And I talked to a professor at NAU, noton the podcast, but just in life and
in my friendships, who was mentioningthat there was a real controversy
because a student was punished if theywere told that they were going to be
suspended or, have disciplinary actionbecause they had written their paper
(24:54):
using AI, because it had been flaggedusing a software program that was
meant to detect AI in people's writing.
But it turned out that the studenthad used Grammarly to check
their grammar on their paper.
Grammarly is AI.
It's using AI, so it got flagged.
(25:14):
correctly by the AI detection software,and that's starting to show the nuance
that we're getting into now, where it'snot always black and white, but what
does it mean to have AI assist you inyour writing, and can the education
system actually monitor this, or isit too blurry now, where those lines
(25:36):
are and what tools people are using.
Alright, we'll go to our next guest.
The Naira Bailey.
The Naira does not live here in Flagstaff.
I've met her through mywork with nonprofits.
She's a consultant who'sbased in California.
Thenera Bailey (25:51):
I thought it was interesting when you talked about
disrupting and dismantling systems,I hear a lot of fear around AI
disrupting the ways we're doing things.
And for me, I'm thinking, well,let's not assume that's a bad thing.
Like some things need to be disrupted.
Some things need to be dismantled.
(26:11):
So I think sometimes themainstream narrative.
This is a dangerous technology.
It's disrupting things.
But then I often talk to smallnonprofits or things that say you
didn't have resources and powerand the ability to get things done.
And this is disrupting the technologyin a way that actually allows you to
(26:32):
have access to expertise and resourcesthat used to only be available.
To larger organizations or systems.
I think the only way I had heardabout AI being used with college
kids cheating on papers, I wascoming at it from that narrative.
How are we going to knowanybody knows anything anymore?
(26:56):
Hadn't thought, why would I need it?
I'm not writing a degree.
I don't need to cheat on a paper.
Like what, where would be my use fora full, And so to talk a little bit
more about like how a smaller spacewhere we would use it, one of the
prompts it gave was, or the, in theworkshop, he talked about if you just
(27:20):
needed a way to summarize very quicklynotes from a meeting for those of
us who like, and, or fit in tons ofmeetings, I think of my clients who
Administrative assistant in a nonprofitthat has like 12 meetings in a day.
And that admin staff are like, justtrying to keep their head above water.
(27:44):
And where these like otter programsor different or chat GPT or Microsoft
copilot, can you summarize these notes orcan you transcribe the zoom or can just
that little amount of saving of time.
It's a commodity you can't replacefor those of us who don't make
(28:07):
a ton of money in non profit.
Time is something that we reallyneed to value a little bit more.
That's not cheating on a paper.
That's valuable.
For me, that was mind blowing.
I didn't think about volunteerboard, getting a note summary quickly
after the meeting, how quickly thatwill move movements forward, right?
(28:31):
Like when you're trying to create change,the ability to get the notes out quickly.
Sometimes that's the biggestimpediment to progress that.
Someone can't take the note andthey're just so busy that you just
never know what's happening next.
No one wrote it down.
Someone can transcribe the Zoommeeting automatically and everyone
(28:52):
gets it immediately after.
Like that keeps progress moving forward.
That's that kind ofdisruption of the system.
That's a quick answer.
Small changes where AI can really havea benefit or like the social media
things where like you have a wonderfulpicture from an event, but you are
not the creative person in my company.
Sharon (29:13):
So I don't know if you've been in an online video call meeting
lately, but you may have encounteredan artificial intelligence note taking
app, trying to join your meeting, orhappily being invited to your meeting.
This was one of my firstways in which I was.
in the workplace and in which I had myfirst AI faux pas in the workplace was
(29:36):
trying to embrace the note taking apps.
she mentions an app called Otter.
I now use, almost exclusively,one called Firefly's AI.
And basically, you invite it to yourmeetings and it comes and it records
the meeting, it creates a transcript,and it can even identify It can do
sentiment analysis of the meeting, itcan use, commands that you say in the
(30:01):
meeting to create an action list basedon what people said in the meeting.
So there's lots of extra features thatyou can add beyond just a transcript.
It often usually does a summary as well.
So I've been using Fireflies extensively,but when I very first started using
a meeting note app, I invited it.
(30:23):
I didn't know how to dothe settings, honestly.
I was, learning.
I didn't realize that it wasset as a default to invite
itself to all of my meetings.
And, I had to actually disablethat if I didn't want it.
That wasn't Fireflies, by the way.
That was an earlier one.
which is one reason Iswitched to Fireflies.
Because Fireflies is much betterabout consent and actually asking
(30:46):
for permission to join your meetings.
So this other software I was using calledFathom, it invited itself to my meetings.
I went to a closed meeting of, otherbusiness owners who were going to
basically a mastermind session.
They were just there to talk to eachother and get ideas from each other.
The whole thing wasn'tbeing recorded by anyone.
(31:07):
It was supposed to be a private meetingwith just a, a small group of people.
And unwittingly, I invited this person.
This robot interloper into our meetingthat automatically was recording, too.
And so I tried to get it outof the meeting and apparently
I had no control over it.
(31:27):
I couldn't get it out of themeeting, I couldn't do anything.
We had to shut down theentire meeting to get it out.
And so this is one of those faux pas, youthink about some of the early things we
saw where people had, devices in theirear and they were walking around talking
on the phone, people thought they werecrazy, they were talking to themselves,
people using, phones in restrooms, allthese things that happened when we started
(31:49):
introducing this technology into ourlives, that was one for note taking apps.
So now I know to set the defaults theother way and I just intentionally
invite it only when I want to.
And also a lot of these services havechanged so that they will notify people,
there will be an AI note taking app cominginto your meeting, do we give consent
(32:10):
for that, and allow that to happen.
though, I want to expand on the factthat Venera, she and I talked further
about this, we're both frustrated bythe fact that non profits are often the
last to embrace the latest technology.
And so one thing that she said is, bythe time we embrace it as nonprofits, it
usually has a big price tag added to it.
(32:34):
right now is when everything is freebecause things are being tried out
and they're still being worked out.
And so a lot of times nonprofits,they come in late to the game,
they end up spending a lot of moneyon technology that doesn't work
as well as the latest technology.
And, it's really frustrating.
Okay.
I think that's one thing that Iwant to do is help educate people
(32:55):
about the actual risks and theperceived risks of the technology.
And one of the risks that wehear a lot is about privacy.
And, just like I said with the notetaking app, it's being recorded.
Also, when you upload things to chat2pt,there's a real question of what happens
to that data that you're sharing with it.
(33:17):
We can talk about what they say ishappening to it, but I think it's a pretty
open question right now because it's anew landscape and people aren't really
able to promise what's happening to that.
but this is where I feel like non profitsoften hear about these risks and concerns
in mainstream media and other places andthey adopt more of a fearful mindset.
(33:38):
Whereas really what they're askingfor instance, the grant example I
started with, it's something that'sgoing to be publicly available anyway.
It's something that they would literallybe publishing on their website, so it's
content that they actually are perfectlyfine with sharing with the world and
putting out there, and there's nointellectual property concerns, there's
no concerns of people's individualpersonal data, and so they're, they're
(34:02):
often, where their concerns lie doesn'tnecessarily apply to the exact situation.
Still a good reason not to, uploadall your client data into these
systems, but there are toolsthat still have a way to be used.
Alright, another local, Abby Chan.
I apologize in advance, Abby was actuallythe first person I interviewed when I
(34:23):
was having some issues with my phone,
so her audio is not great.
But, she's so wise, and Istill want to hear from her.
Abby Chan is the founderand CEO of Evolve Flagstaff.
she's a registered dietitian who doesamazing nutritional consult, counseling,
and is just a great person to go toif you want help with your health,
(34:48):
particularly as it relates to nutrition.
Abby Chan (34:52):
I want to make sure we also talk about Smart devices, consumer
tech that's coming into the space.
Cause I know I mentioned that I had heardabout a product that I think was unveiled
at the big convention in Las Vegas,where they had a tray that could measure
the calorie content in the food on it.
(35:13):
And it could also measure aftersomeone had eaten some of that
food to see the difference.
So.
Certainly that raised alarm bellsin my brain, but I'm curious what
you've been seeing out there in termsof actual products and wearables and
things that are in your space andwhere your head is at on those items.
(35:39):
Yeah, there's a lot of tech out there.
There's a lot of options.
We could spend so much money and somuch time diving into all these things.
And It first comes down to lookingat, and even when it comes to
health in general, and lookingat, let's say labs, for example,
right, they are a snapshot in time.
So we don't want to base someone'shealth on just one lab job.
(36:03):
We want to look at what are thetrends, what's the difference.
And I think that's a beautiful thingabout tech is that it can give us trends
and it can give us aspects of, are wemaybe going in the right direction?
But they could also be anywhere from 25to 90 percent inaccurate, depending on
the device, depending on how old it is,depending on the sensors in it, depending
(36:23):
on what data it's then compiling.
I've actually been doing my own personalresearch on myself, where I've actually
worn two devices for the past month, oneof them being the, A faceless one that
it doesn't have any numerical data onit and you have to use an app with it.
It's more focused on recovery basedthings and giving a little bit more data
(36:45):
there and compared to an apple watch.
And one thing that I love about theone that doesn't have a face is that it
doesn't buzz at me and tell me that Ineed to move or shame me into moving.
You need to get up now.
Or have you closed your rings?
And there's a lot of ways youcan disable those things, but
it's actually really challenging.
I have to walk clients through often.
How do we disable these notifications?
(37:08):
How do we decrease that amountfor you to close your quote
unquote rings and all of that?
And so I think they can be reallyproblematic because for a lot
of people, if you're more Okay.
Let's say on the anxiety spectrum, maybeeven more in the obsessive realm of
things, numbers are something that once wesee them and hear them, they can live rent
(37:29):
free in our heads for a very long time.
So that could be your body weight.
That could be caloric amounts of food.
That could be how many calories you'regoing to burn during a certain exercise.
Like all of these numbers really don'ttell us a lot about our body weight.
How do we actually feel in our bodies?
If one of these devices tellsme you're totally recovered
today and you're doing great.
(37:50):
But I'm like, I am so soreand I am not moving today.
We need to look at listening intoour bodies and maybe using this
as some other information as well.
But I think there's yeah.
So many fitness devices outthere, depending on where you
wear them and how you use them,the accuracy will be variable and
also the, the Time and length.
(38:11):
So that's also an interesting aspectwhere buying into something and being
in the whole system of it costs money,it costs money and it costs time.
And so that's one of the things wherewe have this data and we think it's so
valuable and we base our lives around it.
But then if it goes away, what do we do?
Oh, we have to listen to our bodies.
(38:31):
Oh my gosh, that's so hard.
So I think there's some things there,and even from the plate aspect, the
example that you gave from a one on oneindividual level, from a consumer level,
I don't think it's very helpful and great.
I think that could end up againsaying, here's the calories
amount that you started with.
(38:51):
Here's where you, whatyou should be eating.
Oh, you ate too much.
And then inherently,something's going to feel.
Bad, guilty, shameful.
But, from my clinical perspective,as someone who works with eating
disorders a lot, I don't liketo use a lot of serving sizes.
I don't like to give out a lot of mealplans or exchanges, or a lot of really
strict things, because we're, I'm tellingpeople that we don't want to don't
(39:12):
want to count as much, and we don'twant to rely on these numbers as much.
So that could actually be a reallyinteresting tool from a provider
standpoint for the provider to have thedata to where someone doesn't have to
measure and weigh things, but maybe theprovider can get the data on the back end
and see, oh, how are we actually doing?
So I think it's all going todepend on how are we using this?
(39:33):
Are we using this froma place of one metric?
And, um, and not the only metric?
Are we using it from a place thatis actually to improve our health?
And also, are we still able to listeninto our bodies and continuously ask
the question of why am I using this?
And why do I feel like I haveto continuously use these
(39:53):
things and not trust my body?
Sharon (39:55):
Yeah, so when we first started talking, Abby and I, it
was because I had been listening tothese other podcasts about the latest
technology that was coming out.
And the consumer electronics show thathappened in Las Vegas every year, at the
last one, one of the products that wasdebuted was something called a smart tray.
(40:21):
So it was a tray that could somehow,Judge how many calories were on
a tray, or what type of nutrientswere in the food that was on a tray.
I wasn't there.
I don't know how it does that.
But, we were philosophizing around, okay,there's all of this, technology starting
(40:41):
to become what they're calling multimodal,where, the wearable devices like our
watches, the refrigerator at your house.
They're starting to make the Internetof Things, where they're putting the
Internet into all of these things.
now, when they put the Internetinto it, that sometimes also
comes with them putting artificialintelligence, into it as well.
(41:04):
And how does that impactpeople in their daily lives?
I was actually surprised.
I thought that she was going to becompletely against smart trains,
and I could see, like, all theways in which this could go poorly.
But I like that she did also have areframe for me of, maybe there is a
setting in which this would be reallyhelpful to allow the provider to get
(41:24):
the access to data without needing torecreate those, behaviors that are a
problem for the person with the eatingdisorder who's getting the help.
that one was a hypothetical.
That's not an exact situationthat she's dealing with today.
She did talk in our episode more about,how she is working with people today
who are using tracking devices, and shesaid that she's doing an experiment with
(41:47):
different types of tracking devices.
there's a lot of science out there around,how it impacts someone if they have a
watch versus a heart rate monitor versusa step monitor, and the different kinds
of devices, how that can impact you.
in terms of the behavior changeyou're making, also it'll impact
(42:08):
your mental health, and, someinteresting work being done there.
So she's doing an experiment on that forherself, and had some great things to say
on the episode about what people need tobe thinking about when this, is gonna be
hyped more and more, because everyone'sin this sort of AI arms race right
now, from a consumer tech standpoint.
(42:29):
And so they're starting to put thistechnology into things to say that
it's new and different and worth moremoney, so you're gonna start to see
lots of products that have AI in them.
Whether they do, or whether it'smore AI washing, it's definitely
a technology that's being rolledout in a lot of consumer products.
And that can impact people's health.
(42:52):
I will give a shoutout real quick.
I don't actually know I don't know whichtechnology this uses, but, my mother
is an early adopter of technology,and she's obsessed with all Apple
devices, and so she loves going to theApple store and taking all the Apple
classes, and she's got an iPhone, anApple watch, and an iPad, and a laptop
(43:17):
that's, whatever those Apple things are.
One thing that she taught me is thatbecause she and her friends are now
in a category of health, she's hadfive surgeries in the last year.
She just turned 80 this last year.
So she has certain concerns,like being a fall risk.
So she wears her AppleWatch with her all the time.
(43:37):
And she actually taught me how youcan make it more waterproof somehow.
And she wears it in the shower.
Because she wants it to bethere as a fall detector if
she were to fall in the shower.
And she has actually had a fall with iton and it did do what it was supposed
to do of letting, her be able to vocallycall for, an ambulance if she needed it.
(44:00):
And notify her loved one that, theremight be a fall detection, detected.
it is really exciting to me because,Some people were here when I said
that I actually got my start here inFlagstaff as an AmeriCorps member.
When I was an AmeriCorps member,I was working with senior
services, and I recruitedvolunteers for homebound seniors.
And trying to help people stayindependent as long as possible,
(44:23):
and stay safe in their homes, waslike a huge part of what I did.
And I love the ways that some ofthis technology could be incorporated
and to help the community.
So that way people will livemore healthy, safer, independent
lives, the way that they want to.
Alright, another Flagstafflocal here, this is Amy.
She is the owner of the only B Corpthat I know of, which is a company that
(44:50):
is also committed to sustainability.
I said all that, and I realizeI don't have hers queued up.
Alright, so I'm quickly just going tonote something that I learned from Amy.
which is that there is a real concernin this, the amount of compute that
is needed for this new technology.
(45:10):
It does still use energy.
there's a huge, there's been a hugeincrease in the amount of energy that's
needed for all of this technology.
that is impacting the environment.
That is a risk to our environment.
and so that's something thatwe need to be really aware of
and have as part of our plan.
and then we'll have a conversationas we're moving forward.
when we're seeing all these greatuse cases for using artificial
(45:32):
intelligence, there's the questionof what, what are the risks and what
are we, what are the trade offs?
What is happening, as thepotential pitfalls for that?
So she's really tuned into that.
Though an example she gave ofhow she is trying to use it, she
mostly uses ChatGT, and she'sbeen using it as a research tool.
for instance, she creates sustainablebelts, and she's been trying
(45:57):
to create them with as low of alife cycle of waste as possible.
So she's been trying to researcha new type of plastic that she
could use for the belt bucklethat would be fully recyclable.
And so she used Chachi Petit tohelp her narrow down what potential
manufacturers were within the southwest U.
S.
(46:17):
And then she was ableto follow up with that.
call those manufacturers and try tochange her process of making the belts.
So it was a great example of for a lot ofsmall business owners, a lot of creatives.
It's basically allowing them to havea virtual assistant who's really
good at research or really good atsynthesizing information, analyzing data.
(46:40):
Alright, let's see if I've got Julie's
I have started talking to a few peoplewho have expertise in technology.
In Julie's case, she has yearsand years of expertise in data
analysis and in machine learning.
(47:02):
But she said that she's really on thesame path we are in terms of learning
about the new generation of AI tools.
Julie Alig (47:10):
I learned way back in graduate school when I was getting
my doctorate, I learned a lot ofquantitative tools and machine learning.
And a lot of those are subsumedtoday into what is referred to as AI.
(47:32):
And so I've been doing thisfor a while, but The difference
is the generative part of it.
So the generative AI, that's very new.
And I'm right there with everyoneelse learning how to use Claude,
ChatGPT, Gemini, and others.
(47:53):
Generative AI is really the newkid on the block, it's the exciting
thing that's bringing in a lot ofnew possibilities, putting all of us
trying to learn as much as we can.
How is generative AI changingwhat's possible right now
with data and with your work?
(48:14):
It's the sort of thing that,
it's such a change.
It's been such a transformationthat I don't even know how much of
a change it's going to end up havingbeen, if that kind of makes sense.
I heard, I can't remember who saidthis, but it's like the internet, sure.
(48:38):
It's like electricity.
When electricity wasdiscovered, people had no idea.
They couldn't even conceiveof what would be possible.
Um, it was that profound a transformation.
I think this is goingto be on par with that.
(49:02):
I also think we are very faraway from that being our reality.
Sharon (49:10):
So that's interesting to me as to people who are a little bit more knowledge
in this area, what are their impressions.
I feel like a lot has happened in a shortamount of time, and there's been a lot
of change, but does that feel like thatto people who are on the inside as well?
a little bit after we finish thenext clip, I'll show you some of
(49:31):
the places I've sought out learning.
And one of, a big one of those is MIT,and I took an online course through
MIT about artificial intelligence.
And it was a little frustratingbecause They hadn't updated the
course since chat GT came out.
(49:52):
And so I learned a lot abouthow we got to this point.
Like I learned a lotabout machine learning.
I learned a lot about predictivealgorithms and, I learned a lot
of interesting information aboutartificial intelligence as a field and
all the ways that could be used, butit was just starting to touch on AI.
(50:12):
And the early statements from theprofessors at MIT were Oh, it's still
far off that's gonna, make a big impact.
yeah, there's a few developments thatmight be noteworthy, but you don't need
to worry about them yet, This was supposedto be a course for business people,
business owners, to understand what theyneeded to know about AI, like what were
the implications for business owners.
(50:35):
And it just felt really out oftouch, and I've noticed that they've
just scrambled to try to updateeverything since then, and now they
have their courses just on generativeAI and how it's impacting business.
Alright, we have one more clip.
This is hot off the audiopresses, if you will.
this episode just came out today, andit's one I've been looking forward to
(50:59):
for a long time, because I've met, Dr.
Mahabali, at Online Open Facilitators,and she works for the University of Cairo
in Egypt, and she was actually givinga presentation at the event I went to
about inclusion, and particularly sheco facilitated with a student of hers
(51:21):
who is blind, and they were talkingabout how some of these tools could make
things more accessible for students whoare blind or have other disabilities.
So I really wanted to interview herabout that, but we actually went
off on a lot of different topics.
And, here's just one of thethings that we talked about.
Maha Bali (51:38):
The term artificial intelligence is problematic because
there's no intelligence here at all.
And a lot of the hype makes you starttalking about artificial intelligence
or generative AI, especially as ifit has sentience and it doesn't.
Of course it doesn't.
The other misconception that I think isthe main one is because it can respond to
human written prompts with human writtenlanguage that looks pretty grammatically
(52:02):
correct and is kind of a slightly friendlytone, I think people started to sort of.
Start to feel like they might bedealing with a human and say things
like please and thank you And I'm like,why are you saying please to the AI?
It's you say please to yourfridge to open the door.
Like you don't do that.
You don't say please to youroven That's just a tool.
You say please to MicrosoftWord to open a file.
You don't do that So and Idid a Twitter poll on this.
(52:25):
I'm like 70 percent of peoplesay please I'm like why?
I mean I'm a polite person, but this isnot a person that I'm talking to, right?
I mean you can say please to yourdog if you want, but not to AI.
The biggest issue is I thinkthat just people believe it.
Yeah, well, I, I, problempeople believe it.
I'll, I will say I am one of thosepeople that says, please, to my ai.
(52:46):
I do have a very specificreason for that, which is that.
My understanding is it is learning naturallanguage, so I should use things like
please and thank you because it's learningfor me how, like it's reflecting back the
way to write based on how I'm writing.
And if I wanted to use those terms,I want it to reflect that back to me.
(53:09):
It's not that I think that I'mtalking to a human, it's that
I'm teaching it the right way.
way that I want it to write.
It comes back to the issueof us teaching it for free.
Right.
For free, they're doingsomething with our data.
So they're benefiting from that andthen selling it to us for money.
the pro version of it, right?
So that's another issue.
(53:30):
Um, I think people, so, so the otherthing I was starting to say is that people
believe it because it sounds credible.
It's difficult to notice subtlehallucinations where it goes off
on a tangent and says somethingthat's completely untrue.
You need to be a very, very, uh,meticulous and a good expert in the
thing that you're asking it to do inorder to notice those hallucinations.
It's more likely to make mistakes.
Sharon (53:50):
Alright, so that's just a tiny clip, but we get into some really
interesting conversations about howShe started using ChatGT when it
wasn't even available in Egypt yet.
They were able to use a VPN to, make itseem like she was joining from the U.
S.
so that she could try it outbefore it was actually available.
And how, people talk about thebias that's in these tools.
(54:12):
certainly there is bias and there'ssort of obvious bias that we think
about in terms of how it learnsfrom the data it was trained on.
Much of that is information thatwas on the internet, it was fed
to it through companies that aremostly based in Silicon Valley.
it has a profound bias towardsEnglish and towards, Western,
(54:36):
Western society's views of things.
so we had a really interestingconversation about how well does
it understand Arabic, how does itunderstand, Egyptian culture, she
pointed out, for example, likeit was trained on ancient Egypt.
So if you ask it things about ancientEgypt, it knows all about ancient
Egypt, but it has no idea that Egypt,still exists and still has a vibrant
(55:01):
culture today, or what Egypt today.
it was interesting that by the endof our conversation, we realized
that There was a profound way thatthis was impacting everyday people
who are starting to use these tools.
It meant that if you were someone likeme, who was closer to the place where
(55:23):
these tools originated from, I findmyself slipping into that feeling often
that, wow, it really understands me.
It gets me.
it's so accurate all the time.
Wow, it's so good.
And I say that, I have friendsthat say that, a lot of
people I interview say that.
Talking to her, she was saying,it's wrong all the time.
(55:44):
It makes these stupid errors all the time.
She's like, how does it not know X?
How does it not know this?
Why is it changing something from theArabic calendar to the Gregorian calendar?
I didn't tell it to do that.
so she's saying all of these thingsthat to her seem very obvious
because of where she lives andwhat she deals with every day.
I don't know.
And I said, that's an interesting biasI hadn't even thought about is that
(56:06):
because you're in a culture and in alanguage that it wasn't trained in,
its lack of skill and the fact that itactually isn't as far along as a lot
of people think it is more evident.
Whereas those of us who are closerto it in terms of what it was trained
on are more likely to give it morecredence and give it more, trust.
(56:30):
Thanks a lot.
Than those who weren't.
those were all the clips that Iwanted to share from a podcast.
I do have other episodes.
I hope to be coming out soon.
So Ariel Strong is a local scientist,and she also won a second place in
the recent moonshot competition forentrepreneurs with her Fireflight company.
(56:54):
And she and I are actually meetingtomorrow and, we're hoping to
have her on the podcast soon.
So she is using AI aspart of, fire detection.
The other contest winner fromMoonshot, oh, now I'm going to
forget the name that was there.
Feel free to shout it out to me.
but they also are using AIin fighting fires in Arizona.
(57:17):
So there's actually agrant that came out through
There's a grant that's basically tryingto put money into wildfire detection and,
fighting wildfires and trying to help withtechnology that goes in that direction.
both of these companies that are bothbased here in Flagstaff are able to be
(57:42):
part of that and are trying to scale upcompanies that could, do faster detection.
I know Ariel's company works on drones.
The other company I believe workswith, using mapping from above.
There's a new institute starting at NIUfor doing this type of mapping and having
(58:02):
more sensors that can actually detect,fire starts earlier in remote areas that
you wouldn't be able to see the smoke yet.
some really interesting usecases for that right here
locally in a big problem we have.
All right, this is just one moreuse case I'll mention, is it can do,
not only can it transcribe audio tovideo, but it can also, You can also
(58:24):
transcribe your handwritten notes.
like Kathy and I met bothbeing volunteers at Rudin.
I was talking to the park manager there,and we were both like, don't tell the
volunteer mansion that ChattanoogaGBT can transcribe cursive handwriting
because they've had volunteers workingfor decades, literally, to try to
transcribe all of those documents thatwere part of our local history archive.
(58:49):
I do journaling on a daily basis, andI like to take my journal outside.
I'll just take a picture with myphone using the ChatGT app and
have it transcribe my notes for me.
If it's something that I think of whereI'm like, oh that's a great idea, I
should turn that into a blog post orI should turn that into an episode.
it allows me to actually have lessscreen time, but still capture that.
(59:15):
So a few things that I recommendthat have been helpful in my journey.
If you're looking forbusiness or for marketing.
Definitely Kinsey with, her podcast,Authentic AI, and her business.
She does some great resources,and I learned a lot from her.
This is the course that Itook with MIT and CSAIL.
(59:36):
Like I said, they now have some additionalcourses that are specific to generative
AI, if you're interested in that.
And then, I love podcasts, so Ilisten to a lot of podcasts, and
these are some of my favorites.
Me, Myself, and AI is from BostonConsulting Group at MIT, so they
(59:57):
tend to talk more about business anddifferent sectors and how it's impacting.
Black Box on the top right, that's moreabout the real concerns, and it was
really raised by our keynote speaker onFriday about the idea of explainability,
and that many of, she mentioned the termblack box, and that a lot of these AI
(01:00:17):
tools are, working in a black box sothat the everyday user of it, or even
some of the people working on it, don'tknow how it came to the conclusions
or the outputs that it came to.
that dives deep into that,into the whole series.
And then AI for Creatives is really great.
It's the one that inspiredme to start the wallpaper.
(01:00:41):
AI for Humans is annoying,but surprisingly helpful.
Alright, while I keep up this slideabout some risks and hazards, I
also want to give you a chance,does anyone have any questions
since we're about to wrap up here?
I know I went through a lot of differentuse cases and things, it was a smattering
to just whet your appetite to learn more.
(01:01:03):
Yeah.
The episodes we talked about are livenow, so all of those are live now.
I'm trying to release a newepisode every other week or so.
so there's seven episodes thatare up right now, and you can
find them at blimpfacilitation.
com or at, in Spotifyor other podcast apps.
(01:01:31):
Any
Audience (01:01:32):
other questions?
Yes.
Sharon (01:01:42):
Yeah, that's a great question.
this was really, one thing I did learnfrom that MIT course was how the ability
for, us to move towards natural language.
in the past, you had to learn acomputer language in order to program
the computer to do what you wanted.
I know I took an HTML class when I wasin school and I could, program, this
(01:02:03):
really basic website about Care Bears.
It's very embarrassing.
Hopefully it doesn't existanymore on the internet.
but now, what really allowedeverything to jump forward is
that they made it so that You canactually just use natural language.
You can talk to it like you would talkto an intern or an assistant and use just
regular, instructions and it can interpretthose and give you your response.
(01:02:29):
I will say that this was part of myconversation with Maha is that as
long as you're speaking English andyou're using regular language like
business language or the languageof, common news jargon, things like
that, it does a really great job.
Yeah.
If you start speaking in a differentlanguage or something it wasn't trained
in, it's not going to be able to followyour prompting or instructions very well.
(01:02:53):
So you don't need any particularprompting classes or any
particular syntax to use with it.
Does that make sense?
Does that answer your question?
Yeah.
And one thing I like about it is, I'llgive one more use case since you all don't
seem to be running off, so that's great.
my A family member, I won't outwho it is actually, was in a
(01:03:16):
custody battle for his child.
Really negative, bad situation where hewas fighting with the child's mother.
And it had gotten to the levelthat they had to have court orders.
And the court had said, you're notallowed to talk to each other anymore.
You have to put everythingin writing and it has to go
through a court supervised app.
(01:03:40):
And So I realized, hey, this is agreat use case for ChatGPT, because he
had to follow specific instructions.
he had to say in the subjectline what the topic was.
He wasn't allowed to do more thana certain number of sentences.
it was strict to teach them how to speakto each other without creating conflict.
So we actually did what'scalled custom instructions.
(01:04:03):
We were able to customize ChatGPTwith the instructions from the court.
And we said, here's how we have towrite, please, anything I tell you,
write it according to these instructions.
And so he would actually use thevoice note feature, and he would just
speak out loud to it, and then itwould translate his voice note, and it
(01:04:23):
would translate it again into what wascompliance with the court's orders.
And then he could sendthat off to his, ex wife.
Didn't sound anything likehim, but that was the point.
The point was to sound exactlylike they wanted it to.
And it worked really great.
So I think there's weird use cases.
(01:04:44):
Yes?
It's interesting, the AIs, most ofthe AIs, so we say it generally, but
we're talking about the main ones,like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot.
Most of these have been trainedwith similar instructions, which is
(01:05:04):
to try to be friendly and helpful.
So they tend to interpret whateveryou say also in that context.
They tend to, be a little bit locations.
And that is a bias that comes in.
for example, I asked, Chachi Petitto help me prepare for this podcast.
I was like, what kind ofreactions might people have?
(01:05:27):
What might they want to know about?
And at first it was really positive.
people are going to love this.
This is a great idea.
You should do, this, and this.
And then I said, You and I knowthat this is a fantastic idea.
It's going to be great.
But there might be a few peoplewho might have concerns or
negative feelings about it.
Could you give me some examples of whatthey might think about this podcast?
(01:05:50):
And it was like, oh sure, and then it gaveme like 20 responses of, they might think
that, you're a sellout, or it's a, gonnatake over the world, or you're just part
of the problem, like all of these things,and it was funny, it was like, it's bias
was so positive, but the moment thatyou turned around and gave it an excuse,
it could go into a different direction,so I don't know if that answered your
question, but it doesn't do great at,I don't know, I use Fireflies and it
(01:06:15):
does do sentiment analysis, And thosegenerally seem to be fairly accurate.
It tells me what percent of theconversation was positive, what
was negative, and what was neutral.
Audience (01:06:26):
Oh,
yeah.
Sharon (01:06:39):
Yeah, absolutely.
AI for Humans does a lotof experimenting with that.
they're comedians, andthey also are gamers.
And their whole thing istrying to create characters.
And they use a lot of the, they'llcreate characters using AI, both
create the voice, but also havelive chatbot characters that, and
they give it a whole backstory.
(01:06:59):
And so some of them are really rude,some of them are angry, so yeah,
they can go all directions, yeah.
that's how to find me online.
facilitation.
com, you can listen to all theepisodes directly there, or find them.
(01:07:19):
or feel free to let me knowand I'll have to hand you a
business card if that's easier.
if you do have any recommendationsfor people you think that I should
interview on the show, I'd love to know.
But otherwise, I really appreciateyou coming and learning and being
part of the learning journey with me.
Brian AI (01:07:35):
Thank you for joining us on this episode of AI for
Helpers and Changemakers.
For the show notes and moreinformation about working with
Sharon, visit bloomfacilitation.
com.
If you have a suggestion for whowe should interview, email us
at hello at bloomfacilitation.
com.
And finally, please share thisepisode with someone you think
would find it interesting.
(01:07:56):
Word of mouth is our best marketing.
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