Welcome to The Tech Panel 1 2 3 4 The podcast where Tech Minds Meet Oh hey before we get started today don't forget to subscribe and ring that bell. Welcome to the tech panel I'm your host James Arvin and I'm Sarah Bowers and this is the podcast where we dive into Cutting Edge ideas Innovations and Technology transforming Industries each week we sit down with the leaders and disruptors at the Forefront of these changes to hear their stories explore their vision and uncover the challenges they're solving in real time today we're excited to welcome someone who's not just shaping the future of AI but is also redefining how businesses and customers engage in the digital age Nyssa Waters is the CEO and co-founder of Being AI customer Solutions a venture within Being AI Group which made history in 2024 as the first AI listed company in New Zealand Stock Exchange big pretty big yeah yep and you've actually been a little bit obsessed yourself about chat GPT lately you like AI I'm into chat gbt I'm asking it everything actually the other day I asked it for some marriage advice for a friend asking for a friend and it was brilliant it was like a free psychology session I've loved it there's always someone out there who runs their entire life with the AI models any hack I can do I love it back to Nyssa so with over 20 years of experience in the tech industry Nyssa has held sales and Leadership rolls across Australia and New Zealand at some of the Giants like Google telra and Spark NZ and she has a unique understanding of how to tackle the challenges of the digital era we're in that right now yeah that's it we're going to be uh diving into the vision of AI powered customer Solutions the ethics risks and her mission to use AI to transform businesses for good this is The Tech Panel, Nyssa thank you for joining us today did we get that right and tell us a little bit about your role yeah thanks for that so look about a year ago we set off on a journey of doing things a little bit differently to others in the market um we definitely recognized that there was a gap and we also recognized that both Australia and New Zealand were pretty behind when it came to AI adoption actually quite significantly here in New Zealand um my co-founder and I were over in San Francisco and we went man people are really struggling with trying to a) identify the business cases that they could uh look to leverage AI in tool selection um but then also really convincing sort of uh Legacy companies to actually be able to invest in this technology and obviously there's also the the question around roles and what that does to our culture so when we set up on this mission we went through a few iterations as you do when you're starting a company and it really became quite clear to us when you pull together a number of our passions that there was this overlapping need um one for customers to be educated around AI for us to be able to help those customers with what those business cases are what the art of the possible actually is because their business is doing their business it's not necessarily doing technology even if they do have technologists within their technology team they don't necessarily know Ai and it's moving so darn quickly they can't keep up right so there's a traditional businesses that just were struggling with what this actually was then also along with that we have um the need for investment so when you're talking to a number of these companies they come to you and oh no we're just not ready for that and that's where the conversation of ventures started to come in hey what if we invest in doing it for you what if we are able to acquire a component of that business or if we're able to if it's a new product for example co-develop what that solution might look like um and that's actually a massive uh and you know everyone's got to have a VIN and a consulting company so in our Vin diagram it's really that that circular element of going okay investing Building Technology from scratch and then also advising on what technology to use because it's not always just a build it can be a get it off the shelf that could extract the value that you're hoping to extract so we see a number of businesses that just really making really small changes can make a massive massive improvement on their business bottom line so we kind of went out um on that on that journey to go let's do things a bit differently let's sort of actually go all in with our customers and be on that Journey with them um what businesses can we look to rather than just go and buy a whole lot of core tech companies and do amazing things what traditional businesses could we actually look to to merge together apply this technology to and and make a new asset out of that um so that's that's the adventure of being AI um as it is today so we are formerly six months old on the NZX um but in our hearts and Minds we've been around for about a year yeah that's fabulous it's the first uh AI company in New Zealand to be listed correct yeah yeah very exciting it's a big achievement yeah it's huge and now I mean the idea of I guess a holistic ecosystem sounds great on paper but it it is hard to execute in practice do you have any examples of of some clients that you've helped or or you know a transformative project that you've delivered just to to give the audience a bit of an example yeah and look we all learned from our mistakes throughout this too we're not I'm not going to pretend like we've done everything perfectly so one of the businesses and as part of our acquisition portfolio as a male company and and we set out on transforming the heck out of that right we start looking at those processes and we go oh my gosh there's so many things you can do um Auto magically with AI right um but the reality is that it's actually more about people it's more about what people do and what those processes um that they own and they love and they care and and how they adopt the technology so I I think throughout both our own internal um evolution but also our customer evolutions we've come up against the same sort of challenge it's what is that person that that people change that we have to make as we're going through this journey um so from our perspective there are a couple of really amazing projects but I'm under some pretty strict NDA's um to be very careful about what I share around them um but one is a very traditional company um we actually just wrapped up most of the project today which is a really exciting milestone for us it's one of New Zealand's biggest brands um but very traditional company now I'm going to talk about this quite vaguely but they had a massive technology team um but they had one of the business owners had a significant technology budget he was only able to spend 20% of that each year why was that it was because the technology team was spending all their time keeping the Lights On The Innovation had been completely and utterly stifled so he came to us and went um can you do this maybe just to the side without our technology team knowing about it and just prove that it can be done and we went yeah we can so rather than it being a million dollar IT project that would take four years and six weeks in 100K we were able to prove an amazing amazing value to that customer um wrap it up and and show them what that value could actually look like do some test points on the data build a model show what AI looks like in their environment and it's just been such a phenomenal success so that's kind of one example now he can take that as the business owner to the tech teams and go I kind of know what's involved in doing this now yes I know it's not going to happen overnight but we know we've done all the due diligence from a business perspective around what the technology might need to actually make this happen so that's been really exciting for us um but it was it has been one of the big ones for me and I've worked in technology my whole life um is in this particular iteration the AI era it's the business owners not the technology owners that are really embracing it you kind of wonder why and it's because to be honest the technology teams almost seem quite petrified over what this might do for the future of of their businesses their teens and they are doing a bit of a land grab they're going don't necessarily want this to happen just yet so um I'm I'm getting a lot more momentum with the head of operations the head of marketing the CFO then I am with the CTO the cios um that were the traditional holders of this type of Technology yeah that makes sense when you put it like that um and do you have any real life examples that you can give us I know that was uh that was an example but you had to be quite vague about it but can you can you give us an example of how you could or or a hypothetical of how you could help help a business yeah a little bit more of an example in there look um so so we operate across lots of different different areas um our niche is obviously focused around AI but AI isn't always the answer right um we've been doing some uh implementations of a tool called Glean um Glean is a company that we very early on identified as a a partner of ours or or one that we wanted to spend a lot of time on and the reason being is I'm mix Google right um and when you're working at Google you're in the Google ecosystem doing things is just all about Google go to any other business out there and finding information is an absolute disaster to do business and even just when you're Google so we are just Google in our um being environment trying to go hey um what was the last Financial result or what what am I owing on this contract usually take somebody 10 to 20 to 30 minutes to try and actually figure out what the last contract was get all of that data in right um now co-pilot everyone will go hey just use co-pilot for that right where a Microsoft shop yeah but half of your things might be in Salesforce it might be in HubSpot it might be in Slack um things most businesses information is incredibly fractured so what glean has been able to do is allow us and our customers so we're working with one customer at the moment this is just it's around 20% cheaper than employing um or signing a contract on Microsoft co-pilot but it's just giving such such phenomenal results now measuring that's hard I would suggest anywhere between 25% to 50% productivity increases from that perspective right um so we're only doing some small um pilots on that particular solution at the moment um we're obviously doing some things around um workflows and chatbots which are the low hanging fruit generally speaking in the AI world so working on how do you improve custm service and access to information um how do you actually get conversational search happening I'm not sure if you guys know much about that but I'm not familiar with that ter at all what's happen yeah a good example of this is working with a car sales company and at the moment when you have to search for a car now I'm a female I don't know what I want maybe shouldn't say I'm a female I don't know what I want but I do don't know what I want I'll tell you what I do not I do want I want a car that can fit two car seats in the back I probably want it to be black with black interior because kids um I know that I want it to be big because we have a big dog um so rather than going okay I want it to be a Toyota I want it to do this buttering in the old-fashioned way I want to be able to type in to search and say black car two car seats big to fit big dog right like you do on chat GPT but being able to actually use that semantic search and be able to get to the multiple selections that fit that criteria rather than me having to go all the way through these different iterations of trying to find what I'm actually looking for so actually being able to deploy that to a customer's website is huge right because it gets your customer involved in and actually to that data so much quicker which takes away that frustration and that lag to making the the purchase or making the decision to go to that next step um so that's that's one uh other example in real life that we've been doing uh working on would it be safe to assume that it's just assuming that you're using a Common Language model to search for things MH okay so instead of saying I'm looking for a car you could say this is exactly what I'm after and the system would be able to interpret actual language to find you the search results you're after it's not it's not a hard thing to solve for right but it funnily enough is something that is not being sold for enough true so because the these these companies don't necessarily know that that is one something somebody might be looking for and two uh you know people are doing a little bit more of this in terms of putting a chat B over their website that may be linked to one of the large language models but also there's this reluctance around where the data is is it um accessible then the marketing person goes to the tech team the tech team go nah that's too hard we're going to have to make sure all of our data is structured which is absolutely not true either um there's ways that you can absolutely uh use unstructured data that that weren't possible sort of 12 to 18 months ago so it it's actually just about that entire process of the business case um for a really simple probably 20K project to solve for that will get your it makes a massive competitive difference as well when you're searching for something like that um even go on to Amazon and try and search for something in that way yeah do you think you're going to get anywhere no it's too much it it doesn't filter it down it doesn't kind of know you so you're building that that customizable like I guess Boutique sort of product for for the business and you know it it kind of works across all the applications that they use and it and it and it cuts down having to to go to many different apps or to many different areas that just kind of streamlines it all keep in mind we're not building anything for a product right we are the product we're a consulting company that works with customers sometimes we might acquire that customer um or partner with someone um but ultimately I I will not say to a customer use Google use Microsoft use chat GPT use whatever it's completely dependent on what their existing ecosystem looks like where their data is what that business process we're trying to solve for is and it's usually different depending on exactly what the environment is if it's a new business it's a whole different ball game um so to put a another I guess customer um example on the table we're working with um a brand well it's an it's a 20year old company and they had an idea here and they came to us and said this kind of looks looks good and we went it's not good enough I'm sorry um and we challenged them back and forth to go no that's old AI technology this is what you can actually do now and we're at a stage where um we're filing patents and we're doing amazing amazing things with actually taking helping them take a product Global so we won't be the product owners there we're helping them build the technology behind it but it's their IP it's their product um and we we may take a stake in it we may not not sure yet uh but that's that's effectively the way that that model works is we're giving our uh very very Niche and ontime expert skills around AI to help them actually filter through what is the next iteration not just the current iteration of this technology I mean that that was going to be one of my questions was the fact that it's it's it's developing and and changing so rapidly I mean you know the buzzword is chat GPT and generative Ai and all of that sort of thing but how does how does being AI I guess stay ahead of the curve or position itself in this rapidly evolving space it's funny you ask that because I stand up at a number of events and I say I'm not an expert I'm the CEO of an AI company and I'm not an expert and I don't believe anyone who's presenting to you and telling you that they're an expert is an expert um because nobody can be in the space right now it is moving so darn quickly so a lot of the time all we can do is be reactive and and look at the actual use case look at the process look at what we think might be possible and approach that when we need to now my team spend so much time doing research so we have a hit of research that obviously spends a lot of time looking at that and what it means um so every day there is something new that comes out every week we do a podcast called wet clean matters that effectively will take um our our user base through what we believe is important for that week um so any of the new announcements so there's been quite a few over the last week uh to make them aware of what is actually possible because sometimes this Tech um highlight reel isn't actually real and it's not even usable in a lot of ways so we're try and I guess demystify some of those conversations that are happening and apply it to more of a business logic um but how do we stay we are very very typical we have a few Bots that do the crawling that summarize the information you've got to use AI right because that's we're an AI company um but ultimately it's us we're humans we have to talk about it and we have to discuss the fact that you know Elon Musk is basically the head of us AI now and things are just changing so quickly so what what could that mean for the world of AI over the next few years um there's a whole lot going on with anthropic and Amazon um so so we just have to keep a breast of what is happening what we think will happen next um so yeah there's definitely a few conversations over bears as we all try and uh mutually learn what is going on and and we're all so freaking passionate about it it's our love child right we love AI so much so we nerd out with each other usually at 10 p.m. at night um around whatever's being released so standard Scrappy startup style right love it we talk a lot about this sort of stuff in the office we're always debating you know the the ethics as well behind AI you know just always gets the gets the conversation started absolutely you go ahead oh no I was going to say well that that's kind of part of um where the whole being consultant side of the business started because you look at New Zealand's such a small place right we're 99% smbs they don't have the ability to have an AI person that's researching all day every day and we met with a large New Zealand customer yesterday and they in a governance policy six months ago but how out of date do you think that governance policy is right now yeah so but they they don't have the ability to hire a head count to to keep all of these things up to date so we're looking at how do we build a Coe but then how do a virtual member of the team spend one day a month just looking at AI governance within that business and that's a massive Roi for them as opposed to the risks that these these programs being outdated can present I'm curious here because you said you know no one's an expert in this space do you feel and maybe this is even true for your company that you run the risk of accidentally over promising or uh overselling expectations to your customers on what is actually capable of these systems I feel like most people when you tell them about any problem you have today it's have you tried using Ai and people are not really understanding like what the limitations or capabilities are when they're infinitely possible everything's possible now we could make it someone could make it for us make that work yeah yeah hey everything's possible with enough time and money right like I I do I do really believe that but you've got to be realistic about the fact that things take time and money um you know you you could want to build this incredible AI product but you've got to look at what those pipelines look like what does product management look like what does uh monetization look like um so there's so much that falls within that do we worry about over promising I don't I think within my team we aren't uh serial startup tech people yeah we are Enterprise it professionals that understand AI so there's a big difference and it's one of the ones that we've actually all had to come to terms with a little bit here at being because you have a part of our team which are those guys building the next Google and then you have my team going trust me this big Behemoth company over here can't hand handle the truth they can't handle what's coming in 12 months because to get them around that is going to be a process so we're going to have to start doing baby steps so my team absolutely not um on our labs and our benches side we've got to make bets right um because that's exactly how we're going to grow that value so um our team are doing a whole lot of really really amazing um projects and the Ed Tech space and um also in terms of uh an amazing project called Treehouse we're working on and you know those those may not pan out because that's just the nature of startups and Tech and um that that portfolio per se do you given the fact that you're actually on the front lines dealing with customers and you're you're you're pitching a product that is brand new to what I suspect are traditional brick and mortar stores you said you work in that SMB space right what has been the receptive reception of those products these companies sorry about that um sorry uh so we don't work INB per se we work more in the business and Enterprise space sorry I thought I heard you sayb earlier apologies yeah no no no that was that was me sort of confusing the the conversation a little bit um so sorry just can you tell me sort of that what that question was again yeah no worries and maybe we we'll change this a little bit don't even worry about it chop this up in the back end editing the question I had was given the fact that you're actually on the front line pitching these products to customers today what is the reception actually being like do I imagine there's a side of society that just feels like everyone should take on AI productivity tools because it's on an individual contributor level it's a fantastic tool to take advantage of yeah but when I actually speak to companies they're a lot more hesitant and in many instances very very uh distrusting of the technology and we'll touch on that a little bit more but what is what do you feel like what is your Vibe of the market today do you feel these companies are receptive to adopting it it's really it's such a good question so um I I spoke to you guys about the fact that I lived in Australia for 10 years I've been back in New Zealand for two um New Zealand up until probably the last few months have been really slow to adopt they have been really pessimistic about the technology and the need for this technology uh a few months ago um the one of the the government Ministries came out with an amazing tool and it seems to have really changed the conversation um and and it's changed the conversation because they've shown New Zealand Public what can be done but have also given license um for New Zealand small businesses in particular to actually look at the adoption of this technology we've been advocating and we've been meeting with some of the Ministries um and we've had a conversation with um you guys it may not be relevant for you but our our economic development side of uh the government around you know do you actually legislate here and I don't really care whether we legislate we just need to help give guidance and framework so if that comes from the government to say these are the way that you do AI ethically and safely to protect your business your business's reputation but be able to get those benefits that is significant right so we're working with the government on that at the moment um because until the last few months has happened it has been just we might do a pilot on it and the Pilot's great but hey we we we're we need to save money and we can't sign up for another massive EA with Microsoft with a 20% or 30% cost increase we just can't afford that um so that's been the challenge what what I'm starting to see though is almost every company I talk to is wanting to do those baby steps in terms of proof of Concepts now the reality here is most of our customers have some form of collaboration Suite or Cloud environment and to be perfectly honest most of those Cloud environments now have pretty phenomenal AI tools built in what I worry about is um AI SAS app fatigue um so what is happening is you've got Shadow AI just in the same way Shadow mobile apps happened 10 years ago going through almost every medium business at the moment so you've got a whole lot of AI being used that have being bought either personally or on a company credit card that isn't linked to any of the governance tools it isn't tracked um it isn't set up properly and that is one of the biggest issues that we're saying to see plus the cost of that right because that those $5 apps they add up so we're going to start to see the CFOs put a bit of a a microscope on that one and we already know that gen Z around 90% of them are bringing those AI tools to work and using them and until copy paste no longer exists that's just going to happen so you're better off giving the tools to your employees than the risk of that happening and I know it happens I spoke to a CMO she doesn't understand AI she's been putting her company information into free chat GPT like it it it seems like common sense to me but to somebody who doesn't read all the blogs or understand the risks it just was kind of cool to her um so that's that that's a massive problem that we're starting to see yeah definitely the governance seemed and I think it's the same in Australia as well probably worldwide is that it's just moving so quickly and regulations or or education aren kind of keeping up with with the pace that it's that it's moving and everyone's you know into the buzzword trying to get involved as you say let's put it all on chat GPT um I guess it would also depend on what client it is whether it's like a startup who might be you know eager to adopt these sorts of things or really you know a Heritage business um I guess that would that would be like I guess the difference in in dealing with those clients did you say your team only deal with mainly the established businesses or but within being AI you've got startups in there as well that you're you're Consulting with right yeah correct so so my team my sweet spot is absolutely the the traditional organizations that are looking to do things differently um one of those some of these companies are pretty big digital companies um they have you know I was talking to a company yesterday and they have a team of 30 software Engineers so you kind of think oh well you must be pretty sey technically right just because you've got software Engineers doesn't mean you have ai experts that can look at how you can actually transform the business and actually build a new business or a new product to supersede some of the older products that are going um being made redundant by other Technologies so that out of the box thinking and kind of going well why don't you solve this in a different way or or challenging your traditional revenue streams because those are slowly depleting um that's my team absolutely the labs team are at what is and more so building that from scratch but what is actually that next big thing that we can invest in and get that value that longer term value out of so they're the guys that are building out patents and and looking at that far off future that to be honest I'm more here and now that they're looking at what that future view is I'm trying to think back to my early days I remember where you used to work I'm trying to imagine you know you're saying you like to work with the more older established companies but just think back to the companies that we worked with when it was telephones that everyone want to use or a physical meeting room where everyone had to get up it it was like pulling teeth from these companies trying to convince them to use something like Skype or Microsoft teams do you just feel like all of your work is ahead of you do you think you'd be able to get more traction that is to say working with some of these more Tech startups like they seem like they're ripe maybe it's a ground swell thing like why why would you go the path of resistance do you love a challenge oh maybe it's a personal thing I've always been in a tech company selling into to Enterprise customers so it's what I know um I feel like you can make a really phenomenal difference as well like you can show the value in a traditional business in a new way um could we possibly it's actually not a subject that I've thought about and it's funny we had a a team discussion yesterday of whether we start looking at some of these startup these digital companies and and assisting them on this Journey um yeah it is an interesting one it's something I've not put too much thought into yet um anytime you want go I'll I'll put down the cap table well so the the the thing that I've really want wanting to dig in for dig into for a minute here is given the fact that you're really Consulting heavily with these companies and directing in the direction of using in some instances AI based models to manag the way their ecosystems are handled um do you feel that there's a risk teaching AI models intimate information about an organization where these things are just they're just designed to absorb data and learn from it do you feel like you run the risk of stripping away that company's unique DNA that gives them a Competitive Edge in the market because if the model learns that that's a tactic that other companies are doing by absorbing what's being typed into it cannot someone else go and type it and then now it's saying well these are tactics being used in the market how about I recommend this to you yeah look really good question but this goes back to governance again and it goes back to the selecting the right tools and and having faith in those tools that you're using and not going to train on your data and share your data right so um the the CMO that I was talking about taking company data and putting it into chat GPT 100% that's a risk but if you are using a a tool that is um you know chat GPT teams or Enterprise version it is very explicitly stated that they will not train on your data and I do I am an optimist I am an optimist I do believe them I worked for Google um and I I 100% believe when they say that that data is is yours and yours only um and we we kind of have to to a certain degree because it's either that or or or you have no other option um you can build your own models but that becomes significantly cost prohibited right um but now we're seeing so much in the way of rag and and other methods we're going to start to see uh I've gotten the acronym um anthropic have just released uh the the connecting of data sets on AI so we're going to start to see more AIS talking to AIS and that complete agentic society and that's what we're actually working with most of our customers on right now is is preparing for that next view the next view where we're not on a computer um the human is not going to be on on the computer the human is going to tell the agent what to do and the agent will perform that task um so that that is already happening we've seen um anthropics computer use you've seen oh gosh what's it called um sorry I should know this because I did a podcast on it earlier but open AI uh release that will be dropping on and I'm a numbers person so so January the 25th they dro their new model which will be doing something similar um and Google has also released theirs as well so you're going to start to see that everywhere and that's going to be the next iteration and it's large action models not large language models because they're actually performing the task for you as opposed to just being a conversation point and sorry I want to dig into this because I hear a similar response from other people when I ask this question you know it's we should trust him because what else can you do do do you feel we're kind of being forced into this position because they're not really being quite trans as transparent as the average person would want them to be with how information is being stored or utilized behind the scenes again working for Google for a number of years I actually I look at things a bit more pragmatically and I look at the way that they've got data set up um and they've got the way that these things go through the technology and go through the pipelines and I have full faith I I don't think they're not being transparent yeah think that it's maybe our lack of understanding as to their operations because even as an employee at Google I can't even see my customers information it is so locked down and it is so fragmented in a purposeful way to ensure that the Safety and Security of that data exists um do I believe open AI are doing the same thing yeah I I actually do believe that they are ensuring that that data is wiped afterwards there may be times where things go wrong it's technology and and um you know Microsoft has had breaches open AI have had a number of different things happen we know data we know that these models hallucinate they hallucinate on purpose that's how they're designed it's not a FLW it's actually the way that the model Works um so do I think uh we don't have a choice and we're backed into a corner no this is a huge opportunity for all of us to maybe regain a little bit more control of our life because mental health is declining we're all working so much two parents working in a family that didn't happen 20 years ago we need to get and we call this company being for a reason we need to just get back to being human beings and do what we're good at which isn't necessarily sitting behind a computer screen I feel triggered personally sorry like I I want a three-day work week I want to spend more time with my children right I I don't want to be to the amount of time I used to spend going through financial statements where now I can ask a question of it and it tells me what I want like that's just gold like just think about the power of that and when you start to extrapolate that out and there's some societal thinking that needs to happen there's a number of different economies that economics that need to be thought of at a government government um stage because the way GDP works is per person right and now we've got armies of people in AI that that that calculator doesn't doesn't compute anymore so things are going to have to change that's well and truly my my my pay grade to sort of work out those those uh macroeconomics but I I really truly believe that we and I think um who who was it who was saying it um can't remember who was quoted as saying it but uh our generation will be the last generation to work five business days and I believe that heard that as well yeah challenge accepted yeah and I mean as you say like you know people get worried about losing jobs but I think it just opens up opportunity uh for more time with the kids for you know Innovation you know time for Innovation which always gets pushed to the side or time for development things like that that if you take out those manial tasks uh you know you've got more time for those more important things that that can of course you know create growth or or a better work life balance or better mental wellbeing all that sort of stuff like we were talking to the team about the hypotheses around this large action model element and I went guys I'm a I'm a mom I'm a working mom and uh we spoke about this I got a four and a six-year-old before I'd even got to work that day I had access 20 different websites I had put the the shopping in um that was probably a couple of different websites in terms of my planning I had uh ordered the kids lunch for through Subway I'd done um a number of different tasks that day before I even got to work now that the anxiousness and the mental load is so overwhelming um and just hope that we can make some of this goal away make it easier I I I hope that um when we start to see more of the AI embedded in these tools that we're using it just becomes natural as opposed to difficult and we're starting to see that like if you took my AI away from me right now I tell you what I don't even know how I would function um and it's change it's changing and getting better every single day like we we play with all the tools all the new releases and something different is coming out every single day um so it is it is really cool to be in a stage where you go I think we can make people's lives better yeah yeah sound like such a s patch no it sounds like genuinely we get the vibe that that is your your mission and your passion to to kind of ease the burden on other people's lives and to use technology for good I guess yeah it's really funny because many years ago I was in a um in a sleep training school um in Australia and one of the moms was like how do we actually get equality and I'm like well I think it all goes back to you know this this whole notion of of both of us are working now and so imagine this this period where you know Dad can be at home with the kids for two days Mom can be at home with kids for three days like just just how it could actually work to make things better for Humanity because I think you know kid kids are kids are amazing and they they're going to be in a really really interesting evolving world over the next sort of 10 20 years yeah I mean over the next two weeks as it sounds like it's evolving very quickly my son and the things he talks to Google about in terms of what is happening with Christmas and Santa maybe that's a bit of a problem is Santa is not a question you should ever ask Google yes oh let's not get started on kids and T Ser debate but from one working mom to another you said you test drive all of the all you know all of the new AI features what is something that you you couldn't live without or do you've got any software or anything that you couldn't live without yeah look from a business perspective glean is is gold for me and um we had something similar when I worked at Google and when I went from working for a large a large Talco across to Google that that made my life so much easier basically think about it as Google search for your Enterprise so it's only going to surface information and knowledge that is housed within all of your different Enterprise tool sets um glean does that but then puts AI over it so it's kind of that tenfold and that's constantly evolving into next bang action models and actually doing things so that that has and we've only we deployed it 3 weeks ago here and already I could not I could not live without it yeah just couldn't um basically being able to find whatever I need whenever I need it by just asking it is just so good um from a mom perspective Google home is life as well right um I just I just don't understand how they haven't merged it with Gemini yet and obviously Alexa isn't AI centered yet either so once the home automation elements of AI start to come out I think that's going to change the game for us um as moms as dads um because in my family actually dad does probably most of the the um the child rearing to be honest and planning and cooking so um it's it's going to be really cool to start to see that come out um notebook alium um I'm not sure if you guys have played with that yet notebook LM no never heard of it how have you not you guys can make your own podcast automatically this sounds fun I'm really two days back I'm hoping she's over selling it like how do I not know what this is no look up notebook ellien so it's a Google um tool that um you can sign up for you basically can put in a number of different websites information so on and so forth so it's effectively uh creating uh your own model based around the data that you've inputed so similar things you can do within an Enterprise environment but they're basically putting it there for for you to use but there is this amazing thing it's been in the media quite a bit where you can go create a podcast from this data so what it does is have these two people chatting about the data that you've just put in so it could be websites could be documents um so an example when we had the ministry come in we uploaded 50 of the links to their websites and showed them what a podcast discussing their uh own data is and they were like I had seen something about I I saw I saw a podcast that was created yeah through Ai and I wasn't too sure what what it was so notebook Ali there you go but think about why that's important it seems it seems novel um so for me I drive an hour each day each way right an hour each way um I had to do some research today so what I did is I got the team to put in all the websites of the different things that we needed to learn about so the Bots obviously gone these are the new things and create a podcast and then I'm in my car and I'm listening to people talk about the information that's so perfect I love that I currently do that but I copy and paste it into notes and then say Hey Siri read my notes and then I listen to that on the drive so the veryable here though is that it's not exactly all of that information that you're copying and pasting they're actually summarizing all content including YouTube videos and able to actually give insights and you can actually prompt it to to talking about it in a critical sense or in a positive sense so pretty phenomenal really brilliant yeah that's brilliant I like it as well I'm still waiting for the World to Change to a point where I think iPhone has just recently done this I can't use it because they stupidly won't give you access to the AI model unless it's the brand new phone but excuse me I was goingon to say so about the money we're all looking for an AI model where you don't need a device to use it I think that's the part that's we're all lacking right now if you want to use GPT or any of these other models you got to sit in front of a computer got to sit in front of a phone and search information all of us I think would like the ability to say hey tell me this information but all you get is Siri or whatever else which is just horrible well that's that's the Alexa and and Google Gemini home um ambition right so that will be what comes next out of those guys um but also you're starting to see chat gptv embedded into cars so a lot of the new cars that are coming out are actually going to have that live within them so you can talk to your car and effective get it to tell you things that's that's when you drive a lot honestly I try to ask I can't search the internet right now and you're like what are you you're dead to me so I went to um CES at the beginning of this year and I'm hoping to go next year as well and that's the the largest Tech conference in the world over in Vegas and the things that we're using AI just it just blows your mind right the computer vision models the um the cars that you can talk to basically self driving as well so there's just so many things that are starting to to come out but the Humane pen was one um that was a device that was on your body um you might start to see where B such as Rings see yes I did see earbuds that you can put in um and actually Samsung and Google both have uh AI built-in and and you can converse with your earbuds so you're starting to see a bit more of that um it's not perfect yet but it's getting there it's baby stits on some of the stuff I I know this is like definitely put on your tin foil hat kind of thing about say but I think the future of AI is actually going to be something along the lines of a device that is constantly listening to what you're saying and can recall conversations that you had based on historical things like did I say this yes it said you said this at this point in time uh but I can definitely imagine some people being like nah I don't want anything like that they already they already in theory have that with Microsoft right because Microsoft copilot on PC is effectively recording everything that you're doing on your computer so technically speaking that that exists already but it's the the problem is that data is so fragmented right because your PC isn't your phone it isn't your home device your life is all in different places so um yeah I definitely theorize around how do we actually collect and own our own data so self- Sovereign data I'm not sure if you know much about that but digital identity and self- Sovereign data is going to start to become really really important because exactly there's so much data collected about you you really should own it and in order for agentic societies to actually exist and get the most value out of them you really need to have that data in one place or at least linked um to be able to derive the right summary of what it was going on we have not talked about that I got to say we've probably had about 15 episodes now with AI people none of us have raise the conversation of storing your own personal history that can be accessed by whichever product your provider for AI modeling that you want to go to hey do you want to leave GPT and go over to Microsoft bulk bring all the why can't you own that like it's like your photos why can't you migrate your data over to to other things you're starting to see land grabs everywhere right so everyone's building their own Ai and we we spoke about this on our podcast this morning you know sales force is building their AI you've got Facebook doing their AI everyone's got it um there's the open source versus closed Source um the same thing is going to start to happen with data so uh there are a few startups that are working on that problem um at the moment around how do you how do you collect and then apply whatever AI model you want to your data um because it's not necessarily going to even be models in the future it's going to be agents and you're going to have your personal agent that has access to your life and your personas um open AI uh vision is very much around that that they'll have context to where Persona um agents so that that is going that that's the way it has to go because at the moment it's just just based on this small amount of knowledge with a really big language model behind it I'm really curious to know how we will be marketed or advertised too like if we're not doing Google search and having you know that the the Google seos from your websites websites will be dead right and apps will be dead you'll just mainly be using AI for your information and your searching how do you get how do you yeah how are people going to advertise to you it's funny say that I've been asked to speak at a lot of marketing conferences and and be part of a lot of marketing um events recently for that very conversation because we believe that seo's dead and even now how do you advertise your company for it to be surfaced on AI so perplexity Google and open AI search all now only surface very limited results because they're becoming more summarized more definitive um I'm not sure if you know that perplexity launched uh direct shopping so you take a photo of something and you can just buy it because I've linked it with shoper by so these things are starting to change massively compared to where they used to be Nissa this has been an absolutely incredible conversation I've got to say again out of most of the AI conversations I think this has been the most enlightening and you've sparked a lot of thoughts and ideas in my brain I I wish this could go on for another hour because I I swear I could talk to you for days but uh I want to thank you for coming on to the episode and sharing all this information with us and our listeners but before we wrap up can listen where can our listeners find more about you in the products that you provide yeah look linkedin's always fun because that's a really um tangible way of being able to see what we're doing at any one point in time um being consultants. is our domain um so would love for you to join in um our group is being ai. group um but yeah I'm really happy for anyone to reach out and nerd out with us on this we're based in Oakland um but we do have a number of projects going on in a Australia um so yeah really really cool to to be part of this with you guys you're building an amazing Forum of tech experts and and bringing us together I'm looking forward to the event when's that happening I love it that's great yeah let's get let's get drinks happening together yeah I'll be in Orland over Christmas so I'll meet you the sky tower thanks for the invite Sarah oh no no it's cool it's cool yeah all the social channels um weekly matters.com is our podcast that we release every every week um for for my sins somehow I was on it today but I only make guest appearances every now and then when I feel like uh giving the boys a little bit of a a hustle um but yeah uh really really excited to sort of see what comes out of your channel as well so thank you so much for for hosting me pleas you call yourself not an expert you're an expert in our eyes and we've loved chatting with you as well I'm just an excited nerd that's all I love that can you do me one really big favor there's a couple one I'd love for you to give us one more plug tell us exactly what your product does in the most charitable light that you think would excite people to hear about like maybe an overview of being AI in those kind of three categories so I guess the most three different departments okay so to tell you a little bit more about us we work with largely business and Enterprise customers to rethink what is actually possible so for them often they're challenged with what AI is how they can leverage it within their businesses how they can look at innovation and transformation and everyone's talking about AI so what we do is work with those customers to envisage what is actually possible and look at the journey to making it real this isn't about throwing a tool um to solve a problem or saying AI is going to fix that it's about actually thinking things through and looking next at what is actually possible because this space is just moving so quickly we want to be those Niche experts that understand the technology where it is now now where it's going in the future and then how it can actually assist business customers not just consumer customers beautiful that's very exciting love it that's great the only other thing is there anything else you wanted to get across in the in the interview in the chat La uh no I I I really just love technology right so for me it's about sharing that this isn't this big scary thing that's coming it's changing really quickly yes and that that can make people really uncomfortable but making sure that you have the Frameworks and the governance there but looking at Innovation as being number one and trying things out and not expecting it to be 100% every single time is really important um I'd love customers to think about what they already have up their sleeves so most of them have a work productivity Suite most of them have a cloud provider you would be surprised by how many tools how many AI tools are already available to them within the domains that they have it might just cost a little bit of money to turn them on um we're going to start to see things changing really really quickly in that space so um reach out to us if if they want any help and um we'd always we always love to come in and and have a look at customers environment and see what what's possible there that's that's awesome I I'd love it if you could be my personal life consultant if that's if that's an option if I could sign up and be your your first personal life consultant client if you could just give me those agents working for you right so we get the agent doing the shopping and booking the Hol booking the holiday is the big one let's book the holiday that's what fromn booking the holiday is the big one because that's really hard work when you got kids it's a nightmare on your own these days well thank you again Nissa this has been a wonderful wonderful chat and we really appreciate your time thanks for joining us on the tech panel me again don't forget to subscribe and hit that Bell and we'll see you in the next episode thanks for tuning in to the tech panel if you like what you heard make sure to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Tik Tok Instagram Facebook and Linkin in to stay connected a big thank you to our major sponsor smooth link Integrations for powering today's episode and join us again on the next episode of the tech panel where Tech Minds meet
2025-01-27 16:02