Laid Off or Leveled Up? AI's Double-Edged Disruption"

[00:00:18] Welcome to another incredible edition of Tech Watch Radio, where we keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Hope you're all doing absolutely fantastic. It's a great new tech day. Hi, Jay. Hey, Sam. How's it going? I'm doing fantastic until I heard about all these IT layoffs. They're always happening, you know. I wonder how it balances out. I think overall, though, you probably have more hirings than you have layoffs, but we see it happening all of the time. The latest one is from...

[00:00:48] By the way, you know, it's really bad if it's you that gets laid off. It's horrible if it's me that gets laid off. Yeah, that's right. The way people usually look at it. I don't really mean Sam and Jay. I just mean if it's the other guy, right? Yeah. I mean, definitely impact on your personal life is going to be greater, right? But would you work for Jack Dorsey? Yeah, I guess it depends on how much he's going to pay me. Jack Dorsey used to be the guy that ran Twitter, right? Yep.

[00:01:15] Left Twitter. Elon bought Twitter. Elon Musk runs Twitter now, X. But Jack Dorsey's still right in the thick of it all, isn't he? He is. He owns Square, squareup.com, which is a big merchant. Allows people to use things, but he also owns Cash App, which is part of that. And just recently announced they were laying off 931 people, or about 8% of the company, as part of an organization restructuring. Now, this was a leaked email, by the way. It was his email.

[00:01:45] He denies the layoffs are for financial reasons or to replace workers with AI, but people are speculating. What do you mean he denies they're for financial reasons? If there's no financial reason, then keep them. Well, exactly, right? Just let them sit around if you don't need them. Just keep them. I mean, if there's no financial reason to lay them off, then just keep them. In fact, you could add my paycheck to the mix, too, can't you? In fact, if it's not a financial issue, you might as well just put me on there. If it's not a financial reason, why are you laying them off? You know, maybe they... Who knows? I don't know, but that's a lot of people.

[00:02:15] Almost 1,000 people getting laid off. And you can say, well, I don't need them anymore because of AI, but my response is, then finances is still drawing that, right? Yeah, and, you know, a lot of people are saying that accounting is going to be one of the major areas that AI is going to hit. Coding, counting, or accounting, I mean, these are the areas where... And do you agree? Yeah, I do. I totally agree. Now, in my opinion, there's still going to need to be some master person somewhere that monitors to make sure that it doesn't hallucinate. You're going to have to have a...

[00:02:45] But the day-to-day legwork of bookkeepers, the day-to-day legwork of basic programming, all that stuff's going away, people. So, it just is. We're already seeing it where, you know, you can scan a receipt and it'll automatically file it and put in what category it goes into and do a lot of those. In fact, there are companies now, credit card companies, where you can just take a picture of the receipt and it does all of the laying it out, scanning it. Like, you don't have to have somebody sitting there with a scanner. You can do it right on the job or wherever you're at. Yeah, and they have an app that you install that just does it.

[00:03:15] You make a purchase on your credit card, then you go ahead and just press a button and then just grab the receipt and just scan it real quick and you're done. Yeah, and it handles that. Now, you're still going to have to have a CFO and some, you know, party that's responsible where the buck stops kind of thing. But yeah, for a lot of mid-level and lower-level accountants, it's going to be AI is going to impact that a lot. Now, I thought they said high tech was going to save us from this, Jay. Well, technology always reshapes things.

[00:03:44] For the good or bad, depending on how it's wielded, depending on how it's used, it's going to be, we see it in every revolution. We talked about it before, whether it's the steam revolution or the industrial age or whatever. The internet itself did a lot of that stuff. I mean, it hurt librarians and, you know, all kinds of stuff where it's always going to be a paradigm shift and that's going to change people's focus and, you know, how they're getting things done. Another thing that's interesting, as we're talking about AI.

[00:04:14] So I would say this too, though, Jay. I would say this. I always try to look at, just so people understand my reference point, I always try to look at the positive of a given story. So I'm not happy about people getting laid off for sure. But I am pretty much excited about these changes in the industry. You know, if I can run my business with less people, that's a good thing. But what I try to do is say this. I don't want to run my business with less people. What I want to do is do way more business with the same number of people.

[00:04:44] Right. It's how you look at the discussion. Do I want to just lay people off and just have a super slim organization? No, I'd rather have it to where I've got enough people to where if somebody goes on vacation, no problem. If somebody gets sick or ill or has a personal family need or what, no problem. Back you all the way. Support it. But I want to be able to do more business with the same amount of people. So if I can have AI, for example, do all the bookkeeping work and then I can have my accountants, you know, review everything, make sure it's all kosher and then present it to the CPA. That's phenomenal. Right.

[00:05:12] If I can go ahead and, you know, whatever Jack Dorsey's doing over here with this stuff. Hey, I hope. That this, you know, he's the head of he's it's called block CEO. He's the CEO of block or whatever. Right. And blocks this company that owns all these different things. And anyway, it relates to the block chain and all. Hey, if he can do way more business with the same amount of people, that's smart. That's not bad. That's smart. I mean, after all, that's what a blender is for. Right. Day in its simplest form. You know, you don't have to stir something up by hand.

[00:05:42] You can put it in the blender. Oh, yeah. Yeah. OK. I get where you're going that for a second. I was like, what? Think about how simple that is, though. And nobody fought that one. Right. And I can blend up way more stuff. Otherwise, I'd have to have three stirs in the kitchen to stir all my whatever salsa. But if I put in the blender, boom, it's just done, done, done. We've got vacuums that vacuum for us. We've got I mean, all these technologies are incredible. The question is, how do we apply them and how do we use them in meaningful ways? And most importantly, how do we have tech serve us, not own us?

[00:06:12] And I think that's really kind of the key here. And so I'm not critical of this by Jack Dorsey. I think it's a necessity in the reality in which we face. No one wants an extra bloated staff. And if you need to lay off people partly. And here's my guess. Partly he's laying off people that have skills that he doesn't need. And his effort is to reallocate those resources and funds to skills that he does need. And there's nothing wrong with that realignment either, Jay. In fact, that's vital. A hundred percent it is.

[00:06:40] And that's what we need to see now. Now, you know, talking about AI and chatbots. Another area that this is happening is with therapists. Chatbots are replacing therapists faster than anyone expected. The increased use of chatbots and AI and therapy. Chatbots are being employed with AI frequently to provide mental health support, offering immediate and accessible assistance to users.

[00:07:05] The benefits that people are seeing is they have support, of course, but they have access to traditional therapies, location, cost, availability constraints. But one of the biggest things that people like about this AI chatbots or AI therapists, if you will, is the complete privacy that they have, the anonymity.

[00:07:29] You know, you see people, sometimes they get involved with their therapists or the, you know, things cross lines or their therapist, you know, in a small town. Maybe the therapist talks out of turn about someone. You never have that problem. You have a very objective, independent sort of somebody to bounce things off of with these AI chatbots. And they're becoming much more popular and faster than people ever thought.

[00:07:57] There's some concerns from mental health professionals that there's a lack of human connection, you know, that they might, they can't replicate empathy or the nuanced understanding of human therapists offer. They, there's a complementary tool. AI should be used as a supplementary resource, they say, rather than replacing a human interaction at therapeutic sessions. And I think that, again, this is where I think how we go about this really matters.

[00:08:25] We've got to think through these advancements and we've got to find the place for these advancements. And I'm going to give you a comparison that seems way out of, out of bounds, but I think it completely relates, Jay. Just stick with me for a minute, see if this makes any sense. You know, when I was a kid in the late 60s, early 70s, I remember being six, seven, eight, nine years old, and they changed from rotary phones to push button phones. And I thought that was the coolest thing at about five years old. I thought that was incredible. Right. It's like 1972 kind of range. It was incredible.

[00:08:53] And when we were talking to people, you know, I remember being in a barn with some horses and they had a phone there and they had upgraded to the push button phone. And I thought that was really cool. And, and then, you know, people started saying stuff like, Hey, it's not going to be long. We're going to have video phones, man. Every phone is going to be a video phone. And the joke was, well, don't answer the phone naked. You know, as a little kid, that was funny. Right. Anyways, the reason I bring this up is because come 50 years later, we have video phones, FaceTime, Zoom.

[00:09:22] And I don't care what Skype, however you want to telegram. We've got video phones. Okay. Here's the thing. Most people don't want video phones though for day-to-day interactions. Now, if it's Sam wants to talk to his grandkids and my wife wants to see the grandkids and see their latest, you know, art project from school or see their faces and see them smile. I'm not saying we never use that, but it's not our day-to-day interaction.

[00:09:47] You don't really have a phone that you just pick up getting out of the shower that's a video phone by default. You don't call a business colleague on a video call just out of the blue. You just don't do that. In fact, a lot of people are even shying away from telephone calls now. It's like, oh, you better text me before you call, Sam. Right. In fact, I've got people that say there's so much spam out there. I can't even answer my phone anymore. Please text me and then I'll know that it's you and then I'll pay attention. Sadly, that's the reality. But here's my reason to bring this up.

[00:10:15] A lot of times society and reality and expectations and what you like and don't like, that rules technology more than the advancement in technology does. Okay? We've had video phones for a decade now or more, depending on when you want to look at the start of it is, how ubiquitous it becomes and everything else. That's 50 years after we contemplated this thing as kids. However, it's not even close to used in the way we envisioned it 50 years ago. Right. Why do I bring that up now to this discussion today?

[00:10:44] Think about a therapist. I don't really want a therapist to be just an AI bot. Okay? But before I go to a therapist or in conjunction with, how about using the AI bot as the second opinion? How about using the AI bot as seeds for discussion? Here's my concerns. Here's what I'm going through. How do I get through this? And the AI bot can give me 10 things and then I can go to my therapist and talk to them about those 10 things.

[00:11:12] Now, I personally don't even believe in therapists for the most part. I think they have very limited role. I think we want to send everybody and their dog to a therapist. But I think for the most part, therapists should be used very, very sparingly. Because oftentimes what they do is they solve one problem and open up 10 more. Now, that's just my opinion. I don't mean to get off on a tangent, but here's my point. Society is going to dictate how this gets implemented and used. And if the bots are better than the people, eventually they will go to the bots. If it turns out the bots can be a supplement to great people, then that's how it will be used.

[00:11:41] And I think we, the people, are going to decide how this goes down, just like we did in the video phone scenario. I don't see a video phone being the default for interactions anytime soon, Jay. Right. And we're 50-plus years later after contemplating that as little kids. Yeah. And you thought that it would happen, but it just hasn't really materialized. That doesn't mean that people don't use it. I mean, I use it probably daily, but it's mostly just with family, kids that now live far away and things like that.

[00:12:07] You don't use it at all for business hardly unless it's a schedule, like a Zoom call or something where it's like, hey, we have to have a meeting. But it's also not your default either. That's the point. We were thinking, hey, single rotary phone turned to push buttons. That phone will have a screen on it. That's not the way it materialized at all. Not even close. No. And I would even submit that even phone call isn't the default. In business, it's really email, I think, still. Even though that technology is, what, at 50 years old now, it's still email that's happening. I think it's email.

[00:12:37] I think it's also social or Slack or, you know, what are those called? Yeah, like Teams. Chatbots, chat, Slack, whatever. So it's text. It's Slack. It's email. It's phone calls. It's all of the above. But none of them have a video component unless intentionally chosen. Yeah. Yeah. And planned. Anyway, yeah. And usually planned. I find that interesting. And even when somebody wants to FaceTime, rarely do they just FaceTime me because I always say no.

[00:13:05] Unless, you know, my daughter says, hey, can I FaceTime you? I want to show you this or I want to whatever. Never. So I bring it up because they say chatbots are replacing therapists. I take a challenge to the whole headline. I don't agree with that. I think that people are turning into a chatbot. Oh, yeah. And they're saying, I may or may not need a therapist based on what I get back from the chatbot. Yep. Yep. I would agree with that. But I think a lot of people are opening up to this idea of, hey, this is somebody with pretty good confidence.

[00:13:34] And they feel like, you know, when you're done with a – take OpenAI, for example. When you're done with a chat conversation, which could be anywhere from a few questions to hours long, you know, you can just delete that thing. You can just be done with it if you don't want anybody else to see it or whatever. You don't want it to rely on that for future discussions about you. But, you know, so people are saying that they're promising tools that they might augment health support, but they should not be viewed as replacements for professional therapists. And, you know, I would agree with that.

[00:14:04] I think that there is a use case for therapists. There's a sweet spot, Jay. Yeah. But I think that people are doing it. When do I use the internet to look up a health problem before I go to a health professional? All the time. All the time. WebMD, I mean, has been around for years and people have been doing that in Wikipedia. So it's not a threat to the therapist if done right. So I just asked ChatGPT 4.0 or whatever it is, hey, can you be my therapist? Yeah. Here's what it says. Route the audio.

[00:14:32] Well, I'm here to provide information and support. I'm not a licensed therapist or substitute for professional mental health care. However, I can offer some general advice, some resources, or a listening ear if you'd like to share what's on your mind.

[00:14:51] If you're experiencing distress or need mental health support, I encourage you to reach out to a licensed therapist or counselor who has the training to provide, quote, personalized and effective assistance. Let me know how I can assist you. What a PC response. You know, it's so balanced and covers all the bases, covers their own butt. Yeah. What a great response. I just asked this for a radio show is what I said.

[00:15:18] Now let's see what she says to that because I don't want her to think I really need therapy and report that to Bobby Kennedy or anybody. How do you know it's a she, Sam? I assume that. I don't really know. I guess it's because all the bots in the past were Siri and everything else and it sounded like a she. That's why I think it's a she. Everybody calls a car a girl, right? She's probably a guy. Yeah. So then I respond and say that I just asked this for a radio show. The response. Got it. That sounds interesting. If you have more questions or need more assistance related to the radio show or any other topic, feel free to ask.

[00:15:48] I'm here to help. Sounds reasonable to me, Jay. Very reasonable. And I don't think there's anything wrong with because part of what happens when you query, say, a chat bot or Google or wherever for information, you may eventually go to a doctor or a therapist. But hopefully the knowledge that you gain before you go will be that much more valuable to follow and be involved in your health care in meaningful ways. That's the way I look at it, Jay. Yeah.

[00:16:15] I look at it as, hey, if I can, if there's 20 terms and I can learn some of those terms and I can kind of know how catastrophic something is or what the general treatments for something are or this or that. Then when I go to the doctor and he says, Sam, you have this. Then I kind of have a basis for what guidance I get from this professional to where I can actually understand what they're telling me and I can implement it properly and I can carry it out. Without that, it's very difficult. The doctor rolls in, gives me two minutes of his time, babbles all this stuff I don't understand when he leaves. I went, wow, what was that all about?

[00:16:45] But the more I can educate myself before I go in, I look at this technology in that positioning, Jay. I would agree. And I think that it's, I think that tons of people, more than they even know, are using it in that same way.

[00:17:00] Like you said, as a preliminary thing, as that pre-Google search, as a trusted confidant, you know, that they think that they can ask a few questions to that they may not be able to ask anybody else, either for not availability or they don't want to ask the question necessarily to somebody. I mean, there's lots of reasons. Yeah, a lot of it's very personal. Yeah. Sometimes, too, I may not even know what I'm asking, Jay. I just may say, you know what? For some reason, I itch all over the place. Why would I itch all the time?

[00:17:29] Okay, that's just a simple example. But then it's going to come back in the chat. GPT is going to say, hey, you could itch for these 10 reasons. You should go talk to a medical professional. Yeah, that's the key point. Well, now I can at least start looking through the reasons and say, these don't apply to me. These do apply to me. Yes, I feel that. I feel that. And now when I go to the doctor, I can say, I'm really itchy. And, you know, I think there might be three or four reasons for it. Here's what I'm thinking. And the doctor can say, no, that's not right because of this. Or we can test you for that and find out this or whatever they're going to say.

[00:17:56] But wouldn't the doctor love it for me to roll in with a little bit of understanding of what I'm talking about, what I'm asking? And maybe I can use even some of the right words that I learned in my, quote, preliminary research. And I don't know. I don't like these headlines where it's like, oh, my gosh, therapists are being replaced. You better quit your therapy school now because there's going to be no one needing you. This is just need your crazy reaction, Jay.

[00:18:18] As we well saw with the example that you gave, there is at no time is ChatGPT going to act like the expert or say, oh, you don't need therapy or you don't need help. It's going to recommend professional help. And, you know, it's going to do what it can and be a sounding board. But it's always going to go back to, you know, you should seek professional help in this. And here's some ways. And how can I help you do that? Yeah. And they say there's a risk that they might depend too much on this AI therapy help.

[00:18:46] And my response is compared to what? Being maybe so untrusting and so concerned and so mentally unstable or have mentally to where you decide you won't go to anybody. Yeah. Or just ball it up inside. I mean, at least there's an outlet in a step one for people. I think this actually is. And if that outlet is trained right and good, it will give you a lot of the basic information and let you know when you need greater support and help. If it's smart and good like they claim. Right. Can't it then help you say, you know what, this is a legitimate issue.

[00:19:16] This you do need to go to a therapist for maybe or this you do need a health care professional. I remember a lot of times I'll look up help things and they'll say, hey, you've got this issue. It's not really normally a big problem. But if this and this and this happens, you need to go to the doctor. Right. That's really helpful for me. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Because it lets you weed that stuff down and get to the bottom of it and find out what the next steps are.

[00:19:40] Imagine a chat GPT merged or some kind of a, you know, health chat bot, whatever. AI merged with the doctor. So you know how right now you can call the doctor on the phone, a video call. Speaking of video calls, that's why I use that example because it totally relates to our discussion. Doctor video calls are really prominent these days. I never even imagined it would be used for that, but that's really cool. Anyway, imagine if you were to basically start out your video call and chat GPT came up and said, hey, man, tell me what's wrong. Tell me what's going on.

[00:20:08] And then imagine I have this dialogue with a chat bot and then the chat bot writes a summary. The doctor reads that summary and then now joins the call. I think that's already happening. The doctor would be 10 times more ready to help me and I would be 10 times more ready to receive the information he gives me because I've got kind of a basis for education. In other words, the starting point, 10 times better off. I guarantee that that's already happening. A hundred percent. I know it is. And not only that, but in clinical settings, people are using for soap notes.

[00:20:36] That's the patient profile. And I forget what the acronym stands for, but it's like procedure and what they're going to do about it. And a lot of times that's now being done by AI. You have an AI recording the session and, you know, the doctor may read out the blood pressure reading or whatever. And all that's getting noted and all the charting and everything is doing is being done by AI happening with police reports. And then oftentimes it's summarized. And then the person sitting there with the doctor reads that AI summary and make sure that it's accurate. Right.

[00:21:06] Or the doc does. He reviews it afterwards. Or the doc does. Sure. Yeah. And it takes charting from a half hour after an appointment down to five minutes of reviewing notes, make sure that's all good. And if it's done right, charting is even more accurate because now you're reviewing something instead of writing five pages of notes and being distracted writing it so you don't look illiterate. Right. You just simply say, hey, I'm going to read this summary. And my whole focus now is on the accuracy of it. Exactly. Did I leave out anything?

[00:21:30] Did I – and I find that two or three passes of the chatbot, even if I ask a question or feed it something and it kind of gets it wrong, I just start over and rephrase what I want out of it. And pretty soon it's on target again. Well, in a lot of these places – Freed AI is one that does this. And a lot of these places – What's it called? Free to AI? Freed, F-R-E-E-D dot AI. Freed dot AI. Okay.

[00:21:54] And not only does it keep better notes and the summaries are more accurate, but it keeps recordings and transcription so you can always look back. You know, if you question something or you want more detail or the summary didn't cover something that you remember, you can just look back and either read the transcript or even sometimes listen back to the entire interaction with the patient. See, there is just tremendous stuff. So I would say this, ladies and gentlemen, let's not freak about this.

[00:22:22] Let's not write crazy headlines that say, oh my gosh, all the replacement for therapists is happening. Your job's gone tomorrow. Let's find out how we can embrace this incredible, incredible opportunity where you have so much information at your fingertips, it's overwhelming. And let's focus on how to implement that into our lives in meaningful, summary-style ways. I don't need 3,000 pages on my medical problem. I need a summary that helps Sam Bushman, who's not a medical professional, understand what I'm talking about.

[00:22:51] So when I dialogue with my physician, that I can actually talk intelligently when they explain something to me, I understand. And if I can get my issue in front of the doctor with a lot more holistic detail before he even talks to me – because he deals with tons of patients every day, right? When he gets to me, he's like, I've got to get caught up first. Well, what about helping him get caught up first in a very meaningful way so that when he says, hi, Sam, as far as I understand, this is what's happening for you.

[00:23:15] You're itchy and you're this and you're that, and we've ruled out these kind of things because of these reasons or whatever, and we think these things and it's likely this or let's do a test for that. He can instantly jump in and be really valuable for me. I welcome all this, Jay. I absolutely welcome it. Agreed. The question is, how do we shape it as a society? Society, that's the only question left, and knee-jerk reactions like all the therapists are going away tomorrow is not the answer. Right.

[00:23:42] Saying, hey, how do we implement this into our lives? How do we make sure that the chatbot doesn't hallucinate, first of all? Then how do we make it smart enough to know when do you need greater help versus when can it give you the information you need? In other words, how can it support you and direct you? How can it serve you, not own you? The chat GPT or the chat situation, I say chat GPT, I know most of the chatbots aren't even GPT now. I understand, but I'd call it that because I'm so used to it. Yeah, it's kind of synonymous, like Band-Aid.

[00:24:10] Yeah, but the AI is kind of, how do we make sure that it knows that it's serving me, that it doesn't think that it's in control, that it doesn't own me? And it's all how we interact with it and what license or whatever we give it. We've got to be involved in this unfolding of this new age. And I submit to you that we have a whole lot more as a society, a whole lot more direction in how it goes into the future than we think we do. It's time to get involved, embrace it, and make sure that it serves us. Thanks for being alongside for the ride. You want to learn more about us?

[00:24:43] NetworkProvidersInc.com. Check it out. NPITechGuys.com. Hey, make it a great tech day, will ya? Thanks. Thanks.