AI Overwhelm

Ryan Purvis 01:04:25
Hello and welcome to the digital workspace works Podcast. I'm Ryan Purvis, your host supported by producer Heather Bicknell. In this series, you'll hear stories and opinions from experts in the field story from the frontlines. The problems they face, how they solve them. The areas they're focused on from technology, people and processes to the approaches they took that will help you to get to the scripts with a digital workspace inner workings.

Hello, hello. Hey, how are you?

Heather Bicknell 01:04:58
Okay, it's my audio, right? I'm on my phone.

Ryan Purvis 01:05:02
Yeah, it is. It's fine. Okay.

Heather Bicknell 01:05:05
Okay, I think I'm gonna, I'm gonna have to spring for a new laptop here.

Ryan Purvis 01:05:09
Did reach that time? Yeah.

Heather Bicknell 01:05:12
Or figure out if there's something I can do for the existing one. But eventually, yeah,

Ryan Purvis 01:05:20
I mean, how long have you had it on for

Heather Bicknell 01:05:22
quite a while? Yeah, it's like 2016. So

Ryan Purvis 01:05:26
oh, you said like a month ago, because I was going to tell you my story about Mac Mini server Mac Mini since 2010. And it's really one that just sits in the cupboard, doing, you know, sort of background workflows and all the stuff we talked about the other day. And while we're in South Africa, it stopped working. And normally, it just needs someone just rebooted. So I asked Catherine to reboot, and it just never came up. And I got back home and it's taken me a while to look at it. And whenever I've tried all the things and it turns on, and you can hear the fan going and you think okay, well maybe it's working but you plug something in like a screen, and it doesn't show up. So I finally took it to a there's a local guy who fixes computers. In the end, he said, ya know, your motherboard is completely gone. Well, that's not bad. I mean, I paid probably probably 4000 Rand, so probably 200 pounds for brand new back when I bought it. last 12 years, 12 and a half years. It's pretty good. Pretty good return. But I was running. When I left lakeside, and I went on my own, I was using my wife's in one MacBook Air. And I just found that, yeah, it just didn't cope. Like with all the stuff that I was doing the Excel spreadsheets and teams calls because team's memory usage is obviously so bad. That was so bad. They've improved that a lot. I was running out of disk space, pretty much all the time, out of memory all the time. So I took the plunge. And I bought a pro, which I ended up buying. Remember to intuit him one that got him to pro and I hardly notice anything. They were worried about anything. Just just all my worries went away.

Heather Bicknell 01:07:12
Yeah, I got the pro route, set an error right now, which is probably part of the problem. But it's it's like an ancient error at this point.

Ryan Purvis 01:07:20
Well, look, it's you know, and I was having this conversation with a guy at the gym today. Who just because he, he was always not always but I have my iPad Mini was three minutes sometimes when I'm training because I'm watching something I'm missing something and and that's, that's the device that typically, I'm watching something that's what I carry around with me. And he was asking me, you know, why do you carry your iPad Mini around with you? And I said, Well, I can use my phone, my phone's got my gym programme on it. So I'd like to, I'd like to have like a little window on top of my gym programme or my gym, my phones with my gym programme. And if I'm watching something like I'm just finished watching vs nine again, you know, I like to have them separated. And we sort of got to the heart cuz he was like, Yeah, but no one uses iPads Besides watching TV or select station, my bed for everything. I take notes on it. I take pictures, I signed contracts. So you know if I've got ideas to draw out or draw them out on the you know, I sit there in the sauna, sometimes drawing stuff up any city, well, you're probably the one person and I thought, well, maybe I am for now. But as the stuff gets better and better, you know, I think more people will do it. And it's sorted. Yeah, maybe, maybe maybe. And then ironically, we were sitting in the sauna and a car were another goal to this iPad Mini and sort of drawing things out. And since it's already embodied,

Heather Bicknell 01:08:30
yeah, I feel like iPads are definitely more than just screens for watching TV. That's what I think of what I see there. I feel like they become one of those devices. That's great for kids when travelling and you see the kids with special holders or they can you know, watch their cartoons before the flight that kind of thing.

Ryan Purvis 01:08:56
Well, I actually think the iPads not the right tool for a child. Probably you know, number one is it's a very expensive item. I think the Amazon Fire tablets, and someone else recommended them to us and we've had we've had them with our kids now for six months. Now if you think about an entry level iPad, let's say it's roughly I don't know 300 pounds, 400 pounds, whatever the you know dollars probably for say I'm very similar. I think we paid 50 pounds on a special for them each. And they're pretty hardy, you know, my son did break the screen. While we recognise now. Now the challenge that we had is they don't have the same version out in South Africa, it's a little bit behind. But they also said to me, they won't replace the screen, but with the money. So so it's a very much it's very cheap device. Anyway, I came back to the UK and I brought the device back with me and I said, Look, can you fix the thing? They said, No, it's not worth it, the screen will cost you 50 pounds, the label cost you 30 pounds, and you can buy a new 180 pounds. So why would you? So that's probably not a good thing. I think that, you know, the recyclability is not isn't right. To me, I think it needs to be something you could repay easily and cheaply and that sort of thing. But what's impressive with them, is they've got a very good way to manage the content that the kids can can see. And it's very simple. Like, you can drag the bar as a parent and say, you know, my child is four years old, here's that here's the birthday. And the limit the content based on age restriction, which I think is great. Where it's a bit of a pain is like, you know, especially when you when you're taking the kids around, I mean, these things don't have built in 3g cards, so 4g cards, or whatever. So wherever you go and put them on the Wi Fi, you always have to log in as the parent to put them on the Wi Fi. And there's a couple little things which you know, the user experience is not great, which obviously on the Apple devices is a bit better. But what I find with the Apple experience is you end up quite, quite often with a kid playing a game, and my son's got this game he loves. It's like a dinosaur digger game. And it always wants him to buy more levels and to buy other apps. And of course, he doesn't understand that when he sees the picture. And he clicks on the picture, that that is taking him to another app. And it's a cotton. Yeah. And when I say no, you can't have that, then he gets upset because in his in his mind, and he's so used to especially on the Amazon devices where any app he plays with on the Amazon device, it's already included in our pay like a small fee, I think it's like, F 19 pounds a year or something for the kids subscription. And, you know, he just gets the games, he plays the games. And you know, there's a lot of good stuff on it, you know, my daughter, who's two and a half, you know, she's already practising to write letters, and writing numbers. You know, she, that she, I think I told you the story, she actually walked up to a chalkboard, while we had one of the places he took the chocolate, she drew a letter, because she's been practising the pattern, she has already with the little means spunk from memory, but, but that sort of thing is amazing. So I think from that point of view, you know, I think they're, they're a necessary evil. And our kids don't live on them, you know, they maybe get, you know, half an hour a day, maybe an hour at the most is, you know, they don't even look at them every day anymore. Initially, it was like the other than they, then they kind of like, very rarely will look at their screens, which is which is good and, and bad. But I think it's I think it's something that's pervasive, I think, you know, you will see more and more than as the quality gets better at the lower at the lower levels. Who's not I mean,

Heather Bicknell 01:12:32
have you heard the expression iPad kids

Ryan Purvis 01:12:36
pet gets. You know what my mother loves to remind me of this because when my son was born, I said he will model he will not have an iPad till he's 12. Because at the time friends of ours, the kids basically were glued to their iPads, they would, they would basically have the iPads and you call it you know, awesome camera, but they had the iPads in front of their face for like eight hours a day. Like we go for lunch. And the kid could not walk or do anything without the iPad in front of them. And you know that if you took the iPad away, you were in for the biggest tantrum you've ever seen. So yeah, that's what I've seen as iPad kids. And yeah, definitely put me off I'm very glad that my kids are, are pretty at this stage. I mean, things always change. They they manage their own time pretty well already, in the sense of they'll do it for maybe 1015 minutes and I'll be willing to go and build Lego or build train tracks or something like

Heather Bicknell 01:13:31
that. Yeah, so fortunate to have grown up you know, when there was less digital, easy access stuff pre pre iPhone, pretty tablet. So I think they're, I guess conscientious around it now and sort of controlling screen time and, and whatnot. But it's, it's more there's more temptation out there I guess for kids growing up to just get, you know, glued to technology really

Ryan Purvis 01:14:03
hear that? You know, I'm a hypocrite because I spend my whole life in screens. You know this, I'm doing the call with you today on my iPad because I've come to the conclusion that doing doing calls on my iPad is easier then trying to find the window for my team's calls on my desktop because I've got three screens. And then even if I'm taking a break, I'm reading my book on my iPad you know, so I'm looking at screens pretty much all day long. Listen, listen, I'm going for a walk and then look at the, the scenery. But, you know, if I, if I look at it from an ADHD point of view, it's been a lifesaver, having everything, synchronised across my devices in the same place organised. Because that's one of the things you struggle with when you have ADHD is you can very easily get lost in all the things you're doing. So, you know, you got to use the technology for the right reasons. And in the same token, you know, living in a house full of other people, if you want to watch something on TV, and all the TVs are busy, you have an iPad is useful to have.

Heather Bicknell 01:15:07
So, yeah, so technology, or can you do it live with it can't live without it?

Ryan Purvis 01:15:15
Why do you get any embrace it? And, you know, I'm looking at you, I'm sure you see this on your LinkedIn as well. I mean, the amount of AI stuff that's coming out, Oh, yeah. I mean, I almost posted the other day that I that I'm actually like, so overwhelmed. And I know what's going on. If I compare myself to the average person. And, you know, my wife was asking me yesterday, like, can you show me how to use check EDP and I was thinking, like, had I even, he wanted to do something specific. And I don't even think that's the right tool for the job anymore. I think there's so many services now, you don't even know which one is the right one to use. Yeah. And, and this is kind of this is, I mean, this was always gonna be the problem in, you still have to understand a bit of how it all works to understand what you're getting out of it. And you need to be a critical thinker, I think to what you get out. I mean, yes, chatty, chatty, to me is useful. It's very useful to get you going on something. But you've got to contrast it completely. I mean, we've, we've got content that we're going through at the moment fact checking, and getting real stuff out of because some of the stuff it's quoted as being terrible. But you know, it's much easier to edit something that start from scratch. And that's the gain, or the upside,

Heather Bicknell 01:16:27
right? Absolutely. Yeah, no, I'm right there with you. I feel like every multiple posts a day look at this new, you know, tool that's leveraging open AI as technology to do this task for these people. Right. There's a million of those coming out right now. And it is overwhelming. And it does feel to me, it's I'm still trying to figure out what's the level of knowledge obtained right now? Because it's a it's a job skill, you know, when does it become? Not a just a curiosity, where people who are really into AI? are, you know, learning how to be quite prompt engineers and exploring with ways to use the backend technology to create, you know, new and different tools and user experiences. But when does it become like a, I guess, integrated just into the workplace? Like, is it the Microsoft when Microsoft co pilot goes live? That feels like inevitable to me, if everyone has access to the tools at work? That's when it gets mass adopted? But But yeah, it's there's something in between there where it's sort of a skill that everyone needs to learn.

Ryan Purvis 01:17:47
Yeah, and I think, I think that's a very interesting observation, because that actually posted something on this today. So I'm reading a very good series of books by a guy named Mike grift. Crist. And he's in and he's got AI as in AI has been a theme in a lot of the story in various forms. And one of the one of the and this is kind of the thing I think that the lines I see what you're saying, so, so you have what everyone's kind of expecting is AI as the Skynet data in Star Trek, hell in Space Odyssey, you know, those sorts of movies where, where you're talking to something, and it's talking back to you to check GDP experience right now. We can talk to you now with a voice and I can talk to you by text, and you have an interaction. And, you know, I was doing something the other night and I was literally, I show my wife how to use it. And I said, Look, you can do it this way, like and later, we had like a kind of like an interaction to do the thing. I said, Oh, we can just do my work using my prompt generator, which which puts it all together and I write what I want. And then I just click on all the things that I needed to structure it's and all that stuff. And those are the two different approaches to the same mechanism. You know, in what you're doing, and I think that will become the first option where people are interacting with something and responding is what most people will get used to what most people deal with. You then have the you have the more sophisticated people that will use the prompt and do that kind of stuff. Then I think you'll have the other scenario, which is what you've mentioned, which is the more integrated fee thing. So like if you can imagine, and I'm one of those people that are guilty of this, as you know, there's those, those emails where you write the nasty response, the sharp, the blunt the, or whatever, which I must say I work quite a lot doing, but I still do it sometimes. And why are you writing the nasty prompt, you could have your AI fixing that language as you're writing to. So an example of this already, to an extent is Grammarly. While you're writing some text, you can tell it to say I want this to be professional, I want this to be jovial, I want this to be neutral, whatever it is, and that's a really kind of giving, you can manually fine tune your stuff. But you could in theory, you know, in the market will let's say the news Copilot to do this. You know, you could say set some rules for yourself with the AI to say if I started going down the route of being nasty, spiteful, disrespectful, obnoxious, whatever a fish based, stop me rewrite the text to be friendly, collaborative, etc. Or maybe in extreme cases, stop the email from going out or pausing for a day and then check it the next day festival or send that nasty snotty Brenton email as an example. Those two scenarios are probably the main London and then I think you'll get the third one which I think I saw this on a podcast, YouTube episode yesterday, where while you are having a meeting, for example, and you're discussing the actions like I'm doing some copywriting trademarking stuff at the moment, while I'm saying to my guy, look, I need you to, you know, we need to research this, do this, do this do this, the AI is picking up on those actions, and it's doing the research for you. So that sort of auto GDP theme that's coming out where we're saying go and research the name, go research the concept go go check the various territories for for IP, it can go and do that stuff, and then can almost self direct itself based on that action. So so that need to go and take the action, go do the work, and then come back with the response could be so can be shorter, completely, that by the time you finish the meeting, you might already have the answer or while you'd have in the meeting, the answers are bubbling up in your screen, because the AI is listening and doing the the horizontal easy work. But the the grunt work for you.

Heather Bicknell 01:21:43
That would be super interesting. I know, the demos that they've shown that, you know conceptions of copilots so far are definitely on like the meeting transcription and taking notes of the action items. But having having, like a AI in the room with you, during the call to you know, move things along would be incredibly interesting. Yeah.

Ryan Purvis 01:22:10
And yeah, I mean, that was my hope, when I when I use auto AI as it'll, it'll pick out the actions and it'll summarise the stuff. And that's not it hasn't been very good. It's useful, if I miss a meeting, or it's useful, if I need to go back and refer to the meeting, then I can go look at the transcripts, and read them as opposed to pick them out. I mean, it's still it's, you know, auto in this, to what I've seen so far still requires you to go and pick out the interesting stuff. But I'm sure there's other services that can can do a better job. And I think there's a there's a level of, you know, personal AI as well. And there was another series of books that I was reading, which goes down more this route where you almost have your dedicated AI and, you know, with my wife and our the kids here, and even in South Africa, you get so much information sent to you from the schools, like activities for the week and events coming up and, and all that kind of stuff. And it's it's overwhelming, because you've already from a work point of view, getting sent a lot of stuff now you got the school, send your stuff, so emails and and WhatsApp groups and all that and all that. And if you had your personal AI, there was just digesting that information and pulling out the important stuff putting into your calendar, for example, like just the concept, just that little bit of, you know, there's like tomorrow, the kids are going to be doing a singing thing for the coronation. You know, if my wife so so we have to go and spend two minutes putting into the calendar. But it also breaks that concentration because now we're gonna do that two minute thing. If that could just naturally be digested by the AI and put into your calendar. That would be great. You know, you're I've got a whole bunch of emails here. We're doing some other stuff and just digesting a whole bunch of email trails into a single summary. It says okay, out of all these 15 emails, this is what the important this is the important concept. This is what's been discussed as possible routes and this is what you need to do. I think that'd be awesome. As a solution.

Heather Bicknell 01:24:10
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's it's both a way to generate a tonne of content. So there's potential for content explosion with tools like this, but then also the assistance To digest the content that's already there, and provide that next layer of seamless. I mean, there's already a little bit of this, right? Like, if you start adding an event, I think in Apple or Google Calendar, or if it's kind of seen an invite come through to your mailing service, it can sort of out do you mean this sort of the next step on top of that to just pull out without even asking?

Ryan Purvis 01:24:52
Yeah, but that's, that's a little bit generalised. And that's, and, you know, my experience with that hasn't been fantastic. And this, and this is already an AI problem all the time. But for example, like I had a call service the other day, where I got the confirmation email. So I select to go click on create the event, it didn't copy any of the information across sessile, manually copying all the information across. That wasn't a great experience. And that's never been improved by Apple. I mean, that's been an issue for ages, when it says creative and should be able to take the information out and fantastical, is a much better tool, when I was using it, where you literally could just copy and paste the text, and it would go and create the entry on the day with the information. And that worked quite well. But as you know, there's still a, there's not a there's not a consumption of the information in context of what's important to you. And I think that's where the AI be interesting to me. So, you know, there's a lot of stuff that comes in, as I said, from the school, that's got nothing to do with us. You know, it's different years, or it's always different commitments, you know, like, my son goes to certain activities, and it's the other activities. So we, you know, we need that note, that noise filtered out. And I think that's where we've talked about this before, that ability to get something and this is what check TV is great. You know, in some respects, you could go and give it a paragraph of stuff and say, explain this to me in layman's term in bullets, like I'm a five year old. And we'll do that. And that's fantastic. Now, if that could just be a little bit more intuitive in your workflow. That would be that I think is the next step. And I think that's where, you know, if you look at like apple with their shortcuts, you know, I would see Apple probably launching something fairly soon. That'll tie in there. Will you include a shortcut to do some stuff? With an AR backend?

Heather Bicknell 01:26:38
That'd be cool. Yeah, sure. It's coming. Well, yeah, we'll just see it as stuff goes. Exciting. So developments all around you to run any parting thoughts?

Ryan Purvis 01:26:51
Um, I would think if you're not already playing with some of the AI stuff, you should be. I mean, just do together whenever anyone else?

Heather Bicknell 01:27:01
Yeah, the audience.

Ryan Purvis 01:27:05
If you don't know where to start, I think you need to find someone. And if you don't know, anybody can always come to me. Because this is this is going to be a very quick moving learning curve. And, yeah, I think that it'll blow a lot of people, honestly, out of the workforce, I think they'll still still be the workforce. But I mean, I think I think the ability to leverage these tools is the multiplier for a lot of I mean, you know, I see it every day. And, and I think that's, that's going to be the difference between being very successful. And not.

Heather Bicknell 01:27:39
Yeah, well said. I think it's coming. So getting a little better skill. Prep is a smart move.

Ryan Purvis 01:27:46
Yep. The best return in the world is getting yourself up.

Heather Bicknell 01:27:50
All right, well, great chatting, as always, and I'll see you next time.

Ryan Purvis 01:27:56
Super. Thanks Heather, Keep well.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. Hey, the big news app producer, editor. Thank you, Heather. For your hard work on this episode. Please subscribe to the series and rate us on iTunes or the Google Play Store. Follow us on Twitter at the DW W podcast. The show notes and transcripts will be available on the websitehttps://www.digitalworkspace.works/. Please also visit our website https://www.digitalworkspace.works/ and subscribe to our newsletter. And lastly, if you found this episode useful, please share with your friends or colleagues.