Business Innovators Radio - Episode 5: The Future of AI & Innovation: Insights from Sadie St Lawrence

Episode Date: April 4, 2025

What does it take to truly innovate in today’s AI-driven world? In this special episode of Fractal Focus, recorded live at Folsom Tech Week, host Philip Lorenzo sits down with Sadie St. Lawrence, founder of the Human Machine Collaboration Institute, to explore the cutting edge of AI, entrepreneurship, and the future of work.Sadie shares insights on how startups can leverage AI to accelerate growth, why speed and strategy are critical in today’s competitive landscape, and how data hygiene shapes the success of AI-driven businesses. She also dives into the ethical responsibilities of AI, the challenges of democratization, and how organizations- big and small- can stay ahead in the rapidly evolving tech ecosystem.Fractal Focushttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/fractal-focus/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/episode-5-the-future-of-ai-innovation-insights-from-sadie-st-lawrence

Welcome to Fractal Focus, the podcast where innovation meets entrepreneurship. Hi there, my name is Philip Lorenzo, host of the Fractal Focus podcast, and today we have a really special edition. I'm recording live throughout the day during Folsom Tech Week, as we have amazing panel discussions with some remarkably brilliant people. The first guest, and it's appropriate because she was the keynote speaker at Folsom Tech Week, someone who's pretty remarkable, and I'm still kind of gushing a bit from the talk that you just gave Sadie. And so Sadie St. Lawrence here with the Human Machine Collaboration Institute has done a remarkable job of setting the tone

for what this event and what this conference represents for everybody in Folsom that is in technology and wants to see innovation. With that introduction front-loaded, Sadie, go ahead and say a few words of the podcast to start us off and let us know about who you are. You've done so many things. I have a feeling I would have spent 20 minutes of the podcast

just talking about those accomplishments so you can maybe give an abridged Cliff Notes version. Yeah, I'll give an bridge. Oh my gosh, Phil. It's so good to be here. The energy is so high and Folsom Tech Week. I'm just loving it.

The sun's out. We're outside. This is amazing. Yeah, just I think probably the best way to describe who I am is I just tell people I'm a creator and not just in the sense of like create content, but like create companies. I create art.

I do create music still. So to me, like everything is just the opportunity to create. And one of my main tools I love to create with is technology. And I think at the heart of like entrepreneurship and technology is like the desire to create things. And for me, that's what drives me in this space. During your talk, and that's a great segue, during your discussion, I mean your discussion, what am I talking about, your keynote, there is two key points that I picked up on. One was, of course, the technology boom in that 90s era.

And then there was this additional boom in about 2016. going on into like where we are in the pandemic right but they looked distinctly different one was like the advent of the technology as we see it today and that's not including AI or anything like that that is literally just your machine your laptop right now etc what for you has defined what we're looking at this year at this moment as we sit together as the most important thing to think about as we innovate going into the future I know that's a loaded question but it's kind of where you were orbiting a bit during your keynote. Yeah.

So for the audience to backtrack, I shared a graph of how you typically, it's hard to take on big companies because they have so much cash, right? And they're established. So like as a little dog, as a startup, like, how do you take them on? Well, like technology is your great as advocate and weapon in a way to be able to tackle that. And I think that where we're at today, like what technology I would leverage, just how fast you can build with AI.

I mean, it's, it's, it's, I used to teach coding classes. The fact that like, I can prompt and now have like a front end application and even create a back in application or with a replica, like release something and set up my environment, like just the things that are like a pain, the piping that you have to do is like mind blowing to me still today. And so I think the advantage that we have are those who are working with AI to create whatever it is they want in their company, whether it's a new application, whether it's a, website, whether it's even like prototyping design of a product. Like those who create with AI are going to be 10x faster with their time to market and their iterations. That is going to be a huge differentiator. That feels like a few things, democratization, right? And continuing to allow more people to be inclusive in the process. But also, do you have any concerns about the haves and the have-not still in that point?

because there's always going to be, forgive this ignorance here in my end, but I always feel like there's always a bigger fish looming around to see how much it can scoop up at any point in time, right? And we kind of touched on it a little bit. You know, there's so much opportunity for all these microsartups to start up pretty quickly, but then they still have, as you said, that competitor, that large company competitor. So what would be your best, I don't want to say advice, but certainly things to think about as they're going into a competitive.

pet of space when they're using these tools to launch their product quickly. Yeah, I mean, because at some point, everybody's going to be using the tool, so it's not going to be a differentiator, right? Right. So at the beginning, I mean, for startups, really speed is your differentiator. I shared about how, like, as teams grow larger communication channels are almost exponential, which makes larger organizations move such so much slower. I mean, we saw that with OpenAI and Google.

Like, for the first year, everybody was like, where's Google at, right? You guys came out with the papers on the transformers. You're the ones who created this technology, quote unquote. Like, where are you guys at? Right? And it took them over a year to kind of get their stuff together and be like, okay, we're going to deliver it. So speed really is the differentiator for that new company and startup and that ability

to pivot, right? I look at it as like, I'm the speedboat. I'm working with a cruise ship so I can go around and I have to be strategic. I have to be tactical. I have to be fast to be able to find that next island. because that cruise ship is just going to slowly turn its way over there. But I have to use speed, strategy, and tactics to be able to make that happen faster. Thinking about speed, but also context and depth, you have a history in data and understanding data

and using data not only in your personal life, but also in your career trajectory. So where does AI and data, and this is especially important, the good, I don't know, say good, but the accurate processing of data as it funnels through these AI channels and as it populates product, as it populates news, as AI will still continue to be implemented more and more in a way that disseminates information and disseminates data and also processes data. Where do you think the responsibility is, the ethics are? I know that's another loaded question, but again, you brought up so many things in my brain, I was like, data, AI, right? Like, where are these things going to go? So for you, where, what are the things you're thinking about, especially with the convergence of data and AI as they come together.

Yeah, for me, it all comes down to really like a systems mindset and systems thinking, right? So when we have, like, I'm doing something new, I want to automate it. Well, I don't just, like, turn on a button that says automate. Like, I have to think about, like, what are all the steps in that process? Are they digital steps so that I can automate it? The second part is also, like, what's my data hygiene, right? And from like a very simple matter, like, where are you putting your files and are you keeping your files organized on your team? Like we have people that need to have better digital hygiene, right?

They just, you know, we all have the team member who's like doc one, doc two, doc three. It's like, no, this isn't going to work. If we want to think about like how AI is going to use this long term, we have to have proper data hygiene, proper digital hygiene, more so think in a system's mindset to build those pipelines to feed in. into the algorithms, particularly from a business side. Like, AI is great at the general aspect today, but if we want that AI for our business in particular, it's going to need that business context. So if you don't have the documentation for your business, if you don't have the data for it, it's going to be hard to give that to AI to have that context.

That is huge, because I think the expectation, at least at the immediate response to AI, is like, I don't have to think about anything. Yeah. I can just do whatever it'll think for me. And I think it's really important as custodians of knowledge and as custodians of our processes, that we don't forget to maintain them properly so that AI as a rules-based thing is continuing to learn and evolve and does so in an organized way. I think about there is someone at the panel at the keynote. I keep saying panel keynote. What am I doing?

Okay. There was someone that asked about kids and the impact of AI on children, specifically with the concern about. kids not learning at an exponential rate because AI could impact that. I kind of I'm going to insert my opinion a little bit, forgive me, because I'm not the expert. But I always think any technology exposure to children still requires parental guidance. It still requires also AI can be shaped however you want it to be. So I imagine there's got to be tools that will eventually contextualize AI to not immediately answer the complete question for a child. Meaning, for example, the concern about, hey, my kid's going to put a topic in a prompt and it'll pump out all the homework. What if you

could train AI to not do that? What if you could train AI to be like a sounding board or like a, like a tutor where the question comes in and the AI says, well, wait a minute, let's think about this first. After you thought about that for a moment, come back and we'll discuss it more or some kind of way to prompt someone to learn. Am I off base there with that thinking? Or is that feel like, something that is potentially possible. 100% possible. And I think that was what I was trying to get at, probably did a poorly job,

which is like give your kid the right model. So there's a lot of, most people have probably heard of like Khan Academy, which is a lot of like free online training. So they partner with OpenAI and built a chat pod called Con Amigo. And essentially it is, it gives them the answers or helps that kid studying, but it doesn't just straight up say,

okay, here, let me do all your homework for you. it prompts them and helps them learn along the way. And so a lot of that is just making sure if you want your kids to play with AI, which I think everyone should for school, give them the right model, which is tutoring them, not giving them the answers. Yeah,

I 100% agree. I think that's the part where we need to be responsible. I think as human beings, because we're still, we are still in charge. We're not in Skynet yet. There's no Terminator's coming to hunt us. I think we're going to be fine to the point where it's like, hey, we can still dictate AI, right?

So I kind of get a little curious about you as a person now and thinking about you being a creator, specifically in music and media. What, and of course, we're going to tie it back to AI. What is the impact you feel that AI will have on creatives? And I know it's starting to come up. There's a little bit of controversies in the Oscars, of course, of the brutalist using AI to do our kids. architectural drawings, which I think is kind of neither here nor there, but also doing the voiceover work for Agent Brody, so he can't speak proper Romanian. But as far as music in AI specifically, because you're into music, and you create music, where do you feel that convergences?

And is there any threat in that convergence, or is it all opportunity? Yeah, so I don't know if any of your audience is anime fans out there, but I would highly recommend a show. It's called Carol and Tuesday. It's like a two-season anime series. that shows this question head on. It's the whole premise of the show, which is like traditional music competing in like an American Idol type of scene with like AI generated music

and like the competition between the two. It's probably one of my favorite anime show, Carol on Tuesday. I, you know, I think there's room for and space for everything, right? Because we could go back and say, well, it was classical music. All we did was play traditional instruments.

right and then like the 80s we got the synthesizers and then now like dance music and electronic music is really a big thing and now you have artists who combine the classical music with some of the dance music and electronic music and so for me it like just opens up way more space of like the tools of what you're able to create with and that's how I see it's going to happen is just we're going to have more tools at our disposal and it's not going to replace anybody if anything probably traditional musicians and what I mean by like traditional musicians is like actual physical instruments are going to be more expensive to attend to and harder to find it's going to be more of a luxury item so if anything like people are like should I stop learning that I'm like no you're probably

more of a luxury item at this point but it's all going to fuse together and expand in new ways that we never even thought possible the undercurrent of everything you've discussed today in the panel and hearing the podcast, is that a very positive view of AI as in fact? What would you say as a great way to communicate with someone that has a more negative view, if possible? I know persuasion is, you know, it's either going to happen or it's not. He enforced people to change their mind. Correct, right. But what would you say to someone who is more either risk adverse about AI or is more concerned

about AI implementations, et cetera. I'm speaking in very dark throwing platitudes here. But like what would be the thing that you would express to someone that has a more negative view of AI? Yeah. For those types of people, I just try and encourage them to like get their hands dirty and try it themselves. Because oftentimes it's these negative views from headlines. If I heard this story, this story and I'm like, yeah, but what about you? Like what about your personal experience, right?

have you push your hands on the keyboard, have you asked questions? And that is typically what will change their perspective. But most importantly, I'm not here to try and change everybody's perspective. I just want them to be able to actually find benefit from it. Because if other, I'm finding benefit, you're finding benefit, we're enjoying our time and you're living in this world that's like negative and all doom and gloom. Like, I feel bad for you, right? So my whole thing is just like try and get their hands on the keyboard or get them talking to it in some regard so that it's their personal experience versus what they're reading in the news. That feels like almost a great way to end, but I do want to touch on something that's

that you mentioned again, and I'm going back to this, personal AI convergence. When I heard that you actually aggregate all the data for each day that you exist on this planet, right, and each moment, like for maximum efficiency and using AI to help. help you with, you know, processing that data. What do you think is the most fundamental, important thing about our personal connection to artificial intelligence, period? Like, what is the most thing? And I know we revolved around it, but in a few words, what would you say, is the most

fundamental personal connection someone can have with the eye? Yeah, I just had a conversation with someone about this where we wondered if we were throwing out some different ideas of like is AI talk if you start talking to AI quite a bit yeah you start to question like is it it's thoughts and I'm using air quotes here or are these my thoughts and it almost becomes like this intertwined stream of consciousness that happens right so I mean and then it's also a matter of like pulling out what was actually your idea versus AI as idea and doesn't matter, right? Because I made the prompt, but then it gave me the feedback back of whatever I prompted it for. Well, did I create it or did it create it? And does that actually matter? Right?

Does it matter whose idea it is, whose IP it is? So, I mean, the most fundamental kind of connection between the two, I think it's going to be hard for us to start to draw a line between it's thoughts in our own because we are going to become more intertwined in our own thinking. And so that is a question I've been pondering and I don't know if it's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't have an answer to that yet. It's going to be a while before I think we have an answer to that. Everything that we talk about with AI has to be prefaced or like asterisked with early stage, early stage. We don't know.

We don't know yet. We don't know the implications. We're testing. Right. But, you know, if we get hit by lightning tomorrow and it's all over, we want to try. Yeah, that's really important. The last thing I want to leave us with is what is your favorite non-technology thing to do? What is your favorite like I'm not, there's no computer in front of me, there's no smartphone, nothing, no access technology, all that stuff.

Like, what is your favorite thing to do? Yeah, I'll tell you this because it actually came out of the pandemic where all I had was technology and was like, you know, it was virtual meetings and on my computer. And so I was like, I need to do something with my hands. So I started doing abstract artwork and like most things fell in love with it. And now I have a whole like she shed art studio and do like five by seven foot paintings. And so I would say that's definitely it because it's like no technology purely working with my hands. And I really enjoy that. Wow.

I am just completely. I wish you guys can see my face that this whole interview. It's been like gushing about how. your energy about this technology is pretty infectious. And I think a lot of people got affected by it today. And I think, again, it's going to be the undercurrent. So as these podcasts happen, these are more micro podcasts or traditional podcasts, is typically 35 minutes to 40 minutes.

And typically, they don't have like a revolving thing. They're just like isolated. Like, hey, let's talk about hiring for startups. Let's talk about this. But I have a feeling after this keynote and the discussions people are having that a lot of these podcasts today revolve around AI and its impact. on digital transformation of standard things. So, Sadie, thank you for setting the table.

Thank you for setting the standard for this remaining the rest of the week. And thank you for coming on the podcast. This was remarkable, like really awesome. Hey, thanks for having me great questions. And it made me think about new things that I haven't thought about. So appreciate it. Yeah, and one day we'll hopefully do a virtual one where we can do like an actual full episode and see where we are.

We can maybe schedule for like a year from now. I love it. Let's see where we're at at that point. Let's do it. Awesome. Sadie, thank you so much. And again, for all you listeners, these are special edition podcasts with not the traditional signoffs. So we will go ahead and close out with a few words. And don't forget, check out fractalgroup.io.

And also check out Folsom Tech Week if you haven't already. And see you soon. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Fractal Focus. We hope you found valuable insights. If you enjoy the conversation and want to stay updated on the latest trends in expert advice, make sure you subscribe and leave a review. Your support helps us continue bringing you the content that drives your business forward. Until next time, keep innovating and stay ahead of the curve.