Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 102: Future of Work - What's Next For Creative Orgs?

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

What does the future of work look like with AI? Specifically, how will AI affect creative organizations? We explore the role of generative AI in augmenting and supplementing creativity, and how it affects all of us. Camilo De Cruz, Chief Innovation Officer for sparks & honey, shares insights on how AI is shaping consumer mindsets and what companies can do to prepare. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Camilo and Jordan questions about AI and the future of workUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:[00:01:17] Daily AI news[00:03:13] About Camilo La Cruz and sparks & honey[00:06:17] Consumer mindset is changing with AI[00:09:25] Using generative AI to connect with customers[00:12:44] How smaller companies keep up with AI monetization[00:15:20] What does the future of work look like?[00:19:30] Can AI be as creative as humans?[00:23:20] How organizations can combine humans with AI[00:25:50] Using data with Large Language ModelsTopics Covered in This Episode:- Introduction to Camilo La Cruz, chief innovation officer for Sparks and Honey- Overview of Sparks and Honey's mission and methods- Integration of generative AI in consumer mindset- Future of work with AI- Is AI more creative than humans?- Considerations for companies looking to adopt generative AI- Importance of understanding the "why" in integrating AI technologyKeywords:future of work, creative organizations, generative AI, augment, supplement, creativity, Everyday AI, experts, learn AI, leverage, grow your company, grow your career, chat GPT, Gemini, Google, language model, GPT-4, AI offering, Salesforce, generative AI solutions, Einstein Studio, Amazon shopping carts, AI powered features, product description, reviews, ChatGPT, newsletter, chief innovation officer, strategic foresight, innovation consultancy, cultural intelligence platform, Q, SaaS business, consumer standpoint, go-to-market strategy, existential risks, CEO, customer data, AI tools, systems, EY, language models, good contact, good communication.Send Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the Everyday Podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. What's next in the future of work, especially for creative organizations?

You know, when we talk about generative AI and how it can really augment and supplement creativity, what does that mean for the rest of us? That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on everyday AI. Welcome. My name's Jordan Wilson. I'm your host. And we do this every single weekday, Monday through Friday, bring. bringing you experts and everyday people on the best ways that you can learn AI, but how you can also leverage it to help grow your company and to grow your career. So if it's your first time

listening, welcome and thank you. If you're regular, it's great to have you back. As a reminder, this is a live stream and a podcast. So if you are joining this live, please get your questions in. What do you want to know about the future of work and creative organizations? We have a great guest who's going to be joining us here in just a minute. But before we do, we always recap what's going on in the world of AI news. So let's do that real quick. All right. So is Chad GPT and the GPT4 tech going to be dethrone soon?

All right. So a recent report says Google is nearing the release of its highly anticipated new AI offering Gemini. So Gemini is Google's next large language model. And it is reportedly five times stronger. than GPT4. So keep your eyes on that. It was supposed to be released fall. And apparently it's the fall already.

You know, my brain is still in summer mode. So keep an eye out on Gemini and what that means. And also, make sure you go to Your EverydayAI.com and sign it for the newsletter. We always recap all of these news pieces in the newsletter. All right, second piece of news. Salesforce is putting its money where its mouth is for generative AI. Wow. So they are planning to hire at least.

3,300 employees with a heavy focus on generative AI solutions. Specifically, it's its own AI model called Einstein Studio. So Salesforce is also planning to rehire a lot of the former employees that they laid off in January. I think it was around 8,000 employees. All right. And last but not least, there's even more AI coming for your Amazon shopping carts. So we reported this a couple of weeks ago when it was announced, but Amazon has started to now officially release some new AI powered features

where essentially you can use AI to write your product description. All right. So they've announced having AI to help you sort through reviews, a lot of different, you know, even their own kind of chatbot that you can better make purchases with. So now helping on the seller side as well. So we have that and a whole lot more in today's newsletter. So as a reminder, make sure to go to your everyday AI.com and sign up for that.

All right, but we're here to talk the future of work and creative organizations, and I'm excited for it. So please help me welcome to the Everyday AI show. Camillo La Cruz, he is the chief innovation officer for Sparks and Honey. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. And happy 100.

Oh, my God. This week, right? Or was it very recently, right? Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, we hit 100 episodes, I think, think on Wednesday. So, yeah, it's been wild. And we've talked to people from all walks of life. But Camille, tell us, tell us a little bit about Sparks and Honey and what you all do there. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. We are a strategic foresight and innovation consultancy. We're still a very young organization, I would say, started about 10, 11 years ago. And really the mission is to help organizations in both the public and private sector to understand change and really see, you know, how the change that we experience in our everyday lives has an impact on the people they serve, right? Whether it's their employees, the consumers or customers, citizens.

So really help them quantify what's changing, name it, identify it, and then formulate strategies, whether it's developing new products or a new marketing campaign or adjusting strategy and messaging or perhaps even imagining, you know, the role of their company in the next decade or so, right? So that's sort of the mission of the company. When we started, we realized we needed a few ingredients to make this happen, right? One is we need to be connected to a network of super smart people. We built an advisory board today.

Seventy Strong are people who are like really interdisciplinary thinkers in many, many different areas. We also build a cultural intelligence platform that essentially is aiming to categorize changing culture and quantify it, right? We call it Q and it's been up and running for a while. At some point, we decided to take that platform and turn it into a SaaS business. So the company, if you think about like how our business model is, you know, half is, consultancy, and the other half is hands-on keyboard access to our platform. You know, there's a lot to digest there. But, you know, one thing, Camila, I really want to talk about.

So even when we think of the future of work, and you said, you know, one thing that y'all are trying to do at Sparks and Honey is to quantify what's changing and to help companies, you know, adjust to the strategy and messaging. How does the introduction, and you know, I use that term loosely because generative AI has definitely been around for a very long time, but it seems like it's really just starting to infiltrate our daily lives. In your experience, how has generative AI already started to kind of shape and shift consumers' mindsets? And then what can companies do to kind of prepare for that? Yeah, absolutely.

Look, I mean, I would say that we are, from a consumer standpoint, we're at the very, very beginnings of what's going to be a massive change. So it's a great moment to ask a question. We have advice clients who are releasing or launching new features, powered by generative AI. And in the go-to-market strategy, there's always the question. question of, you know, what it's in consumers' minds, right? And if you are in the industry, like if you're a professional working in the space and following generative AI, you're going

to see there's a lot of like philosophical dialogue even now in Congress this week, right, about the existential risks of AI and all that. But if you're a consumer, your views on AI are going to be contextual, right? So there are context dependent, meaning if you present it in the, in the context of a use case, so I'm going to use, I don't know, Instacards, plug in, to be able to more easily sync my shopping list with my lifestyle, then it's like, oh my God, yes, give me more, right? So I think, you know, if you're a CEO, you're looking at, you're looking at different data points. You're looking on one hand. at this very high level sort of philosophical perspective.

And on the other hand, you're looking at more, you know, a promising and demand type customer data or consumer data that I would say is perhaps sort of a good starting point if you want to understand, you know, where things are going, which in my view is accelerating pretty fast. Yeah. I'd say that is a fair statement. Like fairly fast, right?

And hey, as a reminder, everyone joining us. Thank you. Jackie, wishing everyone, good morning. Mike, Harvey, talking about Gemini, Brian, saying, good morning from the Gulf Coast. As a reminder, if you have a question for Camillo about the future of work in the creative industry or just anything, make sure to get your questions in now. So, you know, speaking of that, speaking of how. how fast things are changing.

Because it seems like, you know, almost every week, you know, there's something big going on in the world of generative AI. How do you think, you know, companies can even keep up, you know, trying to, you know, use these different AI's AI tools and systems? You know, we talked at the top of the show, you know, Salesforce is really investing heavily in generative AI. Yesterday, we talked about, you know, EY, major consulting firm, you know, building their own large language models. How can companies even prepare for this if they aren't some of the biggest companies in the world? How can they still take advantage of what generative AI has to offer but still stay in good contact and in good communication with their consumers or with their customers? Yeah, yeah, that's an excellent question and very, very common these days, right? And I would say step one is you have to understand the why, right?

I mean, why would you bring generative AI technology? Why would you create general directive AI driven features or products and release them out into the wild, right? And I think in that sense, when you're thinking about specifically the future of work and what you would do inside your organization, there are a lot of real. really good answers to why you would do it. I mean, there's productivity. There's simply the fact that this is a train that's already leaving the station. If you don't jump on that train,

it's going to be really hard for you to catch up to what everybody else is doing. But there's also, I think, the question that's a bit more human that relates to how can you enrich the experience of the people you serve, including the people,

who work in your organization, right? And that is a question that I think has a lot of different answers when it comes to using generative AI. And there's a lot of really good examples out there in the world where people are starting to think about, okay, how do I think about this concept of an AI companion or an AI agent and put it in the service of students? Like when you look at, for example, what Cannes Academy is doing with Canmigo, for example. If you're watching and you're not familiar, there's a ton of different podcasts that are covering Canmigo and you can go check it out.

I mean, they're essentially flipping a little bit the equation when it comes to learning, right? They're saying rather than seeing Genitive A.A. as a threat, right? I need to catch students who are using chat GPT. I'm going to use large language models to actually engage in a Socratic, you know, discussion with the student, right? And I think that there's a lot to learn about what they're doing that we can apply to the world of work. Yeah.

And it's very interesting, too. And I'm actually going to, instead of following up on that, I actually want to talk about here. Jackie has a great question or a thought, but I'd like to get your take on this. So she's saying, I wonder as generative AI tools monetize, will large, so will the largest corporations have the edge because they're able to afford all of the tools and the ability to create their own. So what's your take on that? And then what can all the other companies that not like Salesforce, not like EY, you know,

if you can't kind of create your own generative AI tools, maybe how can you so keep up and even thrive? Look, I mean, if you look at, if you look at, that's a great question, by the way, right? I mean, if you look at history of media and technology, you see that there's always this dance between decentralization and centralization, right? I mean, radio, you look at some of the first accounts of radio

when it was introduced as a technology, they read like the internet in the 90s, right? It's like, oh, everybody's going to have the power to communicate and create their own communities, etc. And then it was centralized and a few players sort of reap all the benefits. The internet was the same thing. It was decentralized. And then it became sort of centralizing walled gardens.

I think we had a lot of discussion about, you know, Web 3 last year and the decentralization on the power that, you know, that's still sort of more in the background. When it comes to generative AI, right now, this is the moment, if you are a small guy, if you are a small business, to really take advantage of this decentralization stage, right? I can't predict how fast is going to go back and centralize. There's a lot of different unicorns that are being minted, like seemingly every month in the space. So there are really large companies behind all of it, and they're connecting the dots,

really fast. But, you know, if you're playing with chat GPT and now you can, you know, through the premium version, get a plug in that connects it to the internet, now you have a really powerful capability at your fingertips, right? So I would say this is the moment where you're going to try to do everything in your power to create a competitive advantage for yourself using these very powerful tools. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio.

Powered by Adobe's Creative Agent, Firefly AI Assistant lets you start with your vision, just describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the Assistant. The Assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere. Lightroom Express and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations.

Every step the assistant takes is visible so you can refine, redirect, or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director. Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at Firefly.adobie.com. Yeah, and there are so many competitive advantages to be had. And I'm actually glad you even talked about connecting generative AI to the internet to the internet because we did a whole episode on that yesterday. But I do want to talk a little bit.

And, you know, sometimes we look into the future. But what do you think the future of work looks like? You know, you kind of mentioned, you know, this thought of, you know, AI agents or AI companions. Is that kind of where you see the future of work going that we're all going to have a suite of generative AI tools built around kind of our daily role? Or where do you see this going? I think that's a fair extrapolation in terms of if you look at where the money is being spent right now, you look at the last year, Q2, 2022, Q2, 2023, the vast majority, the vast majority of capital going into generative AI is going into AI assistance and AI

companions. You combine those two and that's way more than half of all the dollars, right? So, there's definitely a lot of appetite from an industry to be able to move fast in that space. We've also seen a lot of good indications that these large language models are not just mastering in language, which is so already impressive. But they're even communicating with a level of empathy that becomes really, really interesting. There's a paper that came out a few months ago that was comparing the responses of chat GPT4. It was a blind study versus responses from a Reddit medical community. And the responses of chat GPT4 were ranked by.

the participants in that study as higher in empathy and many other directions, which is very counterintuitive, right? But I think that when you look at the power of a personalized experience that stays with you, whether it's education or work, I feel like that is definitely a space where I think we all need to pay a lot of attention right now. There's also, I don't know if you've seen Kai Fu's AI 247 book. I'm sure if you have your geeking out on it is Kifu and Stan Lee, who's a very well-known writer in science fiction writing in China.

And they're looking at different scenarios of AI in 2047. So out in the future. And, you know, one of them is based on education and it's in this idea of agents, right? I said AI 2040 says 2041. This was published in 2021. That's the old one there. They were looking at 20 years in the future. So the first, so there's like a, the eight chapter is a short story written by the science

fiction writer. And then on the back, there's Kai Fu, who's one of the biggest thinkers in AI out in the world, explaining the technology that would make it happen, right? And this idea of AI companions has been widely explored in that book. And it makes sense. I mean, when you start a new job, what's the first thing that happens, right? You get, you know, a bunch of different people putting a bunch of different meetings in your calendar for like two or three weeks.

You're not really very productive and you're learning, right? That experience could happen the minute you join the company with a tool that's also understanding you as a person, right? Your learning style, your role, who you interact with, what makes other people in your circumstances more successful. So, you know, it definitely has a ton of potential. But as we look into the future, yeah, 2021, 2047 or 2041. I think there's so many different ways that this can go. But I think one thing that people always look back to or, you know, a common roadblock or obstacles, they say, okay, generative AI can't be empathetic. And then Camilo, you know, you just referenced some different studies that have looked at generative

AI's ability to be empathetic. But there's also been, you know, similar studies on the creative side. So, you know, two of the biggest things is people say generative AI can't be empathetic or creative. So working in the creative space, what's your thoughts on that? Do you have any hot takes? Can generative AI be as creative as humans? Well, I think, I think I would look at an example in chess, Right. And I think if you, like, you know, there's a, there's a, there's a, I think a crop of writers and thinkers that are investigating this idea of intelligence, right? So the eye in AI, right? Which I think it's very important for us to sort of think deeply in this world where now we're creating a type of intelligence. James Brittle is one of them. He wrote a book. ways of being recommended to everyone. And then he wrote a piece and an article on the We Transfer magazine that was looking at the example of chess, centaur chess.

Are you familiar with center chess? Oh, no, I haven't seen. So, so, you know, AI today can be like goal players, which it was thought to be impossible, right? So it, because it requires intuition. So you can do that. it can easily beat any human on chess, right? Pretty easily, right?

But a human and an AI partnering can beat any AI playing chess, right? And so there's this sort of very geeky sort of Centaur League of chess, if you will, right? And it's people who play with alongside AI against each other, right? So I think that chess is strategic and creative. And I think that it's a good analogy for, you know, yes, absolutely. I mean, AI can be created. There's some experiments. Adobe with DreamCrapatcher like five, six years ago started experimenting with generative design.

There's a couple of TED talks that are, if you watch them today, you get goosebumps because, you know, this is something that's been going on for a while. right and designers are sort of confronting this AI and saying the only way for the AI to actually do its job is if I put my ego in check if I sort of take a step back right and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and and I, you know, definitely can be creative but can it be more creative than a system that seamlessly gives a role to the human in that context right and I think that that that the answer to that is remains to be seen, but I would dare to say no.

You know, that's a great example that you brought up on, you know, because yeah, we've had the AI systems beating the best humans in chess for decades, but when you combine the human and the AI, that is the best, right? Right. That is the, there's no other combination that can win in a game of chess. So how, because this conversation, we've gone all over the place, but I want to, I want to kind of end on next steps. So how can people, you know, so they're hearing you talking, they're hearing, you know, even what you all are working on at Sparks and Honey. So how can they create that,

that combination of humans working with AI? How can organizations start to do that? Because it seems like, it seems like there's a divide. There's the companies that got it and they got it right away. Then there's companies that are really just struggling. So how can they start? to create that unbeatable pairing, that augmented relationship of the brightest humans working with these very powerful generative AI tools. Yeah, absolutely. So number one, I think about it as a system, right? And you have to design a little bit sort of the system.

So the human has a role and the AI has a role. You have to sort of write a job description for the AI and then rewrite the job description for the human. Look at your frameworks, the things that you. you put out where there is a product or service or or or whatever it is and make sure that you understand what inputs are coming from which side and when you create opportunities to seamlessly sort of collaborate if you will like so for example if you're creating a a type of our direction document you know and you're going to give a generative design an opportunity to

create you need to figure out what is that brief So the prompt, right? And beyond the prompt, like, you know, where is the data, right? Are you going to use what's available out there? Are you going to create your own data rooms, right? We're using vector databases to create dedicated data rooms, and it tends to outperform just the normal sort of, you know, standard large language model.

I can talk a little bit about that if that's important, but I would say, you know, know the data, know the inputs, know what each is going to contribute, and create an environment, a sandbox, right? It could be as easy as a document that's editable, which that has sort of the output of the AI, right, where the human can go and interact with it, right? So I think design with intention,

think about it as a system, and then audit all the different components of the system. Easier set than done, I know, but, you know, I know we don't have a lot of time. No, it's, that's great because you actually laid it out, step by step right there. And I love, hey, yeah, maybe it's because I'm a dork, but I love when people say, start with data. You've got to get your data right.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Look, I mean, these large language models are very impressive in terms of their abilities, but they have limitation when you go into specific domains, right? And that's why if you're a large corporation, if you're, if you're, if you're, a small business, you want to definitely connect your chat GPD to the internet and because the data becomes richer, et cetera. But if you're a large corporation or a bigger business, you have the opportunity. You have the opportunity to use vector databases, for example, to dedicate expert

sort of data spaces, right? And then you have the opportunity to sort of train the responses via the work that you have done over the years, for example, right? So we at Sparks and Honey, we've been doing consulting work for 10 years, we can show our own models how a great insight looks like, right? What a prediction, what a forecast looks like. So when we pre-engineer a prompt that's about a forecast, we get an answer that's trained on our own thing, on our thinking, right? And that gives you at least a starting point that feels more competitive than if you go with the standard outputs. Yeah. Wow. We took in so much everything from vector databases to creating the best, you know, kind of AI, human augmented relationship,

talking about the future of created work. Camilo, thank you so much for walking us through this journey. Really appreciate it. My pleasure. Thank you for the invitation. And here's to the next 100. Hey, absolutely. And hey, if you couldn't, we talked about a lot. But if you couldn't keep up, don't worry. We're going to be sharing a lot more, you know, a little bit about sparks and honey and just going over everything in depth in the newsletter. So even if you're listening on the podcast and you're like, this sounded good. I want to know more. Okay. Well, make sure to go to your everyday AI.com. We every single day, we, we, recap the live stream, the podcast in the newsletter. I think it's fantastic. A lot more in there keeping up with everything that's going on in the AI world. So make sure you do that. And I have to say this, we have a huge, huge giveaway going today. If you're struggling to integrate generative AI

into your workplace, you're going to want to sign up for the newsletter. We're doing a huge giveaway and it lasts for three days only, helping companies actually put generative AI to use. So you're not going to want to miss that. But thank you again, Camillo. And I hope to see everyone. back for another episode of Everyday AI. Thanks, y'all. Thank you very much, Irvin. Meet Firefly AI Assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly,

the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in

and refine at any. time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going. For a little more AI magic, visit Your EverydayAI.com and sign up to our daily newsletter so you don't get left behind. Go break some barriers and we'll see you next time.