Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 18: What Happens When AI and Supply Chains Collide?

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 and 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. Are humanoid robots coming for us, but to do our work?

Starting point is 00:00:51 That's one of the things that we're going to be talking about today on everyday AI, the live stream podcast and daily newsletter where we help everyday people like you and me, not just understand what's going on in the world of AI, but how to actually use it. Today, a very special guest. we have Jim Shaw, the president and co-founder of Zion Solutions Group. Jim, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me, Jordan. Appreciate it.

Starting point is 00:01:19 Looking forward to it. Absolutely. I can't wait to talk about humanoid robots. Are they coming for us? But first, we wanted to run down just some of the biggest news that's happening today in AI. As a reminder, you can go to Your EverydayAI.com. Sign up for the newsletter. We're going to have all the things we're talking about with Jim in there, as well as a ton of other news that we don't have time to get to.

Starting point is 00:01:39 But first, meta-a-I kind of announced that they're going fully open source with some of their AI technology. So here's what that means. You know, a lot of companies, Google, Microsoft, they keep their AI closed and in-house because they say it can be dangerous if you open it up to everyone. So meta is opening it up to everyone. You know, Jim, what do you think? Is this going to have an impact or is it not really going to, you know, kind of affect our day-to-day

Starting point is 00:02:05 lives, do you think? You know, I think it's too early to tell. and I'm certainly not a coder. So I probably share that with other people, but I think back to when Microsoft, you can go in and develop, and yet you think Apple has always been closed source in how they handled their operating their OS software.

Starting point is 00:02:25 And so maybe Mark thinks it's going to give him an advantage because he's late to the game. I don't know. But I'm not educated enough to give anything more than it's interesting. And I would say there's some business going on behind it. for it. Always, always, always there's, you know, especially when you say, oh, we're going open. It sounds like, oh, it's for the people. But it's like, you're right, Jim, there's, there's money there somewhere. There always is, right? So the second one, I think there's a lot of applications

Starting point is 00:02:54 for this, but a new study showed that AI is able to better predict and sooner predict signs of pancreatic cancer. So a new study analyzed medical records of nine million people and what it showed was this kind of AI technology was able to identify risk up to three years before diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. Jim, what are your thoughts on this? I mean, I think this is one of the beauties of how do you harness the power of AI and what can it do good for humans in the human race. And just this is a little near and dear. I was telling you, my grandmother passed away several years ago and she had pancreatic cancer. Could it have helped? But as a human race, like, this is one of the great benefits that we can harness and use and how do you put AI to good use. Yeah. So I think

Starting point is 00:03:49 that's absolutely amazing because we've got a lot of disease and cancer is one. It's just, it's astounding to me that we still have not figured it out. And you wonder why that is. Is it because we can't or is it back to another business question? But if it's safe, one human, then, hey, AI is worth it, right? Sure. I think that's awesome. Sure. I think, yeah, so much of the attention with AI is, you know, over-optimizing our business and, you know, getting, squeezing even more dollars out of the bottom line. But, you know, there is so much hope in this technology for, you know, applications in medical and education and so many other things. So it's always, it's always exciting to, you know, see when that's happening. So, so, so,

Starting point is 00:04:34 So one other thing, speaking of keeping up with what's happening, a new fully AI PR firm is now officially launched. It's called Easy NewsWire. So we'll see how that goes. So it's a PR tech company that they're just using AI to write price releases. So I'm guessing it's going to be putting out kind of press, you know, PR news out in bulk. But they're trying to make it simpler and just cheaper with kind of breakthrough technology. Jim, do you think this is a good thing, a bad thing?

Starting point is 00:05:04 or something that is not really going to affect most of us? I don't know. I'm kind of surprised that they're the first one. They're just the first one to say to give a press release, not to play on the pun, but are they the first press release to say that they're doing that and the others are already doing it in some capacity? But I would think that's a natural fit.

Starting point is 00:05:26 As we get into later, one of the things, I think marketing and AI, when it first hit back last year, that was what all the work. everybody got worried about, okay, is this going to eliminate marketing? Is this going to reduce people's jobs? It seems like a natural fit to take and digest large amounts of data and volume and information and then use it that way. So yeah, I'm not surprised that it makes, it seems like to be a natural fit. I'm surprised that's the first one that said they're actually

Starting point is 00:05:57 fully AI. Yeah. Yeah. Same. Yeah. And you know, we've talked about this on the show a couple of times, It kind of started with BuzzFeed laying off their entire news staff. You know, we talked about CNET, you know, wanting to unionize because of AI. So I do think, yeah, a lot of, you know, whether you're talking about journalism, news, you know, media, I do think that we're going to continue to see a lot of this. Just, you know, more AI and, you know, maybe fewer humans, but we'll see. Speaking of AI and humans, humanoids, robots coming to. Everywhere near us, Jim, this gets into your background. So very interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Starting point is 00:06:38 So there's a couple of different companies that are working on some of these kind of humanoid robots to kind of assist in the workplace, whatever that means. The newest one that was kind of unveiled kind of in the last 24 hours here. So a Vancouver-based robotics company called Sanctuary AI unveiled their Phoenix robot. We will link the video in the newsletter today. It is, if you haven't seen any of these robots, It's like the Tesla robot. There's plenty of others.

Starting point is 00:07:05 It is wild. You know, Boston Dynamics is another one. It's wild to watch them. But, you know, they're hoping to usher in what they call labor as a service. Jim, what's your thought on, you know, not just this Phoenix robot unveiling, but just this kind of, you know, robotics as a service kind of wave that may or may not be coming? Well, I think since the pandemic, so this is near and dear to what I do every single. day. We build systems, and I know we'll probably get to this, but we build systems, material handling systems for companies and customers. And today that system is conveyor, sometimes

Starting point is 00:07:44 it's racking, sometimes it's storage platforms. And that's really where the industry was for several, let's call it decades. There's been advancements, there's been speed, but with the pandemic, you saw this transition to robotics and technologies. And so it's robotics as a service. And I absolutely think humanoids are going to be part of our warehouses in the future. As a matter of fact, one of the things that we do is I partner with other companies and I distribute their products. And so we put together solutions, creative solutions for customers. And so I use other people's products to do that. I don't manufacture anything. So I get the best of class and everything. I can go out and be partnered within reason with several different partners overusing partners there.

Starting point is 00:08:30 but we actually are already investigating. I've been in the room with two of these companies. They're calling them general purpose robots. We're trying to solve what problems do they solve. And there's a hardware piece to them. That's an extremely complex problem. But these companies have some of the brightest people that you can imagine from some of the companies that if I won't name drop. But when I heard one of the companies I was in the room with out in Silicon Valley not too long ago,

Starting point is 00:08:58 and the team that they've assembled, it's like the who's who of tech. And it was, they've got some really intelligent people solving the mechanical problem that ultimately will solve software and how much AI is in this robot, in this general purpose robot. But they're going to be in the warehouse.

Starting point is 00:09:18 There's already, we have our major trade show for most people probably don't know, but for material handling industry, one of the major trade shows is a show called ProMAT. It's in Chicago. it alternates with Modex, which is in Atlanta, but they had their largest crowd ever this year. And a company was there that is a humanoid, and I'm going to not drop names because I've got a couple of partners here.

Starting point is 00:09:42 But they did have a, they had a humanoid that was working, that was live, that had in their booth, it was moving totes off of a storage device onto a material handling piece of conveyor. And so it's coming. And it's not an easy, problem to hear these people talk and to ask, what are you, how are you going to solve this?

Starting point is 00:10:02 So it's complex, but they're coming. Now, how far, how close they are, I think everybody's trying to get first in saying, watch my robot walk, watch my video, watch my render. And I think that's what sanctuary had. It was a really neat video if you watch it. But I'm going to get super excited when I see it in the warehouse, Jordan. And I see it actually doing something outside of a sterile test case to where it's everything's in a controlled environment. I guess it's a very way to put it. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. And you talk, yeah, you talked about pro Matt. I actually have a good friend who was at that conference. I saw the video. You know, we'll link it in the newsletter as well. But you know, how how long do you think it is until, you know, kind of what you said. Yeah, we've seen these videos. It's, you know, a lot of like, you know,

Starting point is 00:10:48 promotion and marketing. But like how long until we go from that to your everyday, you know, whether it's you know, logistics, supply chain, you know, how long until it's, it's commonplace? I mean, are we talking months, years? I think it's hard. I think it's hard to say. I think you will see them in the warehouses in the next, let's call it. There's aspirations to be in the warehouses in 2024. There's some that are already in warehousing doing proof of concepts. I think by the 30s, there is an aspiration to be in these on a larger mass scale. And I was talking with one of the guys in one of these companies actually earlier this week. And the conversation was it's interesting.

Starting point is 00:11:35 If you ever look up when once look at the history when the steamship was invented and look at the time it took for it to replace all the traditional sailing vessels. And there's a whole lot of dynamics that have to go in place. similar to Tesla and the electric vehicles right now. There's a whole infrastructure. It has to be built. There's a whole software. I think you're going to start small. And I think we'll see that over the balance of this decade. But I think in the 30s, you're going to see if we can solve the problem and if we can work together. And if it's handled ethically and morally and responsibly, I think you'll see these in places that humans just, it's a lot of chatter. Jordan, I know I'm talking a lot

Starting point is 00:12:18 about this, but passionate about this one is a lot of chatters like these robots are coming to take human jobs. And that's certainly not the case of the partners that I'm working with. These robots are there to fill voids. They're there to complement jobs that are that as one one guy in the industry, his name's Aaron Prather. He's kind of a voice of AI and robotics and technology. They're to do jobs that are dull, dangerous, and dirty. So there's jobs that humans are really good at. And I've got a little blurb on this. I had wrote down free show to think on my thought, so I could talk intelligently about it, but you want people where people are making decisions. You want people where they're using our best asset. We can learn and adapt so quick. Robots don't do that well.

Starting point is 00:13:02 And as AI comes on, that capacity is going to speed up, but it's not there yet. And you want humans doing jobs that they have to think strategically and they have to learn and just you want more of the general purpose robots doing jobs that just aren't fun. loading a truck. Who wants to sit in a truck in July in the south, which is where I'm from, because you can tell my accent, and 100 degrees outside, 90% humidity, and unload 1,000 boxes. And then your reward for doing that, you've got four of those trucks a day you've got to unload. So if you can solve that problem and put a human in a better environment that's doing more strategic thinking, using our best asset, which is learning and adapting, that's where it's at.

Starting point is 00:13:45 Sure. So when you, you know, when you think of even what Amazon has done in terms of, you know, AI and optimizing kind of their logistics and warehousing, supply chain, when you combine that with, you know, kind of what we're talking about here, these humanoid robots doing the, the dull, dirty, and dangerous, you know, when we look, you know, five, 10 years into the future, again, I never asked guests to look into their crystal ball. But, I mean, what? What does this mean do you think for your industry and related industries in general? Are there going to be fewer jobs there or are there just going to be more jobs kind of more on the tech side, you know, to supplement and complement, you know, kind of where the industry may be going? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:14:34 So I'm a person that looks at the positive and the optimistic side of life. So my viewpoint, the lens that I look at it from is that this is just going to supplement. labor. And we know there's, I think there's a stat, somebody can correct me if I'm wrong, but there's like 10 million, there's a job shortfall

Starting point is 00:14:53 expected and forecast like 10 million people. And some of these companies, you can't get the people in to do the jobs. That's why this technology's taken so long to get to us. But I don't feel like, I think you're going to see them in hospitality. I think you're going to see them in healthcare and senior services.

Starting point is 00:15:11 I know you're going to see them in the warehouses. It's just a matter of how. How advanced? Do they get beyond general? And I don't know that answer sitting here today. I had chosen one of the things I've asked, Jordan, I think I told you this, is one of it, so I go and talk to high school students. And one of the things I try to explain what we do to the everyday person, like your show is like, what do you do? And I said, well, I build stuff. I'm like a general contractor of a warehouse. We, we get a set of Legos. All of us had the same set of Legos, but I build cooler Lego designs and some other companies. And that's what we do. It's

Starting point is 00:15:43 creativity, how we put the Legos together, but we all have the same components. So that's what we do. And I've asked these students when I tell them about humanoids and where the robots and technology are going, like, does it freak you out a little bit? Because it freaks me out a little bit. But I choose to be part of solving the problem instead of sitting back and watching other people solve the problem. So I'm an optimistic that it's going to be good. I'm optimistic that it's going to help us. That's good. We need we like, I think we need a balance, right? We need the people who are pushing it, not necessarily being pessimistic, but we need people who are pushing the innovation, but then we also need a healthy dose of optimism. So thanks for that.

Starting point is 00:16:22 So real quick, Jim, as we kind of wrap up on the show, you know, we kind of talked about, you know, humanoid and robots, you know, in kind of the industry, you know, supply chain logistics warehousing. But outside of kind of the humanoid warehousing, you know, real quick, where do you see or how do you see AI impacting your industry? industry. Yeah, I think we're going to see it in marketing. I think you're going to see it in how we're looking at competitor analysis, business development, certainly large language models. I think that's right, if I got that right, LLMs are going to help with data. We had huge amounts of data that we have to distill and analyze and ultimately turn into solutions and designs. And then there's

Starting point is 00:17:08 predictive ability outside of it. So predictive analysis, you think we do simulation, We do CAD drawings. We do a bunch of contract work in terms and conditions and functional design documents for software, implementation schedules. We do testing on everything once we built it. User acceptance testing. So all those areas are places that I think as AI advances

Starting point is 00:17:33 that we're going to be able to use it. I had somebody say this other day. I'll end with this on how we're looking at it, Jordan, is we're certainly, we're moving towards AI. We're looking at it because we're kind of a future. We're always looking ahead. That's part of what Zion does is we're looking ahead.

Starting point is 00:17:51 What's three, five, 10 years down the road look like? How do we best serve our customers? But I think a lot in our industry are moving towards AI and exploring it, researching it, but it's not a stampede. We're not rushing into it. We're cautiously walking into it and saying, well, where can it help? And let's try it out. So I'm excited about it.

Starting point is 00:18:11 It's a little overwhelming. I'm sure other people's like every day you, you see something like here's the 100 greatest AI plug-ins. And last night I saw Chat GPT did a bunch of plug-ins and they're going to change our life. And I'm like, it's just too much. It's overload sometimes. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:18:25 Exactly. And that's, I mean, that's really why this kind of show even exists, right? Because like what you said, Jim, every day there's so many new breakthroughs that can actually change how you do business, but you do have to take it slowly, cautiously and optimistically. So, Jim, thank you again for bringing that. optimism and looking into the future and helping us, I've personally just been wanting to talk to someone who can tell me more about these humanoid robots. So thank you for doing that. And thank you so much for joining the show today.

Starting point is 00:18:53 Yeah, you're welcome. Thanks for having. All right. Perfect. So thank you for tuning in, whether you watch live, listening to the podcast or signed up for the newsletter. Please check out your everyday AI.com. We're going to have a lot more from the conversation that we talked with Jim about in the newsletter. So we hope to see you tomorrow and every day at everyday AI. Thanks. 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

Starting point is 00:19:38 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.

Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 18: What Happens When AI and Supply Chains Collide?

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