Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 293: How AI Can Create New Economic Opportunities in Your City

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

When we think AI and jobs, we think displacement. Like... how many jobs might AI take from us humans? But what if we start flipping that script a bit. Why? If we leverage AI in the right ways, it can actually be a driver for local and regional economic development. Joining us to discuss is Xiaochen Zhang, the Chief Responsible AI Officer &. Executive Director AI 2030. Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan and Xiaochen questions on AI and economicsRelated Episodes: Ep 222: The Dispersion of AI Jobs Across the U.S. – Why it mattersEp 224: AI and its Impact on Society – How it might lookUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:1. AI in Local Economic Opportunities2. Overcoming Challenges for AI Deployment in Cities3. Specific Examples of AI Innovations4. Impact of AI on Employment5. AI Adoption Strategy in BusinessTimestamps:01:10 Daily AI news03:50 About Xiaochen and AI 203006:07 AI will replace jobs, impacting security.07:00 IMF report: 80 million jobs replaced, AI emergence10:15 Utilize AI to enhance your business strategy.15:03 AI's impact on oil industry is key.17:46 engage externally, leadership enablement.21:15 Leverage AI for collaborative industry models and growth.26:04 Raise AI awareness, empower talent, innovate responsibly.Keywords:Chicago AI Week, AI innovation, community, collaboration, Everyday AI Show, AI newsletter, Jordan Wilson, Xiaochen Zhang, local economic opportunities, AI use cases, go-to-market strategy, AI branding, stakeholders, AI awareness, AI training, new economic opportunities, DeepMind, Harvard researchers, virtual rat, artificial brain, neuroscience research, Luma AI, Dream Machine, AI text to video tool, digital avatar, AI Steve, British parliament, AI 2030, job displacement, IMF reportsSend 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. When we talk about AI, a lot of that talk is often on job displacement.

And, you know, will AI take my job? And, you know, although there may be job displacement, I think we don't talk enough about what happens on the other side of that. And how AI can actually create new economic opportunities in your city. It's something I'm extremely excited to talk about. today on Everyday AI. What's going on, y'all? My name's Jordan. I'm the host of Everyday AI, and this is for you. We are your daily guide to learning and leveraging generative AI to grow your company and grow your career. So we do this every single day. So make sure if you're listening for the first time, go to Your EverydayAI.com. Sign up for our free daily newsletter where we recap

our conversation and our expert guest interview each and every day. So before we get started, let's do as we always do and tell you what's going on. the world of AI news. All right. So first, DeepMind and Harvard researchers have teamed up for an impressive AI discovery with rats. So DeepMind has developed a computerized rat with an artificial brain using movement data from real rats. The virtual rat could lead to breakthroughs in neuroscience research. So this virtual rat has biologically realistic and an accurate brain, making it a valuable tool for studying brain function and behavior. The digital model opens up opportunities for further AI simulations and research into neural circuits and brain disease.

All right. We're going on the other side for our second piece of AI news because we have another new SORA competitor. So Luma AI has launched Dream Machine, a powerful AI text video tool capable of generating videos from simple text descriptions. So this is some aims to revolutionize the video production industry by making it more accessible. and efficient. So yes, this is literally the second major competitor to Open AI's SORA, but SORA is not yet released to the public. So earlier this week, we talked about Kling, which is only accessible right now if you have a valid Chinese phone number. However, this new tool, Dream Machine from Luma AI, is available now for everyone. So it's actually

very impressive and is already SORA quality, which is actually, actually kind of concerning because people are looking at it and saying, okay, this is actually could fool a lot of people that be used for deepfakes, misinformation, disinformation, et cetera. However, you can generate up to 120 frames in 120 seconds, so about four seconds of video in two minutes. However, users are reporting right now. It's taking more than an hour at time for generating just because of crazy demand. So we'll have a link so that you can check that out in our newsletter. Last but not least, Parliament could be getting a new AI member. So a digital avatar named AI Steve is running for a seat in the British Parliament.

The avatar is based on a real person entrepreneur Steve Endicott and is programmed to generate policy to suggestions and collect input from potential constituents. So AI technology, like I said, is now being used in politics. And AI Steve is created by a company called Neural Voice and is programmed to generate policy suggestions and collect input from potential constituents. All right. Well, hey, is that a politician that will now be forced to actually listen to its constituents? We'll have to wait and see. All right, but let's get into today's show. I'm extremely excited to have an industry veteran with us today on Everyday AI. So please help me welcome to the show. There we go. We have Zautchen Zhang, who is the chief responsibility AI officer and executive director of AI 2030. Zau Chen, thank you for joining the Everyday AI Show.

Thank you. And it's a great honor to just come back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, Zauchen was so good. We had to come back. We talked probably about a year ago about AI and startups. And now we have a completely new and very important conversation to have today. Zauchan, before we get started, tell everyone a little bit about your background and a little bit about AI 2030. Absolutely. And so currently as what John mentioned, that I'm running AI 2030, our main mission is trying to mainstream responsible AI and to realize the potential of AI in a meantime to minimize the negative impact of AI to humanity. And then before that, I was the global head of innovation and go-to-market at the AWS. I also worked for, organization like World Bank, United Nations, and studying universities, and started my own startup called FinTech for Good seven or eight years ago and with the main role to just build emerging technology-based adventures. Yeah. So just decades of experience. Yeah. So now has this huge group called AI 2030, some of the brightest minds in our artificial intelligence and, you know, even Zauchen working in go-to-market with, you know,

Amazon Web Services. You've, you know a lot about innovation. So with, with that in mind, how, because I think let's this answer that, that big elephant, right? The big elephant in the room is, I think when people think about artificial intelligence and generative AI, a lot of times they think of job loss, right? And people say, oh, is AI going to take my job? So, I mean, what is the answer to that. And maybe let's talk about the flip side, too, on the new economic opportunities. Yeah. And the answer is yes. A.I. is going to replace your job. And the traditional sense of job security doesn't exist anymore. And any job potentially can be replaced by AI. And that's, you know, ranging from the CEO of the company to really, you know, the technical

person to just even the janitor in the office building. So every job there is a risk that's, you know, that job will be replaced. But, you know, then there's emergence of AI and or machine and a human collaborative intelligence. This is the future where that any job will be redesigned. And that's a redesign is happening already now. And according to the, the IMF report that over 80 some million of jobs will be replaced, but by 2025 alone. But of course that, you know, from the new jobs will emerge with AI and again from IMF reports, that number is over 90 million, which is by 2025. As you can see that, you know, AI can be called as the double-thwart in the

specifically, you know, job market. And if we apply that at the city level and then the mayors and also the city governments, need to really answer that question. Do you want your city to just really, you know, be the city impact heavily negatively by AIC? That's, you know, majority of the jobs in the city disappear, where that's no new job emerged in my city. Or you want to, you know, better prepared to say that. although, you know, there are jobs are replaced, but, you know, we have more jobs created, you know, for citizens. I think there that's naturally there are a lot of things can be done to prepare the city, you know, for the future revolution.

Yeah. Yeah. And an important studies out, Jen just mentioned there. We'll be sure to share that in today's newsletter about the, you know, international monetary fund. And, you know, it says up to 60% of jobs in the West could be impacted by 2025, which is wild to think about, you know, that that's less than two years away the end of 2025. You know, what should Zhao Chen both business and city leaders be looking to do, right? Because it seems like it's been this scramble the past year to understand, you know,

generative AI and actually put it to use. But what can city and business leaders be doing to make sure that they are creating opportunity on the back end and not just focusing on productivity? Yeah, that's the start from the business. And then city actually, you know, the strategy for city is very similar to the business. And number one for the business leader is that, you know, really need to have a strategy. And I had many conversations with the CXOs of the business. And a lot of them really just don't have enough, you know, either preparation or, you know, in terms of resourcing the right people,

they themselves are not resourcing themselves to get ready to have a new type of strategy. And just two days ago in Houston, at Houston Convention, I was sharing with, you know, all the energy-related leaders and energy, all your gas. And one of the key things is that the most important AI model is the business model. So you can imagine that, you know, now that's a lot of business trying to just say, hey, if we can just a brand open AIs or, you know, other general. general generative model into my business that's it but that's really not it and it can create a lot of problem you still don't have a sustainable competitiveness and all that's really you know the number one things that are really looking to you know your AI strategy where you think that's the AI strategy number one is really you know to look into your your human resources and say do you have the

chief or AI officer and do you have people who can give you that strategy and the brand technology and business models together to redesign what had the new opportunities and what are the existing opportunity you are going to lose you know and then define what will be the first the near-term steps and a long-term step and very similar to a city and you know I was at MIT's AI summit and there that's I you know learned that's Massachusetts state and for example introduced a hundred million dollar you know AI AI budget and established you know a public private sector collaboration on like AI task force and then to really define how to leveraging you know this public budget to unlock more opportunity from the private sector budget or and then to just really build a strategy which can keep Massachusetts as continue to be a leader in AI. Similarly, that you can just look into, you know, again, I was back for the Texas

Social Enterprise Award, where that's, you know, this is also state level to recognize the type of innovation, which can really just match the demand with the supply, and a lot of those supply are AI-driven. Come back to come back to where I stay in Illinois and the Chicago. And from back door, there's a lot of the, you know, actions taken by the, you know, the state and the city governments and try to understand, you know, what are the impact and how, who can just help city and the state to do better planning

and who can really just take that, you know, plan and then to support the operation of the plan, bring new additional resources and human capital and technology into solving the city-related problems. Yeah. And hey, as a reminder to our live stream audience, we have Zouchin Zhang with us from AI 2030. So if you have questions, I think of all the people I've met, he is one of the brightest minds in artificial intelligence and how businesses can impact it. So Zautchen, something that you kind of referenced there is, you know, different.

different cities have different focuses, right? So, you know, as an example, if we talk about, you know, New York, we might think of, you know, finance and, you know, real estate and L.A. We think of entertainment and, you know, Houston. We think of energy. So, you know, when it comes to specific cities that have a main industry, I feel that AI both has the potential to be very disruptive, yet at the same time can be extremely explosive in a good way, especially when a city has a specific industry that it focused on. So how can leaders, especially when there is kind of a main driver in a city, how can they use AI to actually create those new economic opportunities? 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.adopi.com. Yeah, so that's a very good question because, you know, number one is that AI is going to impact all industry. And so then naturally, you know, from the city planning side, where that's, you know, within your main industry and how can you keep it competitive, make it competitive in the future. And again, go back to, you know, my trip in Texas. That was a very, you know, specific focus in the oil, gas and energy industry.

And the number one thing, you know, both the business and the, you know, public civil servants need to just be aware of is that, you know, this industry, number one is that the traditional business model will disappear. And, you know, many times if you have a main industry, and which means this main industry is serving existing customers, you have the current need, the current demand, the current demand, priorities which may drive you close eye for future oriented planning and the resourcing and I think a number one thing for for you know the both public and private sector is to really you know understand and also balance the short term and the long-term goal and really just the you know from that balance basically to just include AI-related impact business model design as a priority. And as of now, still, you know, from many conversations that business leaders in those major

industry, in those cities, and still have not realized how much and then their own industry is going to be impacted by AI, they're still trying to solve the current, you know, customer problems that they are solving well today. So I think that's number one, which is critical. Number two is really, you know, identify who are your external innovators you can collaborate with. And during the, you know, AI age, naturally that controlability will be very different. Many, many, you know, business that don't have controlability of their fate. And for example, if, you know, in your industry that, you know, large-length model is the only way that, you know, you can just reinventing your business. And naturally, that's a foundational model.

There are only, you know, very few organizations can just working on foundational model. Naturally, you will lose the control. So how can you just be comfortable? by making your decision and together with working in collaboration with the innovators outside of your organization. How can you design a process to engage externally, bring that insights and that new business model into your business that becoming important? And the third part, which is also important, again, go back to people where that, you know,

I heard so many times at the technical level. level where that's the people, you know, who are excited about AI, they are not enabled by their leadership to just, you know, taking on actions. And I give you an example every day and I receive at least 20 to 30, you know, email or request, you know, there are great talent who want to join AI 2030 because they cannot do the type of job and interact with type of. expertise on AI. They got frustrated. They want to push the boundary, but they are not incentivized. They are not enabled, empowered to do so. I think that is just a meeting opportunity for many of the businesses. You know, another thing, Zau Chen, that I think about, especially when it comes to local economic opportunity, right, because I feel so much of the conversation around of AI is either job displacement or productivity, right? But I think that AI has the potential

to solve many problems that, you know, local communities or cities have faced and maybe have been unable to address, you know, as an example, you know, traffic, crime, safety, etc. How do you see that playing out, you know, once, you know, once kind of city leaders can understand and actually leverage the technology. But how do you see that playing out at the city level on how AI can actually help solve some of these problems? Yeah, I will just go to the upcoming Chicago AI conference. The reason I mentioned that is this is exactly where that's,

when you talk about any other type of conference, and it can only focus one thing. But because you are talking about AI, naturally it impacts all industry. So we have business leaders who will talk about how AI is transforming banking. And then we have leaders who talk about, you know, how AI is just reinventing the real asset.

And then we have also leaders who talk about, you know, how AI is helping them to just, just do media, content creation, different. So as you can see from the examples where that there are a lot of interesting use cases and stories and success for use cases already being tested by many of the industry business leaders. And just from the CT side, how can you just really bring those use cases together? from different industry and informing and bring together other type of ecosystem players and formulate a collaborative model, getting them, you know, working together. I think that would be the key. And because the Biden update, every industry leaders think that they are

empowered or they are being impacted by AI. Naturally, AI is something, you know, bigger than a small individual company and I think from the public sector how you can bring you know businesses together that becoming a unique asset and I see that for city and the state government and the unique competitive advantage is that if a city or a state government designed a process and also have you know a methodology to systematically bring bring in mind from the academic system to together with the industry leaders from across industry together and then to formulate new business models and the new exciting, you know, early stage pilot task and I think that will just help the city to remain to be competitive in the future.

You know, you bring up a super interesting angle there's out Chen, you know, kind of how cities need to kind of really find and exploit that competitive advantage and to use AI to design a process around it. So it almost sounds similar like a go-to-market strategy, right? Like, you know, tapping into your background there at AWS. is that how cities should be looking at AI? Like it is a brand new kind of product or service that they're bringing to their local economy. And should they kind of be taking a similar approach as a company with a big new product or service going to market? Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, then we go back to, you know, city need to redefine what is your brand.

and what is your main card you have to play. And if you have that brand, you want to see how that brand being impacted by AI. And then you need to design new products, and which is at a city level that's basically, you know, is still this industry or it's a different industry. And if you, you know, by the end of day, you know, city also need to understand what is the key problem.

that's my city, the industry or business in my city, help to solve. That those, you know, custom problems and citizens problems are changing and with the emerging technology. And then, you know, to define, understand that's the problem and align the right business or solutions or innovators together to really design and deploy new solutions becoming important. And there that's, you know, yeah, as what we're, you said, you know, city and the state need to really have people who can help the city to really do go to market, to enhancing that brand, to bring together the right stakeholders, and also, you know, bring them together to do the right things. And then that can, you know,

help the city to remain competitive, remain just, you know, provide quality citizens services in the future. A great question here from Sean saying any, so Sean, thanks for joining us from YouTube, saying any advice on how to bring along city leaders who have high negative emotion about AI in low information. Sean saying there is a pushback in some corners, but they really just lack knowledge. What's the advice there, Zauchin? Yeah, so let's go back to AI 2030. Why did we just, you know, started even from beginning?

because we saw that's exactly the gap where that's you know from you know although we've focused on responsible AI but you know just for AI side a lot of you know similar gaps and when we talk about mainstream responsible or even mainstream AI and then naturally we are looking at the different gaps existing in the system number one is the awareness gap and number two is the talent gap number three is the tooling gap no matter you just want to to take AI responsibly and you need to first just raising awareness that from the leadership to your technical level and everyone needs to really just aware of you know how to do AI or how to do AI responsibly that's just at the you know the leadership level for both public and private

sector and you know we organize a lot of events and promote different membership we give you know empower members to really just you you know, raising awareness on AI. Then from the talent side, that you need to really resource the right talent to be able to do it, help you to think, help you to do it, help you even to report back. So there that's, you know, from the, you know, looking at in your city and what is the key AI-related problems and align, you know, the right innovators around it, provide that tooling. and that is very important.

I'm involved as a core partner for United Nations Climate Change Convention and then for you and for you and triple C, you know, to promote future desirable green city and then they're planning for the city challenge with the city challenge to map out you know what are the desirable outcome that the mayors in different emerging market cities are thinking and then to bring the right innovation using the challenge to match them. And that's a good example, how the tooling side, you know, can, that the gap can be filled. Then the last one is from the, you know, the talent part from training. And from the, you know, private sector side that we identify a number of K-change makers,

like in the board of directors, executives. Those are the people who really make significant decisions. and whose knowledge are not there or whose awareness are not there. And then we, you know, in July we are going to deliver the responsible AI for border director training and then to enable the director to have the right framework, you know, to really help, you know, the company they advised to, you know, move forward, not backward, you know, to take on AI responsibly. And I think those are the key things that, you know, help.

them to address awareness, talent, and the tooling gaps. Those are the things that's what we do and we have seen early results, you know, engaging with different business. Jeez. Where else can you get such a well-thought-out answer, you know, on that, aside from Zau-chan and here on everyday AI, but, you know, Zachan, you said a lot about your city, you know, your city. But speaking of our city, Chicago, we're both from Chicago.

So your kind of group is putting on the Chicago AI week starting June 24th. So we'll be sharing about that in the newsletter today. I'm excited to be chairing a panel there. But Zao Chen, as we wrap up, right, because we've covered so much, you know, talking about how traditional job security doesn't exist anymore and how on the flip side cities can be using AI to create new economic opportunities and how it's almost like a go-to-market strategy. But Zautian, as we wrap up today's show, what's the one main takeaway that you want people to understand when it comes to how AI can create new economic opportunities?

Yeah, I think, you know, probably the easy thing for me to do that is, you know, come to join us, you know, on June 25th to 26th, you know, to check out to the Chicago AI conference. and then also joined the 1871 AI Innovation Summit on June 27th. And then we have June 28th, the Web 3Con. And the reason why we designed this week-long program is that no single person should just, you know, give any, you know, individual, business, or government a strategy. And just, you know, to blend yourself in a community, and a community of innovators, a community of thought leaders, a community of, you know, doors. And I think there, during this week-line program, we bring the Web3-related experts, financial service,

health care, media, and all coming together. I think that is the unique, you know, opportunity where that if anyone want to learn about AI and want to just, you know, also do something to, you know, enhance the contrability of your faith in, you know,

in not being disrupted and also develop a strategy and know that who you can collaborate with. I think that is just from one time investment

and you will be able to expose to all of them. Zao Chen, so much good information as always. It was great to have you on the Everyday AI show.

We really appreciate your time. Thank you. All right, y'all, as a reminder, a lot of great information. We're going to be sharing a lot more about what Zauchen talked about and other related things in today's newsletter. So make sure check out your show notes. It's always there. Or just go to your everyday AI.com.

Sign up for that free daily newsletter. Thank you for tuning in today. We hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more everyday AI. Thanks, y'all. Thank you. 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,

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