Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 392: AI-First Workplaces - What You Need to Know

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

There’s very few people in the world as qualified as Xuedong Huang to talk about AI-first workplaces. For real. Now the CTO of Zoom, Xuedong (Known as XD) previously spent 30+ years bringing productivity software working at Microsoft. So, what do we need to know? Xuedong's gonna share all! Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan and Xuedong questions on AI in the workplaceUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTopics Covered in This Episode:1. Changes in the Workplace Due to AI2. Adapting an AI-First Workplace3.Integration of GUI and Conversational User InterfaceTimestamps:00:00 Technology, AI transform modern workplace productivity.06:42 Effective transition to future work with AI.08:33 Daily assistant enhances productivity and information consumption.11:18 AI changes productivity in meetings, reading, writing.16:58 Appreciate expert insights on strategic AI application.17:35 Charting future for widely-used technology products.20:42 Unlearn habits; embrace AI in the workplace.25:46 Hope and advice for AI-driven workplaces.Keywords:Zoom, AI Companion, Generative AI, AI First Workplace, AI Tools, Large Language Models, Productivity, Technology, Microsoft, Google, Google Docs, Microsoft Word, Internet, Workplace, Mobile Phones, Web, Cloud, Action Items, Meetings, email, Typewriter, Desktop Computing, Collaboration, Task Tracking, Anthropic, Google Gemini, GBT 4, GUI, AUI, Web SearchSend 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 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. The workplace has changed so much, right?

I remember when I first started working in the early days of the internet, things seemed very slow. Or even back when, you know, I was on a word processor. But things have changed so much recently with technology, obviously with the web and cloud and mobile phones. But generative AI, I think, is maybe bigger. than all of them in terms of how we work, how we think, how we become productive in the workplace, right? And I think so much of how we work is dependent on what we work on, right? Are you using Google? Are you using, you know, Microsoft? Are you using maybe Zoom, right? So that's why I'm excited today to have an industry veteran and a leader at Zoom to really talk about AI-first

workplaces, like what does that even mean and what you actually need to know to still be productive and to really get the most out of your day. All right. So I'm excited for today's conversation. If that sounded like you, right, if you're wondering, how can I be more productive with all of these AI tools and what does work even look like in the future? Well, you're in the right place. My name's Jordan Wilson and welcome to Everyday AI. This is a daily live stream podcast and free daily newsletter helping us all keep up with what's going on in the world of AI because it is a ton. But how we can actually learn from it, understand it and use it to get ahead to grow our companies and our careers. So thank you. If you are listening on the podcast, please go to your everyday

AI.com. Sign up for the free daily newsletter every single day. We give you everything you need to know as well as recapping all of the important insight. So if you miss anything from our guest today, don't worry, it's going to be in our free daily newsletter as well as the news. Yeah, normally we do this all live, but you know, we got people joining us from all over the world. So technically pre-recorded, but debuting live. So enough chit-chat. I am super excited to bring on our guest for today. So everyone out there, please help me in welcoming. There we go. We have XD. Wong, the chief product officer at Zoom. XD., thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI Show. Jordan, thank you for giving me an opportunity. All right. I'm excited. So

So let's do this. Let's start at the very end, maybe XD, and then we'll rewind our way back. But let's just start with the big question right now. What do people actually need to know about being an AI first workplace? Well, I think the best way to share that story is to review the three eras we all went through. Where was a student for more than 30 years ago, I was a little. was using typewriter to write paper.

And I remember if I have a spending on work, I got to use the liquid paper to correct that. Microsoft really helped change that with desktop computing. And I wrote a book using Microsoft Word, up to 800 pages published by printers. That was amazing. That was really, really huge productivity left. Because the whole paper, the whole book,

The whole book, 800 pages, formatted exactly the same style we want it. With the internet emerging, Google brought us Google Docs and collaboration improvement. That really just give a lot of people the benefit to have multiple people working on the same document and collaborated better. So the internet era created another productivity suite that are prominent as well, just like Microsoft Office, that did lead that stop computing. With generally AI, this is absolutely exciting new era. In the general AI, Zoom is transforming the company from a meeting company to a productivity company to the AI native productivity suite. I'll give you the example how I already benefit from AI companion. Zoom introduced AI company last year.

So really, I can't believe without AI campaigning myself. Wherever I have a meeting, this is one of the most important business function, I do not need to bring my chief of staff to the meeting like I used to do at Microsoft, where I was an Azure AICTO. So AI compendium will transcribe and summarize everything we talked about in the meeting. The most important thing is AI accompanying will identify next steps, action items I need to follow. Once I got that set of action items, that will flow into Zoom docs. So if the follow task is for me to write a block, Zoom AI campaigning will write the dog draft.

on my behalf. So I have the block. I just need to touch it. I'm done. Can you imagine the journey from you have to worry about every single letter with typewriter to worry about the whole style of formatting every chapter with heading and italic style using Microsoft Word, which is you collaborate with a number of people on the same document using Google Docs. Now is AI companion. to write on your behalf from meeting to dogs to chat that whole life cycle is already

there for you to save more time to be more productive. And if you want to actually have some brainstorming idea here, campaigning as we launched in October, we bring not only work information

but also web information seamlessly together. It's so seamless that you can ask the air companion the question. A company will bring the right information and your fingertips. You can incorporate that into Zoom docs. So actually, like that, that was such a great,

like, you know, almost history lesson for all of us, right? And yeah, thank you for, you know, sharing your background, you know, working for, you know, 30 years at Microsoft, you know, just goes to show you that you've been through, right? And you've been helping lead, you know, this slow, but steady kind of transition into the future of work. You brought up one thing, right, that you no longer

need to bring your chief of staff, right, to meetings because you, hey, you're using, you know, Zoom's AI companion, right? Like even for me, that's personally something I love, right? Having, you know, we've been paying, you know, paid Zoom customers for years and, you know, being able to talk to the Zoom AI companion for me in the middle of a meeting, right? Cause let's be honest, everyone out there,

get distracted when you're in meetings, right? Especially when they're virtual, an important notification comes up, you know, you're writing notes about something else. And I love going in there and saying like, hey, what, like, tell me everything that has been said so far and what I still need to, you know, worry about. So do you think that this kind of AI first workplace that we're living in now and in the future, does it kind of give everyone a chief of staff, right? Is that kind of what it's like to be, you know, an AI-first workplace? Absolutely. I really feel that this AI campaign is getting to know me every day.

And not just meeting, we can democratize to help get the action item identified. If you need to write up something, you can brainstorm with AI companion. A.Campion can really write a better draft. If you're not happy, you can be rude. go and work harder, make that change. A.A. Company will just do that on your behalf. So it's really becoming a daily assistant, whether it's writing or reading,

those are the two most important functions, right? And for anyone, if you want to be productive, you have to consume information. A.A. Company will help you to consume information with the context you are doing in Zoom workplace. If you want to write up something, the air company got the whole context, we're also right on your behalf. A lot of people in the past, they go to chat GPT to do things.

I want to share the story. This is almost analogous to British invented steam engine that started the first industrial revolution. If you run American business here on this side, you want to use that sleep engine, you have to travel across Atlantic. That's the power of the steam engine. then come back, we changed that. Air accompanying will actually be part of your experience. You can really get the context into a company seamlessly,

whether it's from the work or web. It's a seamless. You do not need to talk between web or work or travel across Atlantic to do something there, then come back. So we work with perplexity. We have a seamless integration to bring their capabilities, capability on web search into the Zoom workplace contacts.

So this is really a game changer. 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. You know, you kind of hit this big area of how we all work, right? So many of us traditionally have spent times and so much time in meetings. Right. And then generally what we do is we read, right? And then we write, right? These are, and there's obviously thinking and connecting of the dots, you know, but like along that line, right. But I feel that those are three areas that we spend as, as, you know, knowledge working professionals. We spend so much time in those three areas. So, you know, now with things like, you know, AI companion and we have, you know, large

language models built into everything, you know, perplexity for web search and in all. all of these things. So I'm wondering even for you, for you personally, right, when you look at those, you know, meetings, reading and writing, how has, you know, AI even changed how you work and how you spend your time in those three areas? And maybe, I mean, I'm guessing you've become more productive in those areas. And if so, where are you then spending that additional time, you know, that maybe you used to spend more in those three areas? So, One more things I want to add in addition to reading, writing is to connect with people. Zoom is extremely good.

We do bring people together. With Zoom workplace and air accompanying, we help you to get information in the right place and the right time. Without traveling across Atlantic, which is the example. Ananaical example I share. Because of that capability to have information flow naturally, I want to emphasize into every corner of a Zoom workplace. Zoom Workplace got meeting, chat, email, canandering, and docs. The actual item extract from the meeting or from Zoom docs or from your email is monitored, harvested, updated. by AI companion, just like your chief of staff.

You know, if you want to really get more productive, you have to focus on what is you have to do, what are the action items, what are the tasks you have to track. Zoom AI company is like a super AI agent, is following and tracking the life cycle of the action item and help you to get work down, faster, better. This is how we can dramatically improve productivity, not just focus on formatting the document, make this slide more beautiful, or enable two people

editing one page. Those are all good capabilities. We love all of them. You know, Google, Microsoft really created this amazing productivity suite that helped all of us. But now with Zoom AI companion or Zoom Workplace, we're moving the bar much, much higher. We help you to focus on getting worked down, focus on action item, is a system of action with a task-oriented tracking. And all the trafficking, you know, creating document, creating a blog, or write a piece of email, can be helped with AI accompanying,

with all the context information incorporated from your history, what do you do. So we create this unique use interface. I want to highlight graphic use interface has been dominant, dominant for so long, right? It's the representative, whether it's the Mac or Windows or Office. Graphic user interface is iconic. Chatter GPT changed the time. Open AI conversational interface as defined by chatty-gbt really open the imagination for everyone. Zoom Workplace is trying to bring those two together. What I could

call AILED user interface or AUI. That will seamless combine graphic user interface and the conversational user interface seamlessly with information flowing from both. So with Zoom Workplace, if you can chat with AI companion, you can get the work done. But Zoom Workplace also can bring up traditional graphic user interface together.

For example, if you want to schedule meeting, the calendar application, application will be part of that experience. You can stay intact with the graphic user interface, but you are right conversational user interface understand what is you're doing. So we are bringing those capabilities together. That's the second story I want to share.

The most important one is we are taking this effective AI approach. That means we are bringing the best model from everywhere. Unlike many companies, they only use one model. We are using Google Germanai, Matter Lama, anthropic model, and the Open AI GPD4. All together, massage the way that will create the most relevant, most productive action-oriented information flow. That is the iconic differentiation of a swim workplace.

This is why we think we will be the new kid on the blog or productivity lift. We respect internet era, Google Docs, desktop era, Microsoft Office, they will be there. They're very, very important tooling. But this generally AI capability as represented by AI companion from Zoom is going to be unmatched. This is why I love having, you know, super smart people on the everyday AI show. I didn't even know that, you know, so you have a almost like a. a mixture of experts set up, right, with the, all the big model makers, uh, love that.

And you know, using, I think it's so smart, you know, to be able to apply the right AI solution at the right time in the right place. Uh, you know, when you talk about productivity, right, you don't want to be using, you know, model A if it's not really good at task B. Uh, so I think that's great. So one thing though that, that I want to ask you is, you know, you are the chief product officer of, of a product. I'm sorry.

I'm the chief of technology office. Oh, sorry, thank you. Thank you for, you know, correcting me on that. So the chief technology officer for a product that hundreds of millions of people use every single day. How do you, you know, how can you chart out the future, right? Because I think generally, you know, when you're, you know, trying to understand, hey, what comes next? And I'm sure, you know, maybe your your time at Microsoft is maybe a little different than your time at Zoom. Because things move so fast, right?

even those models that you just talked about, those four, you know, kind of, you know, large language model makers, they've all had huge updates in the last week. How can you keep up and kind of chart ahead, you know, how hundreds and millions of people are working? They are really simple. The only three things as I talked about.

Let me just summarize. Number one, as we trying to create the AI backend, We not only use the best model out there, but we do federate them together. In addition to that, we're also creating our efficient, small language model. That will bring the context, everything to work together with the large language models in the cloud.

So that is really a major differentiation. So that's a part of our Microsoft and Google. Microsoft co-pilot most use open-air GPU4. It's a great model. and Google most use the Germanine. It's great model. But we are using anthropic, it's great model. In addition to open AI and the German eye and the meta.

So we built on the success of this powerful set of models in addition to Zoom's own small language model, working as one system like agent to deliver value. This is why we offer a match experience to do that. to track the next steps from your meeting to curate and harvest that action-oriented information flow. That is the backend. The second thing is really, we are trying to bring GUI,

graph use interface, traditional GUI, and chat interface, conversational interface, similar to together in Zoom Workplace, will bring that information flow from both to enhance productivity. Number three, because of the UI innovation and the backend AI innovation, we are going to focus on action or render the task information flow. This means the whole life cycle of what you need to worry would be helped by Zoom AI companion.

The whole life cycle, I really want to emphasize that. It's like you are agent, focus on tracking the task you have to accomplish. for the whole life cycle of that task. Those three things combined will make Zoom AI companioning and Zoom workplace, the new kid on the block. So, you know, speaking of the whole life cycle, XD, one thing, you know, I've literally, I've trained thousands of people on, you know, using large language models.

And, you know, one thing I'm always talking about, you know, especially when it comes to, you know, AI first workplaces. is being able to unlearn things, right, to unlearn good habits. As an example, I'm someone that generally during meetings, because I used to be a journalist, I would type a ton of notes, right? And now when I'm on Zoom calls, right, I don't. So I've had to go through this process of unlearning good habits and knowing like,

okay, you know, I have, you know, large language models now that are doing certain tasks for me. What's your best piece of advice for people, you know, maybe who are mid-career and they've been, you know, successful, you know, in the workplace for maybe a decade or two? What best advice would you have to them on how to really lean into, you know, this AI first workplace that now we're all living in? I think the best advice I have is make sure we all have that critical thinking, independent of critical eyes. because AI companion or any other large language model, they do hallucinate. So just like you're working with someone, the person may not be 100% accurate all the time.

So that independent critical thinking is super important. Always keep that in mind when you work with AI companion, which is a new species. Just like you're working with a new person, you have to maintain that critical thinking and the judgment. But for the drafting, to get 90% of the work down is amazing. That 10% hallucination is going to be there for all of us to be aware and manage. You know, I just thought of something that I generally don't think about, you know, when you say,

hey, you know, AI models are always going to hallucinate. And I think, you know, people have kind of gotten used to that. But, you know, I'm curious, what maybe new skills, right? Because you're someone that's been, you know, working at some of the largest companies for the majority of your career. What new skills are you looking to develop, right? Is maybe a new skill, you know, being able to spot hallucinations in AI models. Or maybe are you even personally creating new creative skills that maybe you didn't have the time for previously. But you know, I'm wondering as we become more productive with tools like, you know,

Zoom's AI companion and, you know, your whole suite of products, what new skills are you even trying to develop right now? Is the ability to ask the right question. That's related to critical thinking. And large language model, the output of large language model, or generally I, really depends on what kind of questions you ask. Raising the right question will help you to reach the right outcome. That's interesting. That makes, I mean, that makes sense, right? Like, yeah, like I personally spend so much time, you know,

speaking to large language models, right? And I think sometimes I just try to personally, I just trying to double down on productivity, right? It's like, oh, you know, I have all this time. I should be more productive, but I think what you said there's important, right? You have to maybe use some of that extra time or headspace to, think more creatively and ask the right questions. I think that's paramount.

So actually, we've covered a lot in today's conversation, right? You brought us through a history of the workplace. You gave us a glimpse into the future of, you know, these AI first work workplaces. And you kind of shared, you know, how Zoom is, is, you know, fitting into that equation. But, you know, as we wrap up, maybe what is the one most important piece of advice that you have for people on how

how to still succeed and business leaders to grow their business in AI first workplaces. I think the incumbents is going to struggle. If you look in the history, it's always the challenger that it can take a full advantage of this new forces. Generally, I really create new forces at the level of the playing field. So I'm excited that we are, absolutely on the right time to take advantage of Genuity AI, create a productivity that will really help everyone on this planet to perform much better, to gain more time, and with better connection to almost everything,

not just to people, better connection to almost everything. Is anyone else pumped up? Is that just me? Like X-D just gave me some, some hope for humanity, right? And I love that, you know, the the challengers can take advantage. advantage of that because I think so many so many of us out there you know we are in that challenger position so actually you just gave us I think some great advice on how we can really take advantage of the best of what generative AI has to offer so thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to help us understand kind of the future of AI first workplaces we appreciate your time

and insights my pleasure thank you jolly all right and hey everyone as a reminder we went over a lot as we always do. If you didn't catch every single thing in there, because that one was jam-packed of great information. Yeah, maybe you didn't have your Zoom AI assistant dropping in, taking notes. Don't worry. We'll have that all in our newsletter. So make sure you go to your EverydayAI.com.

Sign up for the free daily newsletter. And we'll 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,

orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premier 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.

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