Founder's Story - The Future of AI-Human Collaboration with Allius AI and Tianna Linton | S2 Ep: 46

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

Tianna Linton, CEO and founder of Allius AI, is at the forefront of integrating AI with human productivity to revolutionize business operations. With a background in running a marketing agency, Tianna recognized the inefficiencies in current software solutions and sought to create a seamless, all-in-one platform. Allius AI is designed to streamline mundane tasks, allowing businesses to focus on high-level strategy and creativity, thus redefining productivity.Tianna's journey into AI stemmed from her personal need for a more efficient system to manage her marketing agency. Frustrated with the complexity of existing software, she envisioned a solution that combines the simplicity of ChatGPT with the functionality of a comprehensive CRM. Her platform, Allius AI, serves as an intelligent business assistant, capable of handling tasks from data retrieval to email management, thereby enhancing overall efficiency and user experience. With Allius AI, Tianna aims to make technology accessible and effective for businesses of all sizes, ensuring that the future of AI-human collaboration is both innovative and inclusive.Our Sponsors:* Check out PrizePicks and use my code FOUNDERS for a great deal: www.prizepicks.com* Check out Rosetta Stone and use my code TODAY for a great deal: www.rosettastone.comAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Hey everyone, welcome back to Founders Story. If you've ever watched the show, you've heard we are a huge proponent of AI, but not just AI, but humans and AI. And how can we collaborate in the future to make you more efficient, your employees, your business? I mean, these things are incredible. And I'm excited today because we're going to talk with Tiana Linton, who is the CEO and founder of Elias AI. Tiana, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You got the name right. I know that you're redefining productivity. You're really doing this collaboration between AI and human, and you want to make business and people better in the future. Before we dive into your story and why you're even doing this, and what are you solving, because I know it's a need, let's talk about you. What made you not only want to get into AI,

but how do you see the future of this AI-human collaboration? Getting into AI, I kind of fell into it. I don't have a technical background, but I own a marketing agency. So part of what we have to do is set up the backend systems for our clients to ensure that any leads that come in are able to be handled well and not get lost. And I have spent six, seven years navigating different softwares, trying to figure out the best solutions. And they're all pretty miserable to use. I find that I want a one-stop solution. Most of them require multiple plugins in order to do what I want.

And I have ADHD. So having a thousand different things on my dashboard, I get distracted. It drives me insane. I need it to be simple, easy, effective. And when AI started coming out, I was like, I bet I could use that to solve my problems. And so I started building it conceptually for my agency. And then after talking to a lot of my clients, they were like, no, we're going to want that as well. And it just kind of grew from there. But when it comes to human and AI collaboration, I think it could go one of two ways. One of them is pretty doom and gloom. And

I think that's what happens if we don't actually take control of what we're using technology for. If you look at what happened with social media, I don't think that we can really rely on the government to be able to be fast enough to keep up with the pace that technology evolves to put regulations in place. I think they will eventually catch up, but tech's always going to be faster. So if you think about AI and its capacity to learn on its own, I think it gets concerning. So my entire platform is that AI can be an amazing tool, but we have to remember that as a tool. Things like replacing creative work seem silly because that's the stuff that humans enjoy. That's what really fills people up. And I think that if we can look at AI as a tool and look at it as something to be cautious with, then it can advance us substantially.

But the caveat of that is if we are not intentional about how we use it, what information we give it, the restrictions that we put in around it and including safeguards, then I think it can be extremely detrimental long-term for humanity. I was reading yesterday, and thank you for sharing that, that OpenAI might be on the verge of AGI and that they're talking about, they're working on the reasoning part right now. So how do you feel about when people say AI is going to take over all the jobs or even though maybe it shouldn't take over a creative job companies might do that because maybe they want to save money or you know for a variety of reasons but how do you feel about this statement some people say take over every job some people say it won't I think it will take over quite a few jobs I do think that there's going to be jobs that open up there's a lot of opportunity but I think that for most longer horizon than people realize.

Simply because not only does it still make mistakes, a lot of people have a lot of resistance to implementing it in its full capacity. I think that resistance is well placed. I think a lot of the jobs. So the last few months I've been practicing how to learn Spanish because it is really a passion of mine. I've been using Rosetta Stone. Why? Because it immerses you in the language without having translation. So you can really learn to speak, listen and think in that language. It starts naturally with words, then phrases, and soon you're forming sentences designed for long-term retention, which has always been my issue. They even have a built-in true accent speech recognition that acts like a personal trainer for your accent. It gives you instant feedback on your pronunciation. It has flexible learning on desktop and mobile. You can fit language learning right into your schedule anytime, anywhere. Here's the

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Why wouldn't you use an AI to do that? It's going to be faster. It's going to be better, more accurate. But then you think about things like assistance. Okay, it can take a lot of your workload off your plate, but that just means that you can get better at the actual human interaction side. So I talk a lot about reskilling. I think that organizations should be thinking about that right

now. One of our clients is an HR consultancy, and it's not something that any of her clients have even started to consider. But I think people think that AI is a lot like the internet, where it's not actually going to do anything miraculous yet, and then it's going to have this big bubble that pops. And it's like, I think it's different, simply because the internet was not self-learning. You know what I mean? I think the idea of having a self-learning tool can be really beneficial, and that's what we're building into our CRM product management platform. But as a human being, you have an ability to interact with people in a way that technology can't. Like if you think about how many times you've gotten like the robo caller

when you've called like the store and you're just like, I swear to God, if I don't reach a person, I'm going to lose my mind. Like just pressing zero. Think about that experience and then imagine that in every single customer service role, sales role, like people want to talk to people and I don't think that's ever going to change. So there is security at least for jobs that are in that space. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. And I really enjoyed the perspectives of what the future is going to be like. And I think businesses

i mean businesses are prime to benefit right now the great thing is we don't have to wait you know a few months a few years like you said the internet took many years to get to this point we don't have to wait now we can use ai we can leverage it as business owners in our business and we can maximize productivity we can make more money from this right now so tell me more about how your app your software is allowing business owners to be more productive and I I enjoyed your story of of the reasons why you created it and the problems you're solving but where do you see this going in the future so it's not only just productivity but it's overall.

Think about the amount of mundane tasks that you do throughout your day that take up time, whether it's sending email, looking through notifications, everything from populating the data that you need, trying to navigate the platforms that you're currently using. Imagine if you took ChatGPT and the way that you just currently using. Imagine if you took chat GPT and the way that you just ask it for what you need. And that was almost your own business assistant built into your software. Um, the way that I've structured it this way, where it's basically like an empty dashboard is because I want it to be something where I can be like, Hey, Allie, that's the AI's name in our software. Can you bring up the data from the last sales call I had with so-and-so?

And then she can populate it. I can look through it. I can ask her to send an email. I want it to feel and be as if I have an executive assistant right there that can do all of these tasks that I just want to talk and get it done. That way I can focus on the things that I need to do that require a lot more of my high level thinking and strategy. So it can fit within pretty much any business that you could think of, just simplifying and streamlining things. Because the way that it's going to process data, not only is going to give you more accurate reporting, but think of how much time is wasted also with employees having to interact in a way where technology, it's supposed

to make you more productive. But if you really think about most of the tech that you've had to implement, at least in the beginning, but for a long time, it doesn't make you more productive at all. It takes up way more time than it's worth. Um, one of my colleagues always makes fun of me because she's like, you have us using these systems, but then you refuse to use them. And I'm like, yeah, cause I hate them. So I'm building my own. Um, I won't use them. It's takes up too much time. There's only so much time in a day. So, um, it's, it's as ifGVT and like Siri had a baby and then you add it in Salesforce. And I don't want it to be like you have to have a thousand different plugins. Initially, you'll probably have options to add a lot of plugins, but as it grows, I want it to be

a standalone software where it's the exact same thing on your computer, your tablet, your phone, easy to use. Part of that was because technology, as it advances, it almost becomes somewhat discriminatory towards older people in our organizations because they didn't grow up with this tech. They don't know how to use it. It's advancing so quickly. But if you just have a model where you ask it for what you need and it can give you what you need and it's intelligent then it almost opens up an entire realm for people who hate tech because it scares them or it's advanced for them so much technology that we use that i hate too and like i tell my team you have to use it but i can't stand using it and that's not good and i think many times it holds us back the learning curves there's all these things involved and then they don't want to use it. And then you get upset with them because they're not using it, even though you tell them to use it, but you're not using it. So I can really

appreciate that. And I can't wait to use the software. So I know if I go to the website, I can sign up to be on the waiting list. And I believe that you're also have some things coming down the pipeline this fall. Can you talk about that? Yeah. So we're going through a raise right now. We're in the process of building out our MVP. So the race is going to go towards getting that accomplished. And then from there, we're going to, I think it's probably an eight to nine month time horizon until we actually launch into beta. So anybody on the waitlist will have access to beta when it comes out. It is going to be limited though. So it's going to be only people on the waitlist are

going to get access purely because I think that if I can have people who are willing to give us their feedback and help us to optimize the software for how they want to use it and actually have them take more of a collaborative role, we can all build something that everybody want to use it and actually have them take more of a collaborative role we can all build something that everybody wants to use as opposed to just like me being like i know what's best i know what everyone wants you know hey i love beta testing software i think it's great the fact that people can now be collaborative with the apps and the organizations that they use is great because like you you just were talking about many times they're built given to us but we don't really even like them anyways but it's the only

thing so i appreciate that uh can't wait i'm very excited for this to come out so make sure that you join the waitlist but if people want to join that and they want to get in touch with you how can they do so so if they want to join the waitlist, it's alias.ai, A-L-L-I-U-S.ai. And then if they want to reach me, I believe my email is also on the website, so they can just connect with me there for anybody who's interested in joining on Raising Round. Amazing. alias.ai. Tiana, thank you so much for joining today and sharing your thoughts on the future of everything. It's a very exciting topic. It can be scary, but let's just make this super exciting and we can make money. We can do better right now. And what else do we want? But thank you so much for joining us today on Founders Story. Yeah. Thanks for having me.