Silicon Valley Girl: AI, Tech and Career Growth - How to Make AI Your Strategic Partner in 38 Minutes | Conor Grennan

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

In this episode of Silicon Valley Girl, Marina Mogilko sits down with Conor Grennan, Chief AI Architect at NYU Stern School of Business and founder of AI Mindset.Conor works with Fortune 500 companies and teaches thousands of business leaders how to actually work with AI—not just use it like Google. His core insight: most people aren't behind on AI because of tools, they're behind because of behavior.They break down why using AI like a search engine wastes most of its potential, how to transfer your AI memory across platforms in minutes (ChatGPT → Claude → Gemini), and what really makes candidates stand out as entry-level roles rapidly change. Conor also shares the exact frameworks he teaches at NYU for reinventing work processes with AI—and why becoming an "entrepreneur inside your organization" is the best career move you can make right now.Topics covered:Why 99% of people use AI wrong (and how to fix it)The exact query to transfer your ChatGPT memory to Claude or GeminiHow to stand out in job interviews when AI eliminates 30% of entry-level rolesWhy you should reinvent your team's process, not just your own workThe difference between "power users" and people who just ask AI questionsWhy the best time to be an entrepreneur is right nowHow to use AI without losing critical thinking skillsWhat universities will look like in 10 years (they're not going away)More from the Silicon Valley Girl: Newsletter:⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ ⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@SiliconValleyGirl⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠linkedin.com/in/marinamogilko⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Look, even if the technology doesn't change from today, it can still wipe out 25% of entry-level white-collar workforce. Connor Grennan is the chief AI architect and founder of AI mindset, a training organization helping people to adopt AI into their daily life. Reinventing a process gets noticed way more than you just doing more work. New tools drop daily. You're using it a few times in a week and wondering, am I already behind? How do you even keep up? And if I don't figure this out, my job is going to disappear?

So first of all, don't stress, right? Everybody's going crazy with, oh, I just made this into this. Don't worry about that. To me, like a power user is using it across everything from home to work and back again, and also are having long conversations because this is not Google. This is a companion. In this conversation, Connor reveals why we naturally misunderstand AI, how to transform AI from a search tool into your most powerful companion,

how to navigate the changing job market, and what skills actually matter when nobody knows where the technology is headed. Connor, thank you so much for doing this. I'm so excited to be talking to you. You're teaching thousands of future business leaders, AI. You're talking to huge companies teaching their leadership. Can you introduce yourself in 60 seconds and tell me why people should be listening to you when it comes to AI?

Thank you so much for having me. It's really an honor to be on your show here. Yeah, so I'm Connor Grennan. I am chief AI architect over at NYU Stern School of Business here in New York City and a lot of what I do is I run AI mindset, which is a training consulting organization. We train big organizations and kind of like everybody, but on a completely new way of thinking about AI.

It's a behavioral framework rather than just, hey, here's a few features and a tool that everybody should use. And the idea is when you're actually sitting with people in the room, a lot of them are just using it, you know, a couple of times a week or a few times a month or just for a couple of different things. And for queries. And for queries. Just asking questions.

So that's exactly, exactly. We can end the podcast right now. That was it, right? Like, the idea is that when they are using it, well, two things are sort of going wrong with the statistics, I think. First of all, imagine if you were in a big room and you said, hey, who here is using Excel? Every hand goes up, right? But if you say, who's using it in those at least 40 formulas and has done one half-million

dollar deal, like the three investment banker hands go up? So everybody's, quote-unquote, using it. But who's actually really using it to change how they work and how they do everything? To me, like a power user is using it across everything from home to work and back again and also using it like 30 times a day and also are having long conversations because, as you said, this is not Google. It's not Google search. Yeah.

This is a companion. Yeah. When it comes to people who are listening to this and they're like, okay, I'm using it maybe a couple times a week. And I feel like I'm falling behind because everyone around me is sharing like, oh, I just started using this new app and it transformed everything that I do. What should these people be doing now? Yeah. So first of all, don't stress, right? Everybody's going crazy with, oh, I just made this into this. Don't worry about that. The most important thing people can do is just take whatever tool they're

comfortable with. And by that, I mean, Chad GPT or Gemini or Cloud or co-pilot, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. And just start applying what they are doing using this tool. So people keep thinking, I think this is the problem why people were saving like the 10,000 prompt libraries. It didn't make any sense except FOMO, basically. But what I would say is just take this and realize I have to do a certain amount of things during the day. Here are the things that I do either at home or at work. It almost doesn't matter. And what am I doing? I'm usually just trying to figure that out by myself or maybe going to Google every once in a while. And imagine you have sort of this magical, brilliant fairy godmother next to you all the time that is just always at your fingertips.

So don't worry about what's the latest tool or GPD 5.2. What does it do? You don't need 10 PhDs. these in your pocket. You just need some help every day. And what is like the use case that you think is the most transformative? So for me, for example, asking Gem and I to read my email and put things into my calendar, that's already a game changer. I'm like really, finally. All the school emails like everything, they just go into calendar and I automatically add my husband to everything. Amazing. The best. Has there been a use case for you where you're like, oh my God, just try this and your life is going to change. You will understand the power of AI. I think for me it's really just sort of like brainstorming and having conversations.

So I do a lot of writing. And so a lot of what I do is actually do a lot of teaching and writing. Right. So in both those things, AI has been really powerful because I'm a writer by background. So I think I'm a good writer. But the idea is it can always be better. So I just take what I've already written and just throw it into like, for me, it's like clawed maybe or copilot or Gemini or chat EBT and say, just make this more readable. So I'm not asking AI to do a first draft of something, right?

because then it's hard to get the AI out of it. It's write your first draft first, always, always, always. And then just put it in and say, hey, how can I make this better? This is my audience. Like, what am I doing wrong? And for me, it's make this more readable. What are the stats are in here? That's number one.

And the second use case for me, again, me as a sort of a creator and entrepreneur, is I'm just trying to figure out, like, what am I missing? Here's what I'm doing right now. But I use, you know, and, you know, the thinking models essentially of these things. So you can kind of say like, hey, think a little longer or something like that. And we'll just give you a, it's almost like having a co-CEO or co-founder or a co-idea generator with you to say, you know what, Connor, I know you've been doing it this way this whole time, but have you thought that maybe that's flawed? And if you ask it to poke holes in your argument, it's unbelievably impactful.

Yeah. And this is the mindset change, right? Because you're going from, oh, I'm just asking questions to, I treat this as my career coach. I treat this as my co-writer. What is this mindset shift? What do you teach your students? Yeah, the mindset shift is everything, right? And mindset's a little bit of a, I don't know.

Like, I don't love the word even though my company is called AI mindset. But it's because it feels like it's kind of like nothing. But what we mean is that this is a behavioral shift. And what I mean by that is when we're going and talking to big companies, I mean, everybody from, you know, Walmart on down, right? The idea is every company tends to treat this as a digital transformation. And what a digital transformation is, you know very well. right? It's, you're taking a new product and replacing the old product, but that product kind of does the same thing, right? You had, you know, pencil and paper, now you're using Excel or you had, you know, fax machines now you're using email. The thing about that is that you're just moving from one tool to another tool that does essentially the same thing. So that's what a digital transformation is. But imagine now we have something that does something wildly differently. It's, it helps you think in a new way. Like I ask people all the time, hey, what does, you know, chat GPT replace? Because you can always say what something replaces, right? Like, you know, again, email replaced the fax machine and a hammer replaced the rock.

And you can always say what something replaces. But with Chad Chbhit, there's no answer, right? It's a new way of thinking. It doesn't, sometimes people will say Google search, but it doesn't really replace a search. It replaces a million different things. So if that's the mindset where you're like, this isn't something that's replacing something, this is as if I have a new person next to me. Right next to me.

Able to help me with anything. Like if you spill coffee on your shirt, it's going to help you. Like, if you need to brainstorm, it's going to help you. If you need to process information, it's going to help you. If you need to figure out a 12-year-old's birthday party, it's going to help you. It's so broad that narrowing it down to use cases can get overly limiting. So it's that new way of thinking. Yeah.

I heard you say, when you just write down things that you're doing, you can take a picture and send it to chat GPT. And like, ask what are the tools that can speed it up? And something that I realized is really working for me right now. There's like, even for early adopters, like memory is such a core thing, right? in every app, it remembers all your interactions with it. It remembers your goals, your passions, things you're trying to avoid. And so I started doing more strategic things with the Chad GPT and Gemina. I like them both.

And perplexity. I'm trying to use all of them for different purposes. But what I realized, if I start talking about my strategic goals and where I'm headed, then every answer is targeted to that goal. And like when I'm asking, even like about the hotel in New York. And Chad, GPDT would be like, Marina, you're trying to slow down, you're trying to do this, this and that. You should choose this hotel because it's only 10 minutes away from the studio.

Like starting, do you feel like for everyone who's just brand new to this and has used chat, GPT a couple of times, would you say integrating AI, the best way to start integrating AI would be talking to it about your strategic goals first and like describing who you are? Absolutely. And I love that example that you just gave on the hotel. So let's break that one down for a second, right? So Google, or let's call it Google search, I don't mean Gemini here. You just say like, hey, what's a good hotel that's generally near the studio?

Right? And so Google will sort of like look and it'll give you a deterministic response. It's like, okay, these are all within three blocks. But imagine if you had a friend that really knew the area, right? And you're like, Connor, my best friend in the world. Where should I stay? I know you know New York. I'd be like, you know, like knowing you, what I would say is that this hotel's great,

but you walk out, it's a little seedy. And there's other one's right next to Whole Foods. And I know you like to run every day or something like that. And this is actually right near a park. And also, you want to get to the studio a little early. But guess what? there's somebody that takes you there in five minutes. You don't have to be next door.

You're going to want to be here. It's just it'll inspire. Do you what I mean? Like it's a wildly different result because of that. It is. And that's the thing. People are using it just as a search, like a command response walk away.

And one thing on that, our brains have trouble because it looks like a search engine. And so your brain treats it like a search engine. In the same way, if we saw babysitting right here in our podcast studio, which would be phenomenal, by the way, you'd automatically talk to it like a baby. You wouldn't think, how do I talk to this thing? Right.

You just do it instinctively. But that's the thing when your brain sees something like a chat, GPT. It's actually literally, is our research. It literally looks like a search engine. So your brain literally goes into that mode. Command response, walk away. Which hotel should I use? Instead of, hey, this is your friend that you're texting. And then instead of command response walk away, you'd never do that if you had Jeff Bezos in the room and you were asking a question, you'd have a conversation. And so that's what you have to overcome. That's why we call it a mindset. It's literally things in your brain you have to overcome. Yeah, it's a friend or now for me,

it's more like a coach. Yes. Like a professional coach that has access to all the information. something that Jeff Bezos was advised by his career coach. And I just asked them. It's phenomenal. But that's the thing. Because, again, that turns it into a conversation. But why is it hard? So I think that, you know, in terms of getting hyper, hyper practical here, because we can say all we want, like, oh, just talk to it like a person.

But that's like saying just eat less than exercise. There's a reason why we can't just eat. Maybe you can. I have a hard time with eating less than exercise. But why do we have a problem with, like, getting on a treadmill? We have a problem getting on a treadmill because our brain prioritizes quick rewards and conserving energy. And a treadmill doesn't do those things.

So it actually has nothing to do with the treadmill or how many features a treadmill has. It has everything to do with why our brain stops us. Same thing here. This is our research that we uncovered over two years here, is that it's not that people don't want to treat it like a human or don't see the value in it.

It's that your brain is actually literally doing something where it's treating it like a surge engine because of how neural pathways and automation work in your brain. And that's why we have to come up with new paradigms and frameworks to get people through that. So the tools change so rapidly, right?

Like you were just saying. I know. And how do you keep up with that? Okay, and I'm so glad you said that because, you know what, I would say to people out there, you don't have to keep up with it, right? Like, you kind of do because you have this. I kind of do because of my world. But I mean, 99.9% of the population doesn't. Why? Because the things that just came out like literally like last night, right?

Or the day before whatever it is, it's, you know, Gemini, it's Cloud 4.5. It's chat, you know, 5.2. The difference of what that gives you is not significant to 99.9% of the population, right? Because, again, we don't need 14 PhDs in our pockets. You don't need anything like that. And so when I think about even something like Excel, even something like that, what I tell people is, don't worry about the tool. The tool's going to be fine. In the same way, you know, you don't have to buy the best treadmill out there.

You just have to put on running shoes and go outside. Now, that's hard because of how our brain functions and what our brain prioritizes just through our limbic system. But when I think about, okay, practically speaking, let's say you have to do this task and you're thinking, well, what's going to do that? Like, I have to build a spreadsheet. What? Or I have to build a slide deck. What's going to do best on that? what I would say to people, especially as a starting point, but even if you feel like you're pretty confident,

don't worry about the tool that's going to do it the best. Think about your process, right? So just to give you a quick example, if I could. So I was working with a CEO of a big bank here in New York City. And he was asking me, like, well, can it help me determine whether we should open, you know, an office in Denver? I was like, well, not really because it's not a good answer machine. It's a good process machine. He's like, oh, it's kind of what I need.

I'm like, okay, but hold on. Like, let's talk about how would you do that? So he's like, well, here's the process I would take without AI. And every step of that process, they were probably 12. I was like, okay, here's how AI helps you here. Here's how I helps you here. So it's really about breaking down rather than getting an answer. Think about your process and just how the AI walk you through and help you through each step of that process.

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This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. You just basically upload the process into chat, JBT. That's exactly. And the same thing, like with slide decks. How long have people been whining about it doesn't create like amazing slide decks? It's like, yeah, man, that's your job. That's why you get paid. Like, don't offload that. Instead say, hey, this is the message I'm trying to create. Chajabit, help me. What should I put generally on every slide? It's like this. Okay, what do you think would be impactful as a visual? This kind of thing. And then go and build the slide. It's not like every single thing. And you just go to gamma. Go to Gamma. Yeah. Gamma does beautiful presentations. Gamma and nanobanana now. Like there's a ton, beautify. There's a ton of slide deck things. But ultimately, it's your process that this is going to help. What are your top three tools that you use? Okay.

So in switching order, because these things always switch, I would say, I just love Claude 4.5 opus. I think it's a really powerful writer. I love Gemini 3 as just a deep, deep thinking tool. I think it's phenomenal. It also integrates with all my Google stuff best. ChatGBT is my everyday, it kind of had replaced Google for me. Like, if I just have a question like, wait, what is this again? And how long does an oak tree live?

I don't know why I'm asking that. But like, it's Chad, CBT is my great sort of like go-to. And then copilot, like when I'm working with a lot of companies on copilot, we do tons of co-pilot integrations. Copilot's getting smarter and smarter and smarter. So those are kind of like, sorry, I gave you four. But those are the four that I'm kind of switching between every day. But basically you're using the LLMs, right, of the world, not like specific, small apps.

I really like that. And here's the reason why. And it's even the reason why I answer that way when people ask. because there's maybe a couple of tools that I use. But the problem is, in the history of technology, we're always looking for sort of like the better thing. Right? It's like, well, so, because I get asked all the time, like, well, what's better?

You know, Claude, chat GPT. I'm like, it's not relevant. It's sort of like saying, well, is this, you know, $900 a bottle of wine better than this, $800? It's like, do I don't know. Like, I have no idea because your taste buds only go up to like $80. Well, maybe not yours, but mine, right? So point is, it doesn't matter which one is better. It matters which one feels more comfortable, natural with what you.

you are doing and where are you going. And so when we over index on like the specific tool, like some of these, you know, slide deck tools, even though they're great, I would say get used to having this companion because that companion is going to get you. Sorry, one other thing I do a lot with law firms. With law firms, I'm like, well, what's the best legal tech? I'm like, I think they're all pretty good. But what if you just had a companion through Chatubitia or Gemini or Claude that was just

helping you and you could just talk to it? Then it's not about what treadmill is better. It's are you putting on running shoes and getting out there? Yeah, I love that. And also, like, with LMs getting better and better, it's just you keep coming back to them. Yeah. Yeah. Is there, do you have a tip for, for example, like Chad GPD knows a lot about my queries?

Because I also use it as Google. And I feel like the reason is because the output is so well structured, even compared to Gemini, I just love when it gives me bullet points. and bold text and emojis, it's just the visual part. I think they nailed it. How do you transfer from, do you say Claude is amazing?

Now I want to try it for writing. How do you transfer all the knowledge from Chad GPT to Claude? I think these tools are so good now that you can actually transfer pretty easily. So now I have kind of like co-CEOs for AI mindset in Claude Gemini and ChatGPT. And the way I did that was ChatchipetT

essentially knew everything about me, right? Because you're talking about the memory. It's so powerful. So what I asked Chachabitie was, listen, create like a 10-page document on like everything you know about. But you're like really distilling it down to the essentials. Like, what do I like? How do I think?

Like, what do I like in outputs, all that kind of stuff? And then I just take that. And I toss it into Gemini. And Gemini gets it right away. And Clark gets it right away. So you can almost transfer your memory over to each single one. And that is the really powerful thing to me. I love that.

Have you, do you have any queries that people would want to use especially towards the end of the year. I was just interviewing the founder of Opus clip, and he told me this query that he uses, he asked Chad GPT or whatever, I think he was used in Gemini, if you could give me advice six months ago,

based on my queries in the past six months, what that advice would be. And I asked my Chad GPT, and my Chad GPT is like, Marina, you're trying to control everything in your life. Like you're trying to control your kids, your dog, your business, you need to chill. And that was like, yeah.

Yeah, and like let's build a strategy for 2006 based on this. Do you have anything like this that's super powerful because your LLM has the memory about you? When you tell your large language model, I say it almost in every prompt just to make sure. I'm like push back, push back, push back. Because it pushes back and, okay, I'm anthropomorphizing, but it's pushing back. Don't you find it kind of pushes back lovingly and empathetically? It's probably saying like, Raina, you idiot. It's probably saying like, Marina, you're doing a lot of stuff, right?

It's always, it's the nicest person. Marina, you're so amazing. Is it the best? Everybody's like the synchophancy don't. I'm like, I love that part. You're now used to it. You're like, you expect everyone to treat you that way. Oh my God.

They should. We can learn a lot from AI, I think. But it's that empathetic behaving. Obviously, it's not intrinsically empathetic, but it is empathetic behaving. And so for me, the things that I put in there are a couple of things. First of all, feel free to push back because I'm not going to get defensive. And I know it's not sort of like a dead thing. it's going to really help me.

So that other things I use all the time is just like, just make this more readable. How am I think? And then the biggest thing I did this in, so I just did masterclass, if you know the brand masterclass. So the thing I was doing in masterclass a lot, this idea of never stop, right? Because why do we stop working? Right? We stop working because I cannot bear to do another draft or I can't bear to think through this one more time.

But you don't have to. You can just say, how would I make this better? What am I missing? What am I missing? Like five times in a row, it's not going to get worse. Or as soon as it does, you're like, okay, we'll come back to this, come back to this. So I would say the biggest things are, first of all, always create your first draft and have it, edit, make it more readable. But the biggest thing, I love, I love Opus Clips, by the way, I love that you interviewed him, is kind of toward the end of the year.

Remember that your brain instinctively will say, Connor, don't do any more work, you're exhausted. That's instinctive. You have to retrain it to say, just do this again. What's better? What am I missing? What am I missing? That's the real power. I love that.

When it comes to misinformation, right? Because we go to AI for so many questions. And I notice sometimes that if I'm just, especially when I'm in a single thread, like doing all my queries and then I ask like a therapy question. And the answer is like, no, I would never do that. How do you deal with that? Because I think Mustafa mentioned that 60% of copilot AI queries are medical. Yeah. And they like they connected Harvard database to make sure the answers are correct.

but do you ever go to Chad GPD for, I don't know, financial advice? How should I restructuring my portfolio? Would you trust AI with that? I think one of the mistakes people make, especially around hallucinations and especially around, well, you know, AI, I'm not going to trust it because it gets it wrong. Like humans hallucinate too, right? Humans get things wrong too. So what we always say, or I always say sort of on our team when we're working with these organizations is it's not a calculator. Like if your calculator gave you a wrong answer, you'd throw it.

It'd be like smoking and burning up, right? You'd throw it away. But if a person came on and they were brilliant, they didn't know much about your company, but they were absolutely brilliant. You could trust is maybe the wrong word, but they were clearly doing amazing work product. You still wouldn't just say like, hey, do this task for me and then, you know, go off and do it. Like, no, you'd refine it with them. You'd go back and forth with them, et cetera. You'd sort of like teach them a little bit.

You'd say like, ah, I like that, but I don't like that. So what is the difference here? The difference is it's really acting like a human. That's number one. So if a human gives you medical advice, if your friend is like, oh, that, you know, burn on your arm looks like this. is that person a dermatologist or are they not a dermatologist? And so if they're not, and it's important, I'm going to fact-check it. The example sometimes I use is that a lot of things that work, you don't have to have exact

precision. A lot of it's just brainstorming. How should I think about this? But if you are going to go and meet like, you know, the chief marketing officer at Morgan Stanley and you want some conversation starters and your friend's like, I think I read somewhere that, you know, he's really into like balloon animals or something like that. You'd be like, oh, I'll bring all my balloon, right? You better get that right.

Otherwise, like, you are screwed. So if you need accuracy, double check it. How do you double check? You just copy the answer from chatypte to clawed and ask it to double check. I do, but I don't even put it into another AI. If I really need something that I need to be right, I go to Google search, I go to the source. Or I ask somebody or something like that. Like if you need something to be absolutely precise, like you're fixing a thing on an airplane, like holding the propeller to the –

I don't know why you or I would be doing that. But if it's that, you know that I'm going to go to the actual manual. I'm never going to rely on chat, GPT, for something. critical. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you think with all of that, like we're going to chat for all our queries, do you think we're losing memorization critical skills? Okay. Here's the thing. You have kids, I think, right? Like, I have kids. They're in high school or a little further than yours. And we do a lot with education. My son, who's 16, about to be 17. He and I do a lot of like, you know, teaching together. We've taught some amazing places and done

keynotes together around this because I think people keep expecting him to say, hey, everybody needs to use, he's a junior in high school, everybody needs to use AI. And in a way, he's right, in a way I'm right to when I say that. In another way, I mean, it does. Don't you think like it can really destroy critical thinking? I absolutely believe that. And that's, that's hard. Because how are you such an optimist about something that can destroy critical thinking? I guess what I would say is, this technology is here. And a lot of technologies have, you know, done away with what we would think are critical thinking skills and things like that. This is a new one. So if people are only using it to just get answers, it's sort of like, remember like

Cliff Notes and Spark Notes, stuff like that. There's two ways to use that, right? There's either, hey, like, you know, I don't have time to read Hamlet. I'm just going to use this. But then that really diminishes your critical thinking, which is going to matter when you get out into the working world and everything else. School matters for a reason. Or you use it as, hey, what's a new way of looking at this? What am I not seeing? Like, what did? I didn't understand that scene three, act four, like in this. And it's an amazing tool then, right? Now your critical thinking is getting even deeper and deeper and deeper. It's a personalized learning system. So it can help. It's really up to the individual. So it gets the whole question of how do we switch, how do we like

change education? But it's not just does it kill critical thinking or does it not, but I think you're right. It can. So how do we prevent that? So you have two kids. What are you telling them about the future of the world powered by AI? What should they be learning and what skills are becoming obsolete? I mean, you and I live in this world, right? And we're watching it every day. And it is very hard to tell what's going away and what's staying. You can kind of tell in the short term, but we could never have predicted where we are right now either. So it's easy to say to people, oh, we need like adaptability. We need curiosity.

But it drives me a little nuts when people say that because what does that mean? Like we were talking before we came on air, right, about like practical. Practical is always more interesting. And I hate when people are just like, oh, you know, just be more curious. I'm like, how do you tell somebody to be more curious? So what I tell, you know, our kids and what I, it's kind of the same thing I tell with at scale, tens of thousands of people in one single organization, which is it doesn't matter if you're curious or not.

Like you can behave in a curious way. And so what does that look like? Well, let's give you some steps. First understand sort of again, like what we do, which is like, what is the brain malfunctioning here? Like what are these three paradigms? What are these steps? All that kind of stuff.

And take them through what it's not and what it is. And then say, just lean into what you are passionate about. And I don't mean that as a pithy kind of like. Oh, do what you love, because I actually don't believe that. I come from a business school. We don't tend to work in that way. But what I do think is that no matter what you do, AI can enhance it and come up with a new way of doing this.

This is what's so interesting about this technology, is that the history of technology has been the creators of the technology or the service. I've always defined like what the role, like if you invented the computer, you know that we need silicon chips and keyboards and delivery mechanisms. But that's not the case anymore. The leaders of certainly open AI, Anthropic everywhere else, They don't know, right?

Leaders of companies, they don't know. The only people that are going to be able to figure it out is from the bottom up, right? People who's in a, somebody who's in a job, really getting fluent on this, really shifting their behavior, not just telling some, you know, somebody telling them use some new tools, shifting their behavior. And then looking at what they do every day, their bottlenecks and working with AI to really innovate dramatically on what that person, individual does. That's why it's so critical to upskill entire organizations. Yeah. And I kind of say the same thing to the kids. It's like all these jobs are still going to be around.

Maybe there's fewer of them. But if you can reinvent a way of doing things with AI, you're gold. Because nobody knows. Because nobody knows. Yeah, it's what I'm real. The more I'm talking to people, nobody knows. Nobody understands. And it's up to you to come up with idea and say, like, hey, I think this is the right way to do this.

And if it's a good idea, people will listen. 100%. Have you seen how hiring is changing with AI? Because a lot of people are struggling to find jobs, especially entry level. Like, I think AI eliminated 30%. It's like it's a big number. Yeah. I mean, the potential is there to eliminate that, right?

And that's where all these new sort of statistics around what these models can do is fascinating. I know Dario Amadeh over at Anthropics said exactly this. He's like, look, even if the technology doesn't change from today, it can still wipe out 25% of entry-level white collar workforce color. So when I'm looking across like the whole spectrum, I don't see it happening yet necessarily. What I do see is the potential is there. And that's a pretty big difference, right? So right now, where AI is right now, even if it didn't advance for the next 10 years, which is obviously not going to happen, if people were using it correctly, you can take these

teams of 10 people and probably reduce it down to two people. So it's not that you can get rid of everybody, but just that one person can do way more work. Now, here's the really hard part, right, is that the work that it can do is sort of like entry level work. But then how do those entry level people then learn how to do those skills so that they can kind of like go and become managers, et cetera, et cetera. That is unbelievably hard. I'm not sure how to solve that problem.

But what we do know is it's not about getting rid of your people and replacing with AI. That can't happen for the very simple reason that AI doesn't know what quality looks like. AI can do a tremendous amount. And the answers are in there. But like if you and I were sort of, you know, if you were a marketer and I wasn't and we both use chat EBT in 20 minutes to come up with a new shoe brand, mine would look great, right? Because I went from nothing to this shoe. But you as a marketer, I know that's not your bad.

background maybe, but this idea is because you know a quality looks like you'll produce something extraordinary because you know how to steer it, you know what's right and wrong, et cetera. So we still need people with domain expertise everywhere. We probably realistically just need fewer, but I'll also say that companies have been very slow to change their hiring processes. Any advice for people who are struggling to get hired? Yeah, I do actually. And being at NYU Stern at the business school, this has been my passion for the last 12 years,

which is how do people get hired? It's actually one of the big reasons I went to Stern in the first place is that like, doesn't that just break your heart when people are struggling to find work, right? And with AI, I think that we're in a zone right now where the opportunity is absolutely colossal. For this reason, it requires understanding AI and really using AI well is an incredible tool because you don't have to learn anything. You don't need to be a code or you don't need to be anything. Literally all you need to be able to do is talk like a human and everybody can do that. That's number one.

But number two, and this is the really important thing, it's not enough to just go into a job interview and say, I know how to use AI. Because everybody can say that. And it's sort of like Excel thing. Everybody uses it, but people are using it to make a grocery list or something like that, not to transform, you know, how a hedge fund operates. So what does that actually look like? So we actually have a course, right, this generative AI for professionals that helps give people this exact skill,

not just reinventing how they work, because that's not the Holy Grail to me. The Holy Grail is, can you invent the work of everybody around you? So if you go into a job interview, and this is what I tell everybody to do, go into a job interview prepared with what they do. What are the, like, they'll have given you a sense of what you should do. So go in there and say, like, hey, here's my domain expertise. But let me just show you what I would do with AI and how I would reinvent this process. Because folks, and you know this too, right?

Anyone can do this with Claude Gemini, chat, GPT. You don't have to come up with it. You just have to monitor and steer it. So say, here's how I would change this role to even potentially put me out of a job, right? I mean, senior leaders would love that. But here's the really Holy Grail. This is the kicker on all this. This is the kicker.

It's such a chaty-tie thing to say, my gosh, I take it back. But here's the really important thing. Say, and here's how the team can use this in a very different way. Here's the exact workflow. Here's what I would change. Here's how I would think about it. Because we want to upskill a team. You don't want just hire somebody to come in and do AI differently.

You want somebody to come in and change the way it's done around that person. That, to me, is the Holy Grail. We're the Hartford. With decades of experience ensuring millions of unique small businesses, when it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you. One size, absolutely, does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at thehartford.com slash small business.

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See associate or Lowe's.com for details. I love that. And it's the whole business opportunity. When I look at like all of the brick and mortar business, even like tech businesses, there's so much that could be done. So much. For someone who wants to start a business,

where do you see the most opportunity? I almost think starting a business is your best bet right now. Don't you kind of, right? I've heard so many people say in two years you're either an entrepreneur or you're dead. Right. I mean, do you think that, though? Because think about it in two ways. First of all, we have no idea where this thing is going to poke its head.

In other words, we have no idea if it's just going to wipe out marketing or something. We have no idea if it's going to wipe out writing or coding. We don't know. And it's not because the tool can't do it. It's because we don't know how fast the world around us will adopt to that tool. So given that nobody knows, not even Sam Altman or Dari Amade or anybody else or you or Mary, You had Mustafa Suleman on the other day, phenomenal interview you did with him. He doesn't know either, right?

So if these people don't know, then how can anybody know? So here's what I would say. Being an entrepreneur, even if you're an entrepreneur alongside with what you're doing, I kind of call it the parallel resume. Do both, right? If you care about this, Gary Vaynerchuk has a great thing on this where he's like, work the extra hours. Like I know, nobody wants to hear it, but work the extra hours.

But here's how you do it. You build something that you think can transform how your team was already doing that work. In other words, once you sort of like create a process for people, that's what people want. They don't want just like somebody who can do AI because that it's people don't always recognize it. It's sort of linear in the amount of growth you can provide for an organization. But if you're an entrepreneur, this is how I started. I'm not sure how you started, but certainly in this field for me, I just created a framework like,

well, what do I think is missing from how AI is taught? And I just started going out, talking to a million people testing it out, testing it out, testing it out. And then finally is like, somebody's like, you know, if you come and give a workshop at our, asset management firm, like, you know, how much do you charge? And I named like some crazy amount. They're like, okay, great. I'm like, really? Like so, but it's, right, exactly. But here's the thing. It doesn't have to be an AI. Like, if you can use AI to come up with a new kind of marketing or a new kind of operations or new kind of legal or something like that, people are looking for those narrow use cases that can be expanded to others that are repeatable. I think it's the best time ever to be an entrepreneur.

It's all about strategy, right? And even like what I see, I have 35. people on my team. And I see all of them as entrepreneurs. Some of them have multiple clients. It's not just they're working for me. And you can be an entrepreneur within your workplace. Yes. Because you are reinventing the process. And then a lot of companies are hiring abroad. And like there are people who are marketers, but they do marketing for multiple companies because they build a process that works for them. It's just such a fascinating time. This is the perfect way to say it. You could be an entrepreneur inside of your organization in a way. that you never could before.

And why is that? Because, and they've proven this out a million different ways with Harvard Business School, did this with Procter & Gamble. They're showing that one person can essentially create a synthetic team around them. So what's always holding back entrepreneurs? Well, I don't know how to code. I don't know how to market. I don't know how to do operations, legal, whatever it is.

Or I'm not a good leader. All of a sudden, you have these AIs. That can be a great proxy for that. Is it perfect? No, it's not perfect. But imagine where you were before. And so what that means is that inside of your company, you can reinvent a process. Now, here's what I recommend people do.

Reinventing a process gets noticed way more than you just doing more work, right? Reinventing a process. 100%. Right. And if you say, hey, we have, because now all of a sudden they're tracking ROI. But even more than that, reinvent the process and then show how you can share it with others. Show how you can make it repeatable. I was working with this big private.

I do a lot of private equity. And the head of this private equity firm was saying, hey, we have five guys on this team. We're going to invite two more analysts to join that team. But I told these five people, if you can do this work without those. too. I'll give you the money, which is a great way to sort of drive innovation in a way. But what I'd also say, and what I said to him is, that's not the Holy Grail. Because they'll just come up with a system that works for them. They have to come up with a system that's kind of agnostic to who would use it.

They have to come up with a system, a process that's repeatable for everybody else. You are now in an organization, wherever you are in a corporation sitting out there somewhere, working on a process. That's going to be your IP. Figure out how to do that process better with AI. start repeating it across the organization, that will get noticed. And then what I would say, and you'd probably say too, right, go off and start a little side-gigrant.

And talk about becoming a chief AI architect of your company. Isn't that a great title? I love that title. And also, like, as a founder, I want that to have. I want one of my managers to come up and say, like, hey, I don't want to do this manually anymore. I came up with the process. AI is going to do that for me.

I'm the test maker. I'm just going to curate whatever AI is creating. That's where I want. And I love to say, I love that you said this because you are a manager. You are a leader. And for that coming out of your mouth to say, that's what I want. I'm trying to tell people that all the time. Like, senior leaders want that from their people.

Absolutely. We don't want, we senior leaders. Yeah, no, no, you're right. You're right. I mean, I don't want people to just spend hours of their days coming up with what AI can do. I want them to become managers. 100%. Yeah, that's awesome.

Okay. What do you think is going to happen as someone from NYU was going to happen to universities? Do you think in 10 years, do I need to be saving for my kids' scholarship? Or that's obsolete by then? You do. It drives me crazy when people are saying like, oh, there won't be universities. I'm sure that we have said that throughout history. Harvard is older than the United States itself.

NYU has been around for a long time. Universities are not going away because they don't just do one thing, right? Like if universities were simply you go and you pressed a button and you matrixed something into the back of your skull and all of a sudden you had that knowledge, okay, that's one thing. But that's not what teaching is. I mean, like right now, AI can absolutely, first grade through 12th grade, it knows all that information better than any teacher we have, right? So why do we still have schools? We have schools because schools more than that. Universities are more than that.

Universities are where you meet people, where you exchange ideas, where you actually sort of like bounce things off, people who have really lived that experience, where you become, you know, an adult and all this kind of stuff. It's not a transactional thing. Now, if we're just talking about like online school, yeah, I kind of think AI can very easily. replace a lot of online school. Absolutely. And I don't mean like, you know, zooming into a class. I mean just like something where it's like we get this. Yeah, exactly. We're already seeing that. Courses. Because why? Because all of a sudden you're going from just like a course and think about how teachers have to teach just by nature of how the human brain is structured. You have to go to the lowest common denominator when you're teaching 25 people. You can't take every single kid and understand

exactly what each one of them needs. But AI kind of can, to your point about memory earlier, right? So yeah, universities are here to stay. I think that there's going to be definitely, a sithe that takes out kind of like the middle structure of universities. We probably don't need so many. But yeah, there's, I mean, hundreds, a thousand universities that will still remain because of everything they offer to the human experience. Yeah, I love that. My last question is, what type of change influenced by AI?

Do you want to witness in your life so you can say, yes, we did it? Ooh, that's a good one. So for me, so I and my son, too, and my daughter, we go out to Nepal every year. We have kind of a history going out to Nepal and teaching AI in schools. and in nonprofits and things like that. And I've lived in Nepal for a while and I've seen in a country like that, which is one of the poorer countries in the world,

what AI can do for those individuals gives me goosebumps, literally right now, right? Because if you think about it, they don't have tutors, right? You and I can afford tutors for our kids, probably, right? Like, they can't do that. They can't even, like I've seen the schools there, how the schools work.

Now of a sudden they have something on their phone that can be this incredible tutor. And education, it's not a silver bullet, but holy cow, does it really progress a nation? but same with medical. So I spent a lot of time in very remote areas where there's no roads or anything like that. And this idea in those areas is if you cut yourself

or if you have something on your skin or if you have symptoms or something, all of a sudden now, everyone with a mobile phone and they do have mobile phones has access to something resembling a doctor. Is it as perfect as a doctor? No, absolutely not. And you have to check it in as a risk. Yes, of course, all the disclaimers.

But going with your kid is sick and your kid is coughing. Like you have kids, right? I have kids. Like, what's worse than when your kid is sick? you just want an answer. And so all of a sudden, you have these people who live in these very remote areas have answers that they can help their kids. That to me is where I want to go.

That's why, to me, it's more than just like, oh, let's sort of see how we can get corporate America to make more money. That's great because I profit from that. We all profit from that. We're all having a good time with it. But like for me, it's humanity. And I really mean that. Like there's an incredible thing that we can do with humanity. And I'm dying to see that change.

Oh, my God. I love it. Thank you so much, Connor. It was amazing. Very practical. We love that. Thank you. Thank you for having me. That's a really fun conversation. Enjoy more ways to save at Ralph's, like low prices in every aisle. And when you download the Ralph's app, you can clip and save more with digital coupons every week.

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