The I Love CVille Show With Jerry Miller! - Health Tech Sales Professional MJ Smith Joined Hillary L. Murray On "The Juicy Details"

Episode Date: February 14, 2024

MJ Smith, Health Tech Sales Professional, joined Hillary L. Murray live on The Juicy Details! Follow The Juicy Details on iTunes Follow The Juicy Details on Spotify The Juicy Details airs live Wednesday from 2:15 pm – 3 pm on The I Love CVille Network. Watch and listen to The Juicy Details on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, iTunes, Apple Podcast, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, Audible and iLoveCVille.com.

Hey friends, welcome to the eighth episode of the Juicy Details. Today we come to you live with my good friend Mary Jane Smith, better known as MJ to most of us. Hey MJ, thanks for coming today. Hey Hillary, great to see you, great to be here, thank you. Thank you, thank you to all of our fans who are joining in. You know, I've had a few comments, a few emails, a few text messages of people that are really excited to tune in to the juicy details. So thank you for the support. And thank you for believing in the potential of making this something that's actually real versus just for fun.

So I appreciate everybody. We've covered topics from everything from career to mental health and wellness to gut health to community involvement to Bush beer, Anheuser-Busch beer, and ready to drink cocktails. So we've kind of covered a gamut of things, and today Mary Jane's going to talk to us about her career path and artificial intelligence. I am horrible at artificial intelligence. I don't really know what it does. I have no idea about why my internet serves me up ads versus it's stalking me. I have my phone nice and close to me today, so it's picking up all of these things that it's going to feed me.

But first, per usual, we're going to start with our gold rush, loomy shot. Love you, mean it. MJ, thank you for being here today. Love you, mean it. MJ, thank you for being here today. Love you, mean it. Cheers. So this is full of turmeric, lemon, ginger, pear, and cayenne. So turmeric's really good to help with prevention of inflammation and brain health. And I love it. I drink one every day, a couple times a day. So you can get your, your LumiShot at LumiJuice.com or on Amazon. All right. MJ, Mary Jane, tell us everything. How'd you go from Mary Jane to MJ? Well, it's, it's interesting. It's a family name. I was named after my Irish Gaelic great-great-grandmother by my grandfather.

Okay. And the spelling is M-E-R-I. It means by the sea. And that's when I was in kindergarten, I remember telling my mom, you have to call me Mary. Mary Jane sounds too babyish. I didn't want the double name thing. This is growing up in Minnesota. After moving to the south back in 1999 as a 19-year-old. I'm dating myself here. The double name thing is

a big thing in the South. It's so big in the South. Yeah. And I, and I started to kind of adapt to that. And of course, as I became an adult, there's a lot of songs about Mary Jane, the person Mary Jane and other things, Mary Jane, the drug Mary Jane, drug Mary Jane Michael Jordan Michael Jackson I started to kind of really enjoy those initials so and it does make it easier when you go to Starbucks and order your coffee they never misspell your name wrong if you just say it's MJ so that's how I got there I love it so MJ thank you for that I haven't heard that in the 12 years I've known you so MJ and I met I think in 2012 and it was at this great restaurant called Monoloco here in Charlottesville, Virginia. And when I first met her, I was

really excited to meet her because she had this, like such this powerful force of like, this woman is excited about life. She's ready to take on the world. But I was also a little scared because I'm like, well, like she's so, she's so empowered. How can I be that confident in myself? And from then until now, you've just been unstoppable, and you've really just created a life for yourself in different avenues, most recently finishing your MBA, your master in business. So maybe just walk us through the past 12 years

since I've met you and how you've transformed into this amazing woman in business. Thank you for saying that. It's interesting. We were talking before we went live today and you reminded me of when we met. And at that time in my life, I just was leaving a marriage, newly separated. And it's so interesting to hear the feedback that I present as potentially intimidating or you know confident and like a successful person because at that very moment I really was in transition and I felt not successful I felt and I felt terrified right my marriage had was ending I had two young children I'd been out of the full-time workforce for for over almost 10 years

and was really trying to figure out who I was and what I was going to do next so it's I get the feedback sometimes that I'm intimidating in the very best way that I've got myself together but I didn't feel very put together back then so it's interesting to hear that from you and obviously we've had a friendship that is a friendship of peers and you're also incredibly talented and I'm lucky to know a person like you and I know you were very supportive with I was trying to figure out a job back then

what can I do and you helped me open some doors and have some opportunities even to get an interview for things and you were such an incredible business woman at that time so I feel like I might have maybe caught up even to get an interview for things. And you were such an incredible businesswoman at that time. So I feel like I might have maybe caught up to like 75% of the capacity of Miss Hillary Lewis-Marie. Thank you.

By now. So in 2012, I was searching. I had done some property management in my marriage, and I transitioned that into real estate. That was the easiest, least path of resistance. And prior to that, I'd been a baker, an artisan baker. I'd been a office manager for architecture. What was your favorite thing to bake? I actually learned, so I grew up with my grandparents, my maternal grandparents, my mom and my maternal grandparents in the house together. And my grandmother loved to bake. So I, that was something I remember doing a lot with her.

And what would she bake? What was her favorite thing? Just simple cakes, you know? And so when she died in, it was around the year 2000, I was living in Charlottesville and I took, at that time I'd quit a job, it was a professional job for an architecture firm and I wanted, I was grieving

and I wanted to do something that reminded me of her. So I took an apprentice job at Admiral Baking Company. Have you ever had a princess cake? For those of you in Charlottesville, it's the best cake ever. And I think it might be gluten-free because it's all almond, right? It is made with marzipan paste, and I don't remember if it's almond flour. It's been a while since I've made any of those. But that was my first baking job. I wanted to learn to do shape baguettes and make croissant and all of those things.

So Jerry Newman gave me the 4 a.m. to 12 p.m. shift. And luckily I found a little apartment across the street from the bakery. That's where I learned to bake. My favorite thing is shaping dough. It's meditative. It's like sculpting. I love that. So yeah. Do you have a yeast starter at home now and are you making any bread at home? You know, I used, it's really something, it's like having children. I learned to bake bread before I had children. Yes. And using a sourdough starter, like the mother starter, is very different than the dry yeast that you buy in the grocery store and activate with warm milk. So a sourdough starter needs to be fed on regular intervals, like children. You literally can't,

you can put it in the fridge. It's like a plant, like I'm going to kill it probably. Yeah. It's a living thing. And so it needs to be maintained and you can put it in the fridge and let it go to sleep, the yeast for a little while and then take it back out so the answer the long answer to your question is that no I don't do a lot of I don't do much of any baking at all at home because I'm now very attached to the way I was able to do it in a professional environment yeah and so um I got to use all those professional things and um so I just, I use cake mixes. And once in a while I'll do brioche, homemade brioche at home. And that one is one that's manageable for a home kitchen.

But I do hope that I'll be able to part-time, you know, do some baking again in the future, just on a volunteer basis in a professional kitchen. I love it. That's awesome. Okay, so from there, your part-time job, baking and how to bake you then. So then fast forward. So I, I met my now ex-husband. I'm remarried now, but this is back, uh, right at the time I met you. So in the time, fast forward, we got married, decided to have a family. Um, and I, uh, finished my undergraduate degree at that point as an adult, um, at UVA. I'd gone to college for my last

two years of high school where I grew up in Minnesota, came to Virginia, to Charlottesville, thinking I would transfer right into UVA. Didn't do that and finished until I was actually 28. So I did that in my last marriage, had two children, got into some property management, learned the ropes of that, which led me to real estate. Um, and that kind of, uh, I did a little stint right around the time I met you, right before I met you. Uh, I worked for the very last year at the hook newspaper. Everybody in Charlottesville knows the hook newspaper. Yes. Um, Courtney Stewart and Haas Spencer gave me my very first newspaper job. Um, my degree from UVA is in English literature, so I always wanted

to write. And I was there one day a week on press day. So I would redline the newspaper before it would go to print. I loved it. And it was the last year of The Hook I got to work with Lisa Provence, Dave McNair, Courtney Stewart, Haas Spencer.

So where are all these people now, though, since The Hook is no longer around? Haas is. So where are all these people now, though, since The Hook is no longer around? Haas is with The Daily Progress now, and we keep in touch. Courtney Stewart has, she just had a show, a real crime show on Netflix. Everybody knows Courtney. She's got a podcast that she's doing. Lisa Provence is still doing some reporting, I think, for The Daily Progress. Dave McNair has the DTM, the Downtown Mall.

It's a website. I'm a subscriber for local news. So everybody's still kicking in the news world. Yeah. That's so great. Okay. So you were redlining to make sure that all of the articles going to print had no grammar mistakes in them. Yes, yes.

And most of the time I got it right. And were you changing the bylines or fixing anything to make it a little more exciting to read? I did a couple interviews, which I thought was neat. If the hook hadn't folded after a year, I might have moved into more journalistic reporting. I did do just a little bit of that. I still have a little PTSD from having to put the movie times. I'd have to go check the movie time websites and drop those in. That was not my favorite thing. So was anybody upset?

Did you ever put in a 2.45 movie, but it really started at 2.35? I'm sure that I probably messed with some people's lives. And if you're listening now, please take my apology. I'm sorry. The data transfer might not have been perfect. I love that. There was no AI yet. There was no AI yet. The data transfer might not have been perfect. I love that. There was no AI yet. There was no AI yet.

No, no, not at all. So when I met you in 2012, I had been out of the workforce, maybe just in with the hook, the last year of the hook. And maybe in 2013, I started to really, was I going to go back and get another degree? I had an undergraduate degree. I thought about being a nurse. Okay. And doing one of those accelerated second bachelor's degree programs.

I actually was accepted to one in New York City. I was declined by UVA, my alma mater, for their accelerated program. It was a really packed year that year. But I was accepted to NYU Nursing. That brought me to living part-time in New York City, reorganizing my life to try to accommodate that 15-month program so you did you started it but you never finished it I did my prereqs there and I relocated to have a place in New York for when the full-time program

would start and yeah it was a really difficult time with young children living in Charlottesville yeah shared custody with my ex-husband, and I'd always been accused of being a New Yorker my whole life. So part of me was very excited. But you had never lived in New York, but you were accused of being a New Yorker. Yeah. Something about my, maybe my confidence, my dark hair and my directness didn't really read to black and white. Yeah. And didn't really read Minnesotan. Nobody ever says, oh, she looks like she's from Minnesota, for whatever it's worth. It's a pretty diverse place, but I don't really fit the... I feel like this podcast might be covering people all over the Midwest,

because we had Michigan, was Dana Lewis, and now Minnesota's you. And then Jeff Tang, who also was on this, he had lived in Minnesota and Tennessee. So it's like I'm getting this Midwest vibe here on the podcast. Yeah, it's weird. We all don't talk to each other all winter but we're we're big talkers uh in general it sounds like because you because you don't talk for the entire winter that once the winter breaks it's like yeah we're all gonna hang out and talk yeah yeah okay keep going sorry I'm interrupting no that's okay so then part-time in New York and the it was going to be too difficult to um it was

heartbreaking my son was about to start or my daughter was about to start kindergarten my son was in second grade and um the getting back and forth and to to be what I was a full-time mother so going from being a full-time stay-at-home parent with my kids yeah to being thrust into what am I going to do what's my value in in society? And how am I going to be a mom to these two children who need me more now more than ever, because they're going through this transition of their parents divorcing. So I made the decision, um, to pause my NYU nursing career potential. And then I was networking to try to find a path forward to a career. I landed on a med tech career.

So medical technology? Medical technology, right? So I had some friends that I had done some property management for who were in the med tech world. Okay. And one of them gave me an incredible reference. At that time, I started a small property management company and left full-time real estate and got another reference from that. I built those references to try to get any med tech job.

My first interview, I finally did. It was a company called Stryker. It was operating room sales. So I was in the operating room, learning how the operating room worked, dealing with surgeons, healthcare administrators, nurses, and design of those spaces. So it was my, I still look back as one of the most life-changing moments in my career. The woman who hired me there had been raised by a single mother. And I actually get a little choked up. I'm not going to cry in the podcast. I only cry for joy, not for pain. That's my motto.

People, people have cried on this podcast before. Okay. Well not today, not MJ, but, um, I do get a little choked up thinking about it. I remember getting that job offer and, um, sharing a little bit of my vulnerability with her, which is always, it's always in a job interview. We all go through these things. There's a formula to it, right? And I mean, I guess so. I don't know. Yeah, but we are humans. And I remember that she saw that in me. She saw my drive and she saw that I really needed a chance. And what you need is for someone in their thirties coming back into the workforce, which is what was doing yeah and wanting to be gainfully employed and catch up for a career that was nothing you know to anybody well I mean there's

a huge the Economist just came out with an article and it shows a graph I'm drawing the graph if you can't see my hands right now but it doesn't matter you can't see the graph on my paper but it talks about how moms in their career and their career with men that's like parallel then once you have a kid like drops it puts you so far behind everybody else by being a mother but the skills that you're learning while you're a mom arguably prepare you to be even better right like one of the criticisms from my dad is you're really bad at managing people. And I'm like, thanks, dad. And now that I have a five and six year old and kids, I'm like, I'm getting better at it because I'm learning how to manage.

And so there's so many skills that people don't even realize when you're a stay at home mom that you're learning. But keep going. Sorry. No, I mean, that's it. That's it. I mean, we could spend a whole podcast on that. So I know that in the U.S. I never was working. I wasn't working full time when I was a child, like, having my babies, right?

Yeah. I was out of the workforce until my youngest was about two and a half. But I look at... So, seven, six years? Yeah. Yeah. It's a long time. Maternity, and before that, I was out of the workforce.

So, it really added up to ten. Okay. Maternity, you know, parental leave in the U.S. is not, you don't just get that everywhere you work, right? Some companies have very, you know, scant policies. Some have six-month policies. Some have maternity and maternity. In Europe, there's, you know, in general, like Germany, places like the Netherlands, I work for a Dutch company now. It's like six months.

And it's incredible. And you think looking back at that as an American, you think, this is unfair. There's some data out there, and I wish I'd written it down. I didn't know what we were going to talk about. I know. We didn't prepare well, guys. We just decided we were going to dive in and figure it out. But I'll just say it's anecdotal information right now that in Europe, in those countries where women are given that long of a leave and have

their jobs back, they do miss opportunities for advancement. So the higher levels of those companies actually are, the makeup is more men who didn't leave the workforce for six months, even though it was a very, you know, a generous maternity leave program. So I think that it's an interesting concept as a burgeoning politician here to be thinking about how do we, what is the very best way for women to do one of the most important jobs on earth, which is to have and take care of children, but also maintain their career path. Well, I agree, but let's get back to this woman who gave you a chance and she saw that in your interviews, in your tenacity, that you needed a chance and you were deserving of one and you know there's mel robbins has this great podcast called the mel robbins podcast and she had someone last week

where she explained like this teacher in philadelphia and she just started the day on the intercom with like i love you and you know i'm here for you and creating relationships of just telling people that you love them it's valentine's day love you all mean it love you, and I'm here for you, and creating relationships of just telling people that you love them. It's Valentine's Day. Love you all. Love you, MJ. So this is really powerful. You need people to believe in you in order to become successful. It's encouraging.

So this woman, keep going on that story because we kind of tangented from it. Yeah, her name is Tamara. She had to be at least 10 years older than me, so in her mid-20s and running this division at this company. Ten years younger, 10 years younger. Did I say older? Okay. Younger and had been raised by a single mother who had, who was remarried by the time I met her, but, um, who worked really hard and she saw, she believed in me and she, she, I don't, I believe that if Tamara wasn't in that position in that company, in that moment, that I would not be sitting here today having this conversation. I really look back and say that my career- We should be drinking champagne to her, but cheers.

I know. I know. Cheers to Tamara, who is now a mother. We're still in touch. And she is now a mother and has a cute little boy that I get to watch grow up on Facebook. That's so cute. Yeah. So that happened. That was the first door and what I needed was that first chance. And I feel like I've been proving to myself ever since then that I deserve to be right where I am. Um, I've just, I'm, I'm in a transition right now. I'm ending the job. I'm resigning from the job I'm doing now and starting a new one. And, um, it's, it's interesting to look back once I started my career in med tech and now

what I call health tech is where I'm at. Just making sure that your value and your worth is appropriate with the position that you're in, that you're paid for, the title and everything like that. So it's been not to toot my own horn, but a little bit to toot my own horn, I have exceeded expectations in every way since I got into the med tech and now health tech space. Not surprising at all that you exceeded expectations. Thank you. And it's incredible. I've really connected with, it's part of my identity now.

As I was trying on a hat of what is my career going to be, I think mission-driven work is very important to me. So I'm very careful about what products I work with. It has to mean something to me personally. I need to be able to, I mean, God, I love technology. I love things. I love machines that work. If I had to go sell my favorite vacuum, I could do it all day. What's your favorite vacuum?

It's the dyson stick vacuum okay yeah it's not support this podcast but there's your endorsement they should i could sell those all day long it's so funny so for me we have a favorite vacuum well the dyson cordless my problem is you have to hold the trigger there needs to be a setting so like i could just not have to hold the thing my finger to keep. Like if it just went. Like just a button. You're right. Yeah, just like press the button. It's on.

And like just because I'm holding it, I'm like there's too much. My whole kitchen, like all the crumbs between the dog and the dog hair and everything. You're right. I do get a little fatigued. Yeah, yeah. It's like you trigger finger on for like at least, you know, 10 minutes if you're vacuuming a space well, right? Yeah. Because I don't want to turn it off and on.

I understand they're trying to save energy, but I kind of feel like the restart and start might be killing the battery more. I think you're vacuuming a space well right yeah because i don't want to turn it off and on i understand they're trying to save energy but i kind of feel like the restart and start might be killing the battery more i think you're right we're here for the dyson uh development team call us and we'll help you figure out how to make this better yeah but the functionality of it's fantastic because there's no cord it yeah and the battery i've already replaced my battery once like i went and ordered it uh it just works the filters anyway yeah they should be you don't have to change filters they should be supporting this podcast I agree thanks hey uh okay so then let's talk now let's transition just because in the interest of time I really want to get to this artificial intelligence piece and so you went from med tech to health tech and this

is so important because most recently before you you transition to this new role you've just accepted, you have been doing breast cancer detection. Detection. And let's talk about how that's affected, why this interest came, what your company did, and how instrumental this has been. Because what you're doing is just so great. And today on Valentine's Day, you know, it's really great to love everybody that's surrounding you and that you meet on the street even.

Just encourage people. But also just encourage yourself to get your health checked. And let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So, and I'm still in the current role. And we'll plug the company that I work for. It's called ScreenPoint Medical. They don't sponsor this podcast, but we still love them and mean it.

We love them and mean it. We love them and mean it. It's AI-trained computer-aided detection for breast cancer. So what it is, it's a software and trained using machine learning algorithms, neural networks, and AI in a lab. And then that software is installed in the environment of a hospital health system. And a radiologist, which is a person who reads mammographic images, x-rays of breast tissue, without AI support, they're looking for breast cancer on a mammogram is like looking for a polar bear in a snowstorm. Every breast is different.

Dense breasts have different patterns and different tissue types that hide cancer. They show up white on a mammogram, just like cancer shows up white on a mammogram. So it's an incredibly challenging thing to look for on breast tissue. Now we have training programs. We have breast fellowship trained radiologists who do an extra two years of fellowship training after their general radiology residency to read mammograms. I don't want anyone to think that a radiologist reading without AI support today is doing a bad job. But what's incredible about AI-assisted radiologists is that AI can help the two together perform better than the two separately. We have multiple clinical studies that show that. What AI can help do is reduce satisfaction of search errors,

which is when you find one thing on an image and then you focus your time and attention on that but maybe fail to look at the rest of the image to kind of simplify things as much as I can. And then also there's the AI that I work with has shown to find breast cancers up to five years earlier. So one in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. That statistic has not changed much over the last 40 years.

What about men? Do you have a statistic for men? Just under 1% of men. So men, there are also men. I feel bad for all the men who have breast cancer in their families. They have to go in and get mammograms. Most of the breast imaging centers are kind of gendered to women, but breast cancer does affect men as well.

Less than 1% still important. So the survivability of breast cancer has increased over the last 20 years or so. Sure. And the way that we handle, and it's partly due to increased screening, right? Yes, yes. In the U.S., we have the guidelines of once a woman turns age 40, she goes for an annual mammogram,

and that's covered by health insurance. Whether you're insured or not, you are due an annual mammogram. Okay. We know that women under the age of 40 are sometimes diagnosed with breast cancers, and that's something that is very important to me. I do, outside of my professional life, I definitely work with organizations like the Komen Foundation, the Brehm Foundation, which is a Maryland-based

awareness group that tries to get more awareness for screening for younger women and also for just the majority of women who will need that screening once you're age 40. Wow. Well, I think the polar bear in the snowstorm analogy, I'd rather find the polar bear before it finds me, just like you'd rather find the breast cancer before it's found. Absolutely. All of you. Absolutely. And so this is why early detection is incredibly important for men and women.

It sounds like with men, maybe they can get tested for the gene in the cases that seem to be more prevalent in men. But for women, it tends to be just more prevalent. So you said something that I like this platform, and I wish I could scream it from mountaintops. So the breast cancer gene, the test that we have, BRCA1 and 2, only 1% of breast cancers are BRCA associated. Oh, really? Is that more like a uterus cancer thing or what is the?

BRCA is associated with ovarian, uterine, colon, and breast cancer. But that right there, that statistic, 1%, less than 1% of breast cancers are BRCA positive. So women out there thinking, well, I don't have the BRCA gene. I don't need to get my annual mammogram. I don't need to give myself my self-exam. Everybody needs to give themselves a self-exam. Every woman needs to get screened every year. So do you have a website for your current company that talks about how you can self-screen? Is there any videos or anything there?

Well, we haven't talked about dense breasts either. Breast density. We could be here for hours. I would look up densebreast.org. Okay. It's a great, I want to be completely neutral and not sell something here. Sure, sure, sure. So densebreast.org is a great website to go to.

And it also helps educate about breast density, which is another, when I say polar bear in a snowstorm, every woman's breast tissue doesn't have that look, but the ones that do that are dense across four different categories, A, B, C, or D, not size, but density of the tissue, the higher the density, the more challenging it is to find the breast cancer. So not every woman has the polar bear in a snowstorm breast, but this is why AI support is incredibly needed. Good, well-trained AI that's reliable and trustworthy. And also women need to be educated about what these things mean and it increases their risk profile. Dense breast tissue has a masking effect. It hides breast cancer on a mammogram from detection at times. And it can also certain types of dense tissue have a higher risk of becoming breast cancer later. Wow. Interesting. It's, it's a lot of, this is why public health is

so hard in the U S it's, it's, it's a lot of information. It's boring, you know, and it's hard to educate. I wish we had like a public health star in the U.S. that was like giving regular updates about all this stuff. Our poor private practice physicians are tasked with trying to help navigate through all of this. Yeah. And there's not, you know, there's the information is just information overload. So how much is accurate, right? Like I'm sitting here

thinking that most cases of early breast cancer pre-40 are because of this BRCA gene but MJ is sitting here telling me that that's actually not accurate but that's kind of where you when I read about breast cancer this is what I'm thinking and I think of you know I know eight women here in Charlottesville Virginia where I think our population is under 30,000 people if you count students even and that's eight women that are in my close friend circle who have had breast cancer between the ages of 20 and 40. So within that super young age bracket that you're talking about. So get checked. Get checked early. Do self-checks.

Man and women. And artificial intelligence is helping with that. And pre-show mj was talking a little bit about artificial intelligence comes in two different forms yeah and this was interesting to me because i'm literally like the most i'm so on tech savvy you all might be able to notice that by my website by my facebook page thank goodness i have judah here who's helping me be better at all these things um but yeah so this is is when MJ started talking to me about this. I know I sat on a kind of a panel. I didn't sit on the panel.

I listened in on the panel at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. That's now the number one public school in the world. Yeah, UVA. But Yael, who's a famous professor from UVA, Darden School of Business, she's talked about AI and how it helps in everything from food service to finance to healthcare. And so, and let's talk a little bit about what you said before the show. I don't even remember the two types of AI, but this was important, I felt. Well, in my world, I mean, there's so many types of AI. There's generative AI.

What does that mean? What is generative? Should we start defining the first one? Generative AI, I mean, this is not my category. It's like when it generates text. I think chat GPT would be generative AI. It's like when I do speech to text, but I speak too quickly. That's generative AI. Yeah, okay. I'm giving a real-world example.

Okay, and then open AI, chat GPT, is basically you put something in and you ask it for an output and then it really quickly surfs the internet for you and gives you an output. And you hope that it's accurate, but you have to realize that what it's trained on might be bad data in, bad data out. Garbage in, garbage out. So that's what you

have to be careful with. I can give an example that might be a little controversial. It seems like some of those, maybe that someone who might have been in charge of an elite Ivy League college might have used that and it came off as plagiarism with this chat G, what is it? Chat GPT is the product. OpenAI is the company. But OpenAI, it's a great name because it is OpenAI.

It's literally the thing that it is. It's all over. I went to a writing conference with... MJ's going to write a book, so when she publishes it, we're all going to buy it. We'll just sign copies of it. We'll talk about that. I sure hope so.

I can't wait for the title. Is it forthcoming? It's forthcoming, yes. I'm working on it. My kickoff to that was attending a writing conference in Cape Cod by my dear friend Kwame Alexander, who is now a New York Times bestselling author multiple times. What's a book that we can buy at first? He's written over 35 books,

so I can't even begin. How do we spell his name? Because I'm so dyslexic. Kwame. K-W-A-M-E. And then Alexander. He's a Newbery Medalist award winner. Basically zero accolades. Yeah, zero. He's kind of a big deal. He just won an

Emmy for a show he had on Disney+. He's kind of a big deal. Okay, I love it. So you went to his writing retreat. I went to a writing workshop in Cape Cod last October, and I learned OpenAI came up. There was a gal there who the group, it was a small group of like 25 people. There was a gal there who, the group, it was a small group of like 25 people.

There was a gal there who is a sophomore at a major institution in the Mid-South that I won't name, who was using OpenAI to write her memoir, which was a very controversial topic. She was telling it. Like I said really quickly, like yeah. I mean like how do I know what's pulling for my real life

and what it's just gathering? That's junk in junk out. Right. Well, you could say, write me a story. You could give it certain things. Write me a story in the voice of and I don't think she was purposely plagiarizing. She was giving details of her life and then asking it to write a story. But you could say, write me a poem in the style of Robert Frost. And OpenAI would

give you something. I mean, I had a friend who was starting his real estate career and I said, why don't you just do on your Instagram a joke a day? And I said to ChatGPT, give me 100 jokes, 100 real estate jokes. And within 30 seconds, I had an output, which is super fun, right? Yes. Back to the writing conference. Are you tagging the person who maybe came up with that joke, not you? Absolutely not. Yes.

Back to the writing conference, it came up, this young woman talking about how she was using chat to write her memoir. And she was being honest about it, like, I'm a young person. I'm on the AI committee in my college. I'm doing this because it's a thing. Yeah, I think I can't wait to have my fourth year UVA students on the podcast here talking how they use it. Right. Kwame shared that there is a collection of authors who are forming together to sue OpenAI because they trained the algorithm on people's work and didn't license it yeah I mean that's kind of messed up right yeah so that's these are

the things that are scary about it and I think the New York Times is currently selling or suing open AI because it was trained on their on their online journalism so okay so the world I'm in that's open AI and I use it for things I don't use it to create content that I want to be my creative writing. That's a line that I draw for myself, and then I'll never cross. I'm pretty sure I'll never, ever drop my professional creative writing into chat. But I work with medical AI. I'm here to redline it for you after you write it normally,

and then we can, like, you know. Yeah, I love that. I love that. Everybody needs a good editor, right? Yeah. But I work with medical AI, which is approved and cleared by the FDA, and it's not, you know,

I have to tell some of my customers this. They're under the impression that my AI, good AI is all about what data set it's trained on. The larger the data set, the cleaner the data set, the more accurate the data set. So the AI that I work with currently in breast cancer detection is trained on breast cancers. It's trained on normal breast exams, and it's trained on abnormal breast exams with biopsy-proven breast cancers. So the training data set is over a million images. And then every time the company I work for does a clinical study with a research partner, their data becomes part of the

next version of the product. And every version of the product that is released for use at the health system that you might be getting your mammogram at is approved by the FDA. Okay. So that is the difference. And so the fear, like the conversation about chat GPT and open AI has in one way helped me with my job, which is to bring what I think is the very best product to as many breast imaging centers as possible and in the hands of as many radiologists as possible to help women. Okay. It's sometimes infected the conversations I'm having because they're like, well, I heard all this terrible stuff about ChatGPT and OpenAI

and they think that I'm bringing them something that's uncontrolled and unstable. And that is, in one way, all press is good press. I can say, well, let's talk about what the differences are. But in another way, I think it's important to know the difference. And as consumers are more aware of how AI can help improve quality in health care, in food service, in texts, if we're able to talk to text. We all need to kind of pivoting to something I attended. I went to a few weeks ago.

I was literally just going to ask you. We're on the same wavelength here. Yeah, so I tried to get you to go, but it didn't work out with your family schedule. I went to a consortium of sorts. It was called AI and the 2024 Elections, and it was a think tank group of people. I was just a listener, not a panelist, talking about AI in society, and particularly about the upcoming elections. I learned that AI affected the recent elections in Argentina. I learned about deep fakes.

Apparently during the New Hampshire primary, there was... Deep fakes? What does that mean? Deep fakes are... Oh, deep fakes, like fake people. Yeah, like a deep fake. Somebody, the other side had created a deep fake phone call of Joe Biden calling his constituents in New Hampshire during the primaries and telling them, don't go out and vote. It's not important.

And it was identified pretty quickly. But just to give you an idea that this is something that, you know, industry, government is looking at in the U.S. It's a very important concept. And I learned that at that talk that the elections in Argentina were recently affected by AI. And I'm sure we're going to have more and more stories of that coming out. My idea out of that day was, I think, hopefully soon, there will be an AI Bill of Rights for citizens in the United States. Yeah, okay. And part of that is just what can we expect, when can we expect to know what AI, where it is and where it isn't,

and standards and regulations. Well, I mean, there has to be, because look at even those pictures of Taylor Swift that came out that were AI-generated. Right? I didn't look at them, but I heard about them. I mean, I didn't either, but I mean, these are just, I'm so bad at reading the news, so the fact that, mean, I didn't either. But I mean, these are just, I'm so bad at reading the news.

So the fact that like, I saw it on the headline and then this thing with elections. I mean, it's literally everywhere. And it's, a lot of it's fake. Like some people will even say, is Joe Biden real enough of his appearances or is this AI? You know, we don't know what's happening anymore. So there has to be, I think it's a great idea. Bill of Rights for what is allowable. Yeah. Yeah. And for a way for us, I mean, it'll take a while. And the big conversation that's

being had now is whose responsibility is it? Is it now some people will say there's a lot of lawyers, tech lawyers who are salivating over lawsuits to sue tech companies. It's your fault. It's your job. In thes we we don't proactively make laws we reactively make laws sure we wait till there's a precedent and then we make a law um it would be great with this issue if we could be proactive and um but it may not be that way we may have to wait till things bad things happen to create policy around it i don't know where it's going to go i don't know either i think United States, though, people want to have the freedom to be able to choose. And then I think that a lot of these AI, that is not the health AI.

Let's get our processes smoother in a food line operation. Let's get our driving better, right? There's AI on your phone with your health app where you can then see, okay, I'm walking. The past week I've been walking to the right side. What is going on? Do I, you know, is my spine out of awareness? Like do I sprain my ankle really? Like what happened?

Am I having like heart issues? There's a lot of cool ways AI is working, but where is it crossing the line? And until those, your freedoms are being taken away where like Taylor, Taylor Swift, her freedom was taken away, right? Like someone that's not who she is. And that's where they painted a picture of her. That's where like, I think you're going to need those examples to create, unfortunately, the precedent. Yeah, I know it is unfortunate that there has to be some, um, some sacrifice

there. Gosh. Um, I love joyful AI stories to bring it back. Let's bring it back to joy. I mean, finding a breast cancer five years earlier leads to a longer life expectancy unless, um, there's the breast cancer tax. Nobody talks about is, uh, we have mutual friends who have gone through breast cancer. Um, just the cost it cost, it's not all covered by insurance. And so just finding it early, treating it early leads to longer life expectancy, most importantly, and less cost for healthcare system and for the person, for the victim of the breast cancer. But other things like sliding over, like AI is in dating apps. I met my current husband on Bumble and an algorithm helped me. Hey Lars, this one's for you.

An algorithm helped us find each other. He was just like 90 minutes away. Yeah. And for whatever reason, I will always be grateful to that. We were recently in Florida visiting, celebrating our anniversary, but also visiting a friend of mine I've had. I think I've known her about as long as I've known you. Okay. She relocated there after, uh, living in Charlottesville and dating in Charlottesville for quite some time, had a long-term relationship here, left and moved back to Florida. And about, I guess like three months in she was on Bumble and Bumble reconnected her with her high school, end of high school, early first year of college boyfriend. Oh, my goodness.

And we are going to their wedding on Memorial Day weekend this year. They are getting married. And it's like, I think that those stories are incredible, right? If you're on the apps forever and you can't find anybody, something's not working. But AI assistance, when it works, it really does work, and it brings incredible opportunities for joy and connection. In my talk track, back to the medical AI part, breast radiologists go specifically into that specialty because they have a passion for patient care,

the conversations that you have to have with women who have breast cancer. It's not a one-and-done, see you later. Once a woman has breast cancer. It's not a one and done, see you later. Once a woman has breast cancer, she's coming back for screening intervals, for treatment. Sometimes there's recurrence. So it's a doctor who a lot of radiologists sit in a room and read x-rays all day. But a breast radiologist also has that patient care component. And I talk a lot about how AI support actually reunites doctors with their patients. Cool.

Again, where, you know, I remember when I had the same primary care doctor in Charlottesville for many, for the first 10 years I lived here. Yes. And I remember when electronic medical records came up and I don't know if you remember this in your own personal health history. I remember when I went to a doctor's appointment and I sat and looked at the doctor like this or the nurse and we just had a human interaction and maybe the person took some notes on a chart and I remember when a laptop came into the room and my doctor was looking at her laptop and then

most of the time looking at the laptop and talking to me. Now every exam room has a computer in it. They're clicking boxes. There's really little eye contact when the human's in the room. And we've kind of accepted that that is normal. But the reason we go and sit in a room, there's like an intangible part of practicing medicine and caring for others that I think AI, I think we're going to get in the next five to 10 years, we're going to get to a place where those human interactions that are so important and a part of long-term health care outcomes yes return to the health care environment and where some of those other tasks are put with ai and and you know with always a human signing off and intervening but i'm really hopeful about the future okay awesome i love that and so in the interest of time um we i want to just pivot with some fun questions to end our time together.

Because this has been really interesting. And I think there was a lot on the table. Like you're transitioning to healthcare, oncology, AI. Like there's so much more. And we're going to have to have you on again. So I'm headed next. To continue the next conversation. Starting in March.

But since my day job is I'm a luxury travel consultant with Scouted Adventures. Please, all of you, if anyone needs help planning trips, call me. But let's talk about really quickly what is the best place you've been and why, and then what's on your bucket list. I love Spain. I love to travel to Spain as a country. I love the certain parts of it that are socialist, like the gazpacho is the same everywhere you order it. Yes. I love, um, the certain parts of it that are, uh, socialists, like the gazpacho is same everywhere is the same everywhere you order it. Yes. Uh, I love that. I love taking

the train. I like, um, the South of France. I like all over Spain. Um, I like the culture, the food, um, the people that's gotta be. And on my bucket list, I want to go to the Nordics, to Scandinavia. Um, I, My husband and I talk about this, getting a, like, not a van down by the river, but one of those cool, modern, you know, pull-along houses. Yes. And just driving and boating when we have to across the Nordics. Like a Winnebago, but trendier. Yeah, trendier. More Nordic chic. Yeah, less American looking, and more European, more Scandinavian, but just being in those kind of places. So that's bucket list stuff.

And I love that. And I know you've had a lot of wonderful men and women who have been supportive of your career and all the things you've done over the past years of your life. But what's the best advice you could give us? That it's never, um, too late to reinvent yourself. I would say, um, the career I have now, uh, I wouldn't have imagined. I feel like I lost a lot of time, but it turns out I was able to make up for that.

And, um, finding, knowing when to share your vulnerability with the right person who can open some doors for you that's not a small package of advice but just where my head's at what we've talked about today I would say just don't be afraid to reinvent yourself well I love that well MJ thank you so much for joining us and as MJ said it's never too late to reinvent yourself. Love you, mean it. Happy Valentine's Day from us to you. And remember that advice. I think that's been a common theme here on the Juicy Details, that it's never too late to reinvent yourself and just follow a new path

and be excited about it. And artificial intelligence can help you. Yeah. Thanks so much. All right. Well, thank you, MJ. All right. Love you, mean it all.

Thanks. Again, message me if you have any topics you'd like to include on the juicy details or if you'd like to be a guest thank you see you next wednesday Thank you.