Because AI isn’t just a tech story, it’s an economic story, a jobs story, and your story. In one hour, you’ll gain the clarity to understand where the economy is heading, the foresight to adapt your skills, and the confidence to navigate an AI-driven future. Whether you’re a business owner, leader, or lifelong learner, this is your front-row seat to the economic revolution already underway.
In this thought-provoking episode of Serving Up Success with a Splash, we’re joined by a very special guest, Dr. Paul Isely, Associate Dean at the Seidman College of Business, Grand Valley State University, and one of the most respected economic voices in the country. Featured on Marketplace on NPR, USA Today, AP, Financial Times, and the BBC, Dr. Isely is known for turning complex economic trends into clear, actionable insights.
Together, we’ll explore how Artificial Intelligence is reshaping economic growth, revolutionizing the job market, transforming the skills you need to thrive, and disrupting industries in ways few people are prepared for. From the hidden risks of “single points of failure” to how AI could change the way we think and make decisions, this conversation will be your wake-up call and your roadmap for the future of work and business.
Cocktail of the Week: The Future-Proof Fizz
Ingredients:
• 1.5 oz gin (classic foundation – the “economy” base)
• 0.5 oz elderflower liqueur (floral notes for creativity)
• 0.75 oz fresh lemon juice (sharp, refreshing insight)
• 0.5 oz honey syrup (smooth adaptability – blend of old and new)
• 2 oz sparkling water (AI’s effervescent energy)
• Garnish: Lemon twist and a sprig of rosemary (fresh thinking + resilience)
Instructions:
1. Add gin, elderflower liqueur, lemon juice, and honey syrup to a shaker with ice.
2. Shake briskly like you’re prepping for a fast-changing future.
3. Strain into a tall glass over fresh ice.
4. Top with sparkling water for that “AI-driven lift.”
5. Garnish with a lemon twist and rosemary sprig.
iselyp@gvsu.edu www.angiesnowball.com www.brucecramer.com https://iniciahub.com/
#ProductivityTips #SuccessMindset #ProfessionalGrowth #MindsetMatters #PersonalDevelopment
Tune in for this fun conversation at TalkRadio.nyc
The hosts set the stage with humor and energy before welcoming Dr. Paul Isely, a leading economist, to discuss how AI is rapidly transforming business and the workforce. Isely highlights that AI is driving unprecedented productivity growth—similar to past industrial shifts—by reducing the need for both low-level and middle management roles while narrowing the gap between entry-level and high-skill workers. For business leaders, this means adapting quickly to AI-driven changes in operations, workforce structures, and decision-making will be critical to staying competitive.
Dr. Paul Isley explained that AI’s rapid growth is disrupting careers, especially for middle managers in their 50s, since retraining has an eight-year ROI that many cannot recoup. However, he emphasized that while AI replaces routine tasks, the demand for human creativity, emotional intelligence, curiosity, and people leadership remains critical—and businesses should view AI as an augmentation tool rather than a full replacement. On a global scale, he noted that the competitive edge hinges on energy availability, with China leading in capacity, while U.S. and European firms gain advantage through risk-taking cultures, though rising energy and water demands pose serious challenges for sustainability.
Dr. Paul Isley emphasized that every major transformation—like agriculture or manufacturing—creates winners and losers, and while AI will accelerate economic growth, society must avoid repeating past mistakes of leaving displaced workers behind. He explained that AI will diminish some traditional cognitive skills but open opportunities to strengthen creativity, emotional intelligence, and curiosity, shifting how humans apply their abilities. The hosts and Isley stressed that both individual accountability and collective social responsibility will be crucial, urging businesses, educators, and leaders to ensure AI is used ethically and constructively rather than allowing echo chambers or shortcuts to undermine long-term growth.
In closing, Dr. Paul Isley urged businesses and individuals to embrace AI not with fear but with curiosity, adaptability, and proactive skill-building. He emphasized that success lies in using AI to augment, not replace, human strengths—particularly creativity, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving beyond well-defined tasks. The hosts highlighted key takeaways: AI is unavoidable and fast-moving, but leaders who stay curious, experiment with new tools, and continually adapt will not only survive but thrive in this new business landscape.
00:00:45.990 --> 00:01:00.749 Bruce Cramer: Welcome back to Serving Up Success, the show where we take a little bit of life and career and some business insights, and we blend it with a strong drink.
00:01:00.920 --> 00:01:05.540 Bruce Cramer: You all know me, Bruce Kramer, the corporate cockroach!
00:01:09.390 --> 00:01:10.330 Bruce Cramer: That egg.
00:01:10.330 --> 00:01:14.870 Angie Snowball: Gotta unmute. I know, I was so excited to talk, I didn't unmute.
00:01:14.870 --> 00:01:17.510 Bruce Cramer: We were excited you were on mute.
00:01:17.510 --> 00:01:26.130 Angie Snowball: I bet you were. They're like, oh, we got her this time. Notice nobody told me. They just left it. Okay, your turn, not dead.
00:01:26.770 --> 00:01:44.850 nawtej dosanjh: So, I wasn't on mute, and I'm Dr. Notej Tasanj, your strategy doctor, and I'm just putting it out there, I'm just noticing that neither Bruce nor Angie have said, hey, Notej, we missed you so much last week. Just putting it out there, just putting it out there, didn't get, didn't get that done.
00:01:45.060 --> 00:01:47.799 Angie Snowball: We're getting to it, we have an important guest here, then we'll talk about it.
00:01:47.800 --> 00:01:48.690 Bruce Cramer: Yeah!
00:01:48.690 --> 00:01:49.889 nawtej dosanjh: Alright, so….
00:01:50.570 --> 00:01:54.949 Angie Snowball: Damn British culture, Americans are, put yourself before others.
00:01:55.760 --> 00:01:57.549 Angie Snowball: You're others before yourself.
00:01:57.550 --> 00:02:12.369 Bruce Cramer: Well, tonight, we got a very, very special guest. I still can't believe he's here. But he's not only the Associate Dean at the Seedman College of Business at Grand Valley State University.
00:02:12.430 --> 00:02:22.450 Bruce Cramer: But he's one of the most respected economic voices in the country. He's been featured on Marketplace, on NPR,
00:02:22.450 --> 00:02:33.220 Bruce Cramer: USA Today, the AP, Financial Times, the BBC, it came knocking on his door, the list goes on and on. What makes him so famous?
00:02:33.220 --> 00:02:47.119 Bruce Cramer: is that he's one of those few people that can take really complex economic trends and convert them into clear, actionable insights. So tonight, we're gonna list his help.
00:02:47.140 --> 00:02:56.619 Bruce Cramer: To talk about artificial intelligence, how it's reshaping the economy, revolutionizing the job market.
00:02:56.650 --> 00:03:11.999 Bruce Cramer: And, of course, transforming the very skills you and I, our audience, are gonna need to thrive. Not to mention, it's disrupting quite a few industries. But we're also gonna talk about how it's changing the way we think.
00:03:12.390 --> 00:03:30.639 Bruce Cramer: and make decisions. And let me tell you, that's a two-edged sword, and it's scary. So AI isn't a tech story, it's an economic story, it's a job story, and it's your story! So stay with us. And now, without further ado…
00:03:30.930 --> 00:03:40.700 Bruce Cramer: Please welcome The Economist, the visionary, and friend of the show, Dr. Paul Isley!
00:03:40.920 --> 00:03:42.470 Paul Isely: Boop!
00:03:42.680 --> 00:03:43.410 nawtej dosanjh: Yay!
00:03:44.070 --> 00:03:52.930 Paul Isely: I'm really excited to be here and be part of this. It's really great to see this level of excitement about economics.
00:03:56.160 --> 00:03:57.060 Angie Snowball: So….
00:03:57.060 --> 00:03:58.060 Bruce Cramer: Angie!
00:03:58.810 --> 00:04:01.379 Bruce Cramer: What are we drinking?
00:04:01.380 --> 00:04:04.529 Angie Snowball: Today, we are drinking the Future Proof
00:04:04.570 --> 00:04:29.439 Angie Snowball: fizz. So basically what this is, is, what's kind of like a gin and tonic with some extra stuff. And last week, somebody asked me about the elderflower stuff, so this is what I got. I did not use a liqueur, I used the syrup, elderflower syrup, and this was actually at Kroger. This was super easy to find. So today, what we're doing, an ounce and a half of gin, or two ounces if you like gin. I happen to like gin, so we'll just round that up a little bit.
00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:35.399 Angie Snowball: And then some elderflower syrup, or liqueur, a little bit of fresh lemon juice.
00:04:35.400 --> 00:04:54.680 Angie Snowball: Honey, which I thought sounded disgusting. Sorry, Bruce, I left that one out, but I'm sure you can drop that in there. And then 2 ounces of sparkling water, and then you just put it over ice, you shake it, we did a lot of shaking, it's noisy, I didn't want to ruin your eardrums by doing that. And then you can put a little lemon in it, and here you go, future proof.
00:04:54.680 --> 00:04:56.220 Angie Snowball: Fizz, so….
00:04:56.220 --> 00:04:56.750 Bruce Cramer: Cheers!
00:04:57.090 --> 00:04:57.420 nawtej dosanjh: list.
00:04:58.200 --> 00:04:59.560 Bruce Cramer: Also, Bruce….
00:04:59.560 --> 00:05:10.510 Angie Snowball: I gotta give you kudos for your entrance there. I was really feeling like Kermit the Frog. You did such, like, hype there. I was like, and today! I felt like saying, wah-ha-wah-wah when you were done. That was very, very intense. Good job.
00:05:10.710 --> 00:05:13.220 Bruce Cramer: It's not every day we have such a….
00:05:13.350 --> 00:05:16.639 Angie Snowball: Such a distinguished guest. And you did, you did a good job.
00:05:16.640 --> 00:05:21.200 Bruce Cramer: Well, thank you. Alright, so we're gonna dive in because…
00:05:21.620 --> 00:05:37.170 Bruce Cramer: Anytime you got AI, we're gonna do probably many, many, many episodes. Thank you so much for watching us. Thank you for your feedback. This is one of the topics you keep telling us to talk more about, so we are there. So, Paul?
00:05:37.420 --> 00:05:38.670 Bruce Cramer: Buckle up!
00:05:38.860 --> 00:05:57.999 Bruce Cramer: We're gonna throw the first big question at you, is, you know, we had a brief conversation, and you had said to me, listen, AI is fundamentally shifting the trajectory of economic growth. Bruce, unparalleled, unprecedented.
00:05:58.380 --> 00:06:00.840 Bruce Cramer: What exactly do you mean by that?
00:06:02.250 --> 00:06:17.180 Paul Isely: Yeah, so as we think of things right now, what's happening right now to white-collar workers, happened to agricultural workers 150 years ago, started happening to manufacturing workers 50 years ago.
00:06:17.180 --> 00:06:26.510 Paul Isely: And it's happening now to white-collar workers, because what AI is doing is allowing us to do actions with fewer people.
00:06:26.630 --> 00:06:41.059 Paul Isely: And as a result, what we're seeing right now is really fast increases in productivity growth in some sectors of the economy that we can attribute now to how AI is influencing how business is done.
00:06:41.190 --> 00:06:49.160 Paul Isely: You know, it is… it's really speeding things up. How many times, Bruce, did you use AI to get ready for this podcast?
00:06:50.560 --> 00:07:05.850 Bruce Cramer: Oh, gosh, every step of the way. So, first of all, great, great question. You know, we use it as we tell our audience. We actually don't use a script, but we generate an outline.
00:07:05.850 --> 00:07:13.940 Bruce Cramer: Because we know we have to kind of dice our subjects down, just like we talked last week, otherwise it's too huge of a beast to tackle.
00:07:13.940 --> 00:07:25.489 Bruce Cramer: We use AI to help us think through that. We use AI to come up with little clever quips, if need be. I mean, you can't help but avoid it.
00:07:25.490 --> 00:07:36.119 Bruce Cramer: And literally, as I talk to my peers in podcasting, what used to take 2-3 hours to prepare for is less than 30 minutes because of AI.
00:07:36.600 --> 00:07:37.010 Paul Isely: Right.
00:07:37.010 --> 00:07:37.790 Angie Snowball: Yeah.
00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:53.230 Paul Isely: And so, you know, and that's small potatoes compared to the AI that we see right now being used in the supply chain across the United States, where large corporations need to get things shipped to their stores, and
00:07:53.230 --> 00:08:03.779 Paul Isely: The information from those stores go into an AI. The AI decides what's necessary. It goes to robots that grabs the stuff, and the stuff then gets taken to the truck.
00:08:03.780 --> 00:08:14.520 Paul Isely: Now you need 4 people, where you used to have a shipping center that had hundreds of people in it. It is really, really changing how we do business.
00:08:14.840 --> 00:08:18.949 Angie Snowball: That's… that's what's so interesting to me. I can't wait for you to hear more, because
00:08:18.950 --> 00:08:38.309 Angie Snowball: I… as much as we see AI, and we know so many things are changing, there's so many things that we don't see, like what you just explained. Not everybody's thinking about that, and I'm sure there's hundreds more. Natej, your university deals a lot with AI in medical fields and stuff like that. Do you… you see the same thing, right?
00:08:38.870 --> 00:08:49.119 nawtej dosanjh: Totally, I mean, we're, you know, we're, as you know, Angie, we're a startup university, and so we're able to set up a new, and we've used AI to be very, very lean.
00:08:49.330 --> 00:09:02.260 nawtej dosanjh: and keep our bureaucracy very, very lean in a way that legacy institutions can't. But I'm gonna just dive right in here, Dr. Paul. I've got another question for you.
00:09:02.440 --> 00:09:06.989 nawtej dosanjh: And it's this that, you know, you're describing the impact of AI,
00:09:07.630 --> 00:09:14.070 nawtej dosanjh: But it's… it's several-fold, isn't it? Because it's just changing… developing
00:09:14.260 --> 00:09:17.670 nawtej dosanjh: all the time. I read recently
00:09:17.990 --> 00:09:27.129 nawtej dosanjh: Sam Altman say that having ChatGPT 5 is like having a PhD student as an intern permanently.
00:09:27.930 --> 00:09:29.180 nawtej dosanjh: Scanning?
00:09:29.610 --> 00:09:42.820 Paul Isely: Yeah, it is, and what that's doing is it's narrowing the gap between those entry-level workers and those high education, high-cost workers. And so we're seeing that narrow.
00:09:42.820 --> 00:09:52.189 Paul Isely: And that's really changing how we can actually attack problems. You don't need as much of the high-end workers, and in fact, you don't need as many of the low-end workers.
00:09:52.190 --> 00:10:05.740 Paul Isely: So it's… it's actually increased the productivity. How fast we're growing. It's doubled how fast we're growing as an overall economy, and that is amazing. We haven't seen that type of growth since the 1990s.
00:10:05.840 --> 00:10:13.539 Paul Isely: when we got Word, Excel, Windows, and the internet all at the same time. So….
00:10:14.060 --> 00:10:21.059 nawtej dosanjh: Again, Dr. Paul, who's gonna, who's gonna win and who's gonna lose? Where… where, you know, where's, where's, where's the dust gonna settle?
00:10:21.610 --> 00:10:24.229 Paul Isely: Well, the dust is gonna settle with… with…
00:10:24.590 --> 00:10:32.889 Paul Isely: a consolidation in the AI products, and it's gonna… it's gonna deal with a… a consolidation in the types of workers that we have.
00:10:32.970 --> 00:10:51.310 Paul Isely: And what we're seeing right now is the losers right now are middle managers. So they're the people in the middle, because we don't need as many of them, because we don't have as many people, and we have AI to replace a lot of the functions that they were doing. So right now, it's those mid-50s, middle managers that are actually losing.
00:10:51.990 --> 00:11:05.509 Angie Snowball: Oh, that's kind of scary. That's right where I am. So, I think Jesse's gonna take us out to break here. I saw the two-minute warning, but when we get back, I have a Paul. Dr. Paul, I have a question about that, because that's scary as…
00:11:05.640 --> 00:11:08.689 Angie Snowball: Heck. Okay, Jesse, you can take us to break.
00:13:23.280 --> 00:13:30.780 Angie Snowball: Oh man, even Dr. Isley has the mandatory head bobbing going on there. Our music's doing it.
00:13:30.780 --> 00:13:55.490 Angie Snowball: So, welcome back, everybody, from break, and I'm here with an incredible guy, Dr. Paul Isley, and just before we went to break, he was talking about the middle managers are the people that are disappearing, and quite honestly, that's most of my friends. You know, I just had my 50th, and we're all in that… a lot of us are in that spot. Now, I'm out on my own, doing my own thing, my world's different, but I mean, what's gonna happen to these guys? What's gonna happen on my
00:13:55.490 --> 00:14:02.640 Angie Snowball: friends, are they gonna go broke? Are they gonna… what are they gonna do with their lives? You know what I mean? Because they're getting pushed out. What's happening to that… that…
00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:04.669 Angie Snowball: Sector you were talking about.
00:14:05.030 --> 00:14:06.840 Paul Isely: Well, what's happening right now is
00:14:07.060 --> 00:14:23.000 Paul Isely: is we're in that really high-growth segment, where… where innovations come in in something called an S-curve, where they come in really slowly, and then they go really crazy fast, and then they slow down again. And we're in that really crazy fast spot.
00:14:23.100 --> 00:14:40.459 Paul Isely: And as that happens, it gets harder and harder for people to adapt to those changes, alright? And what the problem is for people who are a little bit older is that it's about an 8-year ROI. It takes about 8 years to make up the money you need to retrain.
00:14:40.480 --> 00:14:47.930 Paul Isely: So if you're in late 50s, and you lose your job because of this, your options become narrower and narrower and narrower.
00:14:48.100 --> 00:14:52.639 Paul Isely: But on the other side of the spectrum, We're building more stuff.
00:14:52.740 --> 00:15:07.000 Paul Isely: The economy is growing faster, and your stock portfolio's gonna do great, because companies are gonna be able to take this and really, really push the limits of productivity, and gain profits as a result of it.
00:15:08.140 --> 00:15:32.719 Angie Snowball: That's really interesting. So, you know, also, in the very beginning, you mentioned how, you know, blue-collar saw this, and agricultural saw… everybody saw this at a different time, with things being replaced, and when I thought… when I heard you say that, I thought, yes, I remember that, but I also remember all the new jobs that were created because of that. Do you see the same thing happening as some of these jobs disappear? Do you see them
00:15:32.790 --> 00:15:38.580 Angie Snowball: More transforming into something different? And what kind of skills will people need to do these new jobs?
00:15:39.150 --> 00:15:55.519 Paul Isely: Yeah, we're already seeing that change happen, because firms have already figured out that they've let too many mill managers go in some cases. And the reason is that now, instead of the click buttons to approve things, because AI can do that very well.
00:15:55.520 --> 00:16:05.039 Paul Isely: You now have to be more in touch with the people who are reporting to you. And so those HR skills become really important. Not the HR hiring and firing.
00:16:05.300 --> 00:16:21.299 Paul Isely: Because AI does a lot of that, too. But the HR skills where you have to motivate workers, where you have to guide the strategy, where you have to help people understand why they're there, those become really important skill sets for a middle manager to have.
00:16:21.580 --> 00:16:27.970 Paul Isely: You know, just think about it right now. We're all losing AI, and we're not AI natives.
00:16:28.650 --> 00:16:29.260 Angie Snowball: Right.
00:16:29.260 --> 00:16:39.340 Paul Isely: But my kid is. You know, teenagers today have basically started to grow up with AI, and they're playing with it.
00:16:39.440 --> 00:16:48.909 Paul Isely: When you play with something, you come up with ways to use it that are much different than those of us, like me, who use it to go from point A to point B.
00:16:49.040 --> 00:16:59.249 Paul Isely: And so we're just at the very beginning to learn how we can even use the technology as it is today. Even if AI didn't improve
00:16:59.290 --> 00:17:10.369 Paul Isely: at all from what it is today. It would take 10 years for us to figure out how to use it the best ways possible to advance, businesses.
00:17:10.900 --> 00:17:16.130 nawtej dosanjh: So, so Dr. Paul, is another way of saying this, that if you're creative.
00:17:16.700 --> 00:17:23.600 nawtej dosanjh: If you, if you need to deal with people, other humans, on an emotional level.
00:17:23.940 --> 00:17:27.600 nawtej dosanjh: If you need to do things which are
00:17:28.010 --> 00:17:41.419 nawtej dosanjh: RT, which, which I need some fuzzy logic. If you need to do all of these things around the periphery of these hardcore skills, then the humans have the advantage over AI. Can we say that?
00:17:41.920 --> 00:17:44.559 Paul Isely: At this moment in time, we still do, so….
00:17:44.560 --> 00:17:46.799 Angie Snowball: Thank God, I have a place still.
00:17:46.800 --> 00:17:53.289 Paul Isely: So, so the, the one thing that we… the one measure really is curiosity.
00:17:53.400 --> 00:18:01.990 Paul Isely: So, we're not seeing… we're not seeing, the AI components being able to replace that
00:18:01.990 --> 00:18:16.740 Paul Isely: piece of your workforce. And that curiosity leads to all of those individual pieces that you were talking about, that creativity, because what we're really seeing with AI is looking at what lots of other people have already done.
00:18:17.000 --> 00:18:17.880 nawtej dosanjh: Alright.
00:18:17.880 --> 00:18:25.150 Paul Isely: And what we're thinking about with an individual is thinking of a new way that no one has ever done it before.
00:18:25.410 --> 00:18:26.280 Paul Isely: You know, so we're
00:18:26.850 --> 00:18:39.769 Paul Isely: further. I mean, in the medical stuff, it's really cool because it's pattern recognition that AI is really good at. So it sees things in maps, and it sees things in large data that's hard for us to see.
00:18:39.900 --> 00:18:47.639 Paul Isely: So if we understand that, and take advantage of it, then we become more powerful, and we keep our job.
00:18:48.430 --> 00:19:01.869 nawtej dosanjh: Can we use the word, you know, I always like to use the word, and a lot of my colleagues do too, augment. You know, the best way to think about AI, the best way to take advantage of it is to…
00:19:01.870 --> 00:19:12.440 nawtej dosanjh: make it all… make it be not your replacement, but your augmenter. Augmentor. If a word like augmenter exists. But it should be now, maybe.
00:19:13.030 --> 00:19:13.400 Angie Snowball: Yeah.
00:19:14.080 --> 00:19:22.649 Paul Isely: it's really good to use AI to make you better, and that's what people have to focus on right now. There are a lot of businesses out there
00:19:22.800 --> 00:19:27.640 Paul Isely: That have shifted from that augmentation mindset to the replacement mindset.
00:19:27.640 --> 00:19:28.170 nawtej dosanjh: Yes.
00:19:28.170 --> 00:19:32.590 Paul Isely: So what they're doing is they're gutting those early jobs.
00:19:32.710 --> 00:19:36.859 Paul Isely: And they're already starting to find out that by gutting the early jobs.
00:19:37.390 --> 00:19:41.190 Paul Isely: No one's learning the job well enough to lead.
00:19:41.300 --> 00:19:47.669 Paul Isely: So there's this balancing act that's gonna have to happen, and we're not to a point where we've figured out how to do it.
00:19:48.120 --> 00:19:54.020 Angie Snowball: And to that point, and I can't believe we kept Bruce quiet this long, but to that point, Dr.
00:19:54.020 --> 00:19:55.240 Bruce Cramer: Panicking.
00:19:55.240 --> 00:19:59.179 Angie Snowball: I know, I bet he's over there, like, oh my god.
00:19:59.180 --> 00:20:00.680 Bruce Cramer: This is exciting.
00:20:01.010 --> 00:20:12.260 Angie Snowball: It is. So, your entry-level jobs, because I… my son's 25, right? And he's… he's an engineer, so he's got a little bit of a path, but what happens… how do those kids get from college
00:20:12.260 --> 00:20:24.770 Angie Snowball: to the next level without entry level, because, like, I can tell you right now, my kid's not ready for that. I mean, he… those first years of entry level teach you all the things Natej was talking about, so what's happening with that gap?
00:20:25.450 --> 00:20:31.779 Paul Isely: Yeah, what we're seeing more and more is that there's an entire rung of the ladder that's been taken out because of AI.
00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:48.000 Paul Isely: And so, it's a matter of how do you replace that? And for young workers right now, it's moving from big companies to small companies, because small companies are further behind in their ability to deploy it to replace jobs.
00:20:48.080 --> 00:21:04.829 Paul Isely: So, a really viable strategy for young people is to start not thinking about that Fortune 500, but thinking about those mid-sized corporations, or those smaller corporations, where you can learn those early skill sets, and then you move to those large companies at a later point.
00:21:05.250 --> 00:21:06.199 Paul Isely: So that's a….
00:21:06.200 --> 00:21:07.230 Angie Snowball: Great advice.
00:21:07.590 --> 00:21:21.129 Bruce Cramer: Yeah, and I know we'll talk more about this, so I'm not going to go there quite yet, but something that I did… I know we kind of ran over is, Paul, you talked about the speed, so not only
00:21:21.180 --> 00:21:35.590 Bruce Cramer: the significant change that AI is driving, but I remember Toffler's third wave, where he talked about the agricultural transformation was 500 years, the industrial was 500 years.
00:21:35.590 --> 00:21:42.420 Bruce Cramer: and predicting safely that the technology would be fine. That paradigm
00:21:42.910 --> 00:21:47.000 Bruce Cramer: is hosed, am I not correct, with this kind of a change?
00:21:47.830 --> 00:22:03.879 Paul Isely: Yeah, I mean, certainly what we're seeing now is much speedier change than we've ever sort of seen before. Now, I would argue that the true, the true revelation in manufacturing, where jobs really started to drop, has only been 50 years.
00:22:03.930 --> 00:22:16.009 Paul Isely: So, agriculture was 500, this was 50, so the next one is 5 or 10 years. So, I'm seeing it step down, not be those big, long time frames.
00:22:16.030 --> 00:22:24.250 Paul Isely: But where we're at right now, it's gonna take even… it's gonna take us 10 years even just to figure out how to use everything we already have.
00:22:24.380 --> 00:22:30.420 Paul Isely: And that's hit… that's trying to hit a moving target, because AI's not standing still, it's… it's moving.
00:22:30.420 --> 00:22:31.030 Angie Snowball: Right.
00:22:31.030 --> 00:22:31.430 Paul Isely: Alright?
00:22:31.430 --> 00:22:31.869 nawtej dosanjh: Oh my god.
00:22:31.870 --> 00:22:42.669 Paul Isely: And so, people are going in, and they're using it for these lower-level tasks, not understanding that it actually is replacing some of the higher-level tasks at an even faster rate.
00:22:43.600 --> 00:22:50.999 nawtej dosanjh: And who's got the advantage, Dr. Paul, globally? Who's got the advantage? Geographically, who's got the advantage?
00:22:51.000 --> 00:22:52.000 Paul Isely: Geographically?
00:22:53.110 --> 00:22:53.850 nawtej dosanjh: Sorry?
00:22:54.310 --> 00:22:55.920 Angie Snowball: Dumped him.
00:22:55.920 --> 00:23:02.760 Paul Isely: Right now, it comes down to who has the energy. So you need lots and lots of electricity to make this happen.
00:23:02.760 --> 00:23:03.260 nawtej dosanjh: Yeah.
00:23:03.260 --> 00:23:23.029 Paul Isely: States, we're now at 5% of our electricity usage from data centers. So for you to take advantage of that, you have to have energy. And right now, China's ahead on that. Europe is behind on that. The second thing you need are people who are willing to take chances and are in managerial systems that allow them to take chances.
00:23:23.380 --> 00:23:33.010 Paul Isely: to try new processes. And there we see some advantage for Europe and the United States at this moment in time.
00:23:33.650 --> 00:23:34.220 nawtej dosanjh: Oh, my God!
00:23:34.220 --> 00:23:44.199 Bruce Cramer: That's fascinating. That is fa… that just… that last thread is fascinating to me, because I never even thought about energy in this equation.
00:23:44.620 --> 00:23:45.500 Angie Snowball: Same.
00:23:45.890 --> 00:24:00.029 Paul Isely: Yeah, it's actually… people thought that it would be EVs that would come close to breaking the grid, and it's really data centers that is pushing us to the edge. So we're seeing… we're seeing decreases in the quality of power.
00:24:00.350 --> 00:24:02.460 Paul Isely: According to some studies.
00:24:02.610 --> 00:24:18.419 Paul Isely: We're seeing tremendous water usage to try and cool down these units, and so we're really looking for technological change to allow AI to do this with less energy, but it's probably 5 to 10 years before we'll see that really bite.
00:24:19.130 --> 00:24:20.830 Angie Snowball: Oh my gosh.
00:24:22.230 --> 00:24:22.790 Angie Snowball: Gotcha.
00:24:22.790 --> 00:24:23.990 nawtej dosanjh: Sorry, Angie, go ahead, go ahead.
00:24:23.990 --> 00:24:31.770 Angie Snowball: No, I was just, I was just processing, you know, I'm the slow kid in the room here. So, EV's being electric. I own that.
00:24:31.770 --> 00:24:51.619 Angie Snowball: All right, Bruce and I share that title, but I was thinking EVs, that just took me a minute, maybe it's my gen, but I was like, electric vehicles, and I'm like, holy cow. So you think… for me, I'm thinking, that's taking up more than all these cars? That's incredible to think of how much power. And, like, Bruce, I just hadn't thought about that aspect of it before.
00:24:51.620 --> 00:24:52.290 Bruce Cramer: At all.
00:24:52.290 --> 00:24:55.619 Angie Snowball: That's not an infinite resource, right? That's a little scary, too.
00:24:56.180 --> 00:25:00.900 Paul Isely: Nope, and… and as we've gone through the last set of… of…
00:25:01.010 --> 00:25:07.950 Paul Isely: Movement to move to cleaner energy sources, a lot of our baseload capacity has been taken offline.
00:25:08.150 --> 00:25:13.649 Paul Isely: So we have less, less available stock
00:25:13.830 --> 00:25:26.259 Paul Isely: to actually put into this. So, it's going to be very interesting to see how we manage this, and it probably is going to increase the probability that we see more nuclear energy happening in the.
00:25:27.850 --> 00:25:34.190 Angie Snowball: Wow, sorry, Ozzy didn't like that either, that was my He's like, I'm scared too.
00:25:34.190 --> 00:25:40.230 Bruce Cramer: This is the first time the show has impacted the… Not at all.
00:25:40.230 --> 00:25:44.669 Angie Snowball: First time Ozzy's ever said anything. You scared him, Dr. Isley. He's terrified.
00:25:44.670 --> 00:25:49.489 Bruce Cramer: Jesse, you're gonna have to take us away. This is a great point to break. Natej.
00:25:49.850 --> 00:25:59.319 Bruce Cramer: You're gonna bring us back into this whole cognitive shift with the doctor, the two doctors, doctors squared.
00:25:59.320 --> 00:26:00.050 nawtej dosanjh: We're gonna try.
00:26:00.050 --> 00:26:04.109 Bruce Cramer: shit trouble now. Alright, Angie, take us to break.
00:26:10.480 --> 00:26:18.730 Bruce Cramer: Angie, or excuse me, Jesse! Jesse, take us to break! Oh man, she's….
00:28:21.200 --> 00:28:30.039 nawtej dosanjh: Welcome back, everybody. We're talking to Dr. Paul Isley. We're going to change tack a little bit now. We're going to talk, the…
00:28:30.790 --> 00:28:47.269 nawtej dosanjh: section that's loosely called the cognitive shift. Let me set the scene for you, Dr. Paul, here a little bit. You know, you talked about previous revolutions, you talked about the agricultural revolution, you know, we can include urbanization in that, can't we?
00:28:48.020 --> 00:28:53.100 nawtej dosanjh: What can we learn from those previous …
00:28:53.390 --> 00:28:57.829 nawtej dosanjh: Transformations that could be useful to us.
00:28:57.950 --> 00:29:11.680 nawtej dosanjh: in this transformation? What can we learn? What, you know, give us some… give us some tidbits or insights into, into stuff from the past that we could… we could use for… for this transformation.
00:29:12.270 --> 00:29:20.180 Paul Isely: Well, one of the most important things to know is that as we go into the transformation, we go through that high-speed change.
00:29:20.460 --> 00:29:27.450 Paul Isely: That there are people who are… who are losing their livelihoods, they're losing who they are, they, they, they can't…
00:29:27.670 --> 00:29:32.889 Paul Isely: They're not able to provide to society what they were able to before that shift started to happen.
00:29:33.430 --> 00:29:39.629 Paul Isely: But the economy is growing so fast that it's generating more money than those people are losing.
00:29:39.760 --> 00:29:54.249 Paul Isely: So we have to be aware that this is happening, and we have to be thinking about how do we take care of people as they're losing that, because we really want this technological shift to make things that much better for us as we move down the road.
00:29:54.310 --> 00:30:03.400 Paul Isely: And so we have to… that's one big thing that we saw in the… in the manufacturing revolution, is we saw that
00:30:03.400 --> 00:30:15.599 Paul Isely: That breakneck increase in productivity, but as a result, manufacturing workers lost their jobs, and we didn't come back in and make them better off, even though society had earned so much extra money.
00:30:16.080 --> 00:30:16.840 nawtej dosanjh: Yeah.
00:30:16.840 --> 00:30:20.219 Paul Isely: We've paid that social price, so we shouldn't do it again.
00:30:20.990 --> 00:30:37.900 nawtej dosanjh: And we're still… and we're still paying that social price. That's a great point. Let me change the tax slightly. I'm hoping you agree, but if you don't, please tell me. You know, we haven't… humans haven't always thought the same way as we think now.
00:30:37.940 --> 00:30:47.050 nawtej dosanjh: In the past, in different geographies, but it's certainly at different times, all humans, all of us, thought very differently. We may not have even looked
00:30:47.110 --> 00:30:51.980 nawtej dosanjh: way we look now, we may have been much shorter, we may have been much slimmer, and, you know.
00:30:52.110 --> 00:30:59.969 nawtej dosanjh: … What's gonna change… what's gonna change at the group level, cognitively?
00:31:00.150 --> 00:31:06.590 nawtej dosanjh: You know, how are we gonna… you know, we… we… we are… we look… we… Think of it.
00:31:06.590 --> 00:31:08.239 Angie Snowball: I think he's trying to say, are we gonna get….
00:31:08.240 --> 00:31:15.660 nawtej dosanjh: 2,000 years ago. How do we… how do we… what's going to change in the next 20, 50 years? How are my children and great-grandchildren gonna think?
00:31:15.660 --> 00:31:19.979 Bruce Cramer: Well, let me just… I agree with Angie.
00:31:20.280 --> 00:31:24.930 Bruce Cramer: I mean, so far, the way we've been describing this evolution.
00:31:25.700 --> 00:31:29.229 Bruce Cramer: Are we gonna end up stupid? Are we dumbing everybody down?
00:31:30.310 --> 00:31:36.099 Paul Isely: Well, what's gonna happen is, is we're not going to be able to… we're going to be using different skill sets.
00:31:36.230 --> 00:31:39.030 Paul Isely: that we have. We're gonna have to hone those skill sets.
00:31:39.210 --> 00:31:54.069 Paul Isely: So for the last 50 years, we've been learning how to do business the way we're doing business now. In fact, even if we think about computers, we've basically been using the same systems now for 30 years, alright? It hasn't changed much.
00:31:54.260 --> 00:32:02.029 Paul Isely: And so people who are good at visualizing that, good at understanding that, have gotten ahead. And they're using a certain part of their brain.
00:32:02.100 --> 00:32:03.000 nawtej dosanjh: Alright.
00:32:03.150 --> 00:32:13.059 Paul Isely: We know that the AI is going to decrease our cognitive abilities in some places, because we don't have to use it anymore.
00:32:13.250 --> 00:32:24.039 Paul Isely: Alright? And those areas are going to get weaker, and we've seen that. We've seen that in study after study, that actually it happens faster than we thought. That we're talking months
00:32:24.100 --> 00:32:37.620 Paul Isely: for people to lose skill sets that took them years to build. Wow. It's stunning to see that, and they've done this, you know, Microsoft has done some studies on this. We had a recent one in Lancet that showed that it took just 3 months
00:32:37.760 --> 00:32:44.120 Paul Isely: for doctors to lose the ability to find cancer in colonoscopies. That… that's an amazing….
00:32:44.120 --> 00:32:45.220 Bruce Cramer: Find out!
00:32:45.220 --> 00:32:48.280 Angie Snowball: Yeah, that's a good, literally.
00:32:49.360 --> 00:32:52.060 nawtej dosanjh: Angie's dog's gonna… No pun intended.
00:32:52.060 --> 00:32:53.879 Angie Snowball: Don't make my dog bark again, duck.
00:32:53.880 --> 00:32:56.969 Paul Isely: I'll try not to do that.
00:32:56.970 --> 00:32:58.150 Angie Snowball: But what….
00:32:58.150 --> 00:32:59.589 Paul Isely: What it does mean…
00:32:59.950 --> 00:33:18.110 Paul Isely: is… now we don't have to have that piece, that pattern recognition that had been optimized by these very high-end professionals. Now we need to be thinking about those other skill sets, those other parts of the brain that maybe we haven't used as much, some of those creative, artistic.
00:33:18.110 --> 00:33:36.840 Paul Isely: some of those curiosities, some of those ability to have a high EQ with people, because even though we can make an AI sort of feel like it's emotive, they aren't very emotive, all right? And so, we're going to have to exercise parts of our brain that we haven't been exercising.
00:33:36.880 --> 00:33:41.830 Paul Isely: So it might feel like we're getting dumber, because something that we spent a long time getting good at
00:33:42.080 --> 00:33:44.229 Paul Isely: We're not going to have to use anymore.
00:33:44.900 --> 00:33:50.159 Paul Isely: But, we're gonna have to use other parts. Think about the early 70s. We got calculators.
00:33:50.320 --> 00:34:02.970 Paul Isely: You know, before that, people who were really good at doing math in their head had huge scientific jobs, and in the matter of 5 years, the need for that type of person went away.
00:34:03.510 --> 00:34:04.060 nawtej dosanjh: Yeah.
00:34:04.060 --> 00:34:09.970 Paul Isely: That didn't make those people stupid, it meant that they now had to spend time learning new skills.
00:34:10.360 --> 00:34:16.240 nawtej dosanjh: But to be creative, you know, that creative part of the brain is going to be enhanced.
00:34:16.460 --> 00:34:22.060 nawtej dosanjh: There's bad creativity and good creativity, right? Bad creativity is essentially lying.
00:34:22.310 --> 00:34:39.049 nawtej dosanjh: telling untruths, but doing it in a very clever, manipulative way, and good creativity is inventing, innovating, and so forth. So, it's not all good, right? It's, you know, just because we're going to enhance the creative side of our break, it's not going to be all bad, it's not… but it's certainly not going to be all good.
00:34:39.560 --> 00:34:52.330 Paul Isely: Yeah, I mean, there's been several economists trying to figure out where we'll be in 50 years, okay? And there's sort of this, well, we'll probably just keep growing a little bit faster, but there's two other paths. One is.
00:34:52.330 --> 00:35:04.559 Paul Isely: is we harness AI to do good and leverage ourselves, and that sort of gets us to that Star Trek-type world, where we've taken technology and advanced ourselves.
00:35:04.720 --> 00:35:14.710 Paul Isely: The alternative is sort of the Terminator world, where you use AI and use it the wrong way, and you end up destroying civilization.
00:35:14.800 --> 00:35:30.880 Paul Isely: And… and so we have to be paying attention to this. We have to have ethicists thinking about this. We have to have philosophers thinking about this, and we need to get ahead of how it's being created and used, so that we can have that… that nice upward towards the Star Trek-type world.
00:35:31.480 --> 00:35:35.890 nawtej dosanjh: You know, Bruce was just… Bruce, I saw Bruce exasperate, I've got to bring Bruce in here, we've got to bring.
00:35:35.890 --> 00:35:41.310 Angie Snowball: I know, I was just gonna do it too. I was like, he's been there rocking, we got a little time.
00:35:41.520 --> 00:35:44.769 nawtej dosanjh: I don't know what I'm saying?
00:35:45.020 --> 00:35:50.549 Bruce Cramer: At this point, this is a two-drink minimum show.
00:35:50.550 --> 00:35:51.070 Angie Snowball: doing stuff.
00:35:51.070 --> 00:35:53.900 Bruce Cramer: No, this is… this has been….
00:35:53.900 --> 00:35:54.430 nawtej dosanjh: Absolutely, yeah.
00:35:54.430 --> 00:36:05.679 Bruce Cramer: But I do want to say, and, you know, now this is gonna… Speaking of dumbing this show down, but as Paul
00:36:05.710 --> 00:36:18.590 Bruce Cramer: as all of us have this discussion, Dr. Natej, Dr. Paul, as we get into this, it's been absolutely fascinating. There's been elements of this conversation, I'll be honest.
00:36:18.650 --> 00:36:28.280 Bruce Cramer: I'm in the business of business. I did not think about a couple of these elements, like the, you know, as you brought up, the energy, but also these two separate paths.
00:36:28.650 --> 00:36:47.200 Bruce Cramer: I have had great concern, but, you know, again, I come back to some of our prior shows around awareness, action, and then the accountability, is this is a wake-up call for all of our listeners that are tuning in. There's no need at, you know, definitely…
00:36:47.990 --> 00:37:06.549 Bruce Cramer: Dr. Paul has indicated there's gonna be a lot of opportunity. We gotta get clearly aware of where we are in this scheme of things. What kind of job are you in? Your role, whatever. And then you gotta think about specific actions, and don't panic. I mean, geez, don't panic.
00:37:06.560 --> 00:37:18.109 Bruce Cramer: When we get into the fourth segment, we'll probably get a little bit more into this, but there are things you can do to, as Paul said, to start using other parts of your brain, but you're gonna have to take action.
00:37:18.400 --> 00:37:22.690 Bruce Cramer: You're gonna have to hold yourself accountable, but if you do that.
00:37:22.850 --> 00:37:31.179 Bruce Cramer: The upside to this is, oh, Katie barred the door. There's a lot of opportunity. This is not doom and gloom.
00:37:31.420 --> 00:37:39.860 Bruce Cramer: So, oh my god, let's not panic. You know, an extra drink will help, but let's not panic.
00:37:39.860 --> 00:37:51.340 Angie Snowball: I like what you said about accountability, too, because something else you said, Dr. Isley, that got me thinking in the last thing you said was, not only is it going to be an accountability we hold to ourselves to learn new things.
00:37:51.340 --> 00:38:09.380 Angie Snowball: But it sounds to me like we're gonna need some type of social accountability, you know? You're talking Star Trek, we're gonna need a federation. Like, who's gonna keep us in check morally, right? Because that's not something that I feel like Washington's thinking about. It's like, you know what, let's set a moral board up over here to manage AI stuff.
00:38:09.380 --> 00:38:15.220 Angie Snowball: What do you think about that aspect? How are we going to teach our society to hold each other accountable in that way as well?
00:38:15.680 --> 00:38:30.710 Paul Isely: Well, that's where it gets a little scary, because… because we've already put ourselves into… into echo chambers, where we choose what we want to listen to, or see, and… and narrow it down to things that think like us.
00:38:30.750 --> 00:38:47.400 Paul Isely: now AI can give us exactly what we think. And so there's nothing that helps us understand that we may be getting off track more in a… in an ethical or a moral way. And so it really requires that… that…
00:38:47.940 --> 00:38:53.200 Paul Isely: businesses, because they're the ones who are really pushing AI faster and faster and faster.
00:38:53.320 --> 00:39:06.180 Paul Isely: start thinking about how do we make sure that the people who are here are using it correctly. And we can do that at the university level, too. So we… we have students coming through, and they tend to choose
00:39:06.370 --> 00:39:22.660 Paul Isely: easy paths sometimes, and use AI in places that they shouldn't, all right? And so, one of the interesting things is the success of something that was nearly dead as a result of all this. So we're all old enough to know something called a Blue Book.
00:39:22.690 --> 00:39:34.960 Paul Isely: Where… where you would go to a class and have to… to write out the answers in a blue book. And that's… their sales are going way up, because…
00:39:35.050 --> 00:39:36.590 Paul Isely: We're having… Really?
00:39:37.560 --> 00:39:51.160 Paul Isely: to take the hard way sometimes, because taking the hard way is how you grow. You know, you have to have resistance, just like weight training, you have to have resistance, and if you've chosen a way with zero resistance, you don't grow.
00:39:51.930 --> 00:40:09.810 Angie Snowball: Wow. Okay, that's pretty heavy. The dog didn't bark yet, but, I see that we have to go to… we have to go to break in a few minutes, so why don't we take this opportunity to go to break, let that sink in, then we come back with some more questions. So, Jesse, if you could take us a little early, that would be great.
00:40:09.810 --> 00:40:11.519 Bruce Cramer: And yes, it's Jesse.
00:40:11.520 --> 00:40:13.300 Angie Snowball: Jessica Cup.
00:41:57.190 --> 00:42:12.339 Angie Snowball: Okay, welcome back again, and thank you, everybody, for being with us, as always. So, Dr. Paul Isley is here dropping some heavy stuff on us. We're all sitting here processing all this, all this information. And as we were on break, I thought, you know, this is…
00:42:12.340 --> 00:42:25.819 Angie Snowball: like everybody, you know, companies, but also individuals, this is like drinking water from a fire hose, right? It's coming out so fast, and if you… you can't just really go to Google and say, I want to learn AI, right? You'll just get billions of answers, and…
00:42:25.820 --> 00:42:41.520 Angie Snowball: how do we… what would be your advice to really be ready for this? Because I'm ready, I'm creative, I'm curious, I want this to happen, I want to be ready, but I don't know where to start, and I am… I use a lot of tools, but there's, you know, for every tool I use, there's 100 I don't.
00:42:41.650 --> 00:42:45.149 Angie Snowball: What's your advice for helping somebody to get ready for this change?
00:42:45.610 --> 00:42:50.910 Paul Isely: Well, the starting point is playing. You gotta play with it.
00:42:50.980 --> 00:43:06.610 Paul Isely: You have to get in, you have to not be scared. My advice to someone who's never used it before is plan a vacation with using AI. It's an amazing tool for that, and you'll start to understand how it can help you on that dimension.
00:43:06.940 --> 00:43:24.399 Paul Isely: You know, think about… think about the places where it was first used in business, which was note-taking, you know, so that we got rid of the note-taker, and now we create… we create minutes-to-meetings that no one reads, but we… no one actually had to write it to begin with, so it…
00:43:26.100 --> 00:43:31.709 Paul Isely: You know, and… and so that… that type of thing is important.
00:43:31.840 --> 00:43:33.180 Paul Isely: Creating lists.
00:43:33.420 --> 00:43:35.930 Paul Isely: Creating, you know, creating…
00:43:36.050 --> 00:43:49.910 Paul Isely: doing those types of things that are augmenting ideas for you, where you can go, oh, wow, let's add to that. And then you learn how to add and add to what you're doing. And then, think of one thing that you do that is…
00:43:50.600 --> 00:43:51.930 Paul Isely: that's repetitive.
00:43:53.000 --> 00:43:56.959 Paul Isely: and play around with AI to see whether you can replace that task.
00:43:57.420 --> 00:44:03.040 Paul Isely: Because if you can, Then you don't have to do that, and repetitive tasks are boring.
00:44:03.210 --> 00:44:12.499 Paul Isely: They're boring, they're low productivity, you know, and so… so my AI screens my… I get around 300 emails a day.
00:44:12.670 --> 00:44:23.700 Paul Isely: And so, having it give me a summary so I know which emails are the most important for me to get to is extremely helpful to my workflow.
00:44:23.860 --> 00:44:26.540 Paul Isely: You need to find something that helps your workflow.
00:44:26.830 --> 00:44:27.340 Paul Isely: Alright.
00:44:27.340 --> 00:44:28.369 Angie Snowball: Well, that's great advice.
00:44:28.370 --> 00:44:28.880 Paul Isely: yard.
00:44:29.790 --> 00:44:32.959 Bruce Cramer: What would be some specific skills
00:44:33.590 --> 00:44:38.180 Bruce Cramer: You think are going to be something you want to kind of hone in on?
00:44:38.770 --> 00:44:40.579 Bruce Cramer: Yeah. To, to develop.
00:44:41.090 --> 00:44:43.869 Paul Isely: So, so what, what keeps you future-proofed?
00:44:44.070 --> 00:45:01.660 Paul Isely: Future-proofing yourself requires that you think a little bit about what jobs look like they might be pretty easy to replace. The number of call center jobs are down 25% since the release of ChatGPT. The number of programming jobs are down 5%.
00:45:02.300 --> 00:45:05.189 Paul Isely: The number of ad copy is down 2%.
00:45:05.400 --> 00:45:12.970 Paul Isely: Alright, so… so jobs that have that repetitive nature to them, that's in a well-defined box.
00:45:13.070 --> 00:45:16.109 Paul Isely: Are the stuff that might get substituted.
00:45:16.370 --> 00:45:23.770 Paul Isely: Alright? So you need to be thinking about, how do I get out of a well-defined box? How do I get to things outside of that box?
00:45:23.890 --> 00:45:38.859 Paul Isely: The broader things that you have to bring in, the harder it is for AI to do what you're doing. You know, if you go back to the beginning of computers, they discovered it was really easy to teach computers to do something humans think is very hard… play chess.
00:45:39.490 --> 00:45:44.319 Paul Isely: But it was really hard to teach computers to do something that humans think is very easy.
00:45:44.540 --> 00:45:45.410 Paul Isely: Walk.
00:45:45.540 --> 00:45:54.299 Paul Isely: Alright? We have the same problems with AI, so you need to be adaptable, you need to understand what your tech competition is.
00:45:54.360 --> 00:46:00.290 Paul Isely: And you need to build it in so that you're augmenting and not being replaced, alright?
00:46:00.310 --> 00:46:10.330 Paul Isely: And you need to elevate yourself to understand that now, I don't have to be a statistician to learn… to ask really interesting questions.
00:46:10.330 --> 00:46:22.210 Paul Isely: Because I now have a tool that will let that happen behind the scenes for me, and I can ask interesting questions and get answers that I couldn't get before if you weren't sitting in a university like I am.
00:46:24.020 --> 00:46:24.550 Bruce Cramer: Wow.
00:46:24.550 --> 00:46:30.269 nawtej dosanjh: Just great advice, by the way. Really, really wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful views.
00:46:30.940 --> 00:46:34.529 Bruce Cramer: So, let's talk a little bit about some key takeaways.
00:46:35.110 --> 00:46:37.839 Bruce Cramer: I'm gonna go… I'm gonna throw this at Angie.
00:46:37.980 --> 00:46:44.499 Angie Snowball: I knew it, I knew he said that look in his eye. What's your key takeaway?
00:46:44.770 --> 00:46:47.630 Angie Snowball: I know, there's so many.
00:46:47.680 --> 00:47:01.389 Angie Snowball: I, you know, every time I think about AI, though, that quote, I think it was Einstein, something about, I fear the day that the human… technology overlaps humanity, or some… the technology, something like that.
00:47:01.390 --> 00:47:11.330 Angie Snowball: And I thought a lot about this as Dr. Paul was talking, and about how important, like, the soft skills will be, like EQ, dealing with people, staying curious.
00:47:11.330 --> 00:47:30.469 Angie Snowball: And I think, especially with what I do, that's something that I could encourage more people to do, to branch out and get on their own. So that was one takeaway that I thought was like, I really need to spend more time doing that. But the other one was just to play with things. You know, the other day, I made a cartoon movie of myself.
00:47:30.470 --> 00:47:55.390 Angie Snowball: And I was kind of, like, making… I was like, oh my gosh, I'm like a five-year-old, and I was so excited. And then I'm like, look, I can even turn myself into a monkey. I was having so much fun with this, and I felt like an idiot, but today, I don't. Today, I feel like I'm ahead of the game for being able to play and make a movie of myself where I can turn myself into a monkey. Like, how fun was that to do? So, I found that very encouraging, actually. I mean, my dog's still upset, but I found a lot of encouraging stuff here, so thank you.
00:47:55.390 --> 00:47:56.240 Angie Snowball: Thank you, Dr. Paul.
00:47:57.890 --> 00:47:58.330 Bruce Cramer: the day.
00:47:58.330 --> 00:47:59.010 nawtej dosanjh: kudos.
00:47:59.910 --> 00:48:01.540 nawtej dosanjh: So…
00:48:01.740 --> 00:48:10.040 nawtej dosanjh: Two things. One that's been implied rather than stated, and it's this, because I want to end on a positive note.
00:48:10.170 --> 00:48:24.810 nawtej dosanjh: You know, we are an amazing species. We are so creative, adaptable. We have faced near extinction multiple times. It's not in the common vernacular, but we have been… we've nearly bowed out in the dark.
00:48:24.810 --> 00:48:33.209 nawtej dosanjh: Several times over. We overcame urbanization, we overcame where people went to start committing murder for the first time.
00:48:33.230 --> 00:48:41.120 nawtej dosanjh: You know, when they had to live in confined spaces. We overcame the agricultural revolution, where Disease entered our…
00:48:41.620 --> 00:48:54.640 nawtej dosanjh: our species for the first time. Major disease, because, you know, we weren't… we weren't eating, healthily, we were eating processed foods. We overcame the Industrial Revolution, where people had to get to work on time and died in factories.
00:48:54.640 --> 00:49:08.540 nawtej dosanjh: we're going to get over this. This is… this is going to be the toughest, but we… we are a species that has overcome over and over again in the last 200,000 years, and will overcome again. And… and that leads me to the second thing.
00:49:08.790 --> 00:49:12.930 nawtej dosanjh: the doctor… and this is what Dr. Paul said very explicitly.
00:49:13.190 --> 00:49:14.150 nawtej dosanjh: play.
00:49:14.490 --> 00:49:17.640 nawtej dosanjh: What was it that you became good at?
00:49:18.000 --> 00:49:18.550 nawtej dosanjh: Pardon.
00:49:18.930 --> 00:49:22.839 nawtej dosanjh: play. I became not a bad soccer player.
00:49:23.180 --> 00:49:31.940 nawtej dosanjh: as a child and later, because I played thousands of hours of soccer. I became reasonably able at soccer.
00:49:32.080 --> 00:49:45.819 nawtej dosanjh: I mean, I was a terrible tennis player because I didn't put the work in, I didn't play enough hours of tennis. So, play, play with AI. Add things. Don't follow… don't follow regimented, clear paths. Do something slightly different.
00:49:46.240 --> 00:49:56.910 nawtej dosanjh: And so, yeah, those are my takeaways. I'm excited. I know we've talked a lot about, you know, downbeat things and dangers, but…
00:49:57.010 --> 00:50:03.750 nawtej dosanjh: At the end of the day, we are an amazing species who've overcome mass extinction several times over.
00:50:04.570 --> 00:50:10.019 Angie Snowball: Man, we're really Americanizing him, too. Did you hear that? He played soccer. He didn't play footy.
00:50:11.070 --> 00:50:14.070 Bruce Cramer: Holy shit, that was a bit of a mic drop there!
00:50:14.070 --> 00:50:16.640 Angie Snowball: I know! He's always like that, he does it every week.
00:50:16.640 --> 00:50:19.900 Bruce Cramer: Yeah, you stole the one I had about.
00:50:19.900 --> 00:50:27.549 nawtej dosanjh: I'm sorry, you should have texted me, you know, I wouldn't been looking, but you should have sent me a website and say, hey, don't do that.
00:50:27.900 --> 00:50:46.489 Bruce Cramer: If I… I can't add a whole lot to what you two have just covered as takeaways. I do think that one of my takeaways is not to think of AI just as cognitive in terms of my job, but all the other implications, as we discussed, like energy.
00:50:46.490 --> 00:50:48.760 Bruce Cramer: You know, there's other facets…
00:50:48.860 --> 00:51:01.729 Bruce Cramer: to the growth of AI that go beyond me personally, in my job, my career, etc, and just even my cognitive. There's… there's a lot of ramifications, the social.
00:51:01.930 --> 00:51:09.510 Bruce Cramer: the energy, etc. So, wow. Now, I'm… I'm gonna ask…
00:51:09.770 --> 00:51:17.659 Bruce Cramer: Mr. Dr. Paul Isley, what… what's been your one tagline that, you know, because clearly when you're…
00:51:18.000 --> 00:51:27.430 Bruce Cramer: When you're having this kind of conversation, it's very easy to kind of start to panic, for lack of a better word.
00:51:27.560 --> 00:51:36.369 Bruce Cramer: What do you tell your students, who I'm sure, you know, oh my gosh, you guys, you know, funnel thousands of people through.
00:51:36.630 --> 00:51:41.279 Bruce Cramer: They've got to be thinking, what do you tell them to calm them?
00:51:42.630 --> 00:51:49.550 Paul Isely: So I can tell you the number one question I get from students is, what can I study that will be still a job 10 years from now?
00:51:49.790 --> 00:51:52.980 Paul Isely: And I tell them that they're thinking about the wrong question.
00:51:53.200 --> 00:52:02.060 Paul Isely: That, that what they need to do is be thinking about a suite of skills, and a suite of skills that is ever-adapting.
00:52:02.220 --> 00:52:03.140 Paul Isely: Alright.
00:52:03.310 --> 00:52:10.389 Paul Isely: In reality, a problem, whether it be a recession, because I'm an economist, whether it be AI,
00:52:10.660 --> 00:52:16.160 Paul Isely: They're only problems if you don't know they're coming, and you don't react to them.
00:52:16.490 --> 00:52:20.599 Paul Isely: The worst thing you can do is freeze, or put your head in the sand.
00:52:20.810 --> 00:52:32.890 Paul Isely: The best thing you can do is get proactive, and take advantage of what's there, and be on the cutting edge. Because when you are, you're gonna move it. You're gonna move the bar.
00:52:33.610 --> 00:52:39.889 Paul Isely: And you're gonna be personally successful because of it. So you have to do that. You have to do that.
00:52:41.510 --> 00:52:42.020 Bruce Cramer: Wow.
00:52:42.020 --> 00:53:00.119 Angie Snowball: Man, everything you've said is so insightful. I didn't… I was worried about this episode, to be honest, because I'm… I'm the creative person. I'm not always that smart when it comes to economy and all this hard stuff, but goodness gracious, you made this so relatable and so interesting. I learned so much. I can't thank you enough for joining us today.
00:53:00.120 --> 00:53:09.349 nawtej dosanjh: Absolutely, had a great hour with you, Dr. Paul. Really, thank you so much. Will you come back again? Can we… can we make sure you come back again?
00:53:09.350 --> 00:53:11.140 Paul Isely: Oh, this was fun, I'll do this.
00:53:11.140 --> 00:53:11.800 nawtej dosanjh: and join us.
00:53:12.090 --> 00:53:12.830 Angie Snowball: Yay!
00:53:14.440 --> 00:53:20.340 Bruce Cramer: And so, so a couple of things. One, thank you…
00:53:20.520 --> 00:53:33.450 Bruce Cramer: Thank you, thank you. There are probably people out in our audience thinking, oh my god, how… you know, if you're in a business, whatever, how do I get ahold of Dr. Paul Isley?
00:53:33.650 --> 00:53:42.009 Bruce Cramer: He's very well established. So I say, worst case, AI them, Google them.
00:53:42.010 --> 00:53:42.820 Angie Snowball: You're the one.
00:53:42.820 --> 00:53:48.800 Bruce Cramer: You can easily get ahold of him and his colleagues. They do a lot of work with businesses.
00:53:48.870 --> 00:54:04.190 Bruce Cramer: and, other things to really help people think through this and be successful. So I want to put that out there, because he is extremely successful, and as everybody could tell, this has been very insightful.
00:54:04.190 --> 00:54:15.439 Bruce Cramer: So, he lives up to the building… building. So, I hope you come back, and so what I would say to all of our listeners, your key takeaway, AI is here.
00:54:15.470 --> 00:54:17.119 Bruce Cramer: You can't hide from it.
00:54:17.400 --> 00:54:21.259 Bruce Cramer: And it's changing. Just about everything.
00:54:21.520 --> 00:54:27.229 Bruce Cramer: No need to panic. Understand that. The winners will be those that adapt.
00:54:27.230 --> 00:54:41.990 Bruce Cramer: fast, think critically, and keep building skills AI can't replace, as Paul alluded to. So with that, everyone, until next time, stay sharp.
00:54:42.420 --> 00:54:47.700 Bruce Cramer: Stay adaptable, and keep your glass Half
00:54:48.040 --> 00:54:54.310 Bruce Cramer: Thank you so much for joining, and thank you once again, Dr. Paul Isley. Cheers!
00:54:54.650 --> 00:54:55.200 Angie Snowball: Cheers, thank you.
00:54:55.200 --> 00:54:55.720 nawtej dosanjh: Bye.
00:54:55.720 --> 00:54:57.449 Bruce Cramer: Take us away, Jesse!
Talking Alternative Broadcasting
392 Central Park West Suite 17R - New York, NY 10025
Privacy Policy · Terms & Conditions
Thank You for Visiting TALKRADIO.NYC © 2022.
