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Ai Do Less Earn More – a conversation with Gary Dhanda Founder of Ai Twin and Tekmait
15 Plays18 days ago
How to make Ai work so that your company can earn more
Gary Dhanda, is the founder of Tekmait and Ai Twin.
In this episode of the Abeceder podcast The Independent Minds Gary explains to host Michael Millward the approach any organisation could take to ensure that they maximise the benefits of implementing Ai as a business tool.
Gary and Michael discuss
- The history of Ai
- Absence of imagination in how Ai is used
- How to use Ai correctly
- The role of Ai within an organisation
- How to become an Ai first organisation
- The jobs that Ai will create
Discover more about Gary and Michael at Abeceder.co.uk
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Transcript
Introduction to Zencastr and The Independent Minds
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution process so easy. Use the link in the description to access Zencastr.com and take advantage of the built-in discount.
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abbasida and people who think outside the box. about how work works with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:42
Speaker
I'm your host, Michael Middleward, the Managing Director of Abusida.
AI's Role in Business Efficiency
00:00:47
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, Gary Dandar is going to explain how organizations can really use AI to earn more by doing less.
00:00:59
Speaker
Gary, the founder of Techmate and AI Twin. Gary, worked with some of the biggest names in AI before branching out on his own. Gary is based in Glasgow, a city that smiles better.
00:01:13
Speaker
I know, i have been. And if I get the opportunity to go again, I will be sure to use my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to book my trip, because membership of the Ultimate Travel Club gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:01:31
Speaker
I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club as well and also travel at trade prices. Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to and probably good enough to share with friends, family and work colleagues as well.
00:01:58
Speaker
As with every episode of The Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think but we are hoping to make you think.
Career Transition and Software Utilization
00:02:06
Speaker
Hello, Gary. Thank you for having me on the show, Michael. It's a great pleasure. I'm really looking forward to exploring this AI issue because I'm sure like many other people, I don't really understand very much more about it other than ChatGPT, which is I shouldn't mention unless I also mention all the other companies because ChatGPT has almost come a little bit like...
00:02:28
Speaker
Hoovering, or what we've given all versions of AI as a name, ChatGPT, but it's a company, a brand. Absolutely. Indeed. I think they've they they landed with the kind of loudest bang.
00:02:40
Speaker
It was obviously what drove the the large spike in interest in TAI kind of a couple of years ago now. And they've done some really exciting things. So they've done well to cement their position on that space. But yeah, they're one of a few leading providers in AI.
00:02:56
Speaker
Can we explore a little bit about your experience in history and and tell me a little bit about, please? how you came to set up your own business after working for some of the big names? I was most recently at Microsoft for about five years. My role was ah basically a newly formed part of the organization at the time when I joined, it was still growing, customer success. So this idea of what happens after the customer signs on the dotted line, how do we get them to realize the value, find the use cases,
00:03:24
Speaker
deploy, manage, optimize the technologies that they have with us. um So spent about five years doing that across the public sector. So that enabled me to see quite a broad use of both AI and cloud technologies in general, which is fascinating. And that that came in the back of prior to that having about 10 years in other software applications that were essentially focused on making things more efficient, quicker, slicker,
Optimizing AI in Business Processes
00:03:49
Speaker
safer. And it was really the combination of the experience across all of those companies where I found had a bit of a sweet spot, I'd like to think, in terms of what AI should look like moving forward to us as individuals and not just organizations. And and that's what led to the birth of AI Twin.
00:04:06
Speaker
Right. One of the things I've always thought is that organisations invest in software like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and never really take full advantage of the capabilities of that software.
00:04:19
Speaker
Like PowerPoint becomes just a ah list of the notes that somebody's going to use on a presentation. Or Excel is just a spreadsheet, but it's a table because people don't use all of the capabilities. And sounds like your job was to help people or understand how they could use more of the software.
00:04:41
Speaker
and more of the software's capabilities. Yeah, I think that's a fair summary. And that's consistent right when you look across the board, Michael, like whether it's productivity suites like Microsoft 365, and we talk about things like Excel, PowerPoint, and people use a very small percentage of the features that are there. But that's also true when you look at other systems within businesses. So CRMs, for example, which people have used as almost fancy black books, as opposed to you using them in the way they're designed to be used. That then extends further into accounting platforms that that a lot of businesses have. where they use a lot of the basic functionality, a lot of the focus is driven around compliance and ensuring the tick boxes from a kind of, even just even just a tax submission perspective, and they fail to take in and realize the broader benefits of these applications. yes yeah So part of what I do even on the consultancy side is focus more on what people have got already rather than try to push in new solutions.
00:05:43
Speaker
Because at the moment, it it feels like we're in a world surrounded by noise and hype and lots of features that people simply aren't using. It sounds almost as if we have an
AI History and Current Applications
00:05:53
Speaker
opportunity. Let's say when we got all of the Excel, PowerPoints, Word things, we used Word like a typewriter rather than all of its various different potentials.
00:06:03
Speaker
We have the danger, I suppose, that we could do the same thing with AI as well. So it's almost like draw a line and learn more about what we already have and how we can use it to its best advantage. Yeah, yeah. yeah One of the ways within which I kind of look at it is as if like AI has been used like above a bit a vending machine at the moment.
00:06:26
Speaker
That's an interesting analogy. yeah Yeah, but the more I kind of thought about it, the more it kind of stuck that we turn up, we ask for a very simple output, blog post, a social post, a letter, an email or a newsletter or whatever it may be. It produces that and then we can carry on with our day.
00:06:43
Speaker
And I believe AI has the potential to do a lot more than than simply provide those what have now become quite simple outputs. I agree with you. think we all need to understand it much more. But I suppose for me, the understanding starts with where does it all come from?
00:07:00
Speaker
Why does it do what it does? But what's the what's the history of AI? Without, I guess, going into too much detail or the detail around the areas that I know, I guess at high level, it would be good just for everyone understand, it's actually been around for a long time, so since the 1940s, 50s. I think the actual term itself was coined around about the 50s or 60s by, I believe, a gentleman called John McCarthy,
00:07:26
Speaker
And at that stage, we've seen the very early evolutions of AI, maybe in some games and stuff. Whereas now, we're starting to see more of that come into our life. The probably first mass usage of it is through the things like Amazon Alexa and Siri. What was that, 10, 15 years ago now?
00:07:42
Speaker
So this idea of using AI has been around for a while, but maybe it hasn't been viewed as that. And then what really pushed it to the masses was ChatGPT. I think that was around about 2022, I believe.
00:07:56
Speaker
The focus of that was all around this kind of generative AI piece. where it was generating content. So whatever that may be, whether that's written content, nowadays images and videos and code and much more. And the idea of this was is that computers would start to do what would have previously required human intelligence.
00:08:17
Speaker
So they get smart, they learn like us and they don't learn much more than us much quicker. we're already now find ourselves at a stage where I would argue you that AI is already smarter and more capable of doing things that us as humans can do, which for me is quite exciting. I know there's, I'm very well aware of the fact that there's two sides of that coin, but I think that actually creates a a big realm of piss possibility. And now I think the only limitation is your imagination.
00:08:50
Speaker
You could very well
Effective AI Implementation Strategies
00:08:51
Speaker
be right. I think, But that imagination thing becomes a very big point, I think, when you could argue that if ChatGPT started around 2022, we're in 2025, coming towards the end of it, we could actually be saying that there hasn't been that much imagination applied to the use of AI by the general population. We have stuck in a very basic level of usage, I suppose, in many ways.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's fair. I don't think we're using it to us all of its potential. I think how a lot of people are using out there at the moment is not the right way to use it. I think it's made a lot of people lazy. What would you say then when you say a lot of people are not using it in the right way?
00:09:37
Speaker
give me an example of of not using it in the right way so even just from this kind of like giving it enough context perspective so what you get now from a lot of people out there is that they like chat gpt because it's kind of finally doing what they kind of wanted it to do it remembers their name their business their dog's name and part of that has come on the back of them feeding the ai engine information over the last couple of years either knowingly feeding it or unknowingly feeding it and I guess a very simple example of that would be if we were to even just stick to chat GPT because it's it's the one that the kind of masses are using at the moment so we're now at a stage where a lot of people are quite happy with what it's outputting but I guess the I would almost flip that on its head if they were almost to imagine that the kind of listeners that although ChatGPT is doing well now, it's because it knows who you are, but imagine if on the first day you started using ChatGPT two years ago, or whenever it was, a year ago, six months ago, rather than go right in and say, give me a blog post about, I don't know, this new product,
00:10:46
Speaker
You started by saying, my name's Gary. This is what my company is. This is where I operate. This is the market that I'm going after. This is some of the things I've tried that have worked.
00:10:58
Speaker
These are some of the things that I've tried that haven't worked. This is my product. This is how I see it benefiting people. And then going in to ask for the blog post or the social media post or whatever it may be.
00:11:12
Speaker
I think they would have saved themselves six months, a year, two years, or have them however long it was. And don't get me wrong, there's still going to be an element of training and improving as you go. But that's just one very kind of simple way within which people can start to get better results, which is by improving their input.
00:11:31
Speaker
Because people have got really lazy with it now. It's almost like had a couple of word vague asks in the hope that it's going to get you and do the rest of the work. And it does do that an element of the time.
00:11:43
Speaker
but you then have the fear of sounding like everyone else, the content isn't as great as what it could be. And one of the things that I say, I'd argue it slows down your own learning and your own personal development by doing it in that way as well. i agree with you that one of One of my big fears with AI is that it's like a rapid recall, a rapid search of what has happened before.
00:12:08
Speaker
If you don't provide it with enough information as to what it is that you want so that it can understand what you need, yeah it will give you potentially what everyone else has done.
00:12:21
Speaker
So it goes from being an advantage to being something that could actually cause you a lot of problems. and it could actually damage your business rather than help you build a business because you haven't set well you haven't given it everything that you want but then again listening to you talk there was thinking yeah well people are talking to a i in the same way as they talk to other people people that they work with people that they live with they're assuming that people know what they know
00:12:56
Speaker
We're assuming that the computer, at the AI, knows what we already know, whereas it might not actually at all know anything about us. Indeed, spot on.
00:13:07
Speaker
And if it if it was to be this, the way I kind of try and encourage people to look at it is if it's this kind of new virtual employee, it's like the employee walking in on day one, sitting across the desk from you, and you're saying, oh, by the way, go make a blog post on my thy product.
00:13:22
Speaker
And the employee might be able do something with that. but they don't have enough of an understanding of your business to truly be effective. And then but what we also haven't created is almost guardrails, a framework within which they should operate, arguably like an employee contract almost.
AI Integration and Management
00:13:42
Speaker
So we are in the kind of wild west with it a little bit, doing things, hoping for the best, and getting a level of output that does the job rather than it be to the quality that that we all know AI can can do and and and and help us achieve.
00:13:59
Speaker
So you're talking almost like having an AI contract as we would have an employee contract. And also, an AI induction for the AI about all the things that you would include in an induction program for a new employee.
00:14:18
Speaker
This is the organization. This is the history. This is the the story of the founders. These are the corporate values. This is the way in which we do things. Not the way that other people do things. There's a right way. There's a wrong way.
00:14:31
Speaker
There's our way. and This is the way that we do it because it works for us. I had not thought about it in that sort of way, Gary. Thank you very much. But it's, it's, that's really very interesting.
00:14:43
Speaker
Yeah, you've got me thinking.
00:14:47
Speaker
You've got me thinking. Where do you think, know, from the organizations that you've worked with and things that you can talk about, give us an example of an organization that is doing it really well.
00:15:01
Speaker
If I'm honest, I've yet to come across, and I'm not saying they're not out there, but I'm yet to come across what I would truly classify as a AI first organization.
00:15:15
Speaker
Now don't get me wrong, there's lots of ai applications out there and a lot of them do a lot of really good stuff. but I've yet to see so an organization that I've implemented really well and and truly have it integrated and into that business as opposed to it just being another shiny tool that they've bolted on or added on.
00:15:37
Speaker
um like What we're starting to see elements as result of is more and more organisations get it and starting to build that in. I think a part of that will just take time, either to shift the mindset or to maybe get their kind of systems and and processes in a place where they can actually do it properly.
00:15:56
Speaker
But I can't actually think of one. Yeah, I really can't. It's interesting that you say that in terms of, on a topic yet, what you say about organizations taking a little piece of AI from there and another piece from there, vaulting them on to what they already do.
00:16:14
Speaker
And this idea that AI first type organization is very interesting as well. So what would be the first steps that you would, if you were starting a business or if you already have a business, if you already have a business, what is it that you would do to,
00:16:32
Speaker
transform that business into one that was more AI first what were the sorts of steps that you would go through yeah so this is stuff that does come up in a lot of the workshops that i deliver for like the likes of kind of business gateway and so on and it's a bit of the anti-climax and it's the bit that people don't want to hear but I would say I'd start by getting their house in order and that's very much exactly how I talk about it is that they need to get we need to get themselves ready for AI before adopting AI. And part of that stems from, or comes from that this kind of doing this activity of getting their data right.
00:17:09
Speaker
Data is the fuel that drives these applications. You could argue to some, in some ways, it's simple as garbage in, garbage out. I was going to use that expression. okay You've stolen my line.
00:17:21
Speaker
ah So what you're meaning is if if an organization has not got its data sorted out, there's no hope of it ever really going to be able to maximize the benefits and realize any benefits from using ai because you will be putting rubbish in, you're going to get rubbish out.
00:17:40
Speaker
Yeah, and then you're training on the rubbish as well almost. And a lot of this stuff is basic, so it sounds more complex at times than what it is. A lot of it's just having the right naming structures on files, making sure that the right people have access, making sure that any out-of-date files such as HR policies and duplicates have been deleted or they've been archived. And it's just about doing that bit, making sure customers' names are spelled correctly, first name, last name, email address, home address, phone number,
00:18:09
Speaker
That then get starts to get your basic data in order. And then once that bit's kind of done, then you would start looking at your process. Again, it's still not about jumping to j AI because AI isn't like that vending machine that is just something that fits into a part of the process. It's got the potential to reshape what that full process looks like. But you can only do that once you essentially write down what the current process is.
00:18:36
Speaker
and then have someone look at it with you. And that someone one may also be ai So that, but again, it can only work with what you give it. And if we're giving it vague asks and we're jumping we're jumping the gun almost and looking for a fancy social media advert before we've given it an understanding of our business, it's just not looking at it right.
00:18:57
Speaker
So I'd say a large part the first bit is just getting getting your house in order. Yeah, so whilst people talk about AI a i removing lots of jobs from workplaces and that job won't exist and that job won't exist.
00:19:10
Speaker
As with every technology, it also creates new jobs. And what you're talking about, I suppose, is that organisations will need, well, data scientists, people who can look at data and identify where something is not correct.
00:19:29
Speaker
without having to spend days at it and actually putting that logic in place so it's rubbish in rubbish out but if you invest in making sure that the information is up to date and accurate then you're going to get an awful lot more value from the outputs of your ai Absolutely. And also getting comfortable with the whole implementation piece because using AI within your business isn't just subscribing to ChatGPT and paying £20 a month.
00:20:01
Speaker
Again, it's just another, I would argue, wrong way of looking at it. There is going to be that cost, whether it's time or money, at the start and getting your house in order. But then also the ongoing management of it, optimisation of it, the security and scalability of it within your organisation and you need the right person or the right team to lead that.
00:20:21
Speaker
And it's understanding, I guess, how you create a working day for them, and then also how you reward them and incentivize them as well. i made a social media post that I think might have ruffled a few feathers because i had a few comments come in on the back of it, but I think your AI leader or manager should be the highest paid person within your organization, above the COO, above any marketing or sales director,
00:20:47
Speaker
It should be the leader, the CEO, and then whoever it is that heads up your your AI. So why do you think that? Because like Glasgow is a football city. So I remember likes Sir Alex Ferguson, who was the manager of Manchester United, who had a policy that no player should ever be paid more than him because he was the manager.
00:21:08
Speaker
You're turning lots of things on their head there. But why is it that you think that the person who heads up the AI function should be paid more than the head of any other function. Okay, so this is obviously just my my my own kind of opinion, I guess.
00:21:25
Speaker
But the way I look at a lot of these roles is, sales director, or marketing director, HR director, is that a lot of them are paid on delivering a particular outcome. So they create the sales strategy, they go and drive the numbers, and they speak to the staff and drive the motivational piece and and and track the performance and and drive the uplift within there.
00:21:46
Speaker
and the marketing will be the same, and so on within the organization. What none of those individuals could do is aggregate all of that information and then decide how to pivot, where to pivot, and exactly what steps would be required in order to achieve that as well. Either because they don't have the time, they don't have the experience of it, or they don't have the resources to do that.
00:22:11
Speaker
AI can do all those things. So everything that I've said that a sales director or a marketing director could do, AI could absolutely do that, and then some. So you've almost got that that super intelligence within your business that captures everything.
00:22:27
Speaker
and therefore I believe that merits a higher salary.
AI's Future and Personalization
00:22:30
Speaker
So it's the... I'm not going to disagree with you because i can I think I can see what it is that you mean in terms of an individual who runs marketing, sales, finance, human resources, production, wherever it is, is almost limited by their knowledge and their experience as to the impact that they can deliver for the organisation.
00:22:56
Speaker
what you're saying is that the when the AI is managed correctly it has the potential to deliver beyond the capabilities of human managers yeah absolutely and I guess they can gather together it can gather together gather together lots of information from all sorts of different sources and analyze that information and create strategies and recommendations and decisions much faster than any human being can.
00:23:37
Speaker
But the key is that the AI has to be managed effectively and efficiently And so your guardian of that management process is the person who should be paid more than those people who are operating in that human-only world.
00:23:55
Speaker
The logic of it is very sound, very sound. And it's something that I think we need to investigate in more detail moving forward. But what is the future for AI then? Well, I guess, like, where I see the future of technology is that It goes beyond it being an application and more into almost like a an operating system. So there becomes like almost another layer that becomes our personal operating system and it becomes much more merged into each part of our life.
00:24:30
Speaker
So, for example, it starts to aggregate all the information that lives in all other all the different apps that you have, all the different... things that are important to us as individuals, and then provides value on the back of that.
00:24:44
Speaker
And that's part of actually why I'm building at AI Twin, where, for example, it would know when your home insurance is up for renewal, it will know roughly what is being paid in the market around you at the moment, and then it would give you, and it would arm you with the information to make a judgment on the back of that, then what does that then mean for you? Does it mean looking around? Does it mean sticking with your provider on the back of loyalty, for example?
00:25:09
Speaker
So it starts to pull in that information um and it allows us to arrive a lot more informed at every interaction within our life. So if your laptop's broken, in rather than turn up blindly at a laptop repair person and and almost close your eyes and wait bit wait to be hit with the bill, you're going in there with a sense of knowing what's wrong or ah or ah or a good idea of what's wrong. You know what it definitely isn't, what isn't wrong with it. And it then allows you to arrive as a much more informed customer.
00:25:42
Speaker
um And again, there's there's many use cases and examples of that. And that's the world that i see us all living within. um And then the other way that could, because there's all this kind of negative talk around what AI will do to the world. And I get that.
00:25:57
Speaker
But then the way I was almost thinking about that is, is that AI, if, And I don't know if this analogy lands the same way, but it kind of makes sense to me. But if AI is like this big hammer that's meant to be scary, I guess, then what if we were to put that same hammer in the hand of everyone on the planet?
Conclusion and Engagement
00:26:16
Speaker
All of a sudden, there's less of a threat because we've got that same tool. And then it's almost about learning how to swing the hammer. Yeah. The tool is as good as the as our ability to use it effectively.
00:26:29
Speaker
But it's all about education. Yeah, yeah. You know, Gary, this has been fascinating. Really do appreciate your time. Yeah. And I know we've only scratched the surface, so hopefully we can come back and expand on this another time. But for today, thank you very much. Thank you for having me. appreciate time, Michael. It's been great. Thank you.
00:26:48
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida, and I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Gary Dandau, who is an expert in the application of AI in business situations.
00:27:02
Speaker
You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description. If you have experienced technical challenges whilst listening to this episode of The Independent Minds, you will want to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data.
00:27:17
Speaker
So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering. There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code.
00:27:32
Speaker
I am sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Gary and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere.
00:27:45
Speaker
To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You'll probably also want to share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
00:28:02
Speaker
Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.