Unleashing AI's Power for Good With Mahan Tavakoli

In this podcast we discuss the opportunities, ethics, and inevitabilities of artificial intelligences (there are many).

To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center. To get started investing, check out our quick-start guide to investing in stocks. A full transcript follows the video.

This video was recorded on June 07, 2023.

David Gardner: Last month I said that this month we were going to focus on AI. At least some. At least definitely this week. I'm delighted to welcome onboard a friend of mine who has spent his career helping think through and solve problems for leaders and organizations. How we can better focus on purpose, how we can ensure we're aligned. How can this organization for profit, not-for-profit, your organization, mine, thrive? Mahan Tavakoli has excelled at this as an entrepreneur and as a fellow podcast host of his own podcast partnering leadership. He helps professionals like you and me think better and be better. 0 and AI. Artificial intelligence, or the AIs, as Kevin Kelly said last month on this podcast, we shouldn't be thinking of just one AI, the AI. There are many AIs already and many more coming. Mahan, for his part, fascinated by exponential technologies, has been getting up to speed on the AIs and sharing it out with numerous interviews with experts and thinkers. In this plate tectonic change, we are just starting to see and feel you and me together, the onset of AIs into our culture. Let's talk about it this week. Think on it. Lean into it. Only on this week's Rule Breaker Investing.

Welcome back to Rule Breaker Investing. Thanks for joining in this week. Mahan Tavakoli is the CEO advisor, executive coach, consultant, and speaker, renowned for his expertise in purpose-driven leadership and organizational collaboration. He has a particular passion for exponential technologies and their impact on organizational leadership. Mahan and I are aligned in our belief that artificial intelligence is one such exponential technology. And I know we'll be talking about some about where we are right now on the exponential S curve for the growth and influence of artificial intelligence. But first, let me say Mahan is a top 10 global thought leader on management by thinkers 360, the marketplace for business-to-business B2B thought leaders, analysts, and influencers. I know Mahan is someone who strives to remain ahead of where the world is with his thinking. 

That's a significant part of my reasoning to share this friend of mine with you this week on Rule Breaker Investing. Mahan has been going both deep and wide with an array of thought leaders and players in the world of artificial intelligence on Mahan's excellent partnering leadership podcasts, which he's done for years now every week. He's been dedicating a lot of his time the first half of this year talking AI. A dedicated husband and father and all-around great guy. I got to know Mahan during his board chair days for Leadership Greater Washington here in the nation's capital. Mahan, enough with the opening. It's great to have you here.

Mahan Tavakoli: David Gardner, my friend, it is an incredible joy and honor for me to be on this podcast with you. Having learned so much from you through the years, both from the podcast and in our interactions in the community.

David Gardner: Well, thank you. It really is a pleasure Mahan to have you on this podcast because as I was saying to you before we started, often I and you on your podcast, you're interviewing people who are experts, authors, thinkers, but they're not necessarily themselves podcast hosts, but here I have a chance to turn the microphone back around in a minute. You as my interviewee, I've enjoyed so many of your interviews as a talented host for years now and at least one of those just a few episodes ago, your discussion with A. J. Agrawal. I know we're going to talk some about that, but some really remarkable conversations Mahan you've been having about the AIs, which Kevin Kelly taught me I should be saying not AI, but there are already many artificial intelligences there are more AIs coming. So in deference to Kevin, my talk with him last month, I'm going to try to say the AIs from time-to-time Mahan. But I want to start this interview the way that you start. It seems every one of your podcast, [laughs] so this is the old turn about is fair play and I'm just going to ask you the question that you asked me once and that you seemingly do every single episode of your podcast. Mahan Tavakoli, before we start, would love to know whereabouts you grew up, and how did your upbringing impact the kind of person you've become.

Mahan Tavakoli: Thank you for that question, David, and I ask my guests that because I do believe that some of the values we formed early on in our lives and our experiences have an influence on how we see the world. For me, I was born in Iran to a strong family of privilege where overnight, because of the Iranian Revolution, we lost all of that. One of the lessons I learned very early on in life, in addition to growing up very quickly as a result of a revolution, was the importance of taking every moment and appreciating it. Whatever privilege we have, whether it's our health, our family members, or other things in our lives can be taken away in an instance. That's one of the early lessons I learned. Pretty soon thereafter when we came here to the states, I was in Washington going to Washington International School.

David Gardner: Here in Washington, DC?

Mahan Tavakoli: Yes, and those weren't good days to be Iranian in the US. It was right after hostage crisis.

David Gardner: Yeah, 1979, '80, right in there.

Mahan Tavakoli: It was easier for kids to be picked on back then. Now, the school administrators get involved actively, and I remember one specific day this kid who was picking on me consistently, I ended up getting in a fight with him, what now I assume was a big fight but was probably just like momentary.

David Gardner: Slap fight.

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely, before the teacher separated us. I still remember that walk back home as I was dreading after having talked to the principal, the principal had called my home, talk to my mom. I knew my dad would be extremely disappointed and I was shaking. I'm shaking even thinking about it right now, and when my dad came home, he first told me how disappointed he was and how I had reacted and then he shared with me his confidence in me and how he loved the fact that I had stood up for myself and said, that's the young man I want to see growing up in this new country of ours. For me, those two helped define a lot of who I have become trying to be more sensitive to other people's life experiences, relating better to the underdog, and also trying to connect with the humanity of other people. The people we see, they each have a story. They each have a beautiful story. Finding that out, connecting with their humanity, I think is something that is special about us, and will stay special as we want to lead in this future world of artificial intelligence. That ability to connect with each other as humans. That's been a big part of who I have been. The desire and the need and the ability to connect with differences and humanity.

David Gardner: It's not surprising to me in retrospect that you have an excellent answer to the question that you've asked innumerable times at the start of each of your podcasts. Thank you for that window into your early life and you're right, the things often we look back to our childhood and we realize that's who I am today. For me, briefly, games were always so important to me as a kid, I was buying Strat-O-Matic baseball and Dungeons and Dragons ahead of all my friends just trying to teach them so they play the games with me. That's really where I am now my late '50s. I'm just wanting people to play games with me, it's just that the games count for more. I still play Strat-O-Matic baseball and Dungeons and Dragons, but we also play the game of investing, the game of business, and capital L, the game of life, not the bad one with the blue and [laughs] pink pause the spinny dial, that game of live not Hasbro, Parker Brothers, not such it, but the the one that counts, the one we're living, that game of life. I think it often is a game. What I want to say before I want to hear a little bit more about your business Mahan and what you're doing today is I would say that the beauty of the game of life is a lot of people think it's either pure competition or zero-sum. 

But you've helped me understand this and a lot of people, the game of life is more often than not a collaborative one, where we're playing together against the man or the system and we're trying to win for everybody. That's something that it took me a while to learn that I deeply appreciate now and that guides my thinking. Anyway, so games, the Iranian Revolution, a little bit more important and cataclysmic than Strat-O-Matic baseball. What an amazing background you have. Thank you for sharing that. Mahan, before we get into artificial intelligence, the AIs, could you share with me just a little bit more about your business background? What do you do? I gave a standard bio for you upfront, but what do you really do? Maybe more importantly, how do you do what you do differently than others might?

Mahan Tavakoli: Most of my career, David ended up being in training, and development, and organizational leadership. I got involved early on in my career and deal e-training. Eventually Rand operation in Greater Washington DC region and then went on to start international operations which were franchises and helping those grow for the organization. Through that process, I started becoming very familiar with how organizations across the globe work. In part based on the abilities for the leadership to collaborate effectively and tap into their human assets. I saw many organizations that had outstanding strategic plans. They would get a group of smart people in a room and come up with a great strategic plan where a year or two years later they were revisiting the same strategic plan without having made much progress. 

My experience at Carnegie convinced me that leadership makes a huge difference to the success of organizations. That's what I've been doing over the past half a dozen years. In part as a result of my desire not to travel internationally, I was spending a lot of my time on the road and I still remember I was driving on Dulles Access Road. I was going on a trip to Dubai and then India and for it, I was going to be doing a talk on leadership. One of the things that I mentioned about leadership is that more than anything else, leadership is the example we set. When you walk into an organization, it doesn't matter what [laughs] values they put up on the walls. What is in their shareholder letter. How are people behaving? What you can see, those are the values of the organization. As I was reflecting on this talk that I was giving, I was thinking about if people saw my life, what are the values they would say that Mahan has?

David Gardner: International jetsetter and man of mystery, a handsome fellow as well.

Mahan Tavakoli: The handsome part they would have definitely said, international, just sending you a little bit, but they would have started with the handsome part first. That's when I realized that this connect within my values and what I was doing. I decided to focus my effort integrated Washington DC region where I've had long-established relationships and ties as you mentioned, whether on Leadership Greater Washington. I served on the Board and Executive Committee of Greater Washington Board of Trade, the Economic Club, federal city council, many different organizations.

David Gardner: Is mayor topically in the cards one day?

Mahan Tavakoli: Definitely not. [laughs]

David Gardner: Definitely not. We will not have a Persian born DC Mayor once again for another decade. I've been waiting for this my whole life, you're not going to be the one.

Mahan Tavakoli: [laughs] No, politics is definitely not for me, like you David, I say it as I see it, which is why then I was able to be a value to CEOs. There are different approaches to coaching and consulting. Questions are really important. Warren Berger, you've had on your podcast as well. I love his focus on questions and questions.

David Gardner: Beautiful questions.

Mahan Tavakoli: The answer and asking beautiful questions. That's a big part of coaching. That said, I think a lot of the CEOs that I interact with and work with also look for some insights and some challenging, not just the questions. I transitioned my work to mostly focused on regional clients and organizations. Working with the CEOs and the leadership teams in getting them aligned around effectively executing their strategy. Not just coming up with a strategic plan, but the execution of it.

David Gardner: Mahan, I don't think I've ever asked you this before. I'm about to ask you what's your Motley, longtime listeners will know that's one of our catchphrases here at Fool HQ. One of our core values at the Motley Fool is your Motley. Now, Motley of course, was the garment worn by gestures of your that ragtag quilt. You see it on the joker cards and 52 card playing decks. That garment. But whenever somebody new comes into our lives in new employee let's say, I'll say, what's your Motley? What is the unique word or phrase that describes you just saw in your patch onto our quilt. It's a unique color and a unique shape and so this is not practiced on your part. I'm asked you this off the cuff Mahan, but what's your Motley?

Mahan Tavakoli: I see myself as a mirror David. Mirror that reflects the beauty and the strength that individual leaders have and oftentimes, they are unaware of it and beauty that helps them tap into the humanity of others. After my opportunity to interact with lots of CEOs and senior executives, I could tell you that the vast majority, almost all of them are beautiful human beings. However in instances, their approaches, their behaviors, didn't reflect their humanity and their beauty. I serve as a mirror so they can see that beauty in themselves and lead others with a kind of humanity that they deserve to be led with.

David Gardner: That was beautiful. Thank you. We do both like beautiful questions, but you just gave a beautiful answer. Well, Mahan we're about to get to the main event. But before we do, let me just ask you if I wanted to learn more about you or find out how to work with you, and I have access to the worldwide web and the AIs. How would I find you?

Mahan Tavakoli: Nowadays is pretty easy to find people David, mahantavakoli.com, anyone that can't spell that. I am on LinkedIn partneringleadership.com also has a link to my website.

David Gardner: Excellent. Thank you Mahan. Mahan, you been surveying experts and thinkers for months now, providing you dear sir and your listeners with a wide luck. I said a deep look as well, wide and deep look at the potential futures of VAIS. [laughs] That was all the excuse I needed to invite you on to start June on this podcast because I think you're going to help each of us and we're all each muddling through. We need a mirror. We also need somebody who's looked maybe more deeply into the future through the eyes of many others and can integrate those thoughts and help us common fools start to piece together what's been happening in the world. Mahan, what is already right now happening in the world, but also where we're going in the world of artificial intelligence. That is what we're doing. That is why I'm having you do it with me, and if I and my listeners are Dante this week, then you are Beatrice Mahan. Let's get started. I wanted to start by asking you, how did your interests in artificial intelligence come about?

Mahan Tavakoli: About five-years ago, I read a book that I think was recommended to me, David, by A. J. Agrawal.

David Gardner: Wait, the book was by A. J. Agrawal or did A. J. Agrawal make the recommendation of the book?

Mahan Tavakoli: The book was by A. J. Agrawal.

David Gardner: He would have recommended it himself.

Mahan Tavakoli: He would have recommended.

David Gardner: If he`d known you. He would have recommended his book.

Mahan Tavakoli: If he had seen my hands on picture [laughs], he would have said, "I have to recommend my book to that guy."

David Gardner: But regardless of how it came recommended to you, you read that book?

Mahan Tavakoli: Yes.

David Gardner: What's the title again?

Mahan Tavakoli: The title of the book is Prediction Machines. A.J does an outstanding job with his co-authors. Talking about artificial intelligence in a way that someone without a heavy technical background can understand. In reading his book, I saw that this can be transformative, both in the way we work and in the way we live. Pretty soon after that, as I was researching artificial intelligence, I ran across Paul Daugherty's book. Paul is now Chief Technology Officer of Accenture. His book was human and machines. Paul talked about the power of these machines artificial intelligence says, as you call them, based on Kevin Kelly will augment how we decide and how we do our work. That started my fascination with artificial intelligence. I have to add a third author whose book transformed my thinking. That was in 2020, Adzema Har, I've been following his work for quite a few years, wrote a book, The Exponential Age, about the exponential technologies computing, which includes artificial intelligence and quantum computing as a part of being one of those that will transform our lives. However, the difficulty we have as humans to understand exponential change in our environments. Those three books both got me fascinated about AI and helped me see that these changes will hit their exponential curve, and then the pace of change will be very fast.

David Gardner: Just to jump forward a little bit, we're going to go back from this Ford point we're jumping to. But I want to jump forward briefly because Mahan, it is your conviction that we are roughly where within the exponential curve narrative of artificial intelligence right now.

Mahan Tavakoli: On the exponential curve, there is an elbow, which is the point when.

David Gardner: The hockey stick moment.

Mahan Tavakoli: The hockey stick moment when things really pick up. I believe we are at the early stages of that where now we are seeing some of the applications. It's going to take a few years for organizations to fully embrace these AIs and the different technologies. But as they do, the pace of change will pick up a lot faster.

David Gardner: That's the important thing about the hockey stick. If you're viewing it from left to right, you've got the blade of the stick with the puck on the far left. We kind of meander sideways for a little while and that's certainly has been happening, Mahan, whenever we've talked here at The Motley Fool about artificial intelligence and what will it mean for stock-picking. At least, I hope this isn't an old man crank point I've made, but I continue to make this point that I as a stock picker and anybody who's picking there on stocks and a lot who are listening to us right now are those kinds of people. We've been competing against, algorithms, artificial intelligence, neural networks, all manner of different ways that people have cranked up their machines over more than a couple of decades at this point trying to beat the market. Often in my experience Mahan, they're doing it in a very short-term way. I have yet to encounter people who are really dialing AI toward maximizing long-term returns. That's a little harder to do because you have to let long periods of time happen to have it updated a feed-in, although you can look back and grab back data. But anyway, I feel as if the AIs have been out there for a long time. But I would say, and you let me know if you agree, ChatGPT and making it accessible via chat and even better than Google interface has all of a sudden taken us to the point where we're starting to go up the stick fast, the handle.

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. I think ChatGPT did that for a lot of people, including me, including some of the people I've interviewed, who have been deeply involved in artificial intelligence. They were surprised at the power of ChatGPT and the potential of generative AI. I would say though AI has been more transformative in our lives than many people assume already. You mentioned A. J. Agrawal and he gives it outstanding example in his book of how the taxi cab drivers in London, they had to go through the knowledge test, would take them three years to go through the knowledge test. Navi AI, which would help the taxi drivers, would make the least effective or the newest taxi drivers seven percent more efficient. But all of a sudden you had Uber. What is Uber, but an AI algorithm which matches cars and provides access to all these assets that weren't once used to riders that want to drive different places? AI has already transformed some aspects of our lives.

David Gardner: No question. I think just about ways which I use every day and the idea that, if I were an incredible London caveat scored a perfect score on the knowledge and some have, and it's remarkable what the human brain can do over three years of memorizing London street maps and then going out on bicycles and having the whole experience that somebody who is an expert has and yet ways knows well all of the knowledge. But also right now, based on user reports, there's a traffic jam over there and you couldn't have known that just with memorizing maps. I very unintentionally have actively been using AI to my benefit in just that one little area of my life. I`m not a professional taxi cab driver or Uber driver. There are so many examples probably. Mahan, we don't need to go that much deeper here, but do you want to give anything more in that direction? They've been with us all along is the theme of this part of our conversation.

Mahan Tavakoli: My point on that, David, is that that's the augmentation we will see more of in the work environment on one level impacting systems. Uber impacts the system of taxi drivers. You no longer needed three years to go study all the streets in London to be able to get from point A to point B. On the other end, augmenting the intelligence of all those other individual Uber drivers that can now drive not only from point A to point B, but avoid the traffic jams that the traditionally trained drivers would not have been able to do. Artificial intelligence in augmenting our intelligence, will allow us and enable us to do things we wouldn't have normally been able to do. It's not just replacing, it's augmenting.

David Gardner: I certainly was not previously able to come up with a fairly witty poem for an occasion that involves three friends, let's just call them named Jennifer, Margaret, and Daniel, and all of a sudden, it takes me about three seconds these days to create a sonnet to Jennifer, Margaret, and Daniel with a date mentioned or some inside jokes. We just feed some stuff in the ChatGPT these days and it's doing anything from writing a better email than we would have written or a witty poem we wouldn't have time to come up with, and we don't have to accept these as the finished product as you well know Mahan, these can be accelerance or thoughts starters for a lot of us who do writing and I think we all do writing. Even as you tap a text out to your friend, you're doing writing. It's very clear that while ChatGPT is the Johnny-come-lately and is really maybe the tail wagging the whole dog at this point, there are innumerable occurrences of AI already in our lives, but there will be even more now I know part of your focus is on leaders and is on organizational systems, collaborative organization alignment of organizations. I'm wondering what you're saying to clients these days, to a CEO who let's say isn't working at an AI start-up, but is recognizing machine-learning in his or her business today starting to wonder, what do we do with this thing and what does Mahan think?

Mahan Tavakoli: Not working in an AI start-up is back in the early '90s saying, I'm not working in a web based company. What do I need to worry about this worldwide web thing for? Artificial intelligence. You don't have to be an AI company. All of our companies and organizations can use it and will be impacted. Part of what I'm mentioning to the CEOs that I'm working with and senior leadership teams is there will be strategic implications of AI impacting almost all organizations, especially knowledge-driven organizations. They should be looking at the strategic level. Additionally, there are operational efficiencies that can be gained. Think about this, David. Lots of organizations have incredible amounts of knowledge spread out, whether it is on their PDF documents or in their Internet. 

Now, with generative AI, every individual in the organization starting Day 1 can have conversations with and understand more deeply the knowledge base that exists. There are operational efficiencies and there have been already studies on everything from phone operators to people that generate content, to different meeting processes that operational efficiencies can happen. Then also tactical applications of AI in different aspects of the organization. There are strategic elements, there are operational elements, and then there are tactical applications that I believe impact all organizations.

David Gardner: Sometimes during times of rapid change, it does us well to remind ourselves, well, what are the things that are foundational, that will persist, that will continue? That's been a big focus of Jeff Bezos as is asking, sure everything is going to change, but what's not going to change about the consumer, let's say, or about the leader? I know purpose is something you think a lot about and purpose-driven leadership, I'm assuming AI might make your purpose smarter, but it's not about to replace purpose in organizations. Maybe it augments, but give me some thinking there within the realm of purpose, Mahan, how is AI, if anything, changing that?

Mahan Tavakoli: Actually to your point, David. Before tackling AI projects, understanding the organizational purpose and grounding in organizational purpose becomes really important. In my view, the foundations that the organization needs to think about before launching into AI are part, the grounding in-purpose, not purpose based on statements on the wall, but the true core purpose of the organization, grounding in an organizational culture that is willing to be agile and embrace change, and grounding in ethical, responsible and secure use of artificial intelligence. There are ethical questions around data sets. When there are biases in data sets, they contribute to biases and the decisions that are made based on AI, the responsible use of it, the impact that it has. I know you're a big advocate for conscious capitalism. We need to be aware of some of the impact that use of AI will have in our organizations, and then the ethics around it. If I quote David or if I take David's content and feed it through AI, what are the ethical ramifications of that? At this point, it's the wild West of AI where people can clone video, audio to sound or look perfectly like someone else. There are those boundaries that organizations need to think through quickly, but still need to think through before launching into AI.

David Gardner: Isn't that always the way it is with technology though, Mahan? It always seems like if it's a cat, we're going to let it out of the bag. Not to be too cynical about this, but if we required of every new disruptive, potentially exponential technology, that it be pre-cleared at illegal and governmental level, I'm not sure we would have seen much innovation over the course of our lifetime. For better, sometimes for worse, it always feels like the law, government, and society are going to have to try to catch up and deal with whatever new technology has shown up. Now, we've clearly already been seeing that. Some forward-thinking leaders, well-known people like Elon Musk and then a lot less well-known people, some of the academics that are really the most rigorous thinkers about AI have already been calling out ahead of this revolution saying, hey, let's be careful here. Mahan, how do you reconcile the need for us all to innovate and the chaos that comes when somebody mixes two things together in a test tube and something amazing spouts out, but has some potential ramifications that are negative? How do you think specific to AI we should be behaving ourselves? Are we behaving ourselves right now societally, appropriately? Are we behind? What advice or thought do you have there?

Mahan Tavakoli: There are considerations for us to have with respect to the societal impacts of AI and the potential negative futures. However, there are people that I've had conversations with, including professor Renee Cummings, who is a data scientist at UVA and AI ethicist. She says, always talk about the potential negative future implications of AI are masking the fact that there are current considerations with respect to, for example, facial technology and the biases that are baked into facial technology that many police systems are using. We should have those robust conversations, but that doesn't mean we should put a pause to the research, the development, and the advancement. Because AI also is very different technology than for example, nuclear technology was. It doesn't take incredible resources. There are many open-source AI platforms already out.

David Gardner: Usable by anybody, free.

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. There is no pausing that. Therefore, we need to have conversations on how to guide it. I don't think that comes from regulation. It comes from businesses making ethical choices for how they choose to engage. Going back to that conscious capitalism mindset, that businesses also have a responsibility to their community, to their environment. Having those conversations in mind as they embrace use of AI.

David Gardner: For listeners of this podcast a few weeks ago, something old, new, borrowed Blue Volume 7, I talked about Victor Cho, who's a conscious capitalist, former CEO of Evite. Listeners will remember recently talking about a guy who was pointing out that some of the most conscious forward-thinking businesses can really create extra wins, get ahead of society by thinking through the second order effects of the use of their products and services, what those might do to others or to the environment. If in particular the leadership of those companies recognizes the potential for social media to cause depression or AI to lose jobs. To get out ahead of that, acknowledge it, begin to spread awareness of it. What a win sustainably that will be for the leadership teams that get that. 

Mahan, I'm curious within this world of AI, which by the way, is still so early and I don't want to make you sound like you have omniscience here because no one can keep up with all that's happening. But are there one or two organizations that you think have distinguished themselves positively by thinking through and putting out there what they're working on and why it might be troubling and why we need to guard against it. We tend to think about regulators, but I appreciate that I think the regulators are always underfunded and probably a little bit behind. Who impresses you out there in the for-profit world for what they're doing and saying in this space?

Mahan Tavakoli: There is always room for opportunity for improvement and everyone gets some criticism. That said, I would say that actually OpenAI and Sam Altman deserve a lot of credit for a couple of different reasons. First of all, when you think about it, is that part of the reason we are having these conversations in organizations and in society is because they introduce ChatGPT. Generative AI is one small part of all the AI that is developed all around us that is being used by organizations, whether when they are hiring people or when they are choosing where to invest or what products to introduce. Number 1, what OpenAI did and Sam Altman did, is get the conversation going on AI, the potential impacts of AI, so policymakers can also engage with it. Secondarily, they have put boundaries on what ChatGPT can do.

 Those are ethical decisions that at times they come under criticism for, but generative AI could be just as powerful in generating harmful, malicious malware as it is good things. I would say OpenAI has done a great job in introducing generative AI to the broader world and starting the necessary conversations. Right now, Sam Altman is going around the world and talking about it, and one final point about him, and I don't want to make him into a hero. However, he does seem to be driven by the right intentions. As he mentioned in front of the US House, he doesn't have any stock ownership in OpenAI. He doesn't get paid from OpenAI. He truly believes OpenAI will be able to achieve artificial intelligence and take humanity forward, and he wants to play a role in that. So he has the right intentions, and I think OpenAI has done some of the right things. There is room always for criticism, but I admire what they've done thus far.

David Gardner: Well, speaking of OpenAI, ChatGPT is its product. It's something that you use every day?

Mahan Tavakoli: I have conversations with ChatGPT all the time.

David Gardner: It's something that I use just about every day. This would only be my fault because I'm the host. You and I might be guilty of assuming everybody listening to us knows what ChatGPT is, but my guess is a fair number of listeners aren't quite sure what we're talking about. Mahan, could you briefly feel free to be the 62nd elevator pitch man for why you think people listening should get a free account and start using ChatGPT for those who haven't even heard of it yet, let alone started using it.

Mahan Tavakoli: Study came out a couple of weeks ago that less than 14% of Americans at this point have experimented with ChatGPT so you are right, David, to point this out. Many people have heard of it but have not experimented with it. I would encourage everyone to set up a free account. There is no need for GPT-4, GPT-3.5 set up a free account.

David Gardner: The present Version 4.0 is accessible to those like me. I assume you who are paying a premium around $20 a month to subscribe, but one software version ago 3.5 is out there to be used for free, as much as anybody wants to.

Mahan Tavakoli: Which is as powerful and some argue that is even better than four, but that's it.

David Gardner: We won't pick.

Mahan Tavakoli: Different story, yes. I would encourage people to experiment with it. First of all, OpenAI has a page on prompting which tells you out to give better account.

David Gardner: I haven't seen that yet myself, but one of my big takeaways as a regular user, is its quality and quality out, garbage in, garbage out. It is so often the prompt what you're typing in, and I didn't know there's a helpful one-page starter guide.

Mahan Tavakoli: They have that. It's an easy read and to your point, David, I've had clients and others where I've told them about ChatGPT. They play around with it. They say, well it gave me a couple of cute poems, but that was about it and that's where I have to encourage them to experiment more with it. The prompting guide from OpenAI is plenty. There is no need to read books or anything else on that, and then you can have conversations on specific issues and go deeper to understand the potential power of it. For example, if you're interested in AI, you can say ChatGPT what do you think are the potential implications of AI on employment over the next three years. You get a response. The beauty of it is it's not like search. When you get a response, you can ask for clarification. If ChatGPT says some jobs might be replaced. You can say, what jobs do you think will be most likely to be replaced? ChatGPT would give you a response, let's say it would say jobs where people create content, content creation or coding. You can ask what could be potential jobs that would be created? So you can have a conversation back-and-forth and see the power of the technology. I had a conversation recently with Tom Taulli, and he's written a book on generative AI, which he had started before, ChatGPT, and he is.

David Gardner: Long-time Motley Fool writer by the way.

Mahan Tavakoli: Outstanding. I love Tom. Part of what you were saying is in essence the generative AI models like ChatGPT, they guess what word comes next, and they are doing thousands of dimensions of deciding what comes next. There is lots of logic that goes behind it in conversations like this. You get a sense for yourself about the power of it. One more thing for the listeners to try out. When you limit the scope of the conversation, then you see the true power of generative AI. When you give it a PDF or you give it a specific article and ask questions about it, then that becomes a lot more powerful because one of the concerns that some people have mentioned is that when ChatGPT doesn't have an answer, it comes up with an answer, a term some people call hallucination. However, when you give it specific content, you can have conversations on that specific content that it doesn't hallucinate about. You see the power for yourself. This can be applied to all facets of how we live our lives and how our organizations operate.

David Gardner: Running underneath ChatGPT are numbers ones and zeros. That's what drives computers. Pretty much always has been from the beginning. My understanding is that every single word in English has a number associated with it and what drives ChatGPT to invent that witty poem for your next occasion that you "wrote yourself", is just, well after number 346 which keys to the word you just typed in, typically words 1498, 370038 or this other one come up, and it just starts processing numbers like that. The good news is, it's right enough of the time, and it's helpful enough at the time that clearly it is adding value. 

The bad news is sometimes one of those probabilities leads it to a word or a phrase that may not be entirely accurate. By the way, I've noticed, I can ask it sometimes for what its source is for a fact or the material it gave me, and often you'll get a pretty good answer there. but it's fascinating to think, and it's also helpful to be reminded that it's all about probabilities of what might come next and while we tend to see it words, and it wants to be as anthropomorphic as it can be. It wants to be as friendly and Alexa like Siri, like as it possibly can. The reality is, there's a lot of probabilities and in A. J. Agrawal's book which you've read and I've not, but I love your podcast with them. Just a couple of weeks ago, he talks about what's really happening is predictions are getting a lot cheaper. In a sense, ChatGPT is predicting what words should come next, and it's basically free or seemingly free. That's really cheap, but making predictions more broadly, forget about ChatGPT, about what's going to come next in the weather, or what's going to come next in this industry, this is at the heart of a lot of the AIs. Mahan, I'm assuming you agree with this and you've gone more deeply than I have here, but I learned this from you in AJ and I find it fascinating the notion that economically what's happening is that the cost of making predictions, maybe slightly better or more accurate predictions that cost is about to come down dramatically.

Mahan Tavakoli: David, that one points can revolutionize businesses at our decision-making. You just made a brilliant points.

David Gardner: It's with AJS through your podcasts, but it is a brilliant point of his.

Mahan Tavakoli: The fact that there are so many things in our lives and in our businesses that are dependent on more accurate prediction.

David Gardner: Forecasting.

Mahan Tavakoli: Forecasting.

David Gardner: The being counters.

Mahan Tavakoli: Part of what AJ also says is decision-making, human decision-making has two elements to it. It has prediction and it has judgment. With the cost of prediction dropping drastically, first of all, on the human side, it makes our judgment more valuable. Secondarily, this prediction impacts all decision-making with organizations, investments that organizations make and then one other point about it is that complements to prediction also then become more valuable. Part of the point that he makes is that when people start consuming more coffee, then you think about it what are the complements. Well, they're going to use more cream and more sugar.

David Gardner: They should use sugar, but it's OK to use milk. 

Mahan Tavakoli:We will urge them not to use cream.

David Gardner: You don't need to put sugar in your coffee. Am I right? It's not helping you, is not helping the coffee.

Mahan Tavakoli: David, my undergraduate degree was in Human Nutrition and I did graduate work specifically on sugars impact on human physiology.

David Gardner: Was I right about that?

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. 

David Gardner: Now I'm not going to be too much of a stick in the mud here. I used to have sugar in my coffee, but then I started reading about sugar. I have to admit, Mahan, I have so many boxes of hot tamales right there in my study. I eat a lot of sugar, so I'm not holding myself up as an example. But more importantly, back to your point.

Mahan Tavakoli: Yeah, so the cost of complements, also.

David Gardner: The Mug industry goes crazy.

Mahan Tavakoli: Yes. So that just one concept, which is why I love AJ's work and I love his book, is that we can be dismissive and think about it. Cost and prediction goes down or spend hours and days thinking about when cost and prediction goes down as it is drastically going down. What are the industries that influences? How will it influence how we run our business?

David Gardner: Let me ask you about jobs because that comes up all the time, Mahan. Our job's going to be destroyed by artificial intelligence.

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely, jobs will be destroyed and jobs will be created which is why this is a wonderful time for your listeners, because this is what they are doing, David. They are choosing on their drive, on their walk, in their office to listen to you. They are choosing to learn when they could do other things. By all means, watch all the Netflix series you want but this is a great opportunity for us to learn at a faster pace, which is part of what I encourage all the executives that I work with, whether it is experimentation as we were talking about with ChatGPT some hands-on, and then constant learning, unlearning, relearning. This is a beautiful time for humanity because all the routines that are boring and should have been given to robots. All the processing that doesn't take any brainpower will be done by machine learning artificial intelligence. Allowing us to use our brains, our judgment and requiring us to learn and relearn. It's no longer enough that we went to high school college graduate degree, it doesn't matter, we need to constantly relearn experiments in order to tap into those future jobs.

David Gardner: Do you think the educational world sees this and is it getting it? We're swimming away briefly from our business focus and starting to think about society a little bit. You and I both have kids, different ages, high school, some have been through college, do you think that high-schools see and get this to colleges? Are there examples of higher education changing and conforming and moving us toward this new place, or kicking and screaming, is education going to not be disrupted once again previously by the Internet this time by AI?

Mahan Tavakoli: I've had conversations with couple of brilliants professors including some episodes that will be coming out in the future where they understand the huge trouble that the education system is in including colleges most especially mid-tier colleges, but those are legacy organizations that have a very hard time to change. I think over the next couple of months as Khan Academies, KhanGPT, they've been working with ChatGPT, and their KhanGPT comes out, the educational system will get a rude awakening. Because I don't know if you've experienced Khan Academy or not.

David Gardner: K-H-A-N, it's certainly is a long-standing Internet feature insight and driven by a visionary, I haven't used it much myself. I'm certainly aware and respectful of it, I'm even more respectful of it now that you're talking about it in this way.

Mahan Tavakoli: But what they are doing is for example, Khan Academy has videos on specific things, whether it's math or biology. When my daughters are struggling or don't understand something, they go and watch those videos. What Khan Academy has been working on with ChatGPT is to have generative AI that now can serve as your individualized tutor. For that specific content, it won't just give you the answers but it is your tutor. This is the way I look at it. A few years from now, we will look at my daughter's classes. I have one in high school and one in middle school. We will laugh at the fact that 20 or 30 kids of varying maturity levels, varying learning styles and capabilities are sitting in a classroom with one human being standing in front trying to do their best to teach them or at times interact with them While with the power of AI augmenting that teacher, there can be individualized guidance learning and tutoring for each one of the students as well. That's where we're headed. Now that said, part of the point that RJ also makes in his book is that sometimes these legacy systems are hard to change. At this point, on radiology scans, AI can detect certain cancers much better than radiologists can. However, getting it through the system in the healthcare system has been very hard. It will be a challenge changing systems that's why it will take a while. That said, I do think we are in for a transformation including in our education sector.

David Gardner: Mahan, I'm about to ask you since you are an expert in leadership coaching, and in thinking about alignment for organizations and organizational effectiveness. I would love to hear from you maybe a couple of thoughts for our listeners, many of whom work in organizations or lead organizations, that's going to be so helpful. But before we get there, I'm just reminded that last month Kevin Kelly on the podcast to talk about it one more time. Do you know what ChatGPT is? It's our intern. That might be a reason anybody listening the 86% of Americans who haven't used this yet, did you know you have this free intern? It's just an intern by the way, it's not an expert it's not going to be right every time but it's going to do extra work for you. I continue to like that analog, that thought that we all now have an intern in. The question is spend some time with that intern and you make it smarter, it's going to make you smarter, it will start doing some work for you. I also I'm guilty from probably over-talking ChatGPT. There are a lot of other AIs out there and if you have one or more to share with business listeners that might help them, I'd love to hear that. But I'm curious now that you've talked to a lot of people out there, have you started to get to a few theses in your own mind? Maybe predictions or thoughts because I'm having you on the podcast this week and we're all listening to you, you're going to give us one or two gifts of insight that we can put into practice in our professional lives. Maybe not even today but maybe in the near future, so be bold, share where we're headed.

Mahan Tavakoli: David, I'll be happy to revisit these in the future.

David Gardner: You know I love that, Mahan.

Mahan Tavakoli: If and when they come true or they are wrong. Because part of what we need to do even more of is for my hypothesis and then see whether the hypothesis is correct and change our minds when data doesn't support that hypothesis.

David Gardner: That is a superhero power for investors. Not everybody has it, I'm not sure I have it but one thing I can at least say I have is a willingness to admit when I'm wrong and I'm wrong a lot. So it's important to be able to have that. Yeah, Mahan be bold here, take a risk, share a little bit and if you're wrong, we're OK with that, we're going to learn together.

Mahan Tavakoli: I think two things that we will see that will be transformative over the next half a dozen years if not sooner. I believe we are toward the end of the lifespan of the worldwide web. In that, the amount of content that is going to be created will make it unnecessary first of all for us to see the content on the world wide web, and our individualized trained co-pilot, as Microsoft calls it, Jarvis as Iron-Man had it, will be sifting information for us. I think the world wide web as we know it today, will not exist and therefore, all of this focus on contents will not be there. Part of what AI is going to do in my view, it is going to shift the fact that worldwide web democratized information access, AI will democratize understanding of information. We no longer need to access the information, we can get the answers. I think that will disintermediate the worldwide web.

David Gardner: That definitely qualifies as a bold statement and that's what I wanted from you, Mahan you are delivering. Do you have a second one in you or do you want to rest right there?

Mahan Tavakoli: While I'm at it.

David Gardner: Let's go. What else?

Mahan Tavakoli: Putting it all on the table, I believe we will see multi-billion, quite possibly trillion-dollar companies that will have half a dozen or dozen employees at most.[laughs] AI is making it much more possible for very smart, hard-working people to be able to tap into it's power to do a lot of different things. There are examples of tools, AutoGPT and others that are right now very clunky but in essence, where you give the tool a task assignment and it tries to carry out on it. I think over the next few years that's going to become a lot better therefore, enabling a few people to be able to run an effective, highly profitable organization.

David Gardner: Smaller teams, bigger bucks. I think for investors, that sounds really interesting and whether you're a public market investor looking for companies that are probably beyond the start-up level. We're talking about some of the bigger players out there. By the way they've been great stocks over time. There's a lot of AI that drives a company like Amazon and Amazon Web Services drives a lot of AI and it's been a great public market play for I hope many years to come, but also those start-ups, those small teams and the possibilities. I guess with Kevin Kelly, if ChatGPT and AI can be your interns and it's largely free, you could have infinite interests if you could just somehow manage to manage them, you could have a million helpers and just have like eight employees.

Mahan Tavakoli: With respect to, for example, ChatGPT and the interns, I love that analogy that Kevin Kelly uses.

David Gardner: I don't mean to over-stretch about it. I wouldn't say Kevin would either keep going.

Mahan Tavakoli: Those interns are getting a lot better really fast. Let's keep that in mind. That said, at this point, I think it's a great analogy because as people go on ChatGPT and work with it, keep in mind, the same way you train an intern, you can train ChatGPT on your style and your language.

David Gardner: Yeah.

Mahan Tavakoli: You asked me, what are some of the things you do? Here a couple of things that I do with ChatGPT.

David Gardner: Please.

Mahan Tavakoli: I feed ChatGPT some of the content I have written and I say, learn this style, so ChatGPT can write content in my voice, not in Shakespeare's voice, that's really nice, but in my voice. This is an intern that learns to act and behave and speak like me. That's one. Another one is that, a big challenge that I see in many senior leaders, David, is that as we get more experience and move up in the organizational hierarchy, our blind spots tend to grow because people tend to laugh at our jokes more, we are more convinced of our own decisions because, obviously, we made some right decisions that contributed to our success, so our blind spots tend to grow. One of the things I do with ChatGPT is when I have a thought for a business or it could be an article. I post it in ChatGPT and ask it to give me the counterpoint to that. How would you argue against this points?

David Gardner: Poke me.

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. That helps me understand better how I can strengthen my argument or what are different ways of seeing it. One final thing ChatGPT is outstanding at thinking about potential strategies of organizations. The more specific you are, the better the information. If you say, just tell me about a business in an industry, how it's going to be impacted, that's not helpful. But if you say to ChatGPT, you're an electrical company with 300 employees in the greater Washington DC region and this is your product lines, and you're looking to enter a new market or you're looking to add new products, what would you consider? Then ChatGPT would give you a great list. Will some of them be throwaways? Absolutely. Will a couple of them be things you wouldn't have thought about? Quite likely. You can use it as a mental sparring partner rather than something that just rates coupons, which it does.

David Gardner: The way you're using and talking about ChatGPT further persuades me that all of us should be making at least some use of it now it is free. Many will still not have heard about it a year from now, it doesn't happen overnight, but it is advantageous. To think that some of us are either ignoring that advantage, that free resource, or possibly in some ways being undermined by it at a business level if others are out there using machine learning. We're not even going to go there with the conversation, but this does trigger a little bit of cynicism sometimes about, it seems in some ways, every company is "working on AI or has a machine learning initiative." It can sometimes be tacked on or feel green-washed pasted on who's really using AI? But forget about organizations for a sec, Mahan, at an individual level, really each of us will gain such benefits and advantages, I think, to tapping into this intelligence.

Mahan Tavakoli: The way I view it, David, is that if you want to go from DC to LA, by all means, you can walk. I love biking. I don't think I can easily bike within DC and LA. I could bike, however, someone that drives a car gets there a lot faster and someone who chooses to fly in a plane gets there a lot faster. These tools are tools that will help us achieve our goals a lot more efficiently, a lot more effectively. The people that experiment with them, use them, will be the ones that will benefit from it. As you mentioned, it's available for free, play around with it, but don't be happy with the first response that you get. I've seen so many people that get a first response and they're like, well, this is not what I was looking for, it wasn't good enough. Learn to play with it like any other sport game that you play.

David Gardner: Put the reps in.

Mahan Tavakoli: Absolutely. I think this is something that will be truly transformative in our lives. We are at a perfect point to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity that will give us the opportunity to build our cognitive capabilities and take advantage of that through use of AI.

David Gardner: Before I let you go and, by the way, Mahan, thank you for visiting Fool HQ studios. Even our own employees don't often come into the office every day, I'm not in the office every day, but I really have appreciated the face-to-face with you here in the studio. Thank you for being present in every way this week with us on Rule Breaker Investing.

Again, I think I'm guilty of over-talking ChatGPT. There are other AIs, there are other tools, other experiences that listeners might want to consider having, working in organizations or personally. Mahan, give us one or more additional resources we could look into that aren't ChatGPT.

Mahan Tavakoli: There are a couple I will recommend, David. By the way, I'm sure the same thing is for ChatGPT, no association with these organizations.

David Gardner: Sure. I appreciate that.

Mahan Tavakoli: One of them that I use with all of the teams that I work with is Fathom. There are couple of others that are similar to Fathom, which is in essence, a tool on Zoom that you can use. It transcribes meetings, it summarizes meetings, it highlights who spoke how much, it highlights the sentiments that people had at different points and in minutes.

David Gardner: David talked way too much and was a real downer.

Mahan Tavakoli: Sometimes you don't want to look at that, but I've had some fun with leadership teams in looking at this and it makes the information accessible and searchable afterwards. Think about the knowledge that comes from that. Secondarily, there is PDF GPT, there are different versions of it. The one I uses PDF GPT.

David Gardner: PDF GPT.

Mahan Tavakoli: Yes. What you can do is you upload a PDF, you can ask questions, you can interact with the PDF, you can find out what are the most important insights in here, what would you disagree with? Same thing. A lot of these are built on top of open AI's API, but they make interactions a lot easier. Those are a couple that I've used with my clients. They can learn to use them. I mentioned one other thing there, David, is that [Alphabet's] Google is rolling out AI in their Google Suites, and Microsoft has also started rolling out co-pilot AI in their suite. Use the tools because now you can go to Excel and have conversations with Excel. You no longer need to know how to write macros. Oh, my God, back to my MDA days.

You can use simple language with Excel. It is incredible. You can use language to create PowerPoints. If you want to go outside of PowerPoint, Tome is a great tool that you type your presentation or put in there one-page of the presentation, it creates the presentation for you. Gamma AI creates a presentation for you based on just the one-pager you give it. There are lots of these different tools. Most of them at this point is for free because the investors are trying to get as many eyeballs as they can like back to those first Internet days. Use them, and learn from them. That way, you will augment how you get your work done and how your team gets their work done.

David Gardner: I probably could have ended the podcast right there. That was almost a mic drop moment, Mahan, but I don't want to let you go. I'm having so much fun. I'm going to just ask you one final summarizing question. What advice would you give, summarizing, two leaders who want to leverage AI within our organizations while also mitigating potential risks or downsides?

Mahan Tavakoli: This is a beautiful opportunity, David, for all of us, for that excitement of a growth mindset, to learn to augment our cognitive abilities with AI, and powerful points enabling us to connect back with our humanity. Because AI will not replace our humanity to connect with other people. It's a great moment for leaders who are willing to learn AI and double down on their humanity and the humanity of the people they are leading.

David Gardner: He's a wonderful podcast host himself, in addition, to his business acumen and his business partnering leadership. Mahan is your regular weekly podcast which I've enjoyed. Keep up the great work. Thank you so much for joining with Fools and suffering us gladly this week on Rule Breaker Investing. I hope to have you back because I bet we're going to get some questions and people who'd like to learn some more from you that would include me as well. Mahan Tavakoli, thank you. 

Mahan Tavakoli: David Gardner, an absolute joy being with you.