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Welcome to the Technology Translator. I'm Vic. Every episode we break down technology, cybersecurity, and AI into plain English for Australian business leaders. Welcome to the podcast.

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Hello and welcome back to the Technology Translator. I'm Vic, and today we're talking about probably the hottest topic in business right now. And no, it's not the latest iPhone or the latest Samsung release, who's buying TikTok or whatever celebrity has broken the internet over the weekend. We're talking about artificial intelligence. AI. Now, I genuinely hope that by the time this episode is released, it isn't already out of date. The pace that AI is moving at the moment is incredible. It feels like every single week there's a new AI model, a new product launch, another company investing billions of dollars into AI, or someone on LinkedIn announcing that AI has completely changed the future of business. And that's exactly why I wanted to record this episode. And it's not to compare Chat GPT against Copilot, Gemini, Claude, or whatever the newest model happens to be by the time you're listening to this. Because if I did that, there's a fair chance this episode would be outdated before you've even finished listening to it. Instead, I want to talk about the fundamentals, what AI actually is, what it isn't, why everyone is suddenly talking about it, where it genuinely helps businesses, and where I think we all need to slow down and ask a few more questions. Because if you've opened LinkedIn, attended a conference, watched the news, sat through a vendor presentation, or honestly just spoken to another business owner recently, you've probably heard about someone talking about AI. And apparently it's going to revolutionize business. It's going to replace jobs, it's going to make everyone more productive, it's going to change the way that we work forever. And depending on who you ask, it's either the greatest thing to happen since the internet, or something we should all be terrified of. And as someone who spent more than a decade working tech, I can tell you I've seen plenty of buzzwords come and go. There's been cloud computing, big data, digital transformations, blockchain, metaverse, zero trust. Every few years there's something that is the next big thing. Sometimes those technologies genuinely change the way that we work, and others not so much. But AI does feel different, and not because it's necessarily more revolutionary than everything else that's come before it, but because for the first time, everyday people are interacting with technology that previously sat quietly behind the scenes. Whether you're a tradee, an accountant, lawyer, business owner, someone working in HR or someone running marketing, you can now sit at your computer, type a question into a box, and have what feels like a conversation with a computer. And that's pretty new. And that's why we're having this conversation here today. Not to add to the hype, not to tell you AI is going to replace everyone, but to help you understand what it actually is so that you can make informed decisions for yourself and for your business. So one thing I find really interesting about AI is that it isn't actually new. In fact, the concept behind what we're using today has actually been around for a really long time. It's called machine learning, and it has existed for years. Predictive analytics has existed for years. Algorithms have existed for decades. Hundreds of years? Yeah. Businesses have been using computers to identify patterns and automate decisions for a very long time now. So why does it suddenly feel like AI appeared overnight? Because the technology certainly didn't just arrive. Honestly, it's the accessibility that did. Before Chat GPT became publicly available, most people had never interacted directly with machine learning because it was hidden inside software. It recommended the next movie to watch on Netflix, it filtered spam emails, it helped banks detect fraudulent transactions. It suggested products when you shopped online. AI was already there, you just didn't know it. And then ChatGPT arrived. For the first time, everyday people could simply type a question and receive what felt like an intelligent answer. Suddenly, it wasn't something just hidden in the background. It became something that everyone could actually experiment with, and that's what's changed everything. Almost overnight, we've entered into what can be referred to as the AI gold rush. Every software company suddenly had an AI feature. Every product demo includes AI. Every consultant became an AI consultant. And every board meeting suddenly had AI on the agenda. And some of that is absolutely genuinely innovative, but some of it is also simply marketing. And that's also happened before. Years ago, every company became a cloud company. And then everyone was talking about digital transformation, and now it's just AI. And that's not a bad thing, but it does mean that we need to separate what's genuinely valuable from what's simply chasing the latest trend. So let's make this as simple as possible. Despite what the movies tell us, AI doesn't think. What it does is recognize patterns. So most of the tools that you're hearing about today are something called a large language model or LLM. Now don't let the name intimidate you. Essentially, all it is is a computer system that has been trained on an enormous amount of information so it can recognize patterns in that language. So when you ask it a question, it isn't sitting there thinking the way a human being would. It isn't reasoning, it's not forming opinions, it's not saying even I know the answer. Instead, it's predicting what words are most likely to come out next based on everything it's learnt during its training. So that might sound underwhelming until you realize the scale. If you have a hundred people telling you the sky is green, and you look up and you go, well, no, the sky is blue, that is human reasoning. If AI has a hundred people telling it the sky is green, it'll go, oh, the sky is green. So think about the smartphone in your pocket. That phone has more computing power than computers that once filled entire rooms. It's more powerful than the systems that help send humans to the moon. Now imagine not one computer. Imagine thousands of specialized processors all working together inside enormous data centers around the world. And imagine those computers processing unbelievable amounts of information every single second. And that's modern AI. It's not magic, it is just pure maths. Stats, probability, processing power, and a phenomenal amount of data. And here's what gets interesting because AI predicts answers rather than understanding answers. It sometimes gets things wrong. And what's fascinating is it often gets things wrong with complete confidence. It won't ever say, oh, I'm not sure. It will happily give you an answer that sounds incredibly convincing, even if it is entirely incorrect. And that's what's known as an AI hallucination. It's not lying and it's not trying to deceive you. It's simply made an incorrect prediction. And that's one of the biggest lessons I want people to take away from this episode. AI absolutely should be used as an assistant. It can help you brainstorm, write, research, organize your thoughts. But please don't have a let it take your own judgment. You still need to ask yourself, does this make sense? Because at the end of the day, AI is not responsible for the decisions that you and your business is making. That is you. And that's a really important distinction. So in the next part of this episode, I'm going to share my own journey with AI. Because believe it or not, when Chat GPT first came out, I wasn't really convinced. I was actually one of the skeptics. And I wasn't lining up to use it. And I had a few people in my life telling me how revolutionary it was. It was going to change the world. It was going to replace jobs. And I remember thinking, yeah, we'll see. And that's probably the tech person in me. When you've been working in this industry for a long time, you become more than a little bit skeptical of whenever someone says they've invented the next thing that's going to completely change business forever. I've seen quite a number of technology trends, even in the last 10 years, to know that marketing is often a long way ahead of reality. And so I watched, I experimented a little, didn't really trust it. And then something changed. I stopped asking AI to replace my thinking. And instead, I started asking it to organize my thinking. Now, it did require for AI to actually catch up with me too. The voice-to-text side of things changed it completely. The fact that I can actually do in Chat GPT voice to voice is again next level. But that's also the moment that everything's clicked. Because if you're anything like me, your brain is rarely focused on just one thing. I'm thinking about work, I'm thinking about this podcast, my family, meetings, content ideas, emails, the next project, the one after that, the things I need to get done at home. And probably three other things I've forgotten about or I'm ignoring doing while I'm actually recording this. Sometimes the hardest part isn't actually knowing what to do. It's actually slowing my brain down enough to organize all those thoughts into something logical. And that's where AI has become very valuable to me. And it's not because it's smarter, it probably is, but it doesn't have better ideas than me. And it can also help me untangle everything that's floating around inside my head. And look, this podcast is a perfect example. People have asked me whether or not AI writes these episodes, and the answer is definitely no. The stories are mine, the experiences are mine, the opinions are mine. And all the lessons I've learned over the last decade working in tech are definitely mine. What AI does help me do though is turn those thoughts into something structured. Quite literally, I'll sit here and I'll talk just like I'm doing now. I'll bounce ideas around, I'll challenge sections, I'll tell stories, I'll decide whether or not something sounds right. I'll ask for a different way of explaining it. I'll add examples. I'll tell it, nah, I don't like that at all. And I'll remove paragraphs. And sometimes I'll completely change the direction halfway through because I've thought of something better. And it's much more like having conversation than writing a document. If I had to sit down with a blank word doc and write one of these podcast episodes from scratch, it would take me the better part of a day. Okay, well, probably about two or three weeks to be honest. Instead, I can actually have a conversation, organize my thoughts, and spend my time refining the content instead of fighting writer's block. And that's the main difference. AI hasn't replaced my expertise, but it's removed a lot of the friction and turning my ideas into something useful. And I think that's where many businesses misunderstand AI. They're looking for AI to actually replace people. And I think the real opportunity is helping people spend more time doing the work that only a human being can actually do. Now, one thing I find fascinating is that AI starts recognizing patterns in the way that you communicate. Now, before anyone panics, doesn't know me personally. But what it does know is all the information I've shared with it, the conversations we've had, the way I explain concepts, the words I like to use, the structure I like, and over time it starts producing content that sounds a lot more like me. And that's why these podcasts sound like me, even though I actually have got AI to help me write the actual script. They're built from my ideas, my stories, and my way of explaining things. And to be completely frank with you, sometimes it does get a wee bit cheeky. The other week it made a comment that I probably need to stop trying to do 49 different things at once. Now at first that made me laugh. Not because AI was actually judging me, but because after enough conversations, it had recognized a pattern in my life that apparently I have a tendency of juggling too many things at once. Who knew? And if you know me personally, you are actually nodding your head right now and agreeing with it. And that little moment actually demonstrates what AI is doing remarkably well. It's recognizing the patterns, and what that's exactly what these systems are designed to do. No, it's not understanding me, it's not understanding my feelings, it's not feeling for me, it's not thinking for me. It's just recognizing the patterns from the information I have given it. And once you understand that, AI starts to make a lot more sense. So I think one of the biggest mistakes businesses make is assuming AI has to solve an enormous problem before it's actually worth using. And it doesn't. Sometimes I think it's actually the little things. It can summarize meeting notes, it can draft emails. It can also create the first version of a policy. It helps write position descriptions, researches a topic before you meet a client, summarizes a 100-page document into something manageable. It turns rough notes into a structured proposal, generates ideas when you're stuck, and these are all things that AI is incredibly good at. However, notice something. Now, where businesses get in trouble, let's flip the conversation because AI is incredibly powerful and it's also incredibly easy to misuse. And one thing I don't think many people realize is that many public AI models improve by learning from enormous amounts of information. And that's how those systems become better over time. Which means businesses need to think very carefully about what information gets entered into them. Customer information, financial reports, contracts, employee records, commercially sensitive information, intellectual property. These aren't things you should just automatically paste into a public AI tool without understanding with what happens to that information. And that's where many organizations are sitting today. And it's not because anyone's intentionally doing the wrong thing, but it's because people have started using AI without much guidance. Just like the analogy I told you before. If a human comes and tells you, yep, the sky is green, or if a hundred people tell you the sky is green, you can deduct, well, you're all lying to me, the sky is actually blue. If AI is told by a hundred people the sky is green, AI will automatically start thinking that the sky is green. Now think about it in that way. If you are giving AI information to all your company's documents, it will start telling people in response to those company documents what it started to learn. And if that includes sensitive information, you don't want that information getting out. And think about your own workplace. If you've got 50 stuff or 100 stuff, how many of them have experimented with AI without telling anyone? And I'd be willing to bet it's more than you think. Which means the question isn't really whether AI is being used, it's whether your organization and management understands how it's being used. So questions that every business should actually ask. And rather than asking how do we implement AI, I'd encourage businesses to ask a different set of questions. What AI tools are our staff already using? What information should never be entered into a public AI platform? Do we actually have an AI policy? How do we review AI-generated content? Who remains accountable when AI is used? And what business processes genuinely benefit from AI being involved? Because AI doesn't remove responsibility. If AI drafts an email that contains incorrect information, your business is still the one responsible. If AI writes a proposal with incorrect pricing, your business is still responsible. It gives poor advice, it doesn't carry any legal responsibility. That's where it comes back to the people. Now, a few years ago, I went to the Queensland AI Summit. And one of my very favorite ideas that came out of that is that AI might actually help us become more human. And you think about that concept for a moment, and it sounds a little bit backwards, but think about how much time we spend every day, every week on repetitive administration work, formatting documents, writing meeting notes, searching for information, creating a first draft, moving information just between systems. And yes, those things do have to happen, but they're not necessarily where humans create the most value. Humans create value through creativity, leadership, empathy, building relationships, making difficult decisions, understanding nuances, reading a room, having difficult conversations, and no AI model can generally replace those things. If AI can remove some of the repetitive work that fills our calendars every week, maybe we get to spend a little bit more time doing the things that actually make us human. And I think that's a much healthier way of looking at AI than assuming it's here to replace everybody and everyone's jobs. So if there is one thing that I'd like you to take away from today's episode, is this don't be intimidated by AI. You don't need to become an expert overnight. You don't need to chase every new model that gets released. And you certainly don't need to believe every marketing headline that tells you AI is going to solve your problems. Stay curious. Experiment. Ask questions. Find the repetitive tasks that drain your time and see whether AI can genuinely help you. Use it as an assistant, not as a replacement for your own judgment. Because I genuinely believe AI is going to become another everyday business tool, like emails, spreadsheets, smartphones. The businesses that get the most value won't necessarily be the ones using the most AI. They'll just be the ones using it thoughtfully. Now, in our next episode, we're going to shift gears slightly. We've spent today talking about what AI is and how you might use it. But before your organization starts connecting AI to customer information, internal systems, and business processes, there's a much bigger question that you need to answer. Is your business actually ready for AI? We'll talk about AI readiness assessments, protecting your data, governance, security controls, and why good foundations matter far more than buying the Let's AI tool. I'm Vic and this has been the Technology Translator. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.

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Thanks for joining the episode. If you do want to follow me on Instagram at all, you can find me under the Technology Translator.

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If you would like to email me, Vic at the Technology Translator.au And I guess I wouldn't be doing this properly if I didn't say if you like what you hear, hit the follow button. There will be more of these episodes coming up.