Episode 204: KIT LIVE at the SMB Online Conference

[00:00:01] IT Businesses and Secrets of IT. From somewhere deep in the cloud and the corners of the earth, this is The Killing IT Podcast with a focus on helping you make sense and dollars of all things IT with your hosts, Dave Sobel, Ryan Morris and Karl Palachuk.

[00:00:21] Many of you have been fans of The Killing IT Podcast and every once in a while we do a Killing IT Live edition. I want to thank Asigra for making this possible, sponsoring our conference. Asigra is the leader in ultra-secure backup and

[00:00:35] recovery. Last month, Asigra was named to CRN Magazine's coolest data protection vendor list for 2023. Increase your profits and your client's security by engaging today at asigra.com. Welcome everybody to Episode 204 of The Killing IT Podcast. So normally, I would have to like move those two on top of

[00:01:01] each other. But you get it live. You get it live. You get to have it. You got us and we're raring to go. Gents, I'm going to kick us off with the fun question of the day here. What's the most useless talent you have?

[00:01:15] I have to say you're probably never going to believe this. Okay. Pipe fitting. I cut and sold pipe at a hardware store when I was a teenager. And to this day, if you need anybody to redo the plumbing in your house, I'm your guy. Believe it or not.

[00:01:35] I literally might be buying you an airplane ticket sometime soon because that would be radically cheaper than hiring the plumber to come in and actually do that re-piping. And trust me, that's not something that a DIYer should be figuring out.

[00:01:51] Oh, well, I will say I don't own the equipment. I will. I will rent those tools from Home Depot for you. I will say my useless skill is radically more useless than Carl's. I have juggling skills and not just a little like

[00:02:12] when I was a teenager, I worked in an environment where had a lot of free time and I had some baseballs that I was responsible for. And I would spend hours practicing juggling and I still can and I still do. And believe me,

[00:02:29] children are fascinated by this. But other than that, it provides absolutely no real purpose in the real world. And yet I keep the skill. Right? I Sharon has wanted me to learn to juggle for years. I don't know why. Like I completely refused.

[00:02:47] My mind is so I am intensely fast at running a McDonald's drive-through. In fact, I have a record for like I did an entire order in three seconds because I was able to completely game the system from the start to end time of that. So I'm incredibly fast

[00:03:06] at running a McDonald's drive-through. You have mad McDonald's drive-through. Exactly. Mad skills. Mad skills. I guess it's a fallback. It's I guess. Very good. So folks, if you like our podcast, if you haven't checked it out, go to killingit.smallbusthoughts.com or look

[00:03:28] for killing it on all of your help happy podcast podcatchers. And if you like it, give us a review on Apple. It does help us out and we do appreciate it. And Carl was nice enough to leave the sponsorship slot for

[00:03:43] me brought to you by the Business of Tech podcast. If you are not checking out my news podcast, please do every day releasing the two to four stories that you need to know and answering the question, why do we care? Giving you

[00:03:56] some insight into the technology stories of the day through the minds of somebody delivering IET services. You can check it out at businessof.tech. There's a big blue button to get it on whatever format you like. It comes out

[00:04:08] now not just in audio format, but you can get the video version every single day on the YouTube channel. All the but all the links at businessof.tech. Alright, I'm going to jump us into topic number one,

[00:04:21] guys. Shocking it's AI our first first show after a break and we have to go in on AI because we have not dug in too much this chat. GPT now over 100 million users this week debates in the Senate with Sam Altman sitting in front and

[00:04:38] taking questioning. This is the first round of multiple rounds lawmakers are talking about. In fact, they were talking about a digital agency to regulate this whole space and we're clearly past a hockey stick moment in terms of the tech. Alright, where where are your heads at on

[00:04:58] this one? What where is the opportunity and how's it going to change our business in the next 12 months? What's interesting is that the government is talking about regulating and they literally can't spell it. I mean, they have no idea what it is. They couldn't define it

[00:05:15] for a million dollars in cash. Yeah, I've they just it's like, oh, but we should regulate that you know they have some vague idea from the media but you know I think that we need some education before we have regulation because I

[00:05:32] well, I'll push back a little bit because they've been going through there's an AI an actual AI caucus that has now actually been running training programs for representatives to go and learn about those. You know, one of the local reps congressional reps literally went back to get

[00:05:49] his master's degree in AI in order to in order to work on that at the congressional level. They've been doing a lot of training around this. I want to I want to throw out because I've got a new one a new way of thinking on this

[00:06:03] that because I think this is a big opportunity and how it's going to change our business is where we're applying these skills fundamentally but the business underlying hasn't changed. I want to borrow a concept for from the guys over

[00:06:16] at the Tech mean ride home, which is another podcast I listened to Brian McCulloch and Christmasina have put forth this idea that all of the various AI flavors out there are like the the winemaking industry that their individual grapes and the models and the technologies are

[00:06:32] the various grapes and you will learn varietals and that will create different wines and different product sets based on the different models out there. That's their model and I think I like that because I think I've been thinking a lot about the fact that we need to learn

[00:06:46] the models and we need to learn the various ways that they will affect and create products that are like the wines because you can extend this perfectly and what I've done a layer on top of this is saying I think that

[00:06:57] makes IT services companies slash MSPs whatever you recall yourselves some of the A's the exact same space that you would be in terms of helping a customer apply technology to their needs is exactly what a sommelier does for why and so it's it does not

[00:07:15] change our core business at all about advising technology but man it makes it so much more complicated because the numbers of varietals and how fast they're coming and the way that you've got to come up to speed on that is crazy fast. See now that's

[00:07:35] the key right there Dave speed is the most important thing and speed ain't what the government is good at right. I heard some of the testimony and I was encouraged by some of the commentary and some of the

[00:07:47] things that were going on but one of the good news things that I heard in their stay was maybe just an indication that some of these players they admit that they blew it the last time around and they might be learning some lessons last time meaning

[00:08:04] social media right. They did not regulate they did not get involved in the process they just took that well I mean it's new let's wait and see what happens and eventually we'll figure it out and by the time they tried to begin participating in the process

[00:08:19] the meltdown of our culture and discourse had already been well underway this time around they're saying okay AI is new let's not wait for the bad stuff to happen let's try to get ahead of this and be proactive not not just like you know the the school principal

[00:08:38] who's going to whack you on the knuckles when you do something wrong but maybe a guideline body a shaping force that can make this stuff do good things and prevent bad things right not just penalize people when they do things wrong the problem that I have with this

[00:08:54] is speed again think about it this way the the announcement this week that matters in the AI world is that chat GPT in the paid version is now available for those users to apply to direct web queries we all know that the original chat GPT was

[00:09:13] trained on the large language model on everything that had ever been published to the web right up until 2021 and then they stopped and they were training and learning and trying to prove out and it's amazing the hallucinations that happened as a result of that gap in time

[00:09:30] but now you can apply this stuff to real time okay in the in the evolution of product offers that you see in technology worlds to get from this is an internal beta to this is a public

[00:09:45] release for for candidate and then getting it into a version two version three that has radically advanced capabilities that takes years this has taken weeks and I can't imagine a government body that's going to be swift enough

[00:10:03] to make a meaningful contribution but boy I hope they prove me wrong because this has a lot of potential bad but Dave I think you make us sound way better I do have to say having all of these 80 something year olds sitting around talking about large language models

[00:10:21] and unstructured data versus structured data I just am not convinced that they're gonna get it enough to to make rational decisions which gets us back to what you were saying about social media where they basically

[00:10:33] they invited the social media in and said how would you guys regulate yourself do you know right so but but the important part is that we are literally we call it that hockey stick moment right

[00:10:45] we are there like this is one of the few times in my life just this may be the only time in my lifetime where we are visibly seeing that hockey stick moment or that hockey stick second I mean it is AI is

[00:10:59] is this one singularity that if all other technology begins to grow this fast we are going to be very frightened of it right now I'm frightened of AI you guys are probably a little bit more skeptical than I am and I I actually look at this

[00:11:14] and sort of say like I think there's I think they've got a pretty reasonable shot at getting some basic frameworks on when I look at the AI framework coming out of the White House when I look at the ones put together by the Pentagon

[00:11:24] like they're they're actually pretty smart and and what's interesting to me when I listened to some of the hearing stuff from this week was how like hand wavy the stuff from Sam Altman is like he wants you to to worry about the

[00:11:36] existential threats where which is which is actually like a bit of a head fake of where we actually ought to talk about is is the like okay what do we mean about like what do we have to reskill people what do we have to

[00:11:47] do in terms of what this means to the workforce impact and I'm not saying because I said this before I don't I'm not in the business of protecting jobs I'm in the business of protecting people and so but what do we have to do in

[00:11:59] order to help there and I think that is an area where they they have proven they can do stuff and by the way let's you know like you know I'm going to throw out the kind of nugget of knowledge of things that the US

[00:12:12] digital service which is literally their own consulting group built their own tax processing product which they are putting out into beta and it actually looks like works pretty well like they have a they have a whole team of

[00:12:24] these people and they hire tech savvy people to work in these agencies so so don't don't necessarily be completely dismissive of their ability to do something here well just one quick observation even if they can do well I agree with you Dave we need to make sure

[00:12:41] we're focused on what matters long before AI threatens the survival of humanity it can cause bad consequences in terms of you know like let's you let's do a deep fake of the weekend and release a song in his voice and and call it

[00:13:01] hey it's new music from that you know what all of that artistic control and copyright and trademark that's going to be a consequence in an hour and a half from now not at the end of civilization so let's make sure

[00:13:14] they're focused on the right things all right topic number two so this is what we always do we can never finish topics we have to just interrupt nope gotta move on topic number two in case you're unaware of it

[00:13:27] Ryan's favorite movie of all time which he can't literally can't do three shows without mentioning his minority report and and now I was like oh dear god this can't be true so they've taken these mice

[00:13:39] and forced them to watch a movie and recorded their brain waves and then took the mice's brain waves and used it to recreate the movie and it's like oh god this can't be real see not here I know exactly not only could this be

[00:13:59] real unfortunately in the spirit of the pharmaceutical industry and the way that they prove out treatment methodologies before they test them on humans this is a proven pathway to a product that will eventually reach the real world now I'm still suspect of some of the

[00:14:18] capabilities of AI and and machine learning and the ability to create new ideas as opposed to just mimic the ideas that have already existed but the world doesn't actually need a psychic precog to predict the future what we need is pattern recognition

[00:14:37] literally right like the the essence of that predictive accuracy and what gives you the ability to say what's about to happen it takes a very rare black swan moment to break out of patterns of past behavior so uh no what I will say if you notice it's

[00:14:56] see I'm already participating in the minority report with my air pod you will recognize that communication technology from the movie and everything except for precogs and a really legitimately autonomous vehicles everything else in the movie has come true all of those technologies are

[00:15:16] out there productized right now including retina scans and personalizing advertising messages and biometrics and everything it's all coming uh I read this story Carl and and I was half excited and half completely freaked out because I've seen

[00:15:35] enough times that movie to know that the space between when the technology is available and when we get control some bad shit happens yeah okay and the next chapter might not be good all right but I want to make two

[00:15:47] statements on that and then a broader one so the first off is is movies about only nice things happening are boring that's why they don't put them out right okay so so like if we put out a movie about how the technology just

[00:15:59] rolls forward and everyone's live got a little bit better uh that would be boring because you need conflicts for good storytelling right so let's let's acknowledge that that pulling all of our ideas from movies is has this downside because of the second downside this is

[00:16:14] where I'm gonna get a little bit more serious on this humans are wired to see the negatives in things first because it's a protective instinct to recognize something as if it is a danger and understand what the dangers are

[00:16:26] there so that I can then react to them if they are coming for me think back to prehistoric times when you're running around and you see a new animal you want to understand all of the ways it might eat you before the

[00:16:37] ways it might be your friend right that that is that is literally just an instinctive piece so it's very easy for us to think about the bad things that's not a bad thing but what I'm also observing is that it is

[00:16:52] difficult to see all of the good changes right for every major technology we spend a lot of time thinking about all of the bad things that have come come but what I also want to say is that we've

[00:17:03] also can look at computers as they are creative tools they have always been creative tools and our line of new creative tools just continues to get larger and larger I am very much looking forward to seeing all of the things I can't even dream up

[00:17:20] of how artists and creatives will create more things with this while also processing the fact that I do want to take into account that there are the bad things of that those are the things that come into play but know that

[00:17:34] we're just bad at seeing the good stuff because we're not wired to see that I what's interesting is I take the exact opposite point of view I think human beings have this bias towards positivity you know if people did not

[00:17:49] have faith in the future they wouldn't have children right you know human beings tend to look at things and I have to say my bias I love technology and I believe it will solve all of our problems we just have to you know release

[00:18:01] the kraken right so I do think in this particular case this idea that we can look at brain waves and turn it into you know some understanding of what was actually seen and so forth can be huge there's a whole lot of people who

[00:18:18] have issues that the medical community is now going to be able to look at and say oh we can help them with cognition and so forth and so you know there's I think there's always great opportunity

[00:18:30] the main thing is in this case is that somebody came up with something that is so bizarre and said hey you know can I get just enough funding to see whether or not this is true and I'm grateful that we actually

[00:18:43] are able to fund projects like this that to me I would say that just sounds like a silly movie I remain open to the idea of a colander on my head I draw the line at things going into my brain okay I'm going to continue to

[00:18:58] hold that line on I I've written software I understand the difference I will be first to have the implant there's no question you can sign out sir report back because this is the thing right what we're

[00:19:13] seeing and you know all of our humor and and and movie critique aside this technology is fascinating the fact that you can measure the electrical impulses and identify thought patterns it's a question of correlation right it's not just that you saw the pattern of electrical firing that happened

[00:19:36] and you could say well this was a pattern 1234 right it was no no they saw stimulus input and they did something as a result of that and I can correlate the cause and effect with a pattern of information processing that's literally what we do on server

[00:19:56] processing on silicon on silicon chips right if I can say that correctly that's literally what we do with technology is its pattern recognition and a bunch of ones and zeros if you can apply that to the complexity the gajillions of data points of

[00:20:12] thought in one brain and other brain and other brain etc. Holy cow that has some really fascinating capabilities I just want to be the guy who sells the data storage infrastructure behind this technology because if you think that

[00:20:29] autonomous cars produce a lot of data as they're out there observing the world and that needs to be stored somewhere imagine the gajillion terabytes that are going to come from mapping people's minds

[00:20:44] because I don't know about you guys just in the last 10 minutes I've had like 11 other thoughts about cool ways to use this technology my brain's going that fast I'm sure yours is as well and everybody in the audience small usb stick for this small usb stick for this.

[00:21:00] Like 330 million americans and I want to be the guy who has the contract for selling the data storage so I'm going to throw out another little weird twist on this because I'm going to link it to

[00:21:10] to actually like the story where we're not going to cover as much because I'm fascinated by interfaces right I continue to maintain I'm not wrong on voice it's just hasn't happened yet

[00:21:18] but the one that saw that I saw recently is Google's project game face came out last week if you didn't see this open source project it's really intriguing they've actually they are now

[00:21:27] using just webcams can map the entire tracking of someone's face and they're using it as an input device for gaming uh and so and it's fascinating because they've released the whole thing open

[00:21:39] source so that people can work on it and the idea is is those with disabilities can interact with with the with the computer in new ways by moving their face it's interesting to me the

[00:21:50] fact that you that there is an ability not just to like read things from your brain but we're experimenting with more and more of these interesting ways to control the machines that we interact with we can think them we could see them we could talk to them

[00:22:04] it could recognize that we could get into the whole facial recognition piece that whole space is advancing incredibly fast and you know if you if you want to see a positive version of this you know thought about there before the Star Trek computer right the one that

[00:22:19] you can talk to that also seems to have other awarenesses that if you think it through it's clearly using facial recognition positioning recognition we could see a new paradigm of interfaces become available by the combination of these technologies and final note before I

[00:22:38] move on last year a lot of people may have missed this but we re-sequenced the human genome right because the first time we did it our technology was here by today's standards and that technology is grown exponentially and so now we have a much fuller understanding so

[00:22:55] things like this where we have an interface to the brain are going to explode I mean it will be a growth industry for the next five years all right guys topic number three for us I want to

[00:23:09] in the spirit of tech optimism versus pessimism apparently some people who do this for a living have some irrational optimism and the the the money to put into the investments in what seems like cool technology that just absolutely positively never pays off specifically

[00:23:28] I'm referring to the death announcement of the Metaverse capital M metaverse right if you guys were familiar with the the developments in the story just last week in their earnings call when when Mark Zuckerberg got on the call talked to the analysts talked to the investors for

[00:23:48] Meta as an organization he spent a whole lot of time talking about AI he spent a whole lot of time talking about the advertising business again he spent a whole lot of time talking about his

[00:24:01] year of stability and predictability in business finances but you know what he didn't talk about that great big hole over there in his P&L where he shovels billions of dollars for this thing called the metaverse apparently Mark thinks that that is dead technology what do you guys

[00:24:24] think about the metaverse and is it dead is it something that is ever going to become a thing all right go ahead go ahead I'm just gonna say I think that this is one of these cases where

[00:24:37] just because technology exists doesn't mean it has to dominate or be big or or you know whatever control the world I think as we've talked many times augmented reality I think that's our future

[00:24:50] specific things where I need a headset that might be part of the future I think that learning all of this it's kind of like the space race spending all the billions of dollars of of Zuckerberg's

[00:25:03] money is going to advance technology and make our lives better but not with the headset you know so it's just it'll help us with other things and I don't know if you've seen that now they have

[00:25:17] these submarines where they put the drone submarine down and the guy's looking in his goggles because he's got to be able to see only what the sub is seeing and so forth and and you know

[00:25:27] they're using these in documentaries now there is a place for it and surgery remote surgery and so forth like there's lots of great use cases I'm not sure video games is the use case hey remember

[00:25:42] video games bigger than most of the entertain all of the other entertainment spaces entirely so this on us gamers oh yeah I got that the whole Microsoft acquisition going on in my head so

[00:25:52] but so so we as an industry we love our shiny things right most of us got into technology because we do like the gadgets and the gizmos and we like the kinds of stuff that we can do with it

[00:26:01] and we are very enabbered with our own PR every let's go with nine months or so we are all chasing the next big thing everything is the biggest greatest thing ever and I think where

[00:26:14] we need to be very much careful about looking at adoption numbers and actually ensuring that things solve real world problems it is okay to solve small real world problems with technology

[00:26:29] you know do I think everyone's going to have a headset no because I think that's a bad idea and if people like talking to one another and looking at one another and I think with the

[00:26:37] moment you strap the thing on your face uh you look like a goober but do I think that there will be specific instances that are usually yeah okay sure do I think it was a wise

[00:26:47] business choice to dump a big much bunch of money no but I said so before you know but he didn't ask me either right now we the bit I want to focus on for us in the technology space is

[00:26:59] that we need to be good skeptics on behalf of our customers that you want to look at these and say what problem is this solving and does it apply to all my customers I subset of my

[00:27:10] customers specific customers and you want to be much more willing to be skeptical of every one of these fads chat gpt kind of escaped like it was it was a something that they put out that

[00:27:22] they didn't think was a thing and it took off that wasn't a planned thing it kind of just accidentally happened because it showed more usefulness than the designers thought anytime a technology that says can solve everything it probably doesn't do any of

[00:27:38] them particularly well there's a long list of dud technologies that we've talked about anybody remember big data how about let's talk about 3d printing let's talk about you know like there's a whole list of all these but by the way I literally just was interviewing somebody

[00:27:52] over on business tech who literally told me that oh yeah but I can give you specific use cases for 3d printing for big data for like there are each of those have usefulness we as the IT services organizations need to have a much healthier skepticism for this

[00:28:09] and push back on behalf of our customers get excited about stuff but be practical about where it applies I thought a big metaverse bet was a bad idea but I don't know Facebook stock

[00:28:21] either well and I think also everything if it is successful it has its time period there was a time when knowing a great deal about modems made me a bunch of money right you know there was a time

[00:28:36] when every client needed a scanner and then two years later every client had a scanner and they had a bunch of crap on top of it because I haven't used that scanner in in two years right so

[00:28:48] you know everything comes and goes and if it only helps us get to the next step then the metaverse is a good thing but I do think it's got a place and I do think there'll be a bunch of money

[00:29:02] and I think when everybody's done laughing Zuckerberg is going to be the front runner on all those technologies because he doubled down on something everybody else was going to not pay much attention

[00:29:12] to. I think if they're done it's still done. Well and I will say in the strictest case of ROI calculations I'm not sure if Mark will ever make back all the money that he shoveled into this thing

[00:29:27] but there will be practical applications in a real world sense. I think that's a good way to describe the most essential skill that a technology solution provider has. It's not ones and zeros and it's not

[00:29:41] tech administration and managed services our most essential skills is the ability to translate the possibility of technology into a tangible use case right your ability to say hey this is your world as you currently live it and understand it here's something that's not good about that world and

[00:30:00] what if it was improved in a measurable meaningful way. That's a practical application of technology in very much the same way that electricity is a technology and it well what's the purpose of electricity. Shocking things is not a very good use case but there are 18 million other

[00:30:23] use cases that once we saw it we went oh wait now I see why this stuff is going to be practical. It will never not be humorous that Mark went so far into this thing that he literally renamed

[00:30:36] his company because he was so delusionally convinced it was going to be the immediate future that he stopped being one thing and started being another but even inside his application right now the funniest data point about this entire thing that I heard was that last

[00:30:54] month in the month of April my space had more active users than horizon worlds did and that is if you are involved in the horizon worlds world you all ought to go home and have a glass of

[00:31:10] wine and reconsider your decision making processes because you're not winning in the practical sense but I'll go exactly where Carl is. I think in an industrial sense in a practical exploration sense in a physical world you are going to find a lot of very valuable use cases for

[00:31:31] augmented reality it won't be instead of real life the way that Mark kind of put the business case together it will be a way to get your job done much more effectively and we are seeing in the

[00:31:46] industrial world of technology right manufacturing automation logistics distribution the things that industry does there are very valuable applications of even a headset and don't forget it's only going to be a couple of days from right now when apple comes into this conversation

[00:32:07] and releases what we're all suspecting is going to be their AR goggles or headset and you remember how everybody said tablets will never be a thing because everybody tried tablets then the iPad came out and everybody went oh wait the reason the tablets weren't a thing before is

[00:32:26] that all those other ones sucked and then the iPad was graceful and it was cool and it was smooth and then it became a category I'm not going to really say that augmented reality and

[00:32:39] goggle world is dead until I see whether or not the apple guys can make a legit go at it because they tend to do things the rest of us only wish we could. I will say the goggles are stupid

[00:32:53] and it's not going to be a thing I'm going to draw the AR line being on your face and not thing on your face okay and I'm just going to make my last point of like I don't see the goggles

[00:33:03] but I see anything that is projection that is a real world simulation that is AR without the thing on your face that will be where this goes. Very good and that my friends will do it for

[00:33:16] episode 204 of the Killing It Podcast. Thanks for tuning in to the Killing It podcast. Please share with your friends and tell everyone to subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher and all the podcast places. Join us next week and help us keep Killing It in the technology business.