Full Transcript of Think Fresh - Episode 3
00;00;00;00 – 00;00;20;16
RYAN
We’re doing this.
JEN
All right. Hello and welcome to… Were you talking? Oh, my God. All right, we’ll try this again. Ryan, are you settled?
RYAN
I’m settled.
00;00;20;18 – 00;00;48;00
JEN
Okay.
Hello and welcome to Think Fresh, a podcast brought to you by de Novo Marketing’s Collective Creative. Coming to you from our Ideas Institute and here to talk about all things marketing. Insights on new trends, innovative ideas and marketing tools you can use in your day to day life, and whatever else we deem relevant. I’m Jen Neumann, de novo CEO and your host.
RYAN
…and I’m Ryan Shenefelt, Account Manager, Innovation and Education Lead, and resident nosy eavesdropper always looking to push the envelope.
00;00;48;04 – 00;01;11;24
JEN
He is indeed very, very nosy.
RYAN
Today we’re going to be talking about artificial intelligence.
JEN
…and we have a guest on the episode. So today’s episode might be a little bit longer. We have our first guest, Kathleen Perley, here to talk with us today.
RYAN
And I have to admit, I was fangirling a little bit during this episode. Kathleen’s a wealth of knowledge, and truly one of the leading voices in this space. So, it was great just to talk with her about AI and hear everything she had to say. It was it was phenomenal.
JEN
So sit back, enjoy this episode and nerd out with us and Kathleen Perley today.
JEN
Today’s guest is a friend of de Novo. She was a Fulbright Scholar. She started her own digital agency, Decode, in Houston, which grew to one of INC.’s 5000 top businesses.
After selling her company in 2023, she’s turning back to her love of linguistics and is a professor at Rice University, where she teaches AI in the MBA program. And she is a badass. Everybody, it’s Kathleen Perley.
KATHLEEN
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
RYAN
Welcome, Kathleen, our first official guest on the podcast.
KATHLEEN
I feel so honored to be one of the first.
00;01;57;07 – 00;02;16;15
KATHLEEN
Hopefully not the last.
JEN
Definitely not the last. And it might not even be your only appearance on the podcast. Maybe you become a regular friend of the pod.
KATHLEEN
That would be wonderful.
RYAN
Tell us about your background a little bit.
KATHLEEN
Yeah. So as a, and Jen knows this, we know each other really well right? I can be pretty stubborn.
00;02;16;15 – 00;02;44;29
KATHLEEN
And so I actually grew up with dyslexia and ADHD. And so I was often told that I shouldn’t go to college or that I couldn’t go to college. And so I struggled with language, and the English language, especially spelling and, trying to figure out how these words came together. And so as any stubborn child would do, I said, I’m going to own this and make it my – word that I probably can’t say on this podcast.
00;02;44;29 – 00;03;11;23
JEN
Oh, you can say the words on this podcast.
KATHLEEN
But just, you know, I was very, you know, I wanted to prove everybody wrong. And so I was like, I’m going to take the lead and I’m going to pick a major that is probably the hardest major I could possibly choose for me as a learner. And I just fell in love with it because language and words and as somebody who struggled with spelling and my dyslexia, ended up becoming almost like a math equation, and I just truly loved it.
00;03;11;23 – 00;03;32;19
KATHLEEN
And so I was doing that for a while. Graduated, ended up doing research with my Fulbright in Spain on phonetics and phonology. And then I had a true mom who was a big New Yorker. And I moved home after my Fulbright, and I had seven or eight months until my PhD program. And my mom said, “if you live under this roof, you have to have a job”.
00;03;32;21 – 00;03;56;22
KATHLEEN
And so I found a job in marketing and advertising. I was told they were hiring, it was an interactive, automotive agency, which I thought meant that I was going to be interacting with people. But no, my first task was to code the company’s website. But I fell in love with it. And so I feel like I’m finally being able to get back to my roots again, which is nice.
00;03;56;25 – 00;04;25;03
RYAN
So your your first foray into marketing was website development and coding.
KATHLEEN
Yep. Yes.
RYAN
Wow. How did you do any coding before that or just dove right in?
KATHLEEN
Dove right in. In linguistics and a lot of stuff that we do, we do a lot of transcription work. And you end up writing in types of codes and patterns to identify either disordered speech or challenges, and things of that nature with aphasia or some of the language side of it.
00;04;25;06 – 00;04;42;18
KATHLEEN
And so kind of really aligned with what I had done in my previous life. And I just kind of found it interesting and fascinating. And so I dove right in and just did it. I also told my boss at the time, who was paying me a very low salary at the time, that, you know what? I have no clue what I’m doing.
00;04;42;18 – 00;05;09;18
KATHLEEN
I’ll give it a shot. And if this doesn’t work out, we can like both peacefully separate. But I was there for about two and a half years and loved it.
RYAN
Wow. Yeah. So then what led you to. When did you start your, When did you start Decode?
KATHLEEN
Started Decode in 2013. And that one was actually, I was on a plane flying back from a sales pitch, and ended up sitting between these two gentlemen on a flight.
00;05;09;18 – 00;05;37;26
KATHLEEN
They asked me a few questions, and by the time I ended the flight, they offered me a job, and they turned out to be the CEO and president of Ixia, which is a cybersecurity company. They wanted me to lead their SEO department worldwide and I ended up talking to their HR department the next day. And I told them that maybe if I could convince two gentlemen on a plane, you know, for an hour and a half to hire me, then maybe I could try this on my own.
00;05;37;29 – 00;06;01;29
KATHLEEN
And they actually became my first client. Which is wonderful. And they were so amazing. At our larger size, we were about 70 employees, and servicing the healthcare industry and, recently sold about a year ago. And now get to go back to my passion of teaching and sharing and the AI and analytics and linguistic world that I kind of started my career on.
00;06;02;02 – 00;06;25;25
RYAN
That’s congratulations on the sale. Very, very much a celebration.
JEN
It was so interesting to kind of have a front row seat to watching your, your sale of your company and like the emotions that must go with that are, it’s just crazy. So I also think maybe we just ought to start a podcast on being ADHD in the marketing world.
KATHLEEN
Oh, 100%.
00;06;25;25 – 00;06;46;27
JEN
It’s it’s, it’s it can be a blessing. It can be a curse. It’s what you make of it. For sure, for sure. So. But thank you so much for taking the time to be on with us today. And this is, for the people listening. This is such an interesting topic. And there are, there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors around AI.
00;06;47;00 – 00;07;08;15
JEN
And I think Kathleen is a truth teller when it comes to this. And I think a lot of companies also, beyond using ChatGPT, have no idea how to embrace AI or in some cases don’t even know that they’re already using it. So, this is a topic that I think Ryan has really, dug into, and is really owning that space at de Novo.
00;07;08;15 – 00;07;25;17
JEN
And so, I am, for the most part, going to take a backseat while you two nerd out on this podcast today. So.
RYAN
Kathleen, what what, kind of started your journey? Why why did you get into AI? Did you start using it at Decode and wanted to keep expanding or what? What kind of made you start the process?
00;07;25;20 – 00;07;47;06
KATHLEEN
Well, so I’ve always had a passion for it and was doing a lot of what I’ll call not true AI, but a lot more machine learning utilizing SQL databases. And really, up until the last three years, AI existed out there, it just wasn’t really accessible unless you had lots of money to put behind it. And it really has become more accessible and more democratized.
00;07;47;06 – 00;08;12;13
KATHLEEN
And so we were doing things where we were writing code and scripts and algorithms that would take certain types of databases. One of them was we would take, the, clinical database of physicians at a health system, which is really kind of boring and not really consumer facing. And we actually built algorithms that would take what they got from credentialing and actually turn it into physician bio pages.
00;08;12;13 – 00;08;34;18
KATHLEEN
And so we would understand that, you know, the internal credentialing software might call it, “Oncologic Services”, but the average patient wants to understand,”can you treat my type of cancer?” They use the word cancer and they want to talk about specific types of cancer. And so we actually built code and an ETL process that would dynamically populate all of those things.
00;08;34;18 – 00;08;53;03
KATHLEEN
So while that was more about machine learning and some algorithms that we leveraged from that perspective, that really kind of started to be the foundation of my love of really seeing the possibility of what it could be. And then, you know, I remember vividly when, you know, when ChatGPT was released and, you know, I had my team working on it, like from November of that year.
00;08;53;03 – 00;09;10;14
KATHLEEN
One of the jokes my dad and I have is, my sister, my whole family is in oil and gas. I live in Houston, which is not surprising that that’s the case. But I want to say about a year ago. So I was playing around with it for about 18 months.
00;09;10;14 – 00;09;29;11
KATHLEEN
And then a year ago, today, my dad, we were at a family dinner, and my dad was like, “Kathleen have you ever heard of this, like, GPT thingy?” And my sister, who’s also in oil and gas and finance – they typically control the whole conversation at the dinner table. I literally looked at my sister and I was like, “take a back seat!”
00;09;29;11 – 00;09;55;14
KATHLEEN
This is mine now.” And I was like, it’s my turn to shine. I’m finally relevant. Like, people finally want to talk about it. And, you know, my my love of linguistics and language has been a lot of the foundation of what AI is running on today. And before ChatGPT, the only time anyone was interested that I was a linguist was when they saw that alien movie where that woman, that linguist, was brought in to help decipher what the alien was wanting.
00;09;55;16 – 00;10;17;23
KATHLEEN
And so I feel finally relevant again, which is kind of nice. Like my nerdiness is cool.
RYAN
Oh, yeah. Arrival with Amy? Nope. Is it Amy Adams, I think?
KATHLEEN
Oh yeah. Yes, yes.
JEN
Oh my gosh, our producer is over here saying “Arrival… Arrival!”
KATHLEEN
Yeah. I was like some alien movie because, like, people didn’t know about linguistics.
00;10;17;25 – 00;10;33;11
KATHLEEN
Wouldn’t talk about it and then they would see it and they’re like, wait, isn’t that what you studied in college? And I’m like, yes, it is. Would you like to discuss like the – you know, all that stuff. And so but I kind of feel like ChatGPT and this revival around like the democratization of AI has kind of brought that forward again.
00;10;33;14 – 00;10;57;22
RYAN
And it was interesting you said that you were kind of doing it wasn’t necessarily AI, but it was still machine learning but like, you were doing it by hand, you were coding it. So it’s interesting, our designers will talk about how they used to mark things up using wax boards, and now they can use Photoshop. It’s kind of like how you can now use ChatGPT to not you understand how it works, but you don’t have to then code it all yourself.
00;10;57;25 – 00;11;14;27
KATHLEEN
Yeah, it’s it’s actually one of the things that I love the most as somebody, you know, as I mentioned at the start of the podcast. Right, like I was told, you know, I probably shouldn’t go to college. And I had some challenges. And I think what’s so wonderful about this technology and what we’re seeing with it, is that it’s really leveling the playing field.
00;11;14;27 – 00;11;44;17
KATHLEEN
So people who may not have been traditionally, quote unquote, smart or intelligent are having those opportunities. And people who have been maybe ostracized, as in terms of leaders in the tech space like this is an opportunity for all of us because we’re kind of starting on a flat playing field to really kind of step up. So whether that’s women and girls of color or different orientations like that is what I get really excited about is because you don’t have to code to be successful in this space, right?
00;11;44;19 – 00;12;10;29
KATHLEEN
Sam Altman has a wonderful tweet, where he talks about, like, the most prevalent and prominent coding language today is actually English, right? You you know, that is where it lies. And we have, you know, everyone has access to that. And so it is exciting to see where I think, you know, oftentimes our world has been stifled a little bit from an innovation standpoint because people didn’t know how to code or they didn’t know how to bring an idea to life.
00;12;11;02 – 00;12;34;20
KATHLEEN
And so it’s going to be really exciting to see how people who have different perspectives and insights and are now able to kind of take that and really be an innovator in the space, kind of come to life and solve some maybe world life challenges. which will be fine.
RYAN
If you had to summarize this, what’s the difference between AI and that machine learning and or automation.
00;12;34;20 – 00;12;57;27
RYAN
Like what’s the difference between AI and automation?
KATHLEEN
Yeah. So what I’ll say is this: so when we think about automation, it’s like following a very distinct rulebook and really strict kind of rules and parameters and formulas that it should follow. So like when I gave my example about how I created that ETL process to go from here to here, it was more automation.
00;12;57;27 – 00;13;15;22
RYAN
What is ETL. Sorry, Kathleen, what is ETL stand for?
KATHLEEN
It’s like edit transform and I don’t know what the L stands for now off the top of my head. But it’s basically kind of when you think about it, when you take a database and you want to transform it so that it ends up being consistent. So that is, it’s a process that it goes to.
00;13;15;22 – 00;13;38;06
KATHLEEN
You do like clean data into a usable format or into the end format that you want from a standardization standpoint.
KATHLEEN
So and those have very strict rules. So they would have things like if you have the word street, based on Google’s algorithm for schema and what they have for rankings for SEO, we want it to be St period, not street spelled out.
00;13;38;08 – 00;14;01;27
KATHLEEN
And so we would write that and maybe we would have it for street, road, drive. But if we didn’t specify Avenue should be AVE dot, it wouldn’t have caught that and it would have left Avenue. And that’s what automation is, is it follows these very strict rules and guidelines. And it requires somebody like a coder or myself going back in and saying, oh wait, no, no, no.
00;14;02;00 – 00;14;20;25
KATHLEEN
If you see the word avenue, that then needs to become a period. But when we work with AI, you can say, hey, we want to abbreviate any type of word that deal with street, drive, to do things of that nature. And if avenue would have come up, it would have realized that and would have done that on its own.
00;14;20;25 – 00;14;40;03
KATHLEEN
So it’s this idea when people ask, what is AI? AI is making machines smart. And that’s what the difference between automation and AI is, is it’s able to say like, okay, you didn’t give me this exact formula and there’s a use, you know, an input that is slightly different or varied. But I can utilize critical thinking, which is kind of scary to say.
00;14;40;08 – 00;14;57;17
KATHLEEN
But, critical thinking in a way to resolve it. and so I think that’s really how you differentiate the two. I often also use this analogy of, you know, going on a road trip with your kids, and yeah, you can use a GPS that will tell you, you know, how to get there. But if you’re like, okay, I need to go.
00;14;57;17 – 00;15;14;16
KATHLEEN
My kid’s shouting in the back row, “I need to go potty, mommy, I need to go potty”,you know, one thing, as a parent, like, you know, you asked the GPS and it might give you a couple locations, you know, ten miles up the road and it’ll give you, you know, most of your locations, like a mile behind you.
00;15;14;16 – 00;15;35;09
KATHLEEN
And as a parent, you know, like we do not turn this car around by any means. Whereas AI will say, okay, yeah, you’re here. We know you’re going here. We’re going to actually take you. Instead of waiting ten miles, get to the next gas station that’s just off the freeway. We’re going to take you two miles and exit, and you’re going to go a mile and a half further off of the freeway to get gas.
00;15;35;11 – 00;15;54;29
KATHLEEN
And so I think that’s really this idea of it really becoming almost a copilot. And I know that word is used in terms of a lot of the packaging of the software, but it really is more of a copilot being an assistant to you, not just taking your instructions and being a doer, if you will.
RYAN
So when you, you use the word assistant.
00;15;55;02 – 00;16;17;03
RYAN
So would you say that a lot of people already are using AI like you mentioned, maps like GPS and then assistants like is Siri and Alexa, do those also do those count as AI?
KATHLEEN
Not quite yet, you know. And you can tell right? Like how many times have you tried to ask Siri or Alexa or something, and they completely botch it?
00;16;17;05 – 00;16;45;19
KATHLEEN
I have a five year old who is like the biggest space nerd ever, and he’ll be like, “mommy, how do astronauts go potty in the space station?” And like, and I ask Alexa and they’re like, please visit the Johnson Space City website, dictates that the astronauts do use the restroom on the International Space Station. And you’re like, that’s not the question.
00;16;45;21 – 00;17;04;19
KATHLEEN
Or they’ll send you a stupid link and you’re like, I am cooking dinner and doing eight other things, like, I don’t have time to like, I want you to tell me what it is. I don’t want you to send me a link to my phone that I have to then read again, right? Yeah. And so I do think those, those two things are going to get disrupted very quickly.
00;17;04;21 – 00;17;29;04
KATHLEEN
Obviously Open AI has their whisper technology, which is incredible. And Inflection Pi, had really, really good promise. Now they’ve, they’re in in talks, you know, Apple is in talks with Google and Gemini to voice to power their, iPhones moving forward. Because they, you know, Gemini has had struggled a little bit from the standpoint of getting distribution.
00;17;29;08 – 00;17;48;00
KATHLEEN
Yeah. But, you know, I actually really think Apple should be working with Inflection Pi because their technology is so great.
JEN
Isn’t it shocking, though, how flatfooted Google and Apple came out in this? They should have been ahead of it just based on the voice technology. But you’re right. I mean series a piece of crap most of the time.
00;17;48;00 – 00;18;07;26
JEN
Like she and I are in a fight. Actually, I changed my my, Siri voice to a man and it got worse. So I’m just saying. But it’s it’s the perfect application for it, but it doesn’t work.
KATHLEEN
Yeah. Well, and that’s I mean, I actually think when we think about kind of where we’re going to be in the AI space as we move forward is right.
00;18;07;26 – 00;18;26;07
KATHLEEN
Like your, AirPods and voice is going to be where we’re going, right? Where you’re just you’re not actually having to take the time to type stuff in, and you’re just like, “hey, I’m, I’m showing signs of X, Y, and Z symptoms. What are some of the conditions that I could be exposed or that this could be?” and they would tell me in my ears what’s going on.
00;18;26;07 – 00;18;50;27
KATHLEEN
And and I think these really when you think about us as humans, typing is not a natural. Like that’s not natural for us. Right. So speech and dialog is much better. And so I think you’ll start to see that come to fruition very quickly over the next couple of years. I don’t know when I say next couple years, I think like six, two, eight, 6 to 6 months to a year.
00;18;51;00 – 00;19;09;22
RYAN
Yeah, it’ll happen quick. I truly think that all of these devices, these separate devices, are going to be swallowed up by an Apple Watch. It’s going to be your phone that you already have. It’s going to be your, like you said, your headphones. It’s incorporating all these into existing hardware that we already have versus making people buy new.
00;19;09;24 – 00;19;37;19
JEN
And Apple is very good at making things look sexy. Right? Like nobody wants to wear something that makes them look unattractive. The AirPods were a social status before they became such a regular part of our lives. The Apple Watch is, you know, it’s it’s pretty elegant looking. That’s where I think Apple has the opportunity to really get into this and incorporate it into the things that they’re good at, which is product design.
00;19;37;22 – 00;19;52;29
KATHLEEN
Exactly. And I think that’s what we’re starting to see. Yes, Apple is coming out and they’re talking that they’re working on their own foundational models. But I think they’ve also done a great job saying we’re going to be partnering with the best in the, you know, what are we trying to figure out how we can partner the leaders in this space and focus on what we do best.
00;19;53;01 – 00;20;26;23
KATHLEEN
And I really commend, you know, I will say like and it changes, you know, I feel like, you know, right now, my favorite model I use on a regular basis, on an everyday basis is Opus, which is Claude Anthropic’s latest three version at the highest level. And that one’s my favorite right now. But I know it’s been over a year since they’ve made any major releases on four, so I know it’s like one of those funny things where I feel like I’m cheating on ChatGPT a little bit because of Opus, but I know they’re gonna win me back as soon as they release the next iteration.
00;20;26;25 – 00;20;54;21
KATHLEEN
But, you know, they had put a lot of time and effort into robotics at OpenAI and, they kind of struggled with it. And I think they’re starting to realize, you know, we’re really good at software, like, and they’ve kind of made an announcement that they’re partnering with Figure, which is a robotics company that’s like the leader in the space, and they’re going to be utilizing they’re going to be using, OpenAI software and their models and their AI models into these robots.
00;20;54;21 – 00;21;25;11
KATHLEEN
And there’s some demos out there that are truly incredible. And it’s actually really interesting. It’s a very simple – it’s a gentleman talking to a robot, and he has a few, items in front of him, and the man asks, that makes a comment, you know, “I’m hungry. can I have something to eat?” And the robot is able to then look down, looks at the table, picks up an apple and hands it to him, and then the the gentleman, the real human says, “you know, can you help me understand why you did that?”
00;21;25;13 – 00;21;49;18
KATHLEEN
And he said, “well, I looked at all the items on my on the table. And I realized that there’s only one edible item that’s on the table, which is an apple. So I provided you the apple.” And what’s so interesting about this is it is embedding, right. It’s embedding that meaning behind I’m hungry. I would like to eat something and using that to make and discern and critically think about what’s going on in front of it.
00;21;49;18 – 00;22;14;27
KATHLEEN
But then also in this demo video, you can see we talk about a lot about this idea of moving towards more of a multimodal interface. And this is a prime example, like the robot is listening and viewing what’s around him. So it’s utilizing kind of both like both kind of more language models as well as computer vision to achieve the outcome.
00;22;14;27 – 00;22;33;01
KATHLEEN
And so it’s a very simple use case that when you really understand what’s happening behind the scenes, you’re like, this is going to be amazing. I tell people all the time and like, this is our generation’s moon landing. And like, we’re so awesome and lucky to be like, here to see it happen.
RYAN
Yeah. And like you said, it seems so simple.
00;22;33;01 – 00;22;48;29
RYAN
Like when you’re talking to someone, it’s like, yeah, I could choose an apple too, but this is a machine. This is a computer that is choosing an apple. And there’s a whole lot of there’s a whole lot more that goes into it than just being like, oh yeah, it’s obviously food. Choose the food. It’s like, no. Yeah, a whole lot more.
00;22;49;02 – 00;23;12;28
RYAN
We talked a little bit about AI in kind of general, but as companies are looking to in
RYAN
We’re doing this.
JEN
All right. Hello and welcome to… Were you talking? Oh, my God. All right, we’ll try this again. Ryan, are you settled?
RYAN
I’m settled.
00;00;20;18 – 00;00;48;00
JEN
Okay.
Hello and welcome to Think Fresh, a podcast brought to you by de Novo Marketing’s Collective Creative. Coming to you from our Ideas Institute and here to talk about all things marketing. Insights on new trends, innovative ideas and marketing tools you can use in your day to day life, and whatever else we deem relevant. I’m Jen Neumann, de novo CEO and your host.
RYAN
…and I’m Ryan Shenefelt, Account Manager, Innovation and Education Lead, and resident nosy eavesdropper always looking to push the envelope.
00;00;48;04 – 00;01;11;24
JEN
He is indeed very, very nosy.
RYAN
Today we’re going to be talking about artificial intelligence.
JEN
…and we have a guest on the episode. So today’s episode might be a little bit longer. We have our first guest, Kathleen Perley, here to talk with us today.
RYAN
And I have to admit, I was fangirling a little bit during this episode. Kathleen’s a wealth of knowledge, and truly one of the leading voices in this space. So, it was great just to talk with her about AI and hear everything she had to say. It was it was phenomenal.
JEN
So sit back, enjoy this episode and nerd out with us and Kathleen Perley today.
JEN
Today’s guest is a friend of de Novo. She was a Fulbright Scholar. She started her own digital agency, Decode, in Houston, which grew to one of INC.’s 5000 top businesses.
After selling her company in 2023, she’s turning back to her love of linguistics and is a professor at Rice University, where she teaches AI in the MBA program. And she is a badass. Everybody, it’s Kathleen Perley.
KATHLEEN
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
RYAN
Welcome, Kathleen, our first official guest on the podcast.
KATHLEEN
I feel so honored to be one of the first.
00;01;57;07 – 00;02;16;15
KATHLEEN
Hopefully not the last.
JEN
Definitely not the last. And it might not even be your only appearance on the podcast. Maybe you become a regular friend of the pod.
KATHLEEN
That would be wonderful.
RYAN
Tell us about your background a little bit.
KATHLEEN
Yeah. So as a, and Jen knows this, we know each other really well right? I can be pretty stubborn.
00;02;16;15 – 00;02;44;29
KATHLEEN
And so I actually grew up with dyslexia and ADHD. And so I was often told that I shouldn’t go to college or that I couldn’t go to college. And so I struggled with language, and the English language, especially spelling and, trying to figure out how these words came together. And so as any stubborn child would do, I said, I’m going to own this and make it my – word that I probably can’t say on this podcast.
00;02;44;29 – 00;03;11;23
JEN
Oh, you can say the words on this podcast.
KATHLEEN
But just, you know, I was very, you know, I wanted to prove everybody wrong. And so I was like, I’m going to take the lead and I’m going to pick a major that is probably the hardest major I could possibly choose for me as a learner. And I just fell in love with it because language and words and as somebody who struggled with spelling and my dyslexia, ended up becoming almost like a math equation, and I just truly loved it.
00;03;11;23 – 00;03;32;19
KATHLEEN
And so I was doing that for a while. Graduated, ended up doing research with my Fulbright in Spain on phonetics and phonology. And then I had a true mom who was a big New Yorker. And I moved home after my Fulbright, and I had seven or eight months until my PhD program. And my mom said, “if you live under this roof, you have to have a job”.
00;03;32;21 – 00;03;56;22
KATHLEEN
And so I found a job in marketing and advertising. I was told they were hiring, it was an interactive, automotive agency, which I thought meant that I was going to be interacting with people. But no, my first task was to code the company’s website. But I fell in love with it. And so I feel like I’m finally being able to get back to my roots again, which is nice.
00;03;56;25 – 00;04;25;03
RYAN
So your your first foray into marketing was website development and coding.
KATHLEEN
Yep. Yes.
RYAN
Wow. How did you do any coding before that or just dove right in?
KATHLEEN
Dove right in. In linguistics and a lot of stuff that we do, we do a lot of transcription work. And you end up writing in types of codes and patterns to identify either disordered speech or challenges, and things of that nature with aphasia or some of the language side of it.
00;04;25;06 – 00;04;42;18
KATHLEEN
And so kind of really aligned with what I had done in my previous life. And I just kind of found it interesting and fascinating. And so I dove right in and just did it. I also told my boss at the time, who was paying me a very low salary at the time, that, you know what? I have no clue what I’m doing.
00;04;42;18 – 00;05;09;18
KATHLEEN
I’ll give it a shot. And if this doesn’t work out, we can like both peacefully separate. But I was there for about two and a half years and loved it.
RYAN
Wow. Yeah. So then what led you to. When did you start your, When did you start Decode?
KATHLEEN
Started Decode in 2013. And that one was actually, I was on a plane flying back from a sales pitch, and ended up sitting between these two gentlemen on a flight.
00;05;09;18 – 00;05;37;26
KATHLEEN
They asked me a few questions, and by the time I ended the flight, they offered me a job, and they turned out to be the CEO and president of Ixia, which is a cybersecurity company. They wanted me to lead their SEO department worldwide and I ended up talking to their HR department the next day. And I told them that maybe if I could convince two gentlemen on a plane, you know, for an hour and a half to hire me, then maybe I could try this on my own.
00;05;37;29 – 00;06;01;29
KATHLEEN
And they actually became my first client. Which is wonderful. And they were so amazing. At our larger size, we were about 70 employees, and servicing the healthcare industry and, recently sold about a year ago. And now get to go back to my passion of teaching and sharing and the AI and analytics and linguistic world that I kind of started my career on.
00;06;02;02 – 00;06;25;25
RYAN
That’s congratulations on the sale. Very, very much a celebration.
JEN
It was so interesting to kind of have a front row seat to watching your, your sale of your company and like the emotions that must go with that are, it’s just crazy. So I also think maybe we just ought to start a podcast on being ADHD in the marketing world.
KATHLEEN
Oh, 100%.
00;06;25;25 – 00;06;46;27
JEN
It’s it’s, it’s it can be a blessing. It can be a curse. It’s what you make of it. For sure, for sure. So. But thank you so much for taking the time to be on with us today. And this is, for the people listening. This is such an interesting topic. And there are, there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors around AI.
00;06;47;00 – 00;07;08;15
JEN
And I think Kathleen is a truth teller when it comes to this. And I think a lot of companies also, beyond using ChatGPT, have no idea how to embrace AI or in some cases don’t even know that they’re already using it. So, this is a topic that I think Ryan has really, dug into, and is really owning that space at de Novo.
00;07;08;15 – 00;07;25;17
JEN
And so, I am, for the most part, going to take a backseat while you two nerd out on this podcast today. So.
RYAN
Kathleen, what what, kind of started your journey? Why why did you get into AI? Did you start using it at Decode and wanted to keep expanding or what? What kind of made you start the process?
00;07;25;20 – 00;07;47;06
KATHLEEN
Well, so I’ve always had a passion for it and was doing a lot of what I’ll call not true AI, but a lot more machine learning utilizing SQL databases. And really, up until the last three years, AI existed out there, it just wasn’t really accessible unless you had lots of money to put behind it. And it really has become more accessible and more democratized.
00;07;47;06 – 00;08;12;13
KATHLEEN
And so we were doing things where we were writing code and scripts and algorithms that would take certain types of databases. One of them was we would take, the, clinical database of physicians at a health system, which is really kind of boring and not really consumer facing. And we actually built algorithms that would take what they got from credentialing and actually turn it into physician bio pages.
00;08;12;13 – 00;08;34;18
KATHLEEN
And so we would understand that, you know, the internal credentialing software might call it, “Oncologic Services”, but the average patient wants to understand,”can you treat my type of cancer?” They use the word cancer and they want to talk about specific types of cancer. And so we actually built code and an ETL process that would dynamically populate all of those things.
00;08;34;18 – 00;08;53;03
KATHLEEN
So while that was more about machine learning and some algorithms that we leveraged from that perspective, that really kind of started to be the foundation of my love of really seeing the possibility of what it could be. And then, you know, I remember vividly when, you know, when ChatGPT was released and, you know, I had my team working on it, like from November of that year.
00;08;53;03 – 00;09;10;14
KATHLEEN
One of the jokes my dad and I have is, my sister, my whole family is in oil and gas. I live in Houston, which is not surprising that that’s the case. But I want to say about a year ago. So I was playing around with it for about 18 months.
00;09;10;14 – 00;09;29;11
KATHLEEN
And then a year ago, today, my dad, we were at a family dinner, and my dad was like, “Kathleen have you ever heard of this, like, GPT thingy?” And my sister, who’s also in oil and gas and finance – they typically control the whole conversation at the dinner table. I literally looked at my sister and I was like, “take a back seat!”
00;09;29;11 – 00;09;55;14
KATHLEEN
This is mine now.” And I was like, it’s my turn to shine. I’m finally relevant. Like, people finally want to talk about it. And, you know, my my love of linguistics and language has been a lot of the foundation of what AI is running on today. And before ChatGPT, the only time anyone was interested that I was a linguist was when they saw that alien movie where that woman, that linguist, was brought in to help decipher what the alien was wanting.
00;09;55;16 – 00;10;17;23
KATHLEEN
And so I feel finally relevant again, which is kind of nice. Like my nerdiness is cool.
RYAN
Oh, yeah. Arrival with Amy? Nope. Is it Amy Adams, I think?
KATHLEEN
Oh yeah. Yes, yes.
JEN
Oh my gosh, our producer is over here saying “Arrival… Arrival!”
KATHLEEN
Yeah. I was like some alien movie because, like, people didn’t know about linguistics.
00;10;17;25 – 00;10;33;11
KATHLEEN
Wouldn’t talk about it and then they would see it and they’re like, wait, isn’t that what you studied in college? And I’m like, yes, it is. Would you like to discuss like the – you know, all that stuff. And so but I kind of feel like ChatGPT and this revival around like the democratization of AI has kind of brought that forward again.
00;10;33;14 – 00;10;57;22
RYAN
And it was interesting you said that you were kind of doing it wasn’t necessarily AI, but it was still machine learning but like, you were doing it by hand, you were coding it. So it’s interesting, our designers will talk about how they used to mark things up using wax boards, and now they can use Photoshop. It’s kind of like how you can now use ChatGPT to not you understand how it works, but you don’t have to then code it all yourself.
00;10;57;25 – 00;11;14;27
KATHLEEN
Yeah, it’s it’s actually one of the things that I love the most as somebody, you know, as I mentioned at the start of the podcast. Right, like I was told, you know, I probably shouldn’t go to college. And I had some challenges. And I think what’s so wonderful about this technology and what we’re seeing with it, is that it’s really leveling the playing field.
00;11;14;27 – 00;11;44;17
KATHLEEN
So people who may not have been traditionally, quote unquote, smart or intelligent are having those opportunities. And people who have been maybe ostracized, as in terms of leaders in the tech space like this is an opportunity for all of us because we’re kind of starting on a flat playing field to really kind of step up. So whether that’s women and girls of color or different orientations like that is what I get really excited about is because you don’t have to code to be successful in this space, right?
00;11;44;19 – 00;12;10;29
KATHLEEN
Sam Altman has a wonderful tweet, where he talks about, like, the most prevalent and prominent coding language today is actually English, right? You you know, that is where it lies. And we have, you know, everyone has access to that. And so it is exciting to see where I think, you know, oftentimes our world has been stifled a little bit from an innovation standpoint because people didn’t know how to code or they didn’t know how to bring an idea to life.
00;12;11;02 – 00;12;34;20
KATHLEEN
And so it’s going to be really exciting to see how people who have different perspectives and insights and are now able to kind of take that and really be an innovator in the space, kind of come to life and solve some maybe world life challenges. which will be fine.
RYAN
If you had to summarize this, what’s the difference between AI and that machine learning and or automation.
00;12;34;20 – 00;12;57;27
RYAN
Like what’s the difference between AI and automation?
KATHLEEN
Yeah. So what I’ll say is this: so when we think about automation, it’s like following a very distinct rulebook and really strict kind of rules and parameters and formulas that it should follow. So like when I gave my example about how I created that ETL process to go from here to here, it was more automation.
00;12;57;27 – 00;13;15;22
RYAN
What is ETL. Sorry, Kathleen, what is ETL stand for?
KATHLEEN
It’s like edit transform and I don’t know what the L stands for now off the top of my head. But it’s basically kind of when you think about it, when you take a database and you want to transform it so that it ends up being consistent. So that is, it’s a process that it goes to.
00;13;15;22 – 00;13;38;06
KATHLEEN
You do like clean data into a usable format or into the end format that you want from a standardization standpoint.
KATHLEEN
So and those have very strict rules. So they would have things like if you have the word street, based on Google’s algorithm for schema and what they have for rankings for SEO, we want it to be St period, not street spelled out.
00;13;38;08 – 00;14;01;27
KATHLEEN
And so we would write that and maybe we would have it for street, road, drive. But if we didn’t specify Avenue should be AVE dot, it wouldn’t have caught that and it would have left Avenue. And that’s what automation is, is it follows these very strict rules and guidelines. And it requires somebody like a coder or myself going back in and saying, oh wait, no, no, no.
00;14;02;00 – 00;14;20;25
KATHLEEN
If you see the word avenue, that then needs to become a period. But when we work with AI, you can say, hey, we want to abbreviate any type of word that deal with street, drive, to do things of that nature. And if avenue would have come up, it would have realized that and would have done that on its own.
00;14;20;25 – 00;14;40;03
KATHLEEN
So it’s this idea when people ask, what is AI? AI is making machines smart. And that’s what the difference between automation and AI is, is it’s able to say like, okay, you didn’t give me this exact formula and there’s a use, you know, an input that is slightly different or varied. But I can utilize critical thinking, which is kind of scary to say.
00;14;40;08 – 00;14;57;17
KATHLEEN
But, critical thinking in a way to resolve it. and so I think that’s really how you differentiate the two. I often also use this analogy of, you know, going on a road trip with your kids, and yeah, you can use a GPS that will tell you, you know, how to get there. But if you’re like, okay, I need to go.
00;14;57;17 – 00;15;14;16
KATHLEEN
My kid’s shouting in the back row, “I need to go potty, mommy, I need to go potty”,you know, one thing, as a parent, like, you know, you asked the GPS and it might give you a couple locations, you know, ten miles up the road and it’ll give you, you know, most of your locations, like a mile behind you.
00;15;14;16 – 00;15;35;09
KATHLEEN
And as a parent, you know, like we do not turn this car around by any means. Whereas AI will say, okay, yeah, you’re here. We know you’re going here. We’re going to actually take you. Instead of waiting ten miles, get to the next gas station that’s just off the freeway. We’re going to take you two miles and exit, and you’re going to go a mile and a half further off of the freeway to get gas.
00;15;35;11 – 00;15;54;29
KATHLEEN
And so I think that’s really this idea of it really becoming almost a copilot. And I know that word is used in terms of a lot of the packaging of the software, but it really is more of a copilot being an assistant to you, not just taking your instructions and being a doer, if you will.
RYAN
So when you, you use the word assistant.
00;15;55;02 – 00;16;17;03
RYAN
So would you say that a lot of people already are using AI like you mentioned, maps like GPS and then assistants like is Siri and Alexa, do those also do those count as AI?
KATHLEEN
Not quite yet, you know. And you can tell right? Like how many times have you tried to ask Siri or Alexa or something, and they completely botch it?
00;16;17;05 – 00;16;45;19
KATHLEEN
I have a five year old who is like the biggest space nerd ever, and he’ll be like, “mommy, how do astronauts go potty in the space station?” And like, and I ask Alexa and they’re like, please visit the Johnson Space City website, dictates that the astronauts do use the restroom on the International Space Station. And you’re like, that’s not the question.
00;16;45;21 – 00;17;04;19
KATHLEEN
Or they’ll send you a stupid link and you’re like, I am cooking dinner and doing eight other things, like, I don’t have time to like, I want you to tell me what it is. I don’t want you to send me a link to my phone that I have to then read again, right? Yeah. And so I do think those, those two things are going to get disrupted very quickly.
00;17;04;21 – 00;17;29;04
KATHLEEN
Obviously Open AI has their whisper technology, which is incredible. And Inflection Pi, had really, really good promise. Now they’ve, they’re in in talks, you know, Apple is in talks with Google and Gemini to voice to power their, iPhones moving forward. Because they, you know, Gemini has had struggled a little bit from the standpoint of getting distribution.
00;17;29;08 – 00;17;48;00
KATHLEEN
Yeah. But, you know, I actually really think Apple should be working with Inflection Pi because their technology is so great.
JEN
Isn’t it shocking, though, how flatfooted Google and Apple came out in this? They should have been ahead of it just based on the voice technology. But you’re right. I mean series a piece of crap most of the time.
00;17;48;00 – 00;18;07;26
JEN
Like she and I are in a fight. Actually, I changed my my, Siri voice to a man and it got worse. So I’m just saying. But it’s it’s the perfect application for it, but it doesn’t work.
KATHLEEN
Yeah. Well, and that’s I mean, I actually think when we think about kind of where we’re going to be in the AI space as we move forward is right.
00;18;07;26 – 00;18;26;07
KATHLEEN
Like your, AirPods and voice is going to be where we’re going, right? Where you’re just you’re not actually having to take the time to type stuff in, and you’re just like, “hey, I’m, I’m showing signs of X, Y, and Z symptoms. What are some of the conditions that I could be exposed or that this could be?” and they would tell me in my ears what’s going on.
00;18;26;07 – 00;18;50;27
KATHLEEN
And and I think these really when you think about us as humans, typing is not a natural. Like that’s not natural for us. Right. So speech and dialog is much better. And so I think you’ll start to see that come to fruition very quickly over the next couple of years. I don’t know when I say next couple years, I think like six, two, eight, 6 to 6 months to a year.
00;18;51;00 – 00;19;09;22
RYAN
Yeah, it’ll happen quick. I truly think that all of these devices, these separate devices, are going to be swallowed up by an Apple Watch. It’s going to be your phone that you already have. It’s going to be your, like you said, your headphones. It’s incorporating all these into existing hardware that we already have versus making people buy new.
00;19;09;24 – 00;19;37;19
JEN
And Apple is very good at making things look sexy. Right? Like nobody wants to wear something that makes them look unattractive. The AirPods were a social status before they became such a regular part of our lives. The Apple Watch is, you know, it’s it’s pretty elegant looking. That’s where I think Apple has the opportunity to really get into this and incorporate it into the things that they’re good at, which is product design.
00;19;37;22 – 00;19;52;29
KATHLEEN
Exactly. And I think that’s what we’re starting to see. Yes, Apple is coming out and they’re talking that they’re working on their own foundational models. But I think they’ve also done a great job saying we’re going to be partnering with the best in the, you know, what are we trying to figure out how we can partner the leaders in this space and focus on what we do best.
00;19;53;01 – 00;20;26;23
KATHLEEN
And I really commend, you know, I will say like and it changes, you know, I feel like, you know, right now, my favorite model I use on a regular basis, on an everyday basis is Opus, which is Claude Anthropic’s latest three version at the highest level. And that one’s my favorite right now. But I know it’s been over a year since they’ve made any major releases on four, so I know it’s like one of those funny things where I feel like I’m cheating on ChatGPT a little bit because of Opus, but I know they’re gonna win me back as soon as they release the next iteration.
00;20;26;25 – 00;20;54;21
KATHLEEN
But, you know, they had put a lot of time and effort into robotics at OpenAI and, they kind of struggled with it. And I think they’re starting to realize, you know, we’re really good at software, like, and they’ve kind of made an announcement that they’re partnering with Figure, which is a robotics company that’s like the leader in the space, and they’re going to be utilizing they’re going to be using, OpenAI software and their models and their AI models into these robots.
00;20;54;21 – 00;21;25;11
KATHLEEN
And there’s some demos out there that are truly incredible. And it’s actually really interesting. It’s a very simple – it’s a gentleman talking to a robot, and he has a few, items in front of him, and the man asks, that makes a comment, you know, “I’m hungry. can I have something to eat?” And the robot is able to then look down, looks at the table, picks up an apple and hands it to him, and then the the gentleman, the real human says, “you know, can you help me understand why you did that?”
00;21;25;13 – 00;21;49;18
KATHLEEN
And he said, “well, I looked at all the items on my on the table. And I realized that there’s only one edible item that’s on the table, which is an apple. So I provided you the apple.” And what’s so interesting about this is it is embedding, right. It’s embedding that meaning behind I’m hungry. I would like to eat something and using that to make and discern and critically think about what’s going on in front of it.
00;21;49;18 – 00;22;14;27
KATHLEEN
But then also in this demo video, you can see we talk about a lot about this idea of moving towards more of a multimodal interface. And this is a prime example, like the robot is listening and viewing what’s around him. So it’s utilizing kind of both like both kind of more language models as well as computer vision to achieve the outcome.
00;22;14;27 – 00;22;33;01
KATHLEEN
And so it’s a very simple use case that when you really understand what’s happening behind the scenes, you’re like, this is going to be amazing. I tell people all the time and like, this is our generation’s moon landing. And like, we’re so awesome and lucky to be like, here to see it happen.
RYAN
Yeah. And like you said, it seems so simple.
00;22;33;01 – 00;22;48;29
RYAN
Like when you’re talking to someone, it’s like, yeah, I could choose an apple too, but this is a machine. This is a computer that is choosing an apple. And there’s a whole lot of there’s a whole lot more that goes into it than just being like, oh yeah, it’s obviously food. Choose the food. It’s like, no. Yeah, a whole lot more.
00;22;49;02 – 00;23;12;28
RYAN
We talked a little bit about AI in kind of general, but as companies are looking to in
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