AI At Work Without The Hype w/ Henrik de Gyor from My AI fluency

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
0:00

This is Alex once again from Remote Work Life. And I'm with my friend Henrik DeGure, who is a consultant, a remote consultant that I've known for many years now. And I interviewed him as a guest probably about five years ago now. But since then, we've uh we've worked together, we've we've networked together, we've shared ideas together. So I wanted to speak to Henrik because the world, as you know, is is evolving, and AI is definitely at the heart of that. And Henrik is somebody who uh like me is trying to stay close to what's going on in AI. And Henrik also has an AI company, which I'd love him to introduce as well. Henrik, I just wanted to say thank you for joining me today. And as ever, you're very welcome.

Henrik de Gyor:
0:51

Absolutely. Well, thank you so much, Alex, for having me on the show. Yeah, I'm Henrik DeGuir. I'm with the Chief Digital Officer for uh Myaifluency.com. And uh look forward to our conversations. Thank you.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
1:02

Yes, and uh the conversation is going to be around AI because like I said, it's it's a it's a subject that is at the heart of heart of work and the and the heart of life. And for me, it's something that I want to be at least understanding in terms of the direction it's going. There's a lot of focus on tools, which I think it is good in a sense, but I think where the tools are concerned, it can leave you wondering which tool to use, which tool to choose. And I think when I was speaking to when we were speaking, Henrik, I think we were more along the lines of how how to use AI, how we sharing how we use AI, in the hopes that through learning out loud we can help people who listen to the podcast and people whom you know who are either new or sort of uh future listeners to the podcast. So yeah, is that also your take as well, Henry?

Henrik de Gyor:
2:05

Absolutely, yeah. Thank you. And uh I think it's it's not about the tools themselves, to your point, because the tools are literally that. It's like screwdrivers and hammers. Like no one cares what screwdriver created my car or what hammer created my house. Uh, it's not about the tools. And we're we have a lot of focus on tools because there's thousands of them that are AI tools. So, yes, there are some more relevant than others that are relevant to what you're trying to do today or or what anyone is trying to do. Uh, but we're we're gonna focus more on the the thought process of like why and how to get to AI first and and be relevant and remain irrelevant in today's market, if that helps. Thanks.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
2:51

Yeah, and I think uh and where it's even more relevant is that we we as knowledge workers, as desk workers, especially working remote on remotely, you from my perspective, I'm always trying to find ways and means of working as efficiently as possible. And I think AI, as much as I said, I'm not an expert where AI is concerned, AI is actually beginning to help me to do that. And it's something that we can't, it's undeniable that AI is gonna be or is the future of work and how work is done. And for to that end, I think, as I said, sharing what we know is gonna hopefully hopefully help. So from my perspective, and possibly yours as well, Henrik, you because obviously Henrik's gonna share his perspective as well. We're not we're not focusing on tools, as Henrik said, and as I as I alluded to, we want to flip that and we want to really, as I said, look at how AI can hopefully enhance our sort of day-to-day work, but also enhance our careers, because that's another important aspect is that neither myself or Henry, we we don't necessarily want to be, I guess, in a position where we're left behind in it in a sense, where the you know people are moving and developing their careers with an AI-first perspective, or at least AI being part of the work. So we want to be able to do that as well. And the tools will change over time, and that's why I think it's so important, not necessarily at this point, anyway, to focus on the tools, the problems and the workflows, other things that are stable, I guess, in a way. So it's it's more us focusing on that. So things like the meetings. Uh had you and I we use we use uh AI quite a lot, don't we, Henrik, with for our own meetings when we're getting together.

Henrik de Gyor:
4:45

Yep. To transcribe, to uh summarize, to uh um actually schedule things actually uh very easily, to schedule follow-ups, to to uh to uh understand uh who's uh accountable and who's who's gonna do act who has an action item to do this or that the other thing, to even summarize uh podcasts and and uh create contents. There's so many different things you can do uh um as far as just meetings to your point. Yeah.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
5:15

Writing as well, writing is something that I you know, I I'm actually I didn't really as I've never grown up as somebody who's enjoyed writing, because writing it takes so it takes a lot of effort. Um I can remember even writing essays and theses to part of university. It was just a long process. So I'm not I've never been somebody who's enjoyed writing, but I must say that's changed quite a lot because again, now I'm using AI not just not to write the first draft, not to write the final draft, but to sort of get the ideas, get the flow, get the insights. Yes, even writing emails as well. Writing emails was something that has improved, writing messages, direct messages, all kinds of different things. So that's another thing we, you know, one of the another of the workflows that I think is sort of trickled its way into my my day-to-day work. I don't know about you, Henry.

Henrik de Gyor:
6:12

Totally. Yeah, I agree with you because it everything from ideation, meaning creating those ideas, like having an idea of, well, what should I create me an outline of what this should look like, uh, or draft one right at the very minimum, just uh for for the generation of ideas. And then even if you throw away 99% of them, you still have a kernel to start with, and then or a seed that you can plant. And then from that, it can grow based on you as the human in the loop and the AI. It's not you or AI, it's you and AI. And people aren't gonna lose their jobs from AI, they're gonna lose from people using AI. So 100%. That's uh something else you probably want to you want you wanted to discuss.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
7:02

Yep, 100%. Uh on the jobs front, I mean, it's you may or may not know. I don't know if you know this, but I my background is um is hiring is executive search. I mean, I've shared this conversation with Henrik, but I wanted to share it with everybody else. Is that that was my background. So hiring something else that we're gonna explore in this this series of episodes. And something something totally unexpected as well, Henrik. I found myself, which we're gonna go into a bit more detail about, but using Chat GPT for things like health, decision making, and coaching. And this is for my own personal health, decision making and coaching. That was something that's really just happened to me unexpectedly, Henrik. And I think you were saying as well it's something that's in fact I shared it with you, think thinking that am I sort of crazy to use AI for this sort of thing? And when I shared it with you, I was quite relieved to hear that you also um you also have been using it for that respect as well.

Henrik de Gyor:
8:05

Yeah, so I I I use it for my wellness plan and my dieting, uh, uh, which I I I lost uh like 40 pounds uh in like six months uh using it. Not that it's a diet plan, but uh I I I also use it where I got my blood results and I I I was keen to get the results of like what should I do to ameliorate this level that's high or too high or too low? What should I do about it to normalize it? And uh removing the uh personal identifiable information from the the the blood work and just putting in the numbers straight from the PDF that I got from the the lab, I was able to put it into uh AI and and it was churning out. I was like, okay, so look at these numbers. Uh the and whatever number is is uh not normal, let me know what I should do about it. And it gave me instantaneous results instead of waiting for a doctor's appointments and waiting for, and when I say waiting, I it's sometimes months and not based on my schedule, based on their schedule. So it's like getting results. Uh when it's your health, you don't want to wait. So it's like, what why wait when you can get instantaneous results from AI, which you can ask multiple AIs if you're if you're curious and see if if the results are different, uh, which sometimes people do, right? But it it's really a matter of getting results faster and getting more relevant results faster and accurate results faster. And uh the the more you practice how to ask and how to get that, the more likely you're gonna get it, even for for for health results or or coaching or or decision making or ideation to to your point, Alex.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
9:49

And just to reiterate, we're not we're not in this series, we're not teaching, we're not um giving advice necessarily, because as I said, we're not we're not going down that road, but we're just sharing what we've done. And just to sort of piggyback off Henrik's point there about the health side of things, I found myself, Henrik, and I was explaining to you, I've had this shoulder problem and also back problem actually, for for a number of years. And um I've I've been to chiropractors, I've been to doctors, you know, physiotherapists, Pilates, yoga, you name it. And I have I've you know, I've never really sort of got got to the numb of the problem as much as I've had x-rays, I've had MRI scans. So I I I know the sort of um how they described the the actual sort of the root of the problem, but that there's been no sort of remedy necessarily offered. They whether you go to the physiotherapist or the doctor here, they just give you this um, well, they gave me anyway, in my experience, they gave me this sheet with exercises to do every so often, but it's not necessarily it's not prescribed, it's not pr prescribed for you, it's just a general form that they give everybody. So I then found myself using AI to sort of diagnose, diagnose my problem. And to your point, Henrik, was I was actually talking to it and indeed having detailed conversations, find myself having a detailed conversation with my AI on Chat GPT, telling every step of the way what the actual problem was, where it originated, how it affected me, what I could and couldn't do, the sort of pain I was in, how long the pain was there. And okay, it didn't necessarily, I don't know if it did diagnose the problem, but it gave me a sort of a very close sort of um understanding of what I needed to sort of begin to do um in order to sort of remedy the problem. So which I did. I started to build myself up, build up, build sort of the muscle in the areas that I needed to build the muscle based on what the AI had said. And my my my strength and my sort of my pain has gone completely. So there was a point where I couldn't, for example, stretch back to put my coat on without a sort of a twinge of pain in my sort of um that part of uh what they call it, the um the rotator cuff area of my shoulder on my left-hand side. So it was a point where I couldn't even do that. But now I'm at a point where I can I can do all sorts of things. I can do press-ups, which I couldn't do a year ago. I can lift it. That's my shoulder. My back, I could I could I could barely lift shopping without pain radiating in my lower back and my back going into spasm as well. So it's like now I'm it's night and day. I can lift shopping bags, I can lift my daughter on my back, that sort of thing. And I can I have to put some of that down to AI.

Henrik de Gyor:
12:59

So better advice from AI, like almost a focused friend.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
13:04

And this is it. And I I think it is a focused friend, and from the coaching respect, it became because I was sharing quite a lot of the information um in terms of the problem, it became more than a focused friend. It became somebody who's well, it's not somebody, it's something, said somebody, something that is is helping me with real problems and overcoming real problems and getting to the point of problems. So that's something else.

Henrik de Gyor:
13:33

Um a sounding board. Yeah, sounding board for uh even I've heard it being used for mental support because a lot of people are lonely and they don't have anyone to talk to, and they're they're using it for that, so that they can have a proper conversation with, and it's it it sounds it doesn't sound robotic anymore, which is the best part, and and it it will focus on what you want it to focus on. And that for the most part, it it's been positive. Yes, that there are some glitches here and there on occasion, but uh for the most part, it's for the better, and it's but uh there's two camps to it, right? There is the fear camp, which is still sizable, like the people are afraid to use it for a variety of reasons, but mostly because it's new and they don't understand it. It's uh it's confusion. It's like uh oh, I hear bad things about it in the media. Well, that's when do you hear good things about it in the media? I used to work for the media. I know they don't focus on anything good, that's for sure. So, so of course they're gonna say negative things, but uh more importantly, the AI will, or any AI tools, most AI tools are there to have to as tools. They're literally tools. They they don't they don't uh feel either way. Uh they will tell you what you want to hear, and you can tailor them and tailor the your your experience to tell you more rigid or less rigid information. Uh so if you need to talk about your mental health, you can. Um at some point you you may need uh uh help with humans, you know, depending on the challenge, right? Because uh we're not in the age of robotics yet, but that's coming very fast. My assumption is is we'll we'll be seeing robots uh before the end of the decade in pretty much everywhere. Uh it's just a matter of scale and building uh and price point, of course. But uh they're they're already available. Uh it's just uh it's a price point issue. But um, yeah. So what else are we going to talk about?

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
15:34

Well one subject of fear, I th I think that I've in my conversations, I think, and not just conversations, but also generally when you you hear, like you said, the media side of things where there is I guess the fear of AI taking taking somebody's job, I think there are there are there are definitely areas of work that that is true. So for example, in in the in the graduate arenas, for example, so in the in the jobs where it requires a more administrative and process-led task, which used to be disseminated to graduates or people who are at a very junior level, um, there is there there is certainly some justification, I guess, in in that area. But I think what that's gonna mean is that graduates are gonna have to come out of come out of university with a different mindset. Um I think because rot because the roles are gonna be so the structure of work is gonna become a lot, I think, a lot flatter than it than it is currently. So where that with that in mind, the the junior roles which are gonna disappear, people graduates coming out of university are gonna have to think more like how they can use certain skills to compete with people who are perhaps in the workplace have been working in the workplace a long longer time. And AI, I think, will enable that as opposed to sort of disadvantaging them. So there is a lot there. So there is fear, but I think it can be eliminated in some ways. But to your point earlier on, I think the people who are gonna be using the people who use AI and sort of study AI as you and I are in order to do those tasks better, and and also you have to be patient. I think another point you made earlier on is that it's not perfect by any means as well. It's not nothing's gonna be perfect. So you have to, and it makes mistakes as well, so you have to hold it accountable to those mistakes and don't just feed it with some with a question and expect the answer straight away. I think it's gonna require patience and a different mindset from people who are going into the workplace in order to study it, to learn it, to uh to make it part of their day-to-day work to eliminate those fears, you know. Um because there's a lot, there is definitely a lot of fear going on at the moment. But there are also those people as well that through their own ignorance, I think, or their own ego in a way, put a blocker in the way of put their pro their own progress and in in some ways, other people's by casting aspersions or even just refusing to use it. Yep. And I think though those are also the people who will will hopefully, hopefully they will sort of turn a corner and realize that there's no resisting it, I don't think. I think but I what they should do is is try to, I think, be more on board with it.

Henrik de Gyor:
18:51

Yeah. Yeah. I know we'll have a different episode uh specifically around hiring, but around the ego and the fear. Interestingly enough, it's so law firms require new new junior associates to have AI skills. They have to have them in order to scale. Uh, because they know that the AIs already know every law in every jurisdiction. So it's just a matter of how are you going to leverage that versus you could what are you gonna go look at it in the books again? Uh like why would you waste the time? So it's like, yes, you can qualify it again, yes, you can you can get all the sightings and and citations and all the fun things that you need, uh um so that you can document it properly. And then in in the medical sense, again, uh I was I was speaking to someone who works for a hospital group, and they were mentioning, oh yeah, we're we're using uh AI for email to sort our emails, right? So like, oh, this is patient emails, this is this is kudos, uh emails about uh uh accolades and things like that. Uh these are complaints, these are uh um emails from my my my superiors that I need to prioritize and things like that. And then and uh and then I mentioned I asked them it's like, oh, so do you use it for the scans and and to any evaluate scans and things like that, like uh for for body scans and all the things? And um the she was mentioning that there was a lot of resistance in that and and that the certain surgeons preferred to uh assign people, and this is this is back to ego, right? They would prefer to assign a human to doing it. Whether they're using AI or not, that's not really the point, right? Uh they would rather instead of getting the information themselves, they're delegating it to another human. So so so there's still that resistance too. So it's not just fear, it's ego, uh, that that's that's in play, which I found interesting to to to study and understand that that's part of the resistance is like I'm better than AI. It was like, are you sure you want to test that theory?

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
21:01

That reminds me of something I I was speaking to somebody in in um the social care, social care uh um within a social care practice. I don't want to be too specific, but unfortunately, there was there's apparently according to her, there's a few people being made, their roles are being made redundant. But when I dug a bit deeper, because I felt obviously I felt a bit sorry because nobody wants anybody to be made redundant. I've been made redundant myself a couple of times. I know how it can impact you know people's lives, it doesn't just impact the person, usually. So I felt really bad for that person and those people who are being made redundant. But what I understood was that it AI was at the heart of those redundancies because I think what's happening more and more is that the roles that require information and sort of the dissemination or the research of information literally taken over by I because AI can find any any sort of it's got a sort of uh infinite knowledge in terms of healthcare and social care. And my understanding was that there were a few people that were didn't want to go down that route in in terms of using AI to sort of find that information. And those are the people apparently that were being made that were losing their roles. I don't think it's because they were they feared using it or didn't know how to use it, or there I'm not sure which one it was, but I I could see from that conversation, and hopefully that's not a con I I think that conversation may be replicated across different in different industries, but I would just urge people just to try to embrace as much as possible, even if it means just learning chat GPT. There's a chat GPT Academy, for example, just learning those little just little things here and there. And I don't want to go into too much detail about this because we're gonna go into more detail in a later episode, but just embracing it, just learning it step by step and showing people, sharing with people what you're learning. It doesn't necessarily have to be in the public, it could be just sharing it with your manager, sharing it with your colleague, just to show that you you're you're trying, you have you have willing to sort of learn and and develop. So I think those are the people that are gonna be the people that are valued and perhaps given the opportunities to grow within an a you know business. Right.

Henrik de Gyor:
23:32

To your point, the resistance is is not gonna be welcomed in the workforce. So once companies have strategies around AI, which is something that my affluency does as well, once once they have a strategy and understanding how they're gonna be AI first and they're gonna uh have that runway and understand what tools are gonna be relevant to them and all the things, it's not it's now really really about about the willingness to use that and understand what's relevant to them, what's relevant because not every every tool is gonna be relevant to every department, right? There's gonna be tools that are specifically designed just for their department, hypothetically speaking, and their role and what they need out of it, right? So if it's just looking up information, uh pretty much any AI, if it's fed the right information, can give you that information with very accurate results and and just give it to you very, very quickly. So it's speed, it's scalability, and then it's efficiencies. And then but then there's a flip side to that, we'll which we'll talk about in that that hiring episode coming up soon, where if you're overzealous of the efficiencies and you think that I, as a human, can run the entire company myself, and I'm gonna lay off my entire staff, which to your point is starting to happen because they're overzealous on the high on the firing, and then they go, Oh, we actually needed the humans for something, something else, not looking up information. Uh, because most people, you know, if they have a smartphone, they know how to look up information. Now it's just gonna be much faster than than the standard search searches on the web to find that information. It's gonna be much, much more focused. Uh, and that's that's the game changer, one of the game changers. So uh there's yeah.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
25:22

This yeah, uh actually tell us a little bit more about AI. Uh yeah, myai, can't say it, my AI fluency, um, in terms of how you're helping where AI is concerned, Henrik, please.

Henrik de Gyor:
25:36

Of course, yeah. So at myaifluency.com, uh you can go there and you can sign up for a community. You can sign up for time with us. Uh, so me and my co-founders who are uh working on on finding the right tools for for first the individuals, right, who come to us, and then they invite us into the company uh to help the company. Because if we can help the individual and that they get the light bulb moment going, ah, I get it. I understand that this is what I shouldn't be doing anymore. This these are the tools that can help me with this, and that these are the tools that my clients can help, can use directly, and I can white label them or whatever that looks like, um, or use them for a different set of businesses or or new business units or whatever that looks like. Uh so there's there's money generation to be done as well as efficiencies to be had. And then there's there's efficiencies in productivity, individual productivity, right? Not at just at work, at home as well, which we'll talk about as well in the future episodes, and many other things. And it goes all the way to to the level of scaling ourselves. So I've done this actually because I have so much writing and so much podcasting and and and the books and all the things that I've done, I fed it into AI. And now I created a digital twin of myself. So you can ask questions to the the digital twin of me, right? And anybody can do this, right? So you you you tell it all the things that you've done before. Uh Elon was one of the first, Elon Musk was one of the first people to do this for obvious reasons because he's kind of busy and doesn't have time to talk to everybody, but you can talk to his digital twin all day long, right? Um, and and get answers basically from from the the the mind of of Elon Musk. But you can do the same thing and create your own digital twin. It's not necessarily the likeness. Yes, you can digitize your your likeness as well. Uh, you can digitize your voice. I've done that as well. So it's really a matter of how quickly do you want to scale yourself? And do you want to? So some people want to, some people don't. Some people see enormous value in that, particularly if they're a public speaker or an actor. Some actors have already done it and they're they're making millions of dollars in ads and they're sitting at home doing absolutely nothing because they can be in a thousand movies in the future at a time and be collecting on that, on royalties.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
28:03

So imagine that. From my point of view, is that I think it's important that you do one does go to a point of cloning your own voice, for example, or cloning your own image, your own likeness, because that's your IP. And I think what just for example, that there's somebody who we're gonna we're gonna talk about in a in a future episode, a doctor whose name I'm not gonna reveal at this moment. So she's not a doctor, she's uh she's an entrepreneur. And she she was she done something I think is just it makes sense, but at the same time, it's just it's just to me, it's just amazing, it blew my mind. So she was ill for a very long period of time, and it was a debilitating illness to the point that she couldn't, she couldn't move, she couldn't, you know, get up and have the energy to meet clients. She yeah, it just it just really wiped her out. So what she did was she she cloned not only her voice, but she cloned her, you know, her image as well. And she she made it into a daily, weekly podcast, a video podcast. And the story goes is that she she basically well not story because I listened to her the episodes on on YouTube. She her business was she was able to maintain her business throughout the period where she was sick. And to a degree, she was able to earn even more when she when she was actually you know not physically doing the business. And for me, I I mean, I tell that story because I myself, as a podcaster, you're so heavily reliant on your voice. You're not thinking about podcasting to earn money. I'm not thinking about it from that. That's not my sort of prior, you know, it's not my prime thought pro, you know, put part my thought process. But it, you know, it has to come into it because people are using podcasts as a means of generating business, as a means of generating, you know, building their personal brand, for example, or just connecting with people. So what happens if you're if you fall sick or if you lose your voice, as I did, I wasn't able to podcast and I hadn't batch recorded multiple episodes. So I thought to myself, how how do I do that then? So I've I've cloned my voice, I've started to clone my voice, but I haven't I've released a couple of podcasts. But I have to say I plan to do more more cloned voice podcasts. And I think the way that this particular um entrepreneur has done it is is beautiful because she says she tells people it's it's a clone, and it's it is obviously a clone after you watch it each episode, but you know, she did it something that really I think people really should think about doing. How do you clone, even if it's not cloning your voice, it could be cloning your sort of your ideas, so you know that process, yeah, yeah, your thought processes, yeah. Somebody else will do it if you don't, and they can. So that's just a little taster, um, I guess, from Henrik and I about where the show will be going, where the you know, it's this is not everything that the remote work like podcast will be about, but I think it's important to include this because of the things that Henry Henrik and I have mentioned, specifically the workflows, working more efficiently, scaling yourself, keeping your career on track, you know, if you're if you're hiring people, how to do it, you know, all these different kinds of things are really important, which is why I wanted to introduce this as part of the Remote Work Live podcast and introduce somebody like Henrik who you know is into AI and has my AI fluency as part of his business. So, Henrik, I would really want to say thank you for joining me today. Uh it's been it's been good, and I'm looking forward to how this series is going to progress.

Henrik de Gyor:
31:59

Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Alex. I appreciate being on the show again. Look forward to the next episode.

Alex Wilson-Campbell:
32:04

Watch out for the next episode. Speak to you again soon.