Think First. Prompt Second. How To Stay Creative With AI
00;00;00;02 - 00;00;15;28
Unknown
Hello and welcome to energy 101. Today we have Shiva here who is a product leader here in Houston. Why don't you kind of, do a proper intro, get us into the, You know, what you do on a day to day basis in your background. All right. Thank you, Jacob, for inviting me here. It's, a nice office you have here.
00;00;15;28 - 00;00;46;24
Unknown
And, collide in the vehicle road space. So I am Shiva, as you just mentioned. And I'm a product leader with 8 to 10 years in hardware, software, and AI products. Currently, I'm doing some fractional roles, across three different industries in mining, in edtech and in robotics. And, I've been thinking about this, concept of keeping creativity and critical thinking alive in the age of AI because, you know, there's so much rush to AI tools.
00;00;46;27 - 00;01;14;00
Unknown
AI models that sometimes we don't take a step back, pause, and think, which is our main strength as human beings. So I'm excited to talk about, what, the necessities to keep our creativity and critical thinking alive in the age of AI. Yeah, I'm very in tune with everything you just described here. Collide. We, the people here are using AI at its fullest potential.
00;01;14;00 - 00;01;36;01
Unknown
There on top, they they they are watching the keynotes. When they do the latest point, one model is added to everything. So I'm kind of in this rare, more rare 10%, even 1% of users. But then at the same time, I have kids in a school and they send out these generated newsletters that the copy is clearly generated.
00;01;36;01 - 00;01;56;16
Unknown
Are these awful images. So I do see the spectrum of how AI's used and of course, across also social media. And the spectrum is crazy from its casual fun use to how it can actually build and change the world. And it's quite jarring. And we are what I would say, what, six years into all this, AI bubble ness.
00;01;56;16 - 00;02;16;23
Unknown
Yeah. And it's it's a lot. But, you know, with what you said, you know, you can kind of create anything with AI, and it's being used for good and bad, however you want to say, like, what are your thoughts on it current day. Yeah. As you said, I it definitely has been a boon in accelerating execution and learning.
00;02;16;23 - 00;02;37;09
Unknown
Right. So many AI products have come to the market in the last few years. But there is the other side of things where I should not be used or cannot be used, or is it banned from being used? Right. I'll give you some examples. Job interviews. You're not supposed to use AI in examinations. Students are not supposed to use AI.
00;02;37;11 - 00;02;57;05
Unknown
If you have to think on your feet in a boardroom, you don't have access to AI. You got it. You just have to give an answer in the boardroom based on what you think. So individual human thinking still has a very important place, even in the, age of AI. And, that that's what we're going to bring forward in this podcast.
00;02;57;07 - 00;03;19;25
Unknown
And we all know AI hallucinates, right? So not every answer coming from the AI is right. So you cannot take it for granted whatever comes out as a response from AI tools. So you have to use your own critical thinking, judgment and decision making to decide if this answer makes sense. And it is very important, especially in, safety products.
00;03;19;27 - 00;03;51;01
Unknown
And to get the accuracy and the reliability and the safety in AI products. And, finally, you know, AI overuse can stifle innovation, right? Your mind is not thinking of new ideas. You're relying on a tool to give you answers. And innovation is a bread and butter for economic growth. And, right from childhood I've been a guy who is, thinker and, so new tools, new technologies like cloud and I, they, I don't get overwhelmed by them.
00;03;51;08 - 00;04;10;11
Unknown
I keep them at a safe distance and but I see that a lot of people are just using AI for the sake of AI or, you know, just outsourcing their thinking to AI. And I'm, I have a I'm bothered by that. And that's why we're going to talk about in more detail today. Yes. That is that's a good concern to have.
00;04;10;11 - 00;04;31;11
Unknown
And it's almost hard to understand that people who are just tunnel vision being like it can do it. Why not? But I mean, you brought up some things it can't do or it shouldn't do, right. Like, it's funny that you bring up like a job interview or being in a board meeting. You know, technically you could build something where something can listen.
00;04;31;11 - 00;04;52;03
Unknown
It could read, it can read into your, your ear, or maybe you're sitting in a discreet way where you're able to kind of read it live. I, I've literally built something like this, but then it's like, okay, you actually can do this now, maybe you couldn't do this back in like 2022, but there's the other issue, which is where okay, but now you're what are you doing?
00;04;52;04 - 00;05;11;21
Unknown
You're not a person. You're not thinking like like how about you just learn to participate in a board meeting and learn how to communicate and talk on your feet. If you actually build this really cool tool, you're actually kind of like becoming not a human anymore. You can get really like, philosophical about how you think about that.
00;05;11;24 - 00;05;33;12
Unknown
But staying on the topic of like, what shouldn't you build or what what what it can't do? What are some, like, things it literally can't do? Like if I tried to right now typing it in an Lem or generating in some kind of way, what are some actual places it's not at, maybe it won't ever be at. Well, one thing is the advancements that you talked about, right?
00;05;33;12 - 00;05;50;19
Unknown
Having an earpiece to give you answers, you got to listen to what is being said on the earpiece and then talk that disrupts the flow in a board meeting like me and you are talking now, imagine that you're getting, insights on an earpiece with some AI inputs, right? Your brain cannot multitask of listening and talking at the same time, right?
00;05;50;19 - 00;06;15;29
Unknown
You have it has to assimilate whatever it's listening, and then make, judgment and give an answer to that. There is latency involved in this entire thing, right. That will not make a communication fruitful or, flow in a normal manner. Right. So it's going to create more chaos than, do. Good. When you introduce tools which are actually intrusive in a communication, you know, you know, face to face board meeting, for example.
00;06;15;29 - 00;06;34;20
Unknown
Right. So, you could do it, but to, kind of nail it to the latency and the flow levels, it's going to take a lot of work. And I don't think we're there yet in terms of AI. Right? I mean, technically, I could set up this podcast. I got this laptop right in front of me. I can't really tell what's on the screen.
00;06;34;23 - 00;06;53;25
Unknown
And it could be listening to you right now and like popping up answers to me. So that sounds a little dystopian and I don't I'm not really interested in doing that. But it's as I said, right? If you're reading that information, then you're not focusing on what I'm saying. So they could be disconnected content and communication, which may not make sense to an audience.
00;06;53;25 - 00;07;13;07
Unknown
Right. So you got to listen to what I'm saying. I go to listen to what you're saying, and that's when there is a flow in the entire communication, which is why my document is like a five word question and not like a paragraph, because I cannot be like, okay, we should talk about this next. And I glance at it like I literally have like a highlighted six word sentence.
00;07;13;07 - 00;07;40;02
Unknown
And so it's like, okay, that's what I want to talk about next. And yeah, I mean, some people can do that, but I'm not going to be that guy today. But, speaking of the meta of reading questions off my laptop, you know, what are what are we at risk losing due to our overdependence on AI, which is kind of, I think the big thing we want to talk about, where we're talking about the people who use it without thinking about the repercussions, thinking it's this miracle device, but the dependency is the issue.
00;07;40;04 - 00;07;58;17
Unknown
The first thing that comes to mind is the foundation of being creative is to have that struggle of experimentation and failure, right? So when you get when you do creative thinking and creative ideas, you don't get that great idea right at the first go, you get something, is it? And it's not good. And then you get something else.
00;07;58;20 - 00;08;21;01
Unknown
And then you let your mind wander and you get something else. So you're discarding a lot before you actually picking up something useful, right? That process is missing when you go to an AI tool because you're just jumping on to an answer coming from a third party, right? So that is one problem. I diminishes your individual voice.
00;08;21;03 - 00;08;46;26
Unknown
I want to give this example of, in the hiring space. Right? Last year, everybody was asked to tailor their resumes, you know, to their job description, make it fit to the job so that you present yourself as the best fit candidate. Guess what? Everybody's doing it. So all 100 residents are now looking at like, oh yeah, and the hiring managers cannot find out a unique voice, or an individual voice of each candidate, right, about whom do I pick among these hundred resumes?
00;08;46;26 - 00;09;11;01
Unknown
They are all generated by cloud. And so these tiding writers are now asking, do not use AI tools to generate your resume. Right. So that's the irony there, right? We started with tailoring. And then tailoring has a problem. The final thing that I want to bring about is, in a common piece is lost. And I want to share an interesting story from Saul Rashid's podcast that I heard recently.
00;09;11;03 - 00;09;30;01
Unknown
An Uber driver is going to the airport, and all of a sudden his app starts glitching. So he's tapping on the app and then, he's now banging on the app because the tap doesn't work anymore. The writer behind is now a little scared. What is this guy doing? Why is he banging so hard on the phone? Right.
00;09;30;03 - 00;09;50;08
Unknown
So he realizes that the writer realizes that there's a problem with the app and they have to go to the airport. He's not getting directions. And so he says, hey, look up. There are signs on the highway where you can use to actually go to the airport. We don't have to rely on the app. And this guy's like, oh yeah, all right, okay, look at the airport.
00;09;50;10 - 00;10;09;20
Unknown
That was the old school method anyway, that we would look up the board like arrow to the right to go to the airport. And now because of technology and I infusion, people's thinking abilities have gone down. They cannot think of a backup plan that if this doesn't work, let me try something else. Right. They are so reliant on technology.
00;10;09;20 - 00;10;29;01
Unknown
And I found that a very interesting example because, so the idea also brings up the point that a lot of times you are so a victim or a slave to the directions from your Google Maps that you drive from A to B, but without it, if you if I ask you to drive from A to B again, you will you would not know how you drove because you're just listening.
00;10;29;01 - 00;10;50;02
Unknown
Turn right, turn left, turn right, turn left. And you went to that, to that place, right? You see, the mind becomes numb just listening to instructions given by a computer. You're not thinking on your own. So, in this case, this guy becoming agitated is a case of losing in a common piece. And I attribute it to technologies like I.
00;10;50;05 - 00;11;12;28
Unknown
Yeah, I love that. And yeah, like at the end of the day, you're not even talking about AI in that, scenario. You're just using, app that has become ubiquitous in our life. And, you know, I'm not it's in here having my mind blown because I actually do practice this. I love turning off the maps or deciding not to turn them on so I can navigate to a route I've done a few times.
00;11;13;01 - 00;11;37;00
Unknown
Not something I know so well. I and it's funny, you bring up the airport. I actually have, like, a tip I give people when they're like airports. The navigation has always been awful at airports because the how convoluted and all the forks in the road are actually stop using Google Maps when I get into the area and only read the signs because it's like the terminal split up the car rental.
00;11;37;00 - 00;11;56;25
Unknown
So it's actually it's actually good advice to just not use your navigation anyway. And don't forget the orange cones. Yeah. And and then, you know, you're messed sad and you're doing like a 20 minute loop back around. So that's just good advice. And I even practice in all forms like sometimes like I started buying CDs and there's a whole push about physical media kind of happening right now.
00;11;56;25 - 00;12;13;06
Unknown
There's always like an up and down about vinyls, CDs, whatever. And so I have a few CDs in the car and when I get up in the morning, instead of like plugging in my phone, picking a playlist, I turn the car on and the song starts playing and I'm like, okay, fine. And I just start driving and like, it just saves.
00;12;13;13 - 00;12;39;01
Unknown
I get you kind of brought up peace of mind or whatever. Like that's kind of the same feeling. And, you should you should practice something in your life to try to try to ship something away, whether it's putting on Spotify or navigating, you know, like that. That's great advice, I love that. Yeah. I think in the earlier days of minimal technology, life was more peaceful, a lot more distractions and confusions and complications in the modern age.
00;12;39;03 - 00;12;54;29
Unknown
So it's important not to forget that those still exist. Like even though technology has advanced, the old ones have not gone away. As you said, you can put in a CD. Even today my Toyota Prius has a CD deck, but I don't use it. But now that you mention it, I mean, start using it. Yeah, try it out.
00;12;55;01 - 00;13;11;14
Unknown
I know I actually want to get a new car and, you know, obviously want to buy something within the last few years. And something I need to worry about is have a CD player. So let's be weird buying like a high trim, decent car, but then try to find something that you would find in like a car in 1980s.
00;13;11;14 - 00;13;35;19
Unknown
So, well, a funny conundrum there, but I wanted to touch back on resumes. I've actually been thinking about this because my girlfriend has been kind of considering a new job in the recent year, and I got to thinking about like, oh, let me help her build our resume or like, not even helping her, but just being like, I'm interested in what she would do and put on it after all she's done in her last career.
00;13;35;22 - 00;14;03;07
Unknown
And that's when I immediately was like, oh my God, everyone must be using AI right now on resumes like, that must be awful. And what you described as what went in my head, 100 resumes are going to an employer and they all look the same and they all have the same copy length structure, no doubt. And something you didn't mention, which I'm sure you thought of, is that the the the employer probably is using AI to sort through all the AI resumes and then we just get we're in a completely dystopian land.
00;14;03;07 - 00;14;25;17
Unknown
I mean, with the roles you're jumping around with here in Houston, have you actually dealt with, resumes or an employer who wants your help on resumes? Like, what does that the what does the resume ecosystem look like right now? Yeah. So with my years of experience, I rely on referrals. And, you know, 1 to 1 connections with hiring managers.
00;14;25;19 - 00;14;48;03
Unknown
The cold application days are gone. They may they may apply for, younger people who have 1 to 2 years of experience. But with my years of experience, you are considering leadership positions. And so getting that personal relationship and connection becomes really important. So resume is important. But I switch back to a non tailored resume on that topic.
00;14;48;05 - 00;15;09;28
Unknown
And that's because I heard, recruiters say hiring and looking for jobs is like dating. Right? So if you go there you don't just because that person likes blue color, you don't wear a blue shirt, the next person likes the green color. You don't wear a green shirt, right? You wear what you want and you try to see if there's a match between you and the person you're dating.
00;15;09;28 - 00;15;33;20
Unknown
Right? That that's how it works. You don't change yourself for the requirements of A, B, and C. You know, I found that analogy pretty useful, right? You see what? You have to retain your individuality. We talked about individual voice. Right. My resume of what I have done and the impact I've created is my individual voice. If I pass it through, an AI system, that individual voice gets munched.
00;15;33;20 - 00;16;02;17
Unknown
Right. So I realize that and my later resume does not go through, an AI system, right? It's even more closer to dating, because if you compare a list of 100 resumes to a girl swiping through 100 Tinder profiles, it's literally the same thing. It's a resume for love. And, I think that's probably another thing. I bet dating apps have, like generated images on it and text and stuff too, but that's a whole different conversation.
00;16;02;19 - 00;16;19;29
Unknown
We were kind of wrapping up about, reducing your reliance on AI, finding that peace of mind, like, what are some other things that you should reduce, you know, starting today, or consider maybe a little bit more long term. So, as I said, I'm generally a thinker. My first instinct is always to think, like you said something.
00;16;19;29 - 00;16;38;13
Unknown
I want to assimilate it. If you notice, I'm taking a few seconds to think, and I think that's a good, trait to have. So I resist the urge to jump to an AI tool. If I have a task, I ask myself, do I need a AI for this? So I make the judgment call where I should use AI and where I should not use AI.
00;16;38;15 - 00;17;04;27
Unknown
So the places I want to use AI is if I'm learning a new concept right, as applying to a, role regarding gas turbines. And I have no knowledge about gas turbines, so I wrote a little prompt to give me some basic knowledge on gas turbines. Right. AI is a great place to do that. If you have to write a draft of a document, you don't have to start from a blank page, starting the title and all these things you get some starting point, a 70% starting point using AI.
00;17;04;29 - 00;17;23;22
Unknown
It saves you time, right? You still have to own the final document on your own and, you know, edit it as per your requirements. But you don't have to start from a blank page. You know, I think those days are gone way. You have to start from a blank page to write a document. Where I do not want to use AI is, when I have to make a decision.
00;17;23;24 - 00;17;48;23
Unknown
Any decision, you know, should I do this or not do this? AI doesn't know my situation and circumstance to make a decision. So all decisions, I try to make it by myself. And, if I have time to think, I'm not in a rush to do something right. Then I will not use AI, because I'm going to use the time to think and use my own brain to get the job done.
00;17;48;26 - 00;18;19;14
Unknown
I kind of relish that process of stimulating myself to think and do things. And we'll talk about some of those hobbies, as we go forward. That makes you think about relying on a decision not just on the AI, but just what the what you're surrounded by, whether it's someone's opinion in person or online. Like, for example, if you wanted to if you were torn between two movies to go see you in the theater and you saw a thread on Reddit or an Instagram post that was like a carousel of the movies that are out right now.
00;18;19;16 - 00;18;43;28
Unknown
Like just from viewing it or reading it, your mind would immediately get altered by that. Like, do you do you try to even avoid stuff like that? Not even like asking AI, but like things that are kind of shoved in your face on an algorithm that kind of make your judgment different. Well, I'm not a movie person, so it's not like, so I have a 11 year old at home life just gets busy with his classes and, my wife's work and things like that.
00;18;43;28 - 00;19;08;23
Unknown
So we have not gone to a movie for a long time. So but in general, to answer your broader question, I have not, asked I hey, should I have done this or if, given these two choices, what should I do? I generally rely on my own instincts to make a decision in daily life circumstances, to decide what I need to do.
00;19;08;26 - 00;19;29;09
Unknown
Yeah. I'm not. I know people have gone to some extent of, you know, going to I as a thought partner. There's a company in India called Bravehearts, not AI. So it takes all your decisions over your lifetime. And if you have a trouble right now in your personal life, you can actually ask that question. It knows your entire history and it'll recommend something.
00;19;29;09 - 00;19;49;19
Unknown
So I don't know how useful that is. I have not tried that tool, but at this stage, I'm very careful in being, and selective in when to use AI and when not to use it. In moderation, of course. Yeah, I was focused more on like the non AI of it though, like you're kind of just things in life kind of sway to you without even noticing.
00;19;49;19 - 00;20;15;21
Unknown
But I think it's natural that those things just happen. Before we kind of move on, I wanted to talk about, like, things you do trust. Whether it's a simple question and answer on an Al Alam or any kind of other way, you would use AI, like, what do you what do you try and one shot hit enter and just whatever it says, you're going to just be like, yep, fine, I will copy paste this, I will click this and take it as a source.
00;20;15;21 - 00;20;35;27
Unknown
Like like how how what what are the scenarios where you trust it in one shot? I don't think there is ever something like that, because whatever it gives, I read it and I have to convince myself that it is true or not. So I've made some LinkedIn post recently on what is more important. Is it product judgment or domain expertise?
00;20;35;29 - 00;21;02;10
Unknown
Right. So I give some answers, but then I tune it to what I think is my opinion on that topic. So it gives me the right words and bullet points and things that I may not have thought of, but I always add my own input, to before making a post. Right? So to answer your question, I've never had a situation where I just punched a prompt.
00;21;02;13 - 00;21;28;10
Unknown
It gave me something and I copy pasted it somewhere because it just doesn't come naturally to me because then it's not mine anymore. It's somebody else doing it for me. Right? I've always made at least two word changes, in the output that is coming out of AI to disseminate it to somebody else, right? Yeah. It has to be like very small and like, just an afterthought to be like, to be in that situation.
00;21;28;12 - 00;21;52;16
Unknown
Unfortunately, that's not how a lot of people are. Some people do just one shot and move on with their life. I mean, even if I'm using like an lol, as like googling something I use, I will use an L, that gives sources automatically or ask for the source. I think I would click on that source to double check, especially if it's like something that's more like not an opinion, but like a date or something that I need to know exactly.
00;21;52;19 - 00;22;12;26
Unknown
So the steps are very short, where it's like I ask it, double check the source and I'm good. But like as far as, like hit enter and be like, okay, fine. Like that's a good habit to not have. You know, I always check it. So now that you asked, one simple, image creation task comes to mind where I just took it right away.
00;22;12;28 - 00;22;37;20
Unknown
So I did a podcast on something called the Responsiveness Crisis. I think I sent it to you as well. So I got good response through other channels like WhatsApp and emails that hey this is great. You know, and they gave me words like hey, well or so proper. So what I did was I took all those, feedback and I told ChatGPT make it into an infographic in a sticky note style, like everybody giving their feedback as a sticky note.
00;22;37;23 - 00;22;55;05
Unknown
So it did a nice job of putting seven sticky notes. I had no problem with it, so I just picked it up and put it on a LinkedIn post. So there's some very simple activities like that. I'll just trust AI to do it for me, because I've given the exact prompt on what exactly I need out of that.
00;22;55;08 - 00;23;15;05
Unknown
Prompt or the task. Right? So there's not much change to be done because I'm exactly giving you in the words what I need in that, in that sticky note. Right. All it has to do is put seven colors of sticky notes and put in an image out there. So very simple tasks. I am willing to, use AI output as it's but 99% of the time I'm not there.
00;23;15;07 - 00;23;42;22
Unknown
Yeah, when it comes to the image generation, I think that's definitely more of the casual thing I'm talking about, especially if you're like, you're making something for fun or casual or maybe business. But on LinkedIn, like a LinkedIn post is very like, it's fine if there's like a little mistake. People are used to it. But if, you know, I had gotten so good at making slides, for example, that you can genuinely use in a presentation, raising money like very big stakes, those obviously are not going to be your one shot effect.
00;23;42;24 - 00;24;06;14
Unknown
So again, a whole mix of moderation there. Yeah. I mean like icons and images that used to take ages in PowerPoint. Right? I want to bring up PowerPoint. Yeah. We all have been pitching to like investors or hiring managers. Decks out of it, part and parcel of product managers life. And the olden days to make a nice deck took a week and now I can make a nice deck with my modifications in one hour.
00;24;06;14 - 00;24;22;27
Unknown
Right. You just need to know how to tune the LMS to get the right outputs. Right? So, yeah, I think I think, like slides and PowerPoints, you can even, like, you can train them on a style guide. You can teach them the colors and fonts and stuff like that. And it doesn't even use like a diffusion model to like generate it.
00;24;22;27 - 00;24;43;18
Unknown
It actually kind of like technically draws and types, and you can actually edit the text and stuff if you if, if you're listening to this and you've never done anything like that, it's amazing when it comes to generating images. I think the slides are the one thing, if anything, that I'm like, this is good. I see, I see it out in the wild and I see people use it and I'm like, I can tell maybe.
00;24;43;20 - 00;25;12;22
Unknown
But regardless, it's good and it's way better than like some generated image crap that most people are offended by and are tired of. So I think that's a great use. Speaking of like, creativity and creating your own stuff and, you know, deciding what you should create or not. I mean, you walked in and I was on Photoshop making a graphic on a template I built, you know, I picked the colors, I have images or my camera I shot on, like, it's pretty much 100% on me, but I'm still generating images and stuff like that.
00;25;12;22 - 00;25;36;24
Unknown
Right. So I balance things. I mostly I use what's in the middle, like tools and stuff. So what are the things that you're still making today? Whether it's because you're better at it or because you're kind of forcing yourself to put yourself into it and not go all in on, I. Yeah. So I think, I'd like to share some of my hobbies here where my critical thinking and creativity comes to the fore.
00;25;36;26 - 00;26;00;18
Unknown
So songwriting has always been my passion right from childhood. I have, fluency in multiple languages like English, Hindi, Tamil. I'm like, I'm from India. So I've written like small poems and songs right from the right, from the age of 6 or 7 maybe, and the beauty about songwriting is as a lyric is an emotion that comes out of the heart.
00;26;00;21 - 00;26;28;15
Unknown
Right? You cannot go and ask like that. Give me a story on this topic. And that's where you know your critical thinking and creativity can flourish. You don't have to depend on the AI for that, right? So what happens is once I'm created the lyrics, then, I add music to it and an mp3 to it to give life to it, but 50% of it is still done by me trying to write the lyrics by myself.
00;26;28;15 - 00;26;46;17
Unknown
Right? So it's like a good balance between my own creative thinking and the use of AI. So like the instrumental is, generated. Yes. And it, it pairs well with the lyrics you wrote. Yes. Okay, I love that. I, I would definitely try something like that if I had that kind of interest, but I've not taken that approach.
00;26;46;17 - 00;27;10;17
Unknown
But for sure, that's way better than the other way, because the generated, like lyrics, whether it's the words or like the, the voice that's generated is definitely the worst part when it comes to, generative music. Like there's a whole industry now about, like, generating Lo-Fi music, like instrumentals, because that's such simple instrumentation use like, you would never tell the difference.
00;27;10;20 - 00;27;32;04
Unknown
But when you hear like a fake AI song, it's like way more noticeable. So that's a good balance, right? And then I use AI to come up with solutions or options for the music. I don't pick whatever it gives. I ask it to, give it in, in a sad, melancholy tone or, you know, use a, a beats per minute rate of 50.
00;27;32;07 - 00;27;49;11
Unknown
You know, I give it more technical details to build the music in the way I want. Right. And it gives me four options. Then I pick pick the one that makes the most sense out of those four options. Right. Apps like Sunil. And have you heard of Sunil? Yeah, yeah. So, so I don't pick the one that comes out of the bat the first time.
00;27;49;11 - 00;28;08;24
Unknown
I'm not happy with it. I try something else, and, but I kind of lock in the lyrics so that I don't have to keep iterating on the lyrics, to elongate the entire process. Right. So the other example I want to give is comic strip writing. So, I, I've been a big fan of humor and comedy movies right from childhood.
00;28;08;26 - 00;28;27;15
Unknown
Not many, English movies or Hollywood movies, but, you know, from the Indian movies side, I've always been a have had a penchant for comedy and humor. So, in day to day life, I come across a lot of scenarios where my mind immediately clicks. This would make a nice humor post, like a Dilbert, Dilbert type poster.
00;28;27;17 - 00;28;45;11
Unknown
You know, I can make an a comic strip based on this incident or this conversation that I just had with someone, and my mind starts clicking on, what would person one say? And then what does the second person say? You know, you have to go through the story, right, to get the humor and a Dilbert or something like that.
00;28;45;13 - 00;29;03;05
Unknown
So I would compose the entire message and craft it in my head, write it in a piece of paper, and then submit to AI to create the image and laugh out of it. Right. So again, 50% is my own work. And the execution of converting into an image and bringing life to it is what the AI is doing.
00;29;03;08 - 00;29;38;27
Unknown
So, I'm thankful that I have these passions because they helped me unleash my creative side, right? Both in songwriting as well as in comic strip writing. Yeah, and anyone who wants to, like, negate that and talk against it. Like if if the tool didn't exist, then those lyrics are saying on a piece of paper and those that that that story for that comic strip is on a piece of paper and it doesn't even it never ends up seeing the time of day because you're not maybe at in a moment of your life, going to learn how to start drawing, to add to that, or learn how to produce music like those are big ask
00;29;38;27 - 00;30;00;09
Unknown
and big hobbies to combine. Yeah, so it's it's now existing in this new form because of this feature that you have. And you can even go deeper tonight like this is you who who has a family and you work and you don't have time for this anyway. But now you have these hobbies, so you have that escape to do things that are fun and that you love.
00;30;00;09 - 00;30;23;08
Unknown
And it can go down to kids to like kids they want. They're learning there themselves and learning hobbies, and they can use AI to help, you know, though those bloom, of course, as young kids and not being as busy, hopefully they do pick up on the true art and start picking up an instrument or taking drawing classes or whatever.
00;30;23;11 - 00;30;40;17
Unknown
And not becoming fully dependent. But it if it didn't exist in the first place, they may have never looked at it initially. So it's a good thing overall in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. And one of the thing, you know, on the same topic that I would like to talk about is, you know, as I said, I'm a thinker.
00;30;40;21 - 00;31;04;03
Unknown
And every time people are saying something, I'm astutely listening. And, you know, I come across these Instagram posts which have 50,000 likes and a thousand likes and sometimes. But I don't get carried away by them. And I want to give you an example. There's a story on Instagram where somebody's very tired and dying of thirst, almost in the heat, knocks on a door and asks for a glass of water.
00;31;04;06 - 00;31;27;13
Unknown
So the person opens the door and says, yeah, okay, wait, I'll go and bring it and it takes ten minutes. And this person is outside wondering, I'm dying of thirst. Why is it taking so long? Is thinking in his head right? The, house owner brings a big glass of lemonade with ice on it, and every member of the audience of that Instagram post has so fascinated.
00;31;27;13 - 00;31;44;29
Unknown
He only asked for a glass of water, but he got a big glass of lemonade and poured 45,000 likes. Such a nice person. You know that person who brought the lemonade? But that's not how I think the guy is dying out of thirst. You got to bring water right away first because that's his real need of the minute.
00;31;45;01 - 00;32;05;27
Unknown
You can bring lemonade as a second step after he drinks the water, but he, at this very moment, what he needs is water. Not a ten minute wait. And lemonade. Right. So I did you see how I'm thinking kind of differently. So I'm wondering then what made those 45,000 people to put a like on? This was what is, nice about it, right?
00;32;06;00 - 00;32;29;28
Unknown
The person who brought the lemonade is not doing a favor. He's actually trying to kill that person by delaying, bringing the whatever the person needs at that very, very minute. Right. So just an example to show that, I just don't buy in whatever I see and the endorsements and opinions that people have on social media, I tend to put my own thinking hat on it as to does it make sense, what people are saying.
00;32;30;01 - 00;32;49;26
Unknown
So I think that that's an important habit to cultivate. So that you retain your own critical thinking and creativity in the age of AI, right? Yeah. There seems to be a section of people on social media that like the craziest things that you're just kind of set you in reality and realize, like, you're not you're not conform to most people.
00;32;49;26 - 00;33;06;16
Unknown
Like there there are people who are just not even thinking the same way you do it. It can it can kind of ground yourself. If you think about it. Before I kind of ask you some random questions here at the end, like, what's one good habit that someone can start this week when it comes to their AI usage?
00;33;06;19 - 00;33;26;12
Unknown
What comes to mind is explore, right? There are so many AI tools now, if you like video generation, jump on to, some tools and whatever you see, a friend of mine recommended course box to build courses, and I got really excited about what is how does it work? So I downloaded the free version and started just doing trials.
00;33;26;14 - 00;33;50;14
Unknown
So that showed that curiosity is important when you're learning AI or any technology for that matter. So, I would suggest if you are any passion area, video generation, image generation, music generation, whatever you like, go look up the tools, that are available on the internet and download the free version and start playing with it. Cool. All right, well, I'm going to shoot some random, questions.
00;33;50;14 - 00;34;10;29
Unknown
I didn't really have that with you, but, heard they're all there. All can grow into what we're talking about, right? My favorite thing to bring up about AI is a paradox and has to do with the software app Canva. So Canva is this amazing tool that was built to kind of bridge everyone who couldn't quite get into Photoshop.
00;34;11;01 - 00;34;27;06
Unknown
And then, I mean, before that, like, what do you have like Ms. Paint or like just drawing on the iPad. Like there's there was really no like starting ground. You do literally have to jump into what could be elite considered like an elite software like Photoshop. Yeah. You can you can open up a blank thing with a pencil, start drawing.
00;34;27;06 - 00;34;50;25
Unknown
But the the possibilities are endless on that. On a software. Canva brought in this like template style approach to help people build things. And working here at Collide and with like moms on soccer teams and stuff like they have made incredible stuff where I was like, I can I can't even make that on Photoshop. Or I could, but it would take me like five hours and y'all are like busting it out with all these templates.
00;34;50;25 - 00;35;10;18
Unknown
And this is all kind of growing, like just right before Covid and to this current day. But I think gen I came in and ruined it. And now all the all the baseball tryouts and all the school newsletters are all generated and all look the same. And I'm like, we we kind of we finally figured it out.
00;35;10;18 - 00;35;37;17
Unknown
We came out with Canva and like casual people with no time to learn, these hobbies were finally making incredible original pieces of art with their hands being held. And now it's now. Everyone just switched on over. And I think, I think this is like one of the things we got wrong where we, we we were skipping the tool template, hand-holding kind of process, and now we're just like one shotting these images and like I said, like it's an offensive.
00;35;37;17 - 00;35;58;02
Unknown
It's it's for a ten year old, you know, baseball team whatever. But like I see it every day and it kind of drives me crazy. It's like a paradox. Well, I see it in a different way. Like I have used my, I've generated posters for my birthday party last two years, using Canva, and I gave a very specific prompt.
00;35;58;02 - 00;36;23;08
Unknown
As I said, I always try to narrow the space for the AI tool. I don't give a very generic prompt because then it comes. It'll come with 100 different things, right? I kind of in my head, I know what exactly I want. I put in like, you know, neon type color or real people playing pickleball, you know, and, space for putting my, the location of the party and some balloons.
00;36;23;08 - 00;36;38;29
Unknown
I kind of describe it the way I'm envisioning in my head to Canva, and most of the time, the first three times it comes up with what I want. Right? So it makes my life really easy because, it saves time, right? I don't want to be spending time on, a birthday party poster for more than ten minutes, maybe.
00;36;38;29 - 00;36;58;01
Unknown
Well, you're scenario makes sense. It's it's a one off. It's a birthday once a year. I'm talking about people who it's almost a career, right? Like like Crystal, who works next to my side or uses Canva now and still, because she has all these templates built and it knows our style and I know Photoshop. So like I said, I got to work fine.
00;36;58;01 - 00;37;15;18
Unknown
And then of course we have GPT forever. I want to just straight up generate something. So it's a great balance. But this is something we get paid for. This is something that we're we're consistently posting. And you can look at an Instagram page and you can see the style being replicated and looks all good together. And if it was all generated, it would look bad.
00;37;15;18 - 00;37;35;22
Unknown
But for your birthday, it's like, hell yeah, like one shot it. Yeah. I think the use case matters is that commercial use case, which is a personal use case, you know? Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you. Like, if someone said if I was hiring someone to help me out and they said at five years of experience on Canva, I would would be a big green flag, like, they don't know Photoshop because they never went that far.
00;37;35;22 - 00;37;50;26
Unknown
But I've seen what someone who knows what they're doing on something like Canva actually makes me feel good. But now it's even worse because it's like Canva. Now, of course, has to play the game, and now they have their whole AI stuff, so I don't even know what's going on over there. But that's just one thing that gets me okay.
00;37;50;29 - 00;38;15;15
Unknown
Kind of starting from day one of all this, right? Think of like 2020. GPT three is out, Dall-E is out. The generation that image generation. It's not even in GPT yet. Like right now you can go to charge GPT free account and say, generate me this. And it's like, boom, it's beautiful. It's high quality. This is back when it was on Dall-E on OpenAI site, on a different tab, and it would take forever.
00;38;15;15 - 00;38;35;07
Unknown
It give you three options and it was like very abstract and crazy looking like, were you there in 2020 playing with these tools? No, it's a funny story. In 2025, early February, a friend of mine tells me, hey, have you used ChatGPT? And I said, no, I only use WhatsApp and other chat systems. I don't use ChatGPT.
00;38;35;09 - 00;38;58;14
Unknown
Like, dude, that's not what I'm talking about. So I got into this FOMO mode of fear of missing out only in 2025. Wow. Oh, people are using ChatGPT like, okay, that's that's the time I jumped onto the AI bandwagon. Like January February 2025. Wow. And it is a funny. I still remember that because I told him I don't use these chat systems.
00;38;58;16 - 00;39;13;06
Unknown
But he said, no, this is not a chat system. That's funny. Okay, so you're like, relatively new to the game, but, it's, you know, you didn't go through all the pain and trial and errors that we have all gone through. It doesn't really matter, because if you're using it now, we're all using the same thing anyway.
00;39;13;06 - 00;39;35;07
Unknown
So, that's that's pretty funny. What do you think about it? Here collide. We we, you know, we don't we don't use, like, what people would describe as like a chat GPT wrapper and like, put our data in it and whatever. Like, everything we do here is built. We have software engineers. We have someone from, who's collaborated with, OpenAI in the early days.
00;39;35;07 - 00;39;56;04
Unknown
And so what we what we do is we build, essentially, I imagine your own ChatGPT, but for the oil and gas industry and stuff. And that's just a super blanket way to put it. But you know, when imagine you're out on a drilling pad and you want to ask like a super deep question about it has like numbers and data.
00;39;56;04 - 00;40;26;13
Unknown
It needs to know somehow you're not going to open ChatGPT and ask it. It doesn't know what you're talking about, and it will guess and hallucinate or whatever. And so all these industries are considering that, you know, it isn't just oil and gas, it's the medical industry, it's law. And, in my instance, like it's film and stuff like that, like what have you, have you, you what you're doing with your job kind of sounds like, you know, you said you're working in mining and robotics, like those are, again, industries where you can have very insane questions that you're not going to ask.
00;40;26;13 - 00;40;52;08
Unknown
GPT, you're going to use some other product that is built specifically for your industry. So have you heard of any of these, whether they're startups or big companies like Microsoft, somehow and incorporating like a huge database of law or robotics or mining. So these people can ask questions about their industry only. It depends on the use case. I'll give you the example of the edtech use case that you're doing.
00;40;52;08 - 00;41;15;24
Unknown
Okay. We are grading exam papers for Australian students in K9 to K12. Now you have a question. Bank of 5000 to 8000 questions of past exam papers or relevant other questions, gathered from the internet or from schools. And we have this right. I think what you're getting to is a rank system and context. Yes, system is right.
00;41;15;24 - 00;41;52;04
Unknown
Mostly what I'm trying. Right. So this edtech product that we are building, it taps into this question bank and creates, question papers by sourcing questions from the bank. And first it would, rank and score them for the relevance to the curriculum because some questions, could be bogus and they don't belong to the curriculum. And so I am exposed to like, systems and building a LMS around rags to have these chat bots produce contextual information that can be presented to users.
00;41;52;06 - 00;42;19;12
Unknown
Yeah. So what industry I feel like like if someone was gonna bring up anything, they would say medical. You know, they're like, AI is going to solve cancer and stuff like that. But at the same time, like I always think about whether, you know, it's like, okay, let's, let's feed I, all the cloud patterns, radar, for the last 50 years, surely we have every day for every year for decades.
00;42;19;14 - 00;42;35;21
Unknown
Let's go ahead and guess if it's going to rain tomorrow. No, like like it's like I can look at my phone right now, but, like 60% chance. Chance of rain tomorrow. Tomorrow. Blue skies like, what is it going to solve? What are you most hopeful for? What industry? And please don't say weather because that cannot be true.
00;42;35;24 - 00;43;00;08
Unknown
Fintech industry comes to mind. You know how the stock market has behaved over the last 20 years? That can give some predictability as to how it's going to behave in the future. Because we've gone through multiple cycles of innovation and downturns. So there's a lot of data that the cloud picked up, and then the financial breakdown happened, and then the hardware picked up again for the AI.
00;43;00;10 - 00;43;24;11
Unknown
So there's there's a lot of contextual data over time that can be leveraged to predict reliably what the futures stock market might hold. And so I think fintech is one of the promising domains. Yeah. And instead of radar and maps and data for weather, this is numbers as numbers on a paper for decades. Like it's got to be able to figure that out.
00;43;24;12 - 00;43;43;26
Unknown
Plus the richness of data. Right. AI is best when your data is rich. Oh yeah. And the last 2030 years. Correct. Right. Well and reliable. Right. And this is proven data, right? We know the stock market, how it went up and down. What technologies went up, what technologies died, how the technology is evolving now with the AI.
00;43;43;26 - 00;44;10;11
Unknown
And, other, you know, they call it, synthetic biology and quantum computing. So there's a lot of rich data that can be leveraged to predict the future sufficiently reliably. Yeah. No, I think finance is actually probably the best example I never thought of. I like saying like law and medical is usually the first thing that comes to my head because it's like it actually be cool to solve that.
00;44;10;13 - 00;44;33;17
Unknown
And, but, you know, well, we'll be there one day regardless. I, I wanted to do a question that was, funnily enough, was asked today and it was staring up the office, like, literally, we were like, turning our chairs and, like, getting distracted. And, Crystal, she was asking. She was making fun of her boyfriend, who, put their Social Security numbers into ChatGPT, which, don't do that.
00;44;33;19 - 00;44;51;20
Unknown
Don't put API keys. Don't, yeah. Like, we, we have our Claude here, like, tells you, when you put in sensitive information, it's like, you shouldn't have done that. You need to go see Sam and tell him. Do get rid of all that. But, she, funnily enough, was so mad at her husband, she was like, should everyone?
00;44;51;20 - 00;45;11;17
Unknown
Should everyone have access to AI? Like, should we should people have permission? Need permission. And obviously you get into like there's like a freedom of speech, like a very this can be political, but I kind of mean to ask it in a more funny, stripped down way. Not to kids, I would think. Okay. Because good answer.
00;45;11;17 - 00;45;35;10
Unknown
The whole think of the whole point of this critical thinking and learning and creativity. You're destroying it at a very young age if you are exposing them to AI for quick answers at the young teens and the college time frame, and you know that age, your job is to think, learn. And I can stifle that learning. So kids definitely not.
00;45;35;12 - 00;45;55;13
Unknown
I would not encourage my kid to have a video on his phone. He doesn't have even have a phone yet, but, it'll be too soon for him. Right now, he's 11 to get access to AI. Yeah. No, I agree, I have an 11 and a 13 year old. Actually. They have phones. They have restricted access across the boards.
00;45;55;16 - 00;46;17;03
Unknown
They've actually naturally have pulled up GPT a few times, like on a browser. And just ask that like something about like sports like a few times that they're not even, like interested somehow, which I find crazy because I'm surrounded by it and I feel like kids are want to be obsessed with it and stuff. I mean, I do hear the stories like there are kids who are there, vibe coding, they're building, games that they can import into Roblox and actually make money off of it.
00;46;17;03 - 00;46;36;18
Unknown
They're like as high as that to, you know, just using it to, like, cheat at school or whatever. But, don't use it to do your homework. Yeah, it depends on what you're using it for. Like, building new apps. That's a valid use. That's fine. But don't don't outsource your thinking to do your homework. Yeah.
00;46;36;18 - 00;47;01;16
Unknown
Funnily enough, as simple as you think a kid's use would be, I would actually say skip all the lame stuff and go kind of straight to more vibe coding and like, showing them how they can, like, build an app in a website that will pop up in like ten minutes from starting, which is just insane. But of course, there's a healthy way to approach it, and you should yourself understand what you're doing before you teach them.
00;47;01;19 - 00;47;20;21
Unknown
But yeah, it's a it's it's exciting. One final topic I wanted to cover is, Houston, I like I always like getting clips out of this podcast about just kind of the Houston culture and stuff, you know? Are you here in Houston on purpose, doing what you're doing, or are you just kind of here and you just happen to be doing whatever?
00;47;20;21 - 00;47;45;10
Unknown
Or do you have a reason to shout out Houston and the people here, the culture here, and that's maybe helping you and benefiting your life. Yeah. So I'd like to share my story. How I landed in Houston. Yes, please. So, I was in the Bay area, and my wife got a job here, and, we were deciding in Texas whether to go to Dallas, Austin or Houston.
00;47;45;12 - 00;48;09;27
Unknown
And the cost of living of Houston in 2019 was lower than all these three cities. I think it's still lower if I'm if I'm right. So and cost of living was a key factor for us because, no state tax I mean, Texas, there's no state tax whatsoever. But the house prices in spring were like three and a thousand, compared to 1.2 million in the Bay area or even 500 K in Dallas and 800 K in Austin, Texas.
00;48;09;27 - 00;48;41;06
Unknown
Right. So those are big differences. And that's what made us decide come to Houston, North Houston, we really fell in. Love it. I'm in northeastern in spring now. Now in Tomball. But the greater Houston community has been great. You know, there's a lot of innovative companies in energy, oil and gas. General sass, you know, I'm hearing some small hardware startups also popping up in Houston, so, I love the energy in the, entrepreneurial space in Houston.
00;48;41;12 - 00;49;01;01
Unknown
That's probably what prompted me to look at the mining space. Seriously, as well. So, yes, I'm kind of excited to be in Houston, and I like the vibe in Houston. And I'm a as I said, I'm a kind of a family guy, so I, I love my peace and quietness. So from a living point of view, I would always live in the north.
00;49;01;04 - 00;49;21;21
Unknown
But all the buzz I know it's happening in the South, you know, in the downtown areas at the iron, and things like that. So Greentown Labs, Greentown Labs. That's right. Thanks for reminding us. So I, I do come here once in a while to meet the folks, attend events, meetups. There's a lot of great learning opportunity in Houston.
00;49;21;21 - 00;49;42;24
Unknown
So excited to be here. Yeah. No, you're doing you're doing everything right from the prices to the neighboring cities to where you at. You are with your family right now, and how living outside the loop is much better. And but not so far where you can come in for the occasional visit. I grew up in a Tomball area, essentially Cypress, so very familiar with that.
00;49;42;24 - 00;49;53;27
Unknown
And, it's I'm glad that you're in and out, enjoying it in both ways. So, Sherman, thanks for coming on. Anything else you want to say before we head out? Oh. That's it? Yeah. Go by. All right.
