And and he started getting booed at a commencement. Like and ⁓ you know, students were not happy with that line. And and he tried to keep going with his kind of story, but then he he's a CEO, and you and I both work for a lot of CEOs directly, and and they're not used to maybe that direct feedback.

No.

So ⁓ so he he kinda like so the story here was that he kinda lashed out. Is it he mean he he basically from the the podium said, well, you know, it's coming, deal with it, you know, you're you're gonna have to deal with it now. Or, you know, he kinda did the pay me now, pay me later like, you know, approach at these, you know, young twenty-two, twenty-three year old graduates that were booing him. I feel like that that opening line for every one of them is is changes every Well, hey Jim, you know, one of the things that you and I have been talking about is, you know, things that are happening in the news. One of these are ⁓ things that is kind of a cultural moment that we've talked about is what is the younger generation's take on AI? And it's not even about the youngest, it's about the folks that are entering the workforce. And ⁓ so here in Nashville. Near me is ⁓ Middle Tennessee State University. And ⁓ they had ⁓ one of these moments where ⁓ a record executive was ⁓ the ⁓ commencement speaker. And in his you know, kind of ⁓ you know, talking to the to the new graduates, he went in about how AI is changing the face of ⁓ production and ⁓ and the future. And ⁓ and he started getting booed at a commencement. Like and ⁓ you know, students were not happy with that line. And ⁓ and he tried to keep going with his his his ⁓ kind of story, but then he's a CEO and you and I have both worked for a lot of CEOs directly and and ⁓ they're not used to maybe that direct feedback.

Nobody tells them no.

And so so he he kinda like so the story here was that he kinda lashed out. Is it you mean he he basically from the the podium said, well, you know, it's coming, deal with it, you know, you're you're gonna have to deal with it now. Or, you know, he kind of did the pay me now, pay me later like, you know, approach at these, you know, young twenty-two, twenty-three-year-old graduates that were booing him. ⁓ and then ⁓ you know, so I went down the, you know, rabbit hole of like, you know, is this this just is this just us here in Tennessee? But no, like the ⁓ one of the founders of Google spoke at Arizona State or University of Arizona. I know those are very, very different. But those are two schools. Two very different schools. I feel like two ⁓ but he spoke at one of them and he ⁓ and he got booed.

Yeah, two different schools.

⁓ and he did a little bit better job of having some EQ as far as trying to be like, This is good for everybody and this is elevating society and this is ⁓ you know, but ⁓ you know, it didn't turn around the sentiment from the the students that were at the commencement. ⁓

So here's here's Gallup, here's a Gallup poll. Gen Zier's feelings about AI have worsened over past year. Artificial intelligence makes me

Okay.

Excited, hopeful, angry, anxious. And forty-two percent said that it made them anxious, and thirty-one percent said that it made them angry. So thirty-one percent angry, but if you go back to anxious, it was forty two percent in in 2026, and excited and hopeful. Well, excited was twenty-two percent, hopeful was eighteen percent. So basically double, more than double, in ⁓ the the case of hopeful, people are anxious and even angry. They were thirty-one percent were angry.

Well, I mean, does that surprise you? Like that's I mean.

So it doesn't completely surprise me because I have a fourteen year old myself and we've had because I do so much with AI and I talk about it even around the house, you know, I'm trying to find ways to use it in my personal life too, right? And I think you are. My my fourteen year old is pretty adamant that it's not that great. He uses it begrudgingly. Although, you know, we introduced him to Notebook L L ⁓ and he or Notebook LM, sorry. ⁓ he uses that a lot now for school. So he'll load in a lot of different things and then y have it quiz him and things like that. And so he we've we've seen actually we've seen his Spanish grades go up because of that. So that was nice because it basically creates flashcards for him. without having to pay a lot of money for Anki or one of those tools that you get on your phone. So that's great. But when it comes to the creative side of things, so music are even just doing some things around the house, I forget what we were talking about, but it was something to do with, you know, the yard and the grass. And he was like, No, why would we do that? Let's look it up on YouTube. Don't use AI. And I was I was thinking, well, AI is just looking at YouTube and then Okay, whatever you want, son. I think that sounds fine. So yeah, he is he feels like that it's taking away from his human experience. That's like the distilled version of everything that he's told me. That's a fourteen year old who's right in this Gen Z. He's at the end, he's at the tail end of it, but they're all the way up to twenty nine years old.

Yeah. No, I and I mean I think I think you're right. I mean, I think that's part of what's happening. I I I would have been n not dismissive, but I would have at least tried to like say like you have a high amount of EQ in the you know, in in relationships, in the workplace, and so I expect your kids would too. And so, you know, like if you if you come from a place of of of a lot

That's a big expectation of a fourteen year old.

Well, you know, but but it but but he's he is growing up in a home that is prioritizing kind of the this this kind of connection thing. And I would have been like, ⁓ so yeah, of course he's gonna say, you know, or be more inclined to the human side of things, but ⁓ but I think I'm wrong. I mean, I I think I've I've talked to kind of you know in a in a odd way over the last couple of months, ⁓ some younger folks, just you know, friends, kids and ⁓ I am getting the similar sentiment from folks.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I I talked to a college professor recently. So I did ⁓ like an AI open hours after a training course that I that I put together and talked to a professor. His questions were around how do I get the kids to use it and use it correctly because he sees, you know, like w on one end of the continuum not using it at all. On the other end, they're using it too much. like for everything and it's giving them wrong answers and they're not learning the material. And, you know, researching for this episode, what I kind of pulled out of the sentiment across a lot of articles, not just this Gallup one, which if somebody wants to learn a little bit more or you're trying to like think about HR, I recommend, you know, some of the research ⁓ that was on this Gallup article. It was better than anything else I pulled up. But they are they're concerned that it's diminishing their skills or they're never going to build the skill in the first place. So I need to learn what the net present value is. I need to learn what time value of money is. I need to understand how that relates to all the other equations that we use in finance or business. I'm a finance student. This was a finance professor that I talked to. He teaches a valuation course. They're not, they need to learn those basic elements because that is what helps you ask better questions. deeper questions of the AI 'cause the AI is just your textbook on steroids right now.

Now was that him saying that ⁓ he's noticing he wants them to learn how to do like like to really understand the the the math and the impact and the value of things like you know net present value or is it the like or is it the students themselves saying it? Both. So interesting.

So he was talking strictly from his perspective. The articles that you will find and all the research that's out there shows, and these are probably like, you know, the the more introspective. I mean, kids, especially these 20 to 29-year-olds, they're deep thinkers. You know, they're thinking hard about life and, you know, what it means to be human and all those things, right? Like those You know, in your twenties, that's when you have all the feels and the big questions. You know, that's when it really starts to bubble up. And they are thinking really hard about this these diminished skills and the fact that they're not building a strong foundation.

I yeah, I agree with that. I mean I that that's kind of my fear for the the it's the fear for the younger generation and it's the the moat that I'm telling the older guys and and men and women that ⁓ like right now that's your moat. If you if you were concerned about, you know, getting replaced in the digital economy, you you have twenty, thirty years of experience. ⁓ you just have to learn how to apply the technology on top of it.

Absolutely my feeling and I say this all the time ⁓ in these AI training courses that I do, twenty five years of experience plus AI. It's a pretty good recipe if you're using it the right way. No experience whatsoever in the workforce. And then you use AI, that's just gonna make you that's just a recipe for hubris, in my opinion. So that's just a confident, confident person that doesn't exactly know, you know, how they they just don't have the foundation. in place to use it correctly. So how do we so I think that the other thing that the professor was asking me, he was saying, How do I teach AI responsibly? We don't even have it in our curriculum. This is a good school. it's a smaller private school, but or not private, but a smaller school. They don't have a curriculum and they keep it sounds like I'm picking a little bit here and I know I'll get beat up for this, but Sounds like academia. They're all fighting over, you know, what they should teach, what the curriculum should be, and they haven't actually put anything in place. But there needs to be a curriculum on how to use it for sure. I know Anthropic and OpenAI have some good things out there. I love Anthropic's framework.

Yeah. I think they've all got ⁓ material out there. I mean, and and there's third party, right? Material, ⁓ you know, to to try to teach folks. You and I have talked about this as a ⁓ something that we do for a living now is ⁓ we're trying to ⁓ do ⁓ education and fluency, literacy and fluency in AI for businesses. And we've kind of hit the same snag with different clients of ours, kind of saying that they want it and then kind of pulling back a little bit. ⁓ you know, and and and ⁓ you know, it's challenging both of us to figure out how do we package this in a way that ⁓ you know, lands with people, but also is is something that they can agree to invest in. Because that's what we're trying to convince folks is you you need to make a, you know, start with small, make an investment. You if you will invest over time, you'll you will get ⁓ you know, right? I mean it's it's at bats or it's reps, whate whichever one you want to call it, but we've got these folks who are not actually saying, I need the education.

And you do need the educ I mean, I think not familiarizing yourself with this is going to put you at a severe disadvantage pretty quickly because the speed at which I mean I've stay I've I've stood up a business inside of six months. And hey, listen, I'm not like lighting the world on fire in terms of, you know, revenue. Yet But it is increased much, much quicker than I thought. And I use AI in everything I do to look more professional and polished. I'm trying to figure out ways to do that even better. I'm using it I mean, one of the things that people don't hear about often enough is really developing your own voice inside of AI. AI does a nice job of parroting whatever it is that it wants to parrot. But I have spent a ton of time cultivating a writing skill that sounds exactly like me, with lots of examples pre-AI of things that I've written. All of those things have helped me speed up my process. I I just If I'm doing it, if I'm speeding up a process, if it's helping me do these things that I know it can help others, plus you can see scads of people, if you believe ⁓ all, you can see scads of people on YouTube that are doing really well too. Marketing is where I've seen it play in the most.

What you're describing is a significant amount of trust. And I think the ⁓ and what I'm hearing when I hear other folks talk about AI, I've I I've went out for drinks with folks one night and and you know, just kind of having the conversation over a beer and the ⁓ mentioned, you know, doing this type of ⁓ of ⁓ training and and helping companies ⁓ come up with ways to ⁓ you know streamline their operations and spoke with a guy who ⁓ has a ⁓ CPA background, you know, and and he was just like, ⁓ yeah, but it's you know it it it it hallu it hallucinates a lot. And ⁓ you know and I and I'm trying to be nicer as I like hear that because what what it For me, when I hear folks say that, I'm like, that is an interesting out the gate point of view, like stake in the ground to start from. To start from it doesn't do things right. And ⁓ and and so then, you know, it for me, it's walking the, you know, the person back from like, yeah, you know, I mean, my my normal response, you know, I try to be gentle, try to like, you know, you know. Touch the person on the shoulder, be like, You're doing it wrong. I I'm not saying that you're bad. I'm not saying that you're dumb. I'm just saying you're doing things wrong. And then, you know, and I'm like, you know, and then we try to talk about it, but like, you know, and w and when I say it's wrong, ⁓ not only is it maybe you're oversimplifying what you're doing, you're you're treating you're you're not You don't understand how the technology works. So your expectation of the answer or how it responds to you is incorrect. You know, it ⁓ with with this ⁓ gentleman that you know we were sitting out, you know, having a beer out on the street, he ⁓ I asked him what you know his background was. He was like, ⁓ you know, CPA, and I'm like, okay, I pointed across the street and I was like, if I asked that guy walking down the street, ⁓ describe to me ⁓ you know, ⁓ you know, what a chart of accounts is and how, you know, what what what's the purpose of it? Just random. You think they'd be able to answer my question? And then i i if the if it looked like the person had like a job and was wearing a suit, and maybe I s gave them a little bit of coaching and said, It's how an accounting group, you know, organizes the ⁓ you know, the the different line items or or categories of how a business runs, do you think he could probably make something up on the spot and not be wrong but be pulling from his own experience and try to answer this question? But he wouldn't know who you are and why you were asking the question and what your expectation of the right answer was. ⁓ and would you it so is your ⁓ point of view that as we look out on the street here in Franklin, Tennessee, that all these people hallucinate?

Yeah, I mean I think that is a good that's a good point.

I mean, and I'm not saying to like just embrace, you know, your AI overlords, but but I think you're s you're like the problem that I'm seeing with some folks is that you know, we we have talked a lot about about you know people being curious and wanting to work with people who are curious. But also, ⁓ you know, you talk about how people start from a point of view or they have an anchor that they've established mentally and now You know, to get them to zero, you know, from either minus one or plus one, it's a lot of effort to reset where that anchor is.

Yeah. I think the last thing I'll say about this, and then we should probably like talk a little bit about okay, well, how do we deal with this? So people have their anchors, college students are distr I mean, Gen Z is distrustful. It's not just Gen Z, but you know, that's where we're you know, we've seen these commencements and things like that. So that's where it's kind of popping up. When have you ever installed a technology that everybody just immediately

Grasp.

adopted did it right the first time like have you ever done a point of sale like that you ever done a you know hris system like that anything would we've never done that ever we've never we've never had to not learn a technology i will admit though the weird one about this Is that all you're do you have a box on a screen and you type things into it and things come out. So it is a little different than some of these other technologies in the sense that it's way more intuitive and it feels like it should be right. And it it it does act very confident.

Well, and that's that's its failing, right? It's at some level it i you know, th th there's some w ⁓ you know, baked in hubris and ego into the into the way that it responds to you.

Yeah, and and I always I coach people all the time to, you know, change like write that into the instructions overall for the way you want it to talk to you. You can make it skeptical of you and it. Tell it to be the ultimate skeptic. You are my ultimate skeptic. You sit alongside of me and we both scrutinize everything I say and everything you say. And then remember when you run out of context, you're gonna have to go back and tell it that again, start a fresh chat or something.

But it is a ⁓ a situation with you know out of the box, does AI give good answers? Yes. Does it give better than average answers? Yes. And and and does it and is it written in a way that makes you feel heard and ⁓ you know that that it's that that it listened to you and does it sound confident in its replies? All things yes. and for fifty percent of the work that you would give it, that's probably good enough. And ⁓ the problem is is that, you know, a fifty is, you know, still an F. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean like yeah, below. I mean like it it's not even like the best F.

You're right. You know.

It's not okay. So there's distrust. ⁓ we hear it all the time. We hear it from I hear it in training sessions, you know. How do I make sure that I'm doing my diligence? Mm-hmm. So how do you teach or how do you get people that have already anchored this way?

Each

To think differently.

It is an interesting, like I mean, I I I mean it frankly it ends up being highly personal, right? I mean, depending on the the the audience that we're working with. I know I've And let's not say that like we're the guys who figured it out because I'm talking to several folks. I I have a client I'm gonna go see next week, and he's an operator, a CEO of a of a large company. He's he's calling and asking who should I be watching online? What what you know, are there podcasts or anything that I should be ⁓ listening to? He's smart enough to know that there's no book for him to go read. Right.

Told him you told him that we had a podcast, right? Perfect.

I did. All right. So so yeah. ⁓ but but the Those guys are out there. They're curious. They want to learn. They they see that this is not something that you can ignore. and I think they're they're recognizing the fact, like talking with this fella, the rest of his team may not already be on that same path of of curiosity. ⁓ some of them are, but ⁓ On top of that, some of them are using Chat GPT and they they they they are they are engaged with it at a rudimentary level. ⁓ and yet there's the concern of is it going to be accurate? Is it is it gonna actually save me time? Is it gonna you know build value for their for their organization? ⁓ and so we we have talked at length with on the podcast and you know we're telling our clients, you know, that there is a process here, right? I mean, we and it's not something that you and I have come up with. I think we're synthesizing what the leaders in the space are doing. What you just were able to rattle off, right? The you know, telling the system ahead of time how you want it to behave, giving it a little bit of context, giving it some opportunity and some ⁓ agency to ⁓ to to push back on on not just the questions and the answers, but actually push back on the assumptions.