266- Resilience and Innovation on the Tech Frontier

I don't promise you that . You know , some of them goes off the rails in terms of vulgarity and some of it is squeaky clean , professional . I want this , on the way , to reflect on the guests of who they are . I'm not going to tell them what to do . I'm not going to tell had you ever put on a pink dress ? Are you crazy ? I'm not going to .

I don't do that kind of stuff .

B2a , talking about all these B2B , all these acronyms , it's like , oh , I'm about to go crazy . You know acronyms , acronyms , acronyms . I thought only my job , my day job , uses a lot of jobs . To use them as well .

It's just , my goodness , it's , it's , it's , it's probably wildfire , but anyways , I don't want to make this into a random monologue for too darn long . So I have a guest here and I'm going to just look him up real quick .

Ok , I have Benjamin Bowen here and he is the CEO in here , and he is the ceo , he is the grand el jefe , the boss in english of stratoshield . Ai , I almost said stratosphere , but you know , that's why I think of us .

Benjamin , yeah , thanks , elias and thanks for having me on I .

I've been in technology for over 25 years now , but it really starts and ends with a business conversation and I think even technologists they tend to just focus on the product and the technology instead of really the business outcome and what you're trying to accomplish .

So what I can promise you is , yeah , I might mix some technology in there into the conversation , but I think the biggest conversation we can have right now is about the business , people , processes and then the technology is kind of a conversation afterwards , once we're getting on later into stuff . But yeah , my name's Ben Bowman . I'm the CTO of Stratashield AI .

Stratashield AI will be actually interesting enough rebranding to Genova Solutions in January and this is kind of what I would call an evolution of what I've found over the past year being in business and really starting an AI company , and it's interesting .

When I started the company , I thought , hey , I'm going to just talk about AI and jump on the bandwagon and what I found is even calling and reaching out to CTOs , c-suites , cios , even ones that I know they were actually pissed off to even have the conversation . They don't want to talk about AI .

It's another problem , it's another issue that I need to have , and so I've had this just journey for the past year of really diving in and saying what is relevant . Why does it work ? I was never really interested in manipulating a video or an image or like cool GPT prompts . I was really trying to find where does it fit in business ?

And where I really landed is with enhanced decision , and I'm going to pause it and I want to go back to decision making because I don't want AI making a decision for me .

So , when I say that it's more enhanced assisted decision making , and that's where the evolution , where Stratashield really was a good fit , a good foundation , and now it's evolving and growing Actually , I've got another partner who's coming in and joining . I have a fairly large tech team that's going to be joining as well and now it's evolved .

And I think Genova Solutions more captures this idea around enhanced decision making . And yeah , so that's a little background with me and that's about where I'm at on the journey of entrepreneurship and starting up a business and expanding .

It used to be a big company when I was a kid . It used to be everywhere , but they stick to the old stone age mentality oh , we done it this way , it's gonna be just fine . You know why change okay . Well , now I learned the hard way why it needs to change as an example .

I like to pick on a little bit of a nostalgia , a little bit more of a millennial reference , if you will . But it's a good . But it does relate here , because if you don't evolve , you're either going to downsize , which is the best case scenario , or , as a business , you're going to die . Okay , that's it .

I'm going to say , like it is , you're going to die .

You talk about Blockbuster and these companies that didn't pivot with the market . Look , you don't need to dive into AI right now . It's not like you have to do it now . You have to start getting ready , and that's a huge difference . But yeah , it's amazing .

As you're talking about it , I'm like man , there's a lot of similarities to that and just even the adoption of AI . Again , not the embracing it immediately , but at least getting ready and understanding right .

I said , look , you're going to have to eventually learn AI . You're going to learn AI or your job dies . Yeah , okay . So you , if you at least learn some parts of AI , you can stay , be relevant , but but if you refuse to learn AI , well , you eventually gonna go away .

It's not going to be today , it's not going to be next week , next month , might be next year , but you know , that's all I'm going to say . I you heard me say this a lot , um , not all listeners . If you were something like that , go to .

So you're not in a competition with AI , not in a competition with ai . You're in a competition with people who are understanding a tool that enhances their efficiency and makes them faster than what they typically be some more efficient . Does that make sense ?

Come on , come on , yeah , if someone's using ai versus a non-ai user , huh , you know , you know , some job marketers say , well , a lot of them are going to say , well , especially a couple years down the road , especially going further in time , they've got to pick someone who knows how to use AI . I mean , that's just a , that's just reality .

I mean , unless you want to be a cave person , amish , that's the only way you could avoid this for the most part , and I've said this again , if you want to be a cave , an Amish person , try that , see if that works for everybody .

computers .

In high school I got a 16 on my ACT and so I never even qualified to go to college because I thought I was too stupid , because standardized tests and that does bring out the passion , the bullshit of standardized testing , right , it just drives me crazy because it's not fit for everybody .

So , anyhow , I thought I was dumb , I thought I couldn't make it , but I was like no , I always had this push through . So I went in and I got this job and at 22 , I actually kind of hacked through understanding systems and networks .

The CTO left , somehow I ended up in a position of running an IT department for it wasn't a huge , but $20 million international printing company at 22 years old . And so I've always been into technology , always been interested . So 25 plus years now in tech . Then I saw a trend where salespeople so the sales reps were having more fun and making more money .

So I was like , hey , let's get still with tech , but let's go into sales . So I went into some telecom consulting , so like the central links that you know in business and all that , and so I went . I just kind of jumped around from sales engineering to sales and being in corporate . You see something that anyone in corporate sees .

You see a lot of risks , see a lot of layoffs and you see no loyalty . And so always in the back of my mind I was like I want to be an entrepreneur , I want to come up with my own business , I want to do my own thing and fast forward . You know I'm 46 years old . I'm working as the technology , the lead technology evangelist for Comcast business .

People know who Comcast is . They purchased the company I worked for and I got ripped and just elimination of needing to save money . And I decided you know I'm going to do something different this time . You know I've been smart with my money .

I can start a business , do my own thing , and I started evaluating the market and there's two things that I looked at cybersecurity and AI . So when I was the lead evangelist for Comcast , I was always talking about cybersecurity .

That was my expertise really or one of my expertise was cybersecurity but I really saw the market of AI and I wanted to understand and get into that market and at that time I had no clue where it was going to go .

I guess now I still have a little clue where it's going to go , even one year later , but I see that's where the market was going and I wanted to really push into that market . And again , where I've landed since then is this enhanced decision-making and enhanced efficiencies within AI .

So that's just kind of a quick overcap , but I feel like my journey is kind of funny because , yeah , it's not a typical one in the tent no .

Yeah , you only do it academically , but that doesn't always translate to being a great business leader or even a worker at that . You know , you stick to books , you know these concepts and abstract . That's nice and law . But the real world , business , they want skills , they want things to be done , they don't want all this preachy , wordy crap .

You know I used to be an academic , so now I move off vocational person , which is a big transformation for me , the biggest to ever went through . But enough about me . So I I get . You know , I , I could talk academic , but I don't use it as often People just want plain , accessible language . You talk about oh , the bandwidth of this router is 120 gigahertz .

I mean , what the hell is that to a normal person ?

I decided , you know , I'd like to learn about psychology because I've always been interested in psychology . So I ended up getting a bachelor's in psychology , just actually recently graduated . I'm getting a master's in business psychology . But the cool thing about doing this later in life is that now I get to apply what I'm learning to where I'm at .

So I feel like if I was younger , in my 20s , I would have been partying a lot , you know , having the fun that I wanted to have , not really focused on work . But now that I'm later , I'm actually applying a lot .

And then when you get into the business or organizational psychology and AI and how AI is impacting decision-making and how AI is impacting hiring there's a fear of AI with the employees and the psychological impact within businesses of AI .

It actually starts to get really interesting because I can apply what I'm learning real time employees and the psychological impact within businesses of AI , it gets really . It actually starts to get really interesting because I can apply what I'm learning real time .

So I think it just depends on where we're at in our life , right On like am I at this entrepreneurial stage ? Am I at a stage I need to work in business ? But there's no right path , it's just the path we're on right .

You know , just look , you don't like Trump that bad . You just you wait until 2026 , you put enough senators and enough House representatives to block them . Okay , you know there's a solution . The founding fathers did that on purpose , because they don't want any part of the government to have too much power . But you know that's what I'm going to say .

There's a balance right . And my point is talk to people with different ideas . It'll make you smarter . So talk to people with different ideas . Yeah , It'll make you smarter . So talk to someone with the same idea . You know , Biden can't , Trump can't .

This counts for both of you because you like hearing yourselves , you love hearing your own ideas , and this is why y'all both forget excuse me , I'm French . Y'all both that shit crazy .

I don't have issues . It's when they start talking about this politically charged stuff and these ideas that they feel like they have to force down people's throat , then all of a sudden it becomes a problem . But yeah , I completely agree , it's unfortunate that we're letting the best of humanity escape us right now because of media and political manipulation .

Completely agree .

We talked about this a little bit already , about how AI is creating either new opportunities and even revamping or even changing traditional roles . I mean , let's hear some examples of that , because I never really provide much , I just hear about , oh , how there's going to be automated . I just like little things , like tasks .

One is encoding , like coders , and development uh ai , like using claude . I I used to code in php and you know linux environment and it was taxing and I I actually wrote programs that were used by the nfl uh for pro bowl tracking , like tracking uh print for the Pro Bowl program that was used by Anheuser-Busch for tracking their print .

So I've written stuff and it was taxing . Now I can go in and have an idea , plug it . I like Clod . Clod is like my programming or coder of choice . I can plug it in and I can create some pretty complex . I have all sorts of AIs running on my Mac like locally complex .

I have all sorts of ais running on my mac like locally uh , like for searches for for seo content , for all this stuff and and it just writes it . Now you have to understand a little bit of structural programming and everything like that , but it just makes it so much faster . Another way is with writing , but it's again .

If you have that understanding of the english language , you can manipulate ai to write better . We've all seen AI written garbage . Just this nonsense of AI where you're like this is horrible without any kind of human element to it . And if you ever and if anyone's ever heard me speak , they'll know that I'm all about humanity and AI , not just AI .

So , and the humanity and human element is the biggest element , and so that's another one is in writing . And then this enhanced decision-making is interesting because what we see and it won't get too technical , but right now , ai is really good at unstructured data . So , if you think of unstructured data , very simply put , it's a document , a Word file , a PDF .

That's the most simplest way . It's a little more complex , but simply it's a document . But right now , companies have gold mines of data of . But right now , companies have gold mines of data , of structured data , meaning databases of Salesforce or accounting or different things of structured data .

What I'm doing is I'm combining these structured and unstructured data with businesses and I'm allowing them to talk to their data . So now , right now , I can only do it at scale , so meaning like , hey , let's pick your most important data to talk to and provide some reports as a starting conversation .

Then you start talking to it so I might be able to combine like an Asana and ServiceNow and get some insights for ticketing or for IT support , right . But this is where we're going to go Because eventually , if you think about how we talk now , we don't all on a cell phone much we text . The next way of communication is how we talk to AI , action , gpt .

We want to have a conversation instead of Google searching something . I want to talk my data and so , anyhow , that's another way that I'm really seeing that is there's a lot of progress with it .

I'm making a lot of progress with it and it's exciting to see businesses to be able to make more actionable or get more actionable information on their data to make quicker decisions , to move the company forward faster .

At best it could take care of basic issues AI on its own , but it comes to more complex issues , that requires nuance or contains a great amount of ambiguity . It's been transferred to the human counterpart .

Now you have highly specialized humans who aren't dealing with non-leg bullshit all day , just call it what it is , and just grinding all day and frustrated . So then , finally , when they do something and they have to have an interaction , they're so frustrated that their customer service score goes down .

So I completely agree with this model that AI should be used for all these mundane , nonsense , cumbersome tasks and then the human element should be more . But when it comes to customer service , there is an interesting development in ai , and that's a , an ai agent and these voice agents . So , let's say , from poly ai , for example , has some amazing voice agents .

These voice agents , I mean , are almost human-like and they have some pretty refined training that goes within them . And so there are , I mean , a lot of businesses that you might even be talking to now that are using AI agents for common to answer , again , common questions , the legwork , common questions .

But it's even getting into where I heard an agent tell someone they had to have a credit card and they didn't get the credit card number . But the person said why ? And AI overcame the objection as to why they needed to get it in a very calm , like rational manner . And this is where AI actually is very interesting .

Customer service and you talk about bias and we could go into like the different types of bias .

But when you think yourself and I've worked in customer service myself so someone walks into a Denny's and they're in a rush , they're rude , I immediately have a bias that they're a jerk and I don't want to help them as much and I'm going to be kind of addictive . Right , that's what I'm going to be because that's my human nature .

If I'm on a call and someone says something that doesn't seem right , well I'm going to kind of be rude back or maybe not give them the help that they need , but AI doesn't help . So in some ways AI has some biases and that's been uncovered and true in responses , but its response to humanity is a bias .

So you could be rude to AI and it's not going to be rude back . Ai doesn't have a bad drive to go to work or get in a fight with a boyfriend or girlfriend the night before or wife or spouse the night before and is upset .

So there is some interesting aspects of eliminating that bias element from the humanity where it creates a worse customer experience for ai , which doesn't have that , creates a better one .

I'll say 90% of the time I'm able to push the bias aside , but I'm not going to lie . There was a 10% . That said , should I really help this nutjob ? Yeah , should I really help this idiot ? She's so dumb , she can't even , you know , explain the problem right .

But I was like , oh that's , I just calm down and sometimes I'm just so smart , I just delegate it to the staff yeah , just just move .

And she's like no , and she caught herself . It's like I'm sorry , I had a , you know , I had a rough night . There's things that even like I didn't deserve it , I wasn't doing anything , but she'd had snappy on everyone and that those are the things that I do .

Right , like it's like well , we all , we all react away and even subconsciously we're we're acting a certain way because of events that are happening . And that's why , when we talk about not judging anyone , I don't judge anyone because I don't know what they're going through . I know I've been through some stuff . Why am I going to judge anyone ?

Why and you know it takes a lot of training and effort to push that aside , especially dealing with someone that is perceived to be difficult Just rough night , or maybe a relative died , or maybe she lost the house , whatever , you have to be more understanding . I think that's the advantage of AI . But what . AI biases .

I'm curious about that that you haven't covered so far biases .

It just creates an image of a white family . It's going to be a white family , right , Like . It just creates an image of a white family .

And so those are the biases that I'm talking about within AI that have already been uncovered is , sometimes it makes an assumption off of race , religion , Like if you go in and have it make images of , hey , I want to see an image of how a bear would look in Kazakhstan , then it's going to make an Arab , really Arab , type of bear , right .

So it's going to take these regional assumptions and biases that have been programmed into all the data that it consumes and change it . Now there is some fine tuning going on with that , but it is still something that we need to be aware

of . The other bias that I see in AI is that it's a confirmation bias for us . So AI isn't argumentative . It basically wants to please us , and so when you ask it a question , it's not going to often give you the best response .

It's going to give you the response it thinks you want to , and that's super frustrating for me because I have to push my AI models to be like don't tell me what I know , like challenge me , like like actually telling it to disagree with where am I wrong and ask it to where I'm wrong , Cause , if not , this wanting to just confirm me and be on my side

drives me insane with AI , where I want to be challenged with my mind , not just placated and then like added on the back . So so I think those are . Those are two I think that are pretty relevant .

Look , he didn't have , he didn't have a lot of skin color right that had like a uh black or even uh ethnically ambiguous . On george washington I said no , that's , that's a problem right there . This is coming from someone who was a minority , by the way . Someone historically accurate George Washington . He's going to be white .

Someone historically accurate Nelson Mandela . I'm not expecting a Chinese woman to pop up Exactly . I see that Whoa . No wonder you call artificial intelligence .

So there were actual and reverse depending on which model it could be reversed where you ask about problems with Biden , it's like , well , here's the problems . Then you ask about Trump and it's like I don't take a side .

So there are some even political biases that have been found in the models as well , which they're coming from somewhere , and on some of them , I'm thinking they're being put in by the businesses that support a certain agenda , and , again , rightfully so . Whatever you want , but I think we should try to keep bias out of anything we do .

Well , actually , independent has a better chance Of winning a local office Than a democrat . While in While in state like yeah , like independent has a better chance In winning New York of winning a local office than a Democrat . While in state , like yeah , like an independent has a better chance in winning New York than a Republican .

And that's not how we're . Judging people is off of the party that they're at , because there's people who just go in and just blindly just say I'm voting all Democrat or I'm voting all Republican and that's all they do . They don't look at anything except for that .

And I think when we get out of that I don't know if we ever will , but it would be an interesting scenario for us as a country- I mean I don't see hope for the Dakotas .

You make change by talking about them and ideating around ideas . That's how . That's how , in my mind , how you make , how you can change people , because then they hear logic and then they're like oh wait , that kind of makes sense to me , right I mean this is why how I personally deal with it .

If you're not open to listening , or at least try to hear the other side , then don't bother , just continue to go to the echo chamber , which you're part of the problem . I don't bother . Don't bother , just continue to go to the echo chamber , which you're part of the problem , most of the left and right . I don't care where you lean at politically .

Yeah , that's a lot of work we need to do on that , and the reason why I say that is because that's going to affect businesses . They're going to know Democrat or Republican . That's definitely going to affect businesses . Productivity collaboration that's definitely going to affect businesses .

Productivity collaboration that's going to definitely decrease , if not , or , even worse , just be cut off to the point that the boss has to make a decision to fire one , which I think that's a bad idea . I might as well fire both , because they're both part of the problem .

Why , why don't we make those big decisions ?

So in terms of yeah , I'm just going to change that subject . I told me I could go on for hours . So , in terms of AI trends , right , how do you see it evolve in the next decade ? Yeah , and how should business prepare for it ? You said prepare , not necessarily embrace it .

I think the big trend right now , which just drives me insane , is the shiny toy trend . Ai is this big shiny toy and everyone's an AI advisor and expert . But then you go in they're showing you how to type a prompt into GPT and they're showing you how to use GPT or whatever model to create an image or to create a video .

Those are cool in their way , but they're not really going to translate to business , and so I think the shiny toy idea is frustrating . In fact , I hear people are like , hey , the AI market is very crowded , it's very noisy .

And then I step back and I say , well , yeah , because of all the shiny toy stuff , but if you actually eliminate all that and all that nonsense and you focus on what's applicable , what can be used in business , it's actually not noisy . There's not a lot of people doing it .

Well , there's a stat that Garner came out with , I think it's 73% of AI implementations are failing over the past three years and that's because they're buying into the shiny toy . They're not really figuring out what do they need first . And that's why when I go and I talk to businesses , I'm talking about the AI readiness conversation first , is your data ready ?

Do you have a governance policy ? Do you have an acceptable user policy for AI ? Where are you at in this journey ? Because if you say I am just going to implement AI but you haven't trained your people , readied your people , readied your data , all these other steps that take to get there , well then that's why everyone's failing .

So I think the big trend that we're going to see is more education and understanding of what is actually applicable and what can be done . You're going to see , almost like the dot com or dot bomb era right In early 2000 , everyone was , hey , it's dot com this , sorry dot com that , and all these companies went bankrupt .

Right , just this massive amount of companies went bankrupt . You're going to see something not quite as drastic . It's not going to affect the economy like it did before , but you're going to see a lot of businesses who are startup anxious , over-promising , under-delivering and they're just going to go by the wayside .

And I think that's why I say another thing I say is , when you I'm talking to businesses is look , get use cases , talk to people that that this advisor has worked with so that you know that they can actually deliver . Um , don't just buy into , like the cool idea that the tech has .

I've had so many demos where it's like , oh , oh , this is a cool idea and they're using screenshots but they're not actually going through what the actual model is . And then I asked who are they using it with ? Well , we're using this . No , who is actually using this ?

And it's like no , right , yeah , it's not using it because you haven't thought through all the business . It's not using it because you haven't thought through all the business . Remember , I said business first , people , processes and then technology , because you're trying to backwards engineer this into technology processes and people and it doesn't work .

I'm not going to be a cynical asshole on this one . Yeah , I'm sure they are . It's inevitable . Your fear is going to die off with AI at some point . It's not going to be your own skyness , especially the idiot media journalists who love to project that to you . Don't listen to them . They are paid to scare you . They're paid to scare you .

Okay , they paid to scare you . That's it . That's all I could say about that . It's not the most exciting answer because it's on the predictable side , but hey , not all correct answers have to be exciting . Right ?

And people some people are on the bandwagon of well , I don't want my information shared with someone else .

Well , if you're sharing information , I want my ai to be so hyper personalized that I'm iron man when I walk into my office this morning and I have jarvis asking me what I want , joking around with me , knowing what I like , my coffee like that's what I want , so that that's a funner way to look at it .

But it's still that is a truth that there will be hyper personalization yeah , I mean , I mean that's .

I don't know how good they are disclaimer , I haven't actually used them like a cloak and I think there's even some , some tools . Some tools and applications are . They're used as a cleanup . You know , subscriptions or even um . Yeah , I didn't google that way they could delete um , they don't know that . But you know what ?

I know you , we are creatures of habit . They're gonna say that I agree thing and your data's going back out there again .

Right , like this was like beyond terabytes , right ? This is tons and tons and tons of information , and it wasn't the business that was valuable , it was all the data that they had on on people that was valuable . It's pretty amazing yeah , what's ?

I'm a little jealous in a way because I am digitally toxic right now . Okay , rich , in that , right now . Okay , that's why I love to pick on you . It's out of jealousy and quote-unquote love if you want to say that , all right , but quote-unquote love if you want to say that . All right , this has been a great conversation

. Let's do the shameless plug-in , even though his business is evolving . Limited time , I'll just point to my LinkedIn .

Yeah , I mean , I think if you're interested in talking , learning more , I just like ideating no-transcript .

I we get into politics , psychology , education , all this other stuff , and then I then we just get rambling , rambling , rambling , like for me that's when I really can start rambling , but I like the points we touched on and this has been a great experience . So again , I appreciate it .

If it was logical , the markets , everything would have been ran very , very differently . But that's another . That's my final little nugget point and comment that one that wanted to say , yeah , business is business , is very psychological . So that was actually intelligent in your part .

So you already had a clear vision of what you wanted to do in college and you know you're into there later . So that's the day . That's the benefit of entering college later you have a clear vision . While you're in your 20s you kind of don't know . You're just partying your life away or video gaming your life away .

But then you get into business and you make you get into decisions , hiring decisions , how managers act , how employees act , how a construction crew is going to react different than the office group , all the , all these things are all psychological and to me , yeah , it's absolutely fascinating and it does help my approach with understanding why I have such a humanistic

and people-centric approach to AI . I think it feeds into that , completely agree .

So , from wherever you listen to this podcast , you have a blessed day , afternoon or night .