The Future of Engineering in the Age of AI: Insights from Ali Jobe

In this episode of the AI Wave podcast, we tackle the possibilities and challenges of AI for engineers. Join us as we explore the exciting and evolving landscape of AI in engineering with Ali Jobe on this episode of AI Wave.

LINKS:
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LinkedIn ➤   / chrisparisi24 

➤ ➤ ➤ Connect with Trailblaze
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LinkedIn ➤ https://www.linkedin.com/company/trai...
YouTube ➤    / @trailblaze.marketing 

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Transcript

welcome back to the AI wave podcast the only podcast that combines the wonders of AI and how Rhode Island can be the leader of it all I'm your host Chris Parisi and today we have a fabulous guest the one and only Ali Jobe who is an engineer who is an entrepreneur who is also a podcast host himself so he's going to go on the other side of the table and let us know the glimpse of what it's like in the world of AI as an engineer is it Doom and Gloom? is it sunshine and rainbows? we'll find out on this episode of AI wave. let's ride!  

welcome back everyone I'm Chris Parisi the host of the AI wave and today we have a special guest and it's going to be a little bit of a roll reversal because he has his own podcast that I was on recently and now you are a guest on our podcast the one and only Ali Jobe thank you for coming. 

thanks for having me Chris it's a blast to be here and uh being in this beautiful Trailblaze marketing office it's just I can feel the Vibes I can feel how you guys are just so cohesive and how you guys crank out amazing work all together  

I appreciate that and for those that don't know Ali is the uh engineering manager at Cleo as well as the host of The Upward and Onward Podcast you got to check it out 

that's right thanks for the plug so Al we know each other but let's go a little deeper and more backwards of where it all started so one thing to let our audience know a little bit more about you uh where are you from and you know like what led you eventually to where you are today but first like we know you where you went to what Newberry College but even before that like where'd you go to school tell us alittle bit more  

yeah so my journey Begins in Rhode Island and like many other people who are from Rhode Island I haven't managed to escape it yet it's kind of like a black hole that has this gravitational force and you just get sucked in but I love it here um yeah we hope you say I yeah I I say that now but my journey has really started in Rhode Island and I went to Johnston High School I graduated from Johnston High School and at the end of it I was thinking what do I want to do in life I wasn't really sure I applied to a few colleges some of the ones that I wanted to get into I didn't so I looked outward from Rhode Island and to the broader Boston area and I just found myself like hm what am I naturally inclined to doing what am I talented at what are some of the things that I can see myself doing for a long time and my family and myself we spoke and we found that I've always been really inclined with technology I've always found it's been fascinating to see how likes are made how video games are made what goes behind somebody getting an end result and it being beautiful when you go to www.google.com for example so I began my computer science degree at Newbury college and through my studies I found that it was really valuable to take what was being taught to me but it was way more valuable for me to spend my time outside of class looking up things that weren't in the curriculum so I really felt like self-learning was imperative to my success after graduating from Newberry College I returned back to Rhode Island and I then began my software engineering career at Virgin pulse it is located on the top floor of the province Journal building yeah yeah and uh there I began as software engineer, gained valuable insights. As a software engineering intern I was primarily focused on solving bugs for a large scale application so there I got really good insights on a large scale web application the things that go wrong and people complain about being able to contact switch jump into new Services jump into code bases that I've never seen before interface with different Technologies and just get this really good muscle of just being able to dive in quickly assess a situation think of a solution and apply it to that problem so that's how it began yeah which that was pretty good yeah it was awesome like unbelievable experience the people there were super supportive and it was just this culture of fostering collaboration learning and kind of knowledge sharing so instrumental to my career so far.  

before we get into past the internship and where you currently are at I kind of want to go a little bit more backwards.  so our audience understands you more than just I went to the school and in computer science so I have a few questions here oh God and the audience actually didn't prep them on this oh God all right so we do a simple one if you had any car in the world what was the favorite color of that car like what color would you choose 

 baby blue 

 Really  

yeah it's my favorite color I mean I'm wearing it now. 

Right that's right. Okay if you could teleport anywhere in the world right now where would you go?  

Aruba an all-inclusive resort I just want to sit relax drink maybe look at the beautiful sunset and be merry W yeah  

that's a great answer especially in the doldrums of like February and March yeah um of Rhode Island that's right this is a question that I I like because I know my answer is that if you're at dinner obviously there's the entree but what are you more excited about appetizer or dessert? 

I'm gonna go appetizer I mean being in Rhode Island calamari you got some maybe Bara you can't go wrong with any of that so the dessert is great I have a sweet tooth but that appetizer smacks 100% I'm an app guy yeah I will do a couple apps okay instead of an entree sometimes 

interesting what are your apps of choice well it depends on the level right are we talking about pub food cuz I go with a good mozz stick okay love mozz stick can't go wrong calamari that you mentioned I love anything with bread and cheese  

same 

you know so uh definitely a big appetizer guy and speaking about dinner let's say you could have dinner with anyone in the world Dead or Alive like two or three people who would you have dinner with yeah I'm to go with Kobe Bryant I love the the mamba mentality I love just how he was in some ways selfless but also selfish and like knew when he had to step up and take roles and take responsibility for things that went on within his team so definitely Kobe Bryant I think another person would be Steve Jobs I'd love to hear about his Innovations and how he thought of solving problems how he really was ahead of the curve how he was instrumental to the success that apple had and just the trials and tribulations that he faced internally that maybe everyone else hasn't seen  

yeah that's a that's a great answer especially you know uh Kobe Bryant, Steve Jobs two at the top of their professions and you mentioned Steve Jobs always having to think about the future and in this podcast we talk about AI The future of our society the way that everything's going to be today is is going to be different in the near future because of AI and you're an engineer right typically on this podcast we have a lot of great uh not only AI enthusiasts but business owners right employers we want to hear from the employee point of view right especially someone that's directly impacted by AI Engineers yeah and for you you're not only an engineer but recently you're a promoted to being a manager right that's right um at Cleo is that correct? 

That is correct yes I am now an engineering manager at Cleo which is a blast  

What does that mean? what do you what do you do over there?  

yeah so for myself I manage a product delivery team so we work closely with the product side of things and we hear what the ideas and the concepts are that they want to instrument take them to the engineering team present them with them decompose those ideas turn them into actionable items so that Engineers can write code and provide solutions for those ideas yeah outside of that I also manage a data engineering team so  

oh wow 

Really instrumental with the efforts that we have around machine learning and artificial intelligence so that's been a lot of fun oh what can you tell us about Exploring AI's real-world impact in caregiving.  

that yeah so we have began our foray into the world of AI and it's been a blast it's so cool to see the outcomes that can come out of applying AI to real world problems so I'll give you an example at our company Cleo there's people who we have that work for us called guides what they do is they interface with employees of another company who are either parents or caregivers MH what we do is we help alleviate some of their burden whether if it's emotionally mentally and we provide support through phone calls through sessions through assessments on their mental health emotional wellness and just really make sure that we're instrumental in helping them one get back to work and be happy when they are at work 

 oh wow yeah that's important stuff  

yeah it's cool it's really cool it's nice to just work in the health-Tech sector because you can make tangible improvements in people's lives through code through technology and right yeah and when it comes to the data engineering I mean AI is only as good as the data that you feed it and that it works with right exactly so and you also have the program inside so to speak and you have you make sure both teams seamlessly work together that's right that's right yeah so we are really tied together and really cohesive in the way that we think uh we are in meetings constantly and when we're talking about solving certain problems we're often talking about what the other side of it looks like in terms of data so it's a lot of uh collaboration a lot of conversation but we ultimately get to it great Solutions together  

now do you currently utilize AI in your own job or do And or do any of your engineers currently use AI? 

Yeah so for the past maybe eight months I've been at the epicenter of our AI strategy at Cleo uh one of the things that we've done is looking at the member actions that they take the things that they do within our application or even on the phone calls that they have with people at our company and from there we're able to categorize them as maybe needing support through them mentioning that they have some struggles with their mental health or emotional Wellness how is that tagged is it tagged manually or is it tagged dynamically so dynamically so through the use of AI we are able to take those actions that they do we put them through our AI model and that can predict whether if someone is at high risk so from there we're able to have a tighter feedback loop where we're able to provide personalized support to that person when they're in distress much sooner than if it were being over the phone and someone were to log it in and you know they go to bed they wake up the next day they say oh this person was in distress yesterday I need to get back to them this support happens way sooner so what you're explaining to our audience is how your business adopted AI to improve their services right that's right that's right yeah that's wonderful I mean all these businesses we have to adopt AI right and it's not easy fortunately for your business you have a team of Engineers right you're big enough where you have a whole staff some of our small business businesses may not have that luxury um but you know we can be nimble enough we can have ai tell us how to utilize an adopt AI That's right um one thing I'm curious about is you answered it in a sense of here's how you're utilizing AI to perform your services or deliver them what about like in the background meaning like you have your engineer like hey we need to build this code because there's certain things not working we want to build these new Futures  

yeah are your engineers with I don't know if could say so now but like.are your engineers be like okay and then using AI to do that job or is that like something that's a little taboo or what's interesting is I feel like AI at most companies especially tech companies 

um it's kind of something that isn't talked about a lot and whether if people are making use of those tools or not I think it's beh who of them to make use of it similar to a business analyst or a data analyst making use of Microsoft Excel or word or any type of tool that really helps them streamline their processes Ai and chat GPT namely is something that doesn't come up often in conversation but I think that most people who are in this tech industry are making use of those AI tools because it really gets you ahead of the game you spend less time debugging certain issues and can really make sure that uh the things that you think are good 

Solutions are also vetted by Ai and they can kind of give you this breath of knowledge and a breath of explanation that you might not have just by talking to a peer or just coming up with a solution yourself I feel like another engineer is watching this right now or developer and they may not be utilizing AI what is some tips tricks or advice that you would have for Stay updated on market trends, AI developments. 

honestly the first thing I think of is be aware of like new and upcoming Trends uh be in tune with the market not only the AI Market but also just the economy because the economy itself can tell you indications of what's to come next so for example um one thing that I think about is being in a startup world having investment from Banks you need to not only know where the money's going in terms of investment and how you can be competitive one of those ways being having an AI strategy but also being in tune with what's going on in the broader economy so for example Silicon Valley Bank a year ago right went under many tech companies had their all their Capital with Silicon Valley Bank so by being in tune with what's going on you're able to have a sense of if you're safe if your company is safe and really how to navigate those Waters um but specifically in terms of tech skills and things that nature I would say read up on what's going on with open 

AI be familiar with new developments like Sora um Sora is a text to video generative AI which is right but uh 

outside of that just even you hear about Tyler Perry he had a $800 million investment for a new studio something along those lines yeah you know don't fact check me but the fact is that he decided to stop that complete new studio investment yeah cuz hes sore yeah it's 

wild like it's literally just saw it once and said F this I'm done and shut down a whole investment those are a lot of jobs that would have been created but are now be replaced by just the thought of a solution being so seamless where you can type a prompt and get the end 

result that you're looking for that would have taken someone days weeks well that's a great segue into the next question that I have Ali which is about job security a business owner can look at it and be like wow I can and you know really increase my productivity without having to increase my production cost what does an engineer think about when they see these advancements on AI because I'm sure half of it's like like on one flip of the coin right it's like wow I can do my job so much easier so much more efficient so much faster maybe I have a few hours to just you know do nothing I don't know um or be more strategic more creative but the other side of the coin might be like  may be out of a job  

yeah this question AI: Fascinating and ominous, potential job threat. literally made me sweat and it does sometimes um because as mind-blowing and as fascinating AI is it is in some ways a little ominous and can be a threat so I think in the immediate future I think for engineers there's not necessarily this looming uh feeling of that it's going to replace your job now but I think in the future it very well can lower head count across engineering departments because of the streamlining of processes that you can have through a so for me for the people I work with I think that we're really ahead of the game making sure that we're aware of what ai's capabilities are and how we 

can best be ahead of the curve but it is scary it is scary it is and it's something that we can't ignore right there is going to be job losses but there's also going to be net gain in jobs right and a lot of folks ask me that question how why right well they also said the same thing when the internet was formed and even I know I said in my last episode oh they even said it in the industrial revolution like oh this it's going to take our Farmers out you know we're going to “we're going to lose jobs and stuff like that”,  there's going to be new economies, new industries that are going to be built yeah but as much as you spin it there will be jobs that will be lost and we have to make sure that we utilize and deploy AI in a responsible way where we're considering the impact on job loss and one factor that's not getting considered as much is not necessarily job loss but what I'm hearing now are some let's say businesses are growing well let's say they plan on hiring a 100 people they're now hiring 40 people yeah right so that doesn't count as a job loss, right? 

technically but when you do that it it's slowly reducing the number number of job growth totally um so it is a concern that we got to consider and think about and really any individual all you could do is really utilize Master the future which is AI you know and from a competitive standpoint going to do what best to control yourself but also from a state standpoint we have to make sure that we mitigate the job loss that we upskill workers that for the jobs that are going to get lost so they can be doing these new jobs and these new economies and new Industries um and make sure that employers are taking the responsible route towards AI  

yeah 100% which you're doing a great job of uh at least in the state of Rhode Island right you're on the AI task force for Rhode Island yeah uh the AI executive order AI executive order signed; task force key was recently signed uh some weeks ago and uh the AI task force is going to be a key part of that check out last week's episodes that talks about what are the five key components of the AI executive order um and one of them is the Task Force and and that is a pillar of that task force is the jobs like how can we mitigate the job loss how can we increase you know the jobs that we have here in Rhode Island and how can we rescale the workers with some existing great programs that we that we have today and and why not make Rhode Island the leader in this AI driven economy let's do it I mean we're poised for this technological advancement and we are very capable of making it something that we are at the frontier of so I'm excited to see what the future holds for Rhode Island and AI amen yeah well one thing that is when it comes to technology and advancements and going back to our conversation about engineers uh recently a new AI startup um uh released Devin the first fully autonomous AI software engineer oh man fully autonomous AI software engineer he says why come on why you couldn't let us just have this like AI just stay out of this one no that's that's it's great it's cool great but um it is scary because what it can do is remarkable let's tell the audience a little bit about Dev so cognition AI recently launched Devin a skilled teammate to build alongside or independently it's an engineer they they position it so Engineers can focus on solving more problems or more robust right that's how they're going to position it to to Engineers right but it could plan and execute engineering tasks uh requiring thousands of decisions it could do it in an instant and they equip it with a shell they equip it with a code editor 

they equip it with a browser all the tools that programs Engineers typically need and then you can literally see how it's literally building applications it's fine-tuning its own AI model it's looking up on how to do certain things that it doesn't know so that it can do any debugging so it could do anything it's literally a fully autonomous AI software engineer yeah AI can replace jobs, prepare for future.  

scary sorry but it is uh really I think as much as it's cool and as much as it's such a technological advancement which will help us in the future it also is kind of uh daunting to know that something out there can do the work of a whole team in the matter of minutes so I think um for people like myself it's something to be aware of but not necessarily that you have to quit your job just know that there's I guess I don't even know how to say it like know oh that in the future uh the things that you do now can possibly be replaced by Ai and to get ahead of that it's a great idea to be really up to speed with the ways that you can maybe upskill and also things like prompt engineering something 

that didn't exist maybe a year ago uh in the future instead of a person being at their computer writing code they may be 

prompting some AI model to give them a solution on how they can solve their problems so it's going to be uh a drastic change in the near future I feel for software Engineers as a whole uh tech companies too but I'm excited nevertheless right because if there is 

this technological Revolution yeah right and at the core of it is this program right this algorithm this this whatever you want to call what AI is you kind of need software Engineers you do to manage that to build it right so in a way it's a boom for your for your jobs for your industry but understandably it's also like that oh moment it is it is I just saw in your face you saw it see  

yeah no you're right but I agree the silver lining is that AI you can't trust it 100% right now right uh it can't explain to you exactly why it made certain decisions that it did or got to solutions that it did so there is that human in the loop and that is at least uh kind of reassuring for people like myself knowing that we still have a really important role in everything that goes on with technological solutions yeah yeah it's exciting though right I mean I know it is daunting and I understand that for sure um and I see you know the potential negatives but I just I love to focus on the positives too and one thing about when we talk about the future of AI one thing that caught my attention is when Sam Alman recently said the CEO of Open AI that they will be the first ever one person billion dollar company. 

that's wild  

Oh yeah oh yeah and that's essentially saying one person in an army of AI agents is autonomously running a huge organization yeah that's just wild it is crazy to think about which is super cool though right think about maybe Kaden one day having that billion dollar company and through the help of AI he's able to do so which wouldn't have been able to be done in the past I mean it is wild we're talking about the future of AI Kaden my 2-year-old son um what his life is going to be like right like you know I talk a lot about how he'll be tutored by an AI robot we just saw uh is it figure is the robotics company collabed with open AI the chat GPT people and they now have this robot that can process into you know because it's multimodal it could process everything that you're talking to the robot and the demo that they recently did uh you could look it up uh figure AI open AI search that video and this the person was talking to the robot you know they're like you're the robot I'm the person and it was like you know uh I'm hungry give me something to eat and then the robot looks se's an apple picks it up gives it to them and he's like why'd you give that to me and he's like well that was the only edible thing and like was just talking to it it was conversing and it was doing the things and you just saw the future of when it comes to Ai and Robotics combined mind-blowing mindblowing um and 

you know going back to that example of how one person can have a huge billion doll company it makes it very interesting and exciting for maybe someone like myself I am not an engineer right um and our producers so Jack was just talking about it too of like that's kind of cool for for us that we can now create things that we never were able to create before yeah but we're still going to need someone let's say like yourself that truly gets it and make sure that whatever we're building is either built properly or maintained properly or anything like that but you would say it's pretty exciting right I would I Future full of young entrepreneurs leveraging AI. would I think of the future being a world where there's a lot of younger Entrepreneurs people who are able to take the ideas they have at a young age and take action on them not only them but even the older subset of people in our population maybe they think that at this point in time they don't have the capital they don't have the resources to embark on some of the entrepreneurial Ventures that they've had in their mind for a long time but through the use of AI they'll be able to take those processes that they've thought would be really expensive take some time and be able to autonomously bring those things to life so I'm excited to see even for myself some of the ideas that I have uh how I can make him come to life really seamlessly there's really nothing holding anyone back now no like you can never have a knowledge excuse that's right anymore that's right cuz you have the most brilliant mind oh yeah in in in your hand yeah I thought Google was good I thought Google was good but uh once chat gbt became public to the masses I just kind of saw a shift in my mind and then also across the tech landscape I at that moment was like like all of the things that we thought were possible are now even more possible and this has opened up the playing field for a lot more creation so really excited for the future very cool yeah well we like to uh end on a note where uh our guests give advice right so I'm going to be very specific for you there's a lot of young aspiring Engineers or maybe some older folks that want to transition to be Engineers right right so what are your words of wisdom what do you want to tell our audience when it comes to uh engineering yeah when it comes to engineering I think that the world is your canvas you can take code and technology and apply it to a lot of different problems that you see right now but then also some of the ideas you have I would say you have to be Fearless because as you progress in the world of technology you can't know everything and you're going to maybe think to yourself and be like I'm not good enough I'm not going to be able to get up to speed as quickly as some other people or I won't know as much as others but that's almost in some ways the best part about tech is that there's always something to learn 

there's always a challenge you always Finding community and being fearless in tech. get that dopamine because you uncover something new that you didn't think was possible or you fix that bug you uh provide value to somebody and through 

the work in healthtech you can really make tangible improvements in people's lives so I would say be Fearless know that anything that's in your mind you can make it happen your more than capable uh you have way more support than you probably think of just whether if it's through your peers or people who are similar to you I would say find that Community find those people who you resonate with and really just link arms with them and uh March forward because I feel like technology is the best thing that has advanced humankind  

that was great wow that pumped me up go you motivated me um and you talked about linking up peers how can folks learn 

more about you where can they connect with you?  give us all that download 

totally so LinkedIn Ali Jobe, Ali Jobe you can connect with me there happy to chat but outside of that uh I shoot a podcast focus on entrepreneurship creativity and business so look up upward and honor podcast talk a lot about entrepreneurship so uh looking forward to catching you guys in the comment section yeah let us know your thoughts and if you want to maybe join Ali's podcast or if you have any questions for any of us and what are your thoughts when it comes to the future of AI for engineers are you worried are you excited uh do you think this fully autonomous AI software Engineers a threat or an opportunity I would love to hear more and uh always reach out and 

again thank you for listening Ali thank you for coming on you're always a pleasure to chat with you just bring a smile to my face every time I see you likewise thank you so much well thank you