Imagine uncovering the secrets to accelerating your business growth with AI.
That's exactly what we've got lined up for you as I, Kaylee Johnson, sit down with Ken Pomella, the visionary CEO of RevStar.
Together, we navigate the crucial considerations of wielding AI responsibly, including the ethical use and protection of data.
In our conversation, we go over how to maintain your brand's unique voice even as AI takes on a role in content production.
We also tackle the pressing issue of AI bias, highlighting why a diverse development team isn't just a good practice—it's crucial for the integrity of your AI models.
Your digital success awaits, so hit subscribe, join our vibrant community, and let's embark on this digital journey-together!
Want to reach out and hear more about Digital Journey? You can email us at kaylee@digital-journey.net or check out our website, www.digital-journey.net.
Imagine uncovering the secrets to accelerating your business growth with AI.
That's exactly what we've got lined up for you as I, Kaylee Johnson, sit down with Ken Pomella, the visionary CEO of RevStar.
Together, we navigate the crucial considerations of wielding AI responsibly, including the ethical use and protection of data.
In our conversation, we go over how to maintain your brand's unique voice even as AI takes on a role in content production.
We also tackle the pressing issue of AI bias, highlighting why a diverse development team isn't just a good practice—it's crucial for the integrity of your AI models.
Your digital success awaits, so hit subscribe, join our vibrant community, and let's embark on this digital journey-together!
Want to reach out and hear more about Digital Journey? You can email us at kaylee@digital-journey.net or check out our website, www.digital-journey.net.
What's up, guys? This is Kaylee Johnson here with Digital Journey. If you're a person that's wanting to learn social media, maybe that's just for you personally, maybe it's for your business. This is the right place for you. Guys, today we have Ken Palmella with us. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:
Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1:
I'm excited. Ken Palmella is the CEO of Revstar and a renowned technology thought leader. He specializes in harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to drive business growth and scalability. With a distinguished career spanning over two decades, Ken has emerged as a pivotal figure in the tech industry. He's dedicated to transforming businesses through digital innovation. His expertise lies in developing AI strategies that align with business objectives, ensuring organizations remain competitive in the rapidly evolving digital landscape. I'm a big fan of AI. I love using it and I love learning how to use it responsibly. So how did you get to this point in your journey? What made you interested in AI and how did you get to where you are today?
Speaker 2:
You know I've been involved with technology my whole life. My parents were in the business and I kind of just grew up around it. I taught myself how to build small applications when I was in junior high school. So web design business in high school. So even as a kid I've just always been exposed to technology and then I decided to take that on as a career, started out as a software engineer. I'm on my own business now.
Speaker 2:
The bulk of what we do has always been software development, but I'm excited about AI, just like you are, especially generative AI, and like everyone else, I was playing with chat GPT at first, but I realized that quickly that there's some really great business implications for generative AI technology. So we quickly started to help our existing customers make small POCs with the AWS technology that we partner with and it's really been transformative and those projects will kind of grow and evolve and we'll open up, you know, this service to more new customers as we go. But you know it's a really exciting time. These technologies make a huge impact. So I'm right there with you and we're going to keep helping folks implement these in an ethical and responsible way.
Speaker 1:
And ethical and responsible is so key because sometimes people think of AI as I'm just going to do this to get out of work. But people can tell. You can tell if it's someone using AI to actually help others or if it's just to make them have less work. So how do you see AI intelligence transforming businesses today? What are some of the most common misconceptions about AI when it comes to the business world?
Speaker 2:
I think, a lot of misconceptions, but I think the biggest one you have to be careful about is that this stuff is inherently safe and secure just because some semi-reputable company is publishing it, right. So look at open AI. People just immediately started putting information in there before they thought about who's looking at this. How do I classify the information I'm putting in? Is this okay to make publicly available? There may not be bad intention there, but it's not always safe to just take any kind of information and plug it into any AI offering of information and plug it into any AI offering.
Speaker 2:
What we do with customers is a little bit different, because we're building custom solutions, so we'll use model as a service technologies to help us quickly, but we're training with their data, right, so we're not taking this and just putting it into some public. You know service where everybody that works there can see the results. So if we have, you know service where everybody that works there can see the results. So if we have, you know, customers that have to deal with compliance or they have proprietary information, we can set them up in their own cloud environment, train some base models with their data and have them securely prompt data that's theirs with their information, you know being in a secure environment.
Speaker 1:
That's great and I think, since AI is newer, everyone's jumping on the bandwagon. And you know people like, oh, it's a robot that they don't take into connection, that people are seeing the data that you input. It's not just a robot storing in a way to never use again. You know you need to be responsible with it and you need to understand what is it okay to put in here that I'm okay with. You know hundreds of thousands of people saying eventually at some point, and so being able to have that personalized setup is so valuable to make sure that you're protecting your hard work and you're protecting what you own.
Speaker 2:
From that aspect, I think people want to use the tools, so you have to give them some tool to use. I know folks that just cut off chat GPT from the work environment. People work around it, right, they take the stuff home and use it. Yeah, exactly, people that handled that the best did a lot of education on it. What can you use? What are the guardrails? Right, but they didn't necessarily shut it down. You know, that was just one of those things where it happened so fast. Right, people had to react to it. But building these tools and what we do inside of the customer's environment for specific use cases, it allows folks to use the technology and it's very scoped to the work that they're doing.
Speaker 1:
That's so important and making sure that having that tailorization is a way to keep everything safe and secure while still growing. We all know that social media can be overwhelming. You think it takes so much time. You look at all these amazing creators who are doing insane viral posts and think how can I ever measure up to them? The good thing is you don't have to.
Speaker 1:
Your point for being on social media is probably to earn money. You want to increase your sales. You want to gain more clients so that you can have more free time to pour into your clients, to pour into your family. Digital Journey can help you with that. We have a group coaching program targeted specifically for people who are overwhelmed with social media. It's really not as complicated as you think. We can teach you how to spend 15 minutes or less a day on social media so that you can gain more clients and you can up your sales. So if you want to learn more, you can go to digital-journeynet and we'd love to help you out. Now back to the episode. So how do you maintain a balance between innovation and practicality when it comes with implementing AI solutions for businesses?
Speaker 2:
You know it's the POC model, the proof of concept model, that we do. So let's take some data, train it, see the results we get. You don't kind of take on this huge initiative before you show some value right, before you show some value right. We're doing something right now for a company that's in logistics and we're taking data that they have to automate some of the dispatching decisions that are made as a you know, as a very step one. We're not rushing that right out into production. We'll have suggestions for existing dispatchers further train from their feedback. I think it's about doing a crawl, walk, run approach with it and making sure that it adds value before you make a larger investment. It's just a little bit about the approach. I think you have to look at it holistically for the business. I just lean with that business mindset of I want to test out the waters before I go all in.
Speaker 1:
Yes, so you mentioned testing. What are some ways that people individually can test that? If they're a small business or someone just starting up, how can they really see if that's what they need?
Speaker 2:
If you're a developer and there's models you can download and run on your computer if it's fast enough, right. So that's how you can tinker. If you're a business owner, you can use some of these public tools. Just be careful about putting your information in there. You can ask it questions and just see if this technology is something you can leverage in your business. For us, like I said, we quickly can POC solutions. They're still custom, you can't go buy them.
Speaker 2:
But we're able to get that done, sometimes in a month or two pretty quickly, just to gain some surface level insights and say is this a good road to go down? So you're not making this larger commitment. But yeah, it just depends on where you're at from a business perspective the size of the business. Everybody has different needs, but everybody should be looking at AI some way.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely, and I've seen companies that what you're saying earlier no, ai at all. Ai can actually save a lot of time if you know how to use it correctly and properly. It can also get you into a lot of trouble, especially when it comes to ethical reasons and even societal impacts, but it can save you time. Personally, I love to use AI to generate prompts. If I'm trying to think of a new post to write, because I do a lot with social media or if I'm trying to figure out what's some of the correct wording on this, I might put it in and even have it. Just do a proofread of some copy. I've done so. Just it doesn't. It doesn't create my content. I create the content, but it's a little tool there to help. All right, this is how you can utilize it. How do you approach the ethical considerations and societal impacts of deploying AI solutions in your business?
Speaker 1:
A lot of people say you know if you're not doing 100% of the work, then it's all wrong. You know what? How do you? How do you broach those topics?
Speaker 2:
I think what you said is great. So you, you generate ideas, do some outlines, maybe some draft content, but you review it right and you make sure that it's in alignment with you know what you want to present as a business. I mean, here's some of these horror stories, right? Unfortunately, when you have a publicly trained model like a chat GPT, some things can pop up, but you know again, that's some of those guardrails and how you use the data. It's like the Wild West out there with AI. So you want to look at the company's policies. If you can't get a clear, transparent answer on how they've trained their model, you may not want to use it. But I think anything you get from any ai model definitely double check it. You can't just go with whatever it gives you.
Speaker 2:
When you build your own models again, I get that's a little bit of an investment, but you're training it with your data, with your team. You know we we have a really diverse global team, so that helps when you think about you, think about the ethics in this, not having a bias right. The more diverse team working on it, the better. But you're less likely to have strange things in your responses to your prompts when you own that data and you're very careful about what data you're feeding in your training. I think you have the right idea.
Speaker 2:
I'd say the amount of time you save, even if you have to do some proofreading and double-checking. It's invaluable as a small business If you can generate a lot of content very quickly, if you can write emails faster these very basic, repetitive tasks that are perfect for AI and you're spending, you know, let's say, one-tenth of the time just double checking things. That's a huge, you know, savings for your business. It allows you to be more competitive, move faster. So, you know, the benefits outweigh, I think, the bad, as long as you, you know, approach it the right way.
Speaker 1:
I 100% agree and I really like what you said about you know making sure that the artificial intelligence unit you're using is accurate, especially when it comes to numbers and statistics, because sometimes you'd be like show me the percentage of realtors that are on social media and it'll just generate a random number and then you go look at a study and you're like this is 20% off, you know, so making sure that you're checking it and know that even computers have bias, because computers are made by humans and every human has their own lens through which they view things. Therefore, chat, gpt or any of the other ones are going to be influenced by that. Also, I think the idea of if you have the resources to create your own AI program, like you do, is amazing, because you know the information you're putting is correct. It's the type of thing that you're going to need and you don't have to get pulled aside by stuff where, like this, isn't accurate at all.
Speaker 2:
You know it's funny, these large language models are somewhat bad at numbers. If you give them math or things like that, you tend to get weird responses where it just in the way they work and the way that they do their matching on text, it's looking for what is the most likely next response when they look at numbers on the fact that they're looking at a wide range of information on the internet, it can tend to pull some inaccurate numbers into the model. But so you just know that those are things you have to research. You know, get just the awareness of the tool you're using and how it works and how it was trained is really important.
Speaker 1:
I remember when I was in college I took a class and I was doing physics in it and for some of the homework, you know, we were allowed to use AI and so I'd enter something in and they were like try to give them an answer. That is not even the right answer. So it's knowing that even with AI, you have to take things with a grain of salt and realize that, yes, it's a computer, but it's going to make mistakes also, but it can be so valuable. I save so much of my time by using AI to proofread my material I've written or to generate new ideas for specific content. I always encourage my listeners utilize AI and know how to use it ethically so people can tell if a article you've written is completely AI, because it's the same 15 buzzwords used over and over with the same three emojis. But if you're willing to take that and add my personal brand voice to it, let me tailor it to the way I speak in real life. It can save you so much time.
Speaker 2:
I don't know about when you were in school, but when I was in school a lot of people would say, hey, let me have your paper, and then they would just change it around. Right, so it's, it's the same concept, not not that I'm condoning that, but it happens, right. So you still have your own thoughts in there, right? Like you said, people can tell your teachers, other folks reading this isn't you. When you read it, it's, it, doesn, doesn't. It doesn't have your unique spin on it. I mean, you can do some training, like I hear. Here's my writing style and it's a little bit better, but that's just not the same.
Speaker 2:
And, like you said, people can tell, and people can tell what is genuine, but you know there are use cases. If you're writing a blog that's trying to give factual information, it does that pretty well. Right, saves you a lot of time with research. You can have GP pull the references. So when I think about research projects, I did when I was a kid I'm probably a little bit older than you but we would sit in the library and have to go get books off the shelf and read them and cite them. This would save a ton of time, right, and the most important part was the thoughts that I had after, not necessarily what information I downloaded from those books.
Speaker 1:
Exactly, exactly. When I was first at college, chat GPT wasn't a thing, and so it was always go to the library, get that stuff and then chat GPT near the end of college came about, and then professors freaked out and were like, no, you can't use chat GPT for a single thing. And now they're like, yeah, find references from there, learn how to cite things correctly from there. As long as you're learning the correct way to do things and you're learning how to do it, why not? Don't have it going to write your paper, but show you how to format a reference list. Or even when it comes to stuff in the business world, if you're trying to type up a contract, have it, create a general idea of one, and then you can take it and, you know, have your lawyer check it or you go over it, but at least go ahead and it'll add things that you might not have thought about.
Speaker 2:
I think you know why stop people from using the technology. As it grows and evolve, it'll be more integrated in our lives, right? You're not going to get away from it, so it's better to embrace it and just put the right guardrails around it. When I was a kid and the internet first came out, there was the same thing. It's like you can only reference books. You can't get things offline. You know today that's ridiculous. You'd never tell someone that, right?
Speaker 1:
Right right.
Speaker 2:
It changes. Technology's interesting, right. You know, when I was younger your parents probably told you the same thing Don't get in a car with strangers. And now you call it work. So it always evolves. There's this initial shock and reaction that isn't the best, but then eventually you're like oh, this does make life easier and it makes sense and you're not losing your own unique thoughts that are in your presentation paper. What have you right? You're just speeding up the research part.
Speaker 1:
That's very good, very true. What's one thought you would want to leave the listeners with?
Speaker 2:
I would say you know everybody, just play around with these technologies, even if it's just prompting chat. Gpt If you know you're really interested and you're looking for a great career, download some models. You know you can build very small data sets on your own computer. I think there may be a misconception is that you have to have giant data sets to use AI. It's not true. Actually, it can be cost effective to train with a smaller data set if you only need that. But these are great careers.
Speaker 2:
This is a life-changing technology, right? It's like I mentioned the internet. This is like the internet, right? It's going to be one of those really game-changing technologies for everybody. So it's better to learn it, use it, adapt and to kind of be afraid of it or shun it. So that would be my tip. Just say, any way you can get involved, depending on you know your interest level. But you know these are. This is going to open up a whole new sector of jobs and really create a lot of really cool efficiencies for our life that we haven't even seen. We're just scratching the surface.
Speaker 1:
Absolutely Very, very true. Keep trying new things. So if the listeners want to hear more about you and more about Revstar, where can we find you?
Speaker 2:
So the easiest way is go to my website, kenpamellacom. There's some information about Revstar there and you can check out the Revstar site. I have more thought leadership pieces that I publish. I also started a thing where I interview other tech executives and get their insights on these sorts of things. It's fun to chat with other folks that are leading in this space, and they're all talking about AI too, so I think everybody's excited about it. That's the best way you can also reach out. Contact me. I always love having conversations and answering questions.
Speaker 1:
And we'll have all of that linked down below in the description so you can check him out. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. This was awesome having you.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for having me, this was really fun.
Speaker 1:
I hope you enjoyed that episode of Digital Journey with Kaylee Johnson. If you did, go ahead and hit that like button, hit that subscribe button, share, let everyone know about us and continue to listen to our episodes. You can check them out. Go hear more about AI, go hear more about real estate, go learn. And thanks for listening.