AI and the Future of Work: Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace, Business, Ethics, HR, and IT for AI Enthusiasts, Leaders and Academics
00:23:16 · Dan Turchin
[00:23:16] S1: So you just said the key thing, make humans better. And yet I had Peter Voss on this podcast recently. He's one of the co inventors of the term AGI. And we had a spirited discussion about what the end game of AGI generating artificial general intelligence should be. And he quite proudly, you know, claims the objective is to replicate everything that a human can do, only better because, you know, it's a digital brain. That's not, in my estimation, making humans better. That's aiming to replace or perhaps even in the most cynical sense, confusing humans into thinking that they're interacting with humans when they're interacting with, you know, with digital, you know, likenesses of humans. What's your sense of kind of the concept of AGI and and making better better humans with technology versus potentially replacing them?
00:24:07 · George Sivulka
[00:24:07] S0: Yeah. I I think that, you know, there's there's there's a variety of different ways that you can talk about AGI and and and kind of what that means or or or what the impacts that it will have on society. I think one of the ways that I really like to think about it is that I I I believe foundation models are already smarter than any living human being, like, already. They're they're... No no human being can pass, the MCAT and the LSAT and be a world class map. Like, I don't think there's a single human being that has the intelligence of the latest foundation models, and that will only continue to be true. But there's a distinction around, okay, are these things being used to, you know, replicate humans? Or I always call it creating more noise in the world, more marketing copy, more emails written, more emails in my inbox, you know, more meeting notes that are summarized. And AI that's instead of creating more noise, getting the signal from the noise or reducing the amount of information and just distilling insights from it. And I don't really love how generative AI has been used mostly to generate. I actually think it's important that Hebia as as as part of our mission is is all about making sense from all the noise that is being created. And I think that's a much better societal use of of AGI esque technologies.
00:25:26 · Dan Turchin
[00:25:26] S1: Yeah. That's a better model. Complimenting humans versus versus Confusing. Placing them or, yeah, confusing humans into thinking that they're interacting with other humans. And yet, you know, every day, you know, it's a relatively small tech community that's building these technologies. Intentionally or unintentionally, we're making decisions about the future of humans interacting with machines. And just so it's interesting, you know, to have these discussions with other... I mean, you were one of those members of the small, really small community making these decisions, know, just curious to, you know, get your reaction to... Even if it's unintentional, you know, how how you how you think about these important decisions that you and your team are making. Absolutely. Yeah. So these days, we're taping this to the beginning of 2025, we are inundated with all kinds of conflicting visions of what AI agents can do, will do, should do. And a lot of what you described about kind of moving from tasks to jobs or maybe objective driven activities assigned to machine learning models certainly is akin to what we talk about as AI agents, however you might define that term. When you think about, you know, play out Hebia, you know, a decade and it's it's just ubiquitous, right, beyond your wildest imagination, right, it's worked. What does the world of work look like when when we're interacting continuously with, you know, Hebiot Matrix today and then future versions of it?
00:27:02 · George Sivulka
[00:27:02] S0: Yeah. I think that I think that the world of agents will actually be not too dissimilar to the world that we have today, which is... Which might be a bit of a contrarian take. I think Hebby actually, in many ways, has pioneered the agent. We were one of the first companies to come... To go out and and and do these multi step workflows that I talk about. And we're probably even the number one agent AI company at scale actually deployed with the real use cases for a lot of customers. And what we see is that, the work of an employee isn't actually replaced as much as it has changed. And I actually liken it to creating more managers. Right? If if if what's what's going on at the lowest levels of every company, kind of the nodes, the bottom of any hierarchy, is a lot of manual work. It's a lot of doing rather than a lot of thinking. I ultimately think that agents will be used to do not only a lot of single steps, but actually most of the doing in a company. And almost all of our roles will go from doing to actually orchestrating agents in doing. And so people will become managers of AI agents before they'll become replaced by AI agents. And the interface to which you would manage, let's say, 10,000 junior employees, which I think every company will soon have, whether you're, you know, the largest Fortune 100 company, in your industry or a mom and pop bakeshop, you know, will be even more important. Having a thousand employees as a mom and pop bakeshop, or even as a new grad out of new grad out of college is a management problem and an orchestration problem even more than it is a technical or a doing. And we see a lot of the businesses that actually turn to Hebia and make a lot of use of it, starting to starting to lean on this as a... You know, we're upskilling our workforce for a new kind of work altogether. Rather than the doing. They're doing more of the thinking, the discovering. It's it's it's empowering every single aspect of the organization.
00:29:02 · Dan Turchin, George Sivulka
[00:29:02] S1: I like that answer. That's very satisfying. I know I let this one go way over. Thank you for It's been fun. Being a good sport. Yeah. Absolutely. You know, you're not going anywhere without answering one last question for me. Curious about your your personal journey. What is your journey so far? I know heavy is just getting started. But from White Plaza, so to speak, we share a common common alma mater. It's named campus in... At Stanford to being the CEO of a fast growing company, amazing investors, amazing customers. What have you learned about yourself along the way? [00:29:37] S0: I think that the the journey of being an entrepreneur is is very much, something that will will humble you, like, 10 times out of 10. The market does not want startups or you to exist. It's it's fundamentally pretty efficient. It's not perfectly efficient, but it's pretty efficient. And it doesn't like random PhD students, you know, going and dropping out and and trying to impact, you know, the way that the largest firms in the world do work. And I think that there's... You know, no matter who you are as an entrepreneur, there's resilience that you find in yourself as you continue to just climb and and and and and kind of never quit in the in the face of a a very, very daunting task in a very daunting environment. And I think the the act of of creation is one of the most beautiful things that you can do in your life. And so working at a startup has been an amazing gift about all the ups and all the downs.
00:29:37 · George Sivulka, Dan Turchin
[00:29:37] S0: I think that the the journey of being an entrepreneur is is very much, something that will will humble you, like, 10 times out of 10. The market does not want startups or you to exist. It's it's fundamentally pretty efficient. It's not perfectly efficient, but it's pretty efficient. And it doesn't like random PhD students, you know, going and dropping out and and trying to impact, you know, the way that the largest firms in the world do work. And I think that there's... You know, no matter who you are as an entrepreneur, there's resilience that you find in yourself as you continue to just climb and and and and and kind of never quit in the in the face of a a very, very daunting task in a very daunting environment. And I think the the act of of creation is one of the most beautiful things that you can do in your life. And so working at a startup has been an amazing gift about all the ups and all the downs. [00:30:28] S1: Osmos are definitely conspiring against us, and yet we do things that are irrational sometimes because we need to, because it's that itch that you have to scratch. You can't not build this thing because you [00:30:40] S0: owe it to the world. 100%. [00:30:43] S1: It's Yeah.