Navigating Truth, AI Impact, MSP Revenue Decline, SMB Optimism, and AI Adoption Trends

[00:00:13] [SPEAKER_00]: With deep fakes, AI-generated photos, and synthetic voices all becoming commonplace, how will we understand truth?

[00:00:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a profound question, so I asked Jessica Davis with Cyber Risk Alliance to join me.

[00:00:29] [SPEAKER_00]: As a journalist, she thinks about sources of information all the time.

[00:00:34] [SPEAKER_00]: We'll also dive into her reporting on revenue declines for managed services providers and the optimism SMB owners are showing.

[00:00:41] [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Business of Tech Lounge, the live version of the Business of Tech podcast.

[00:00:47] [SPEAKER_00]: It's Wednesday, August 28th, 2024, and I'm Dave Sobel.

[00:00:51] [SPEAKER_00]: We'll take questions and comments throughout the show, so make sure to put them in the chat.

[00:00:57] [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a question, we'll be happy to respond to it.

[00:01:01] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to thank Sales Builder, our Patreon sponsor whose support makes this show possible.

[00:01:06] [SPEAKER_00]: Focus on your IT sales workflow with the power of automation and visit them at salesbuilder.com.

[00:01:12] [SPEAKER_00]: That's B-U-I-L-D-R dot com.

[00:01:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And a reminder, I am watching that chat.

[00:01:18] [SPEAKER_00]: Now today, let's talk about the impact of AI on our perception of reality.

[00:01:25] [SPEAKER_00]: AI generation tools are becoming commonplace and very easy to use.

[00:01:29] [SPEAKER_00]: Voice and photo fakes can be generated easily, particularly with new releases like the Pixel 9.

[00:01:37] [SPEAKER_00]: I want to quote first from The Verge.

[00:01:40] [SPEAKER_00]: No one on Earth today has ever lived in a world where photographs were not the linchpin of social consensus.

[00:01:47] [SPEAKER_00]: For as long as any of us have been here, photographs proved something happened.

[00:01:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Consider all the ways in which a soon veracity of a photograph has, previously, validated the truth of your experiences.

[00:02:02] [SPEAKER_00]: The pre-existing ding in the fender of your rental car, the leak in your ceiling, the arrival of a package.

[00:02:09] [SPEAKER_00]: We briefly lived in an era in which the photograph was a shortcut to reality, to knowing things, to having a smoking gun.

[00:02:17] [SPEAKER_00]: It was an extraordinarily useful tool for navigating the world around us.

[00:02:21] [SPEAKER_00]: We're now leaping head-first into a future in which reality is simply less knowable.

[00:02:28] [SPEAKER_00]: And from the information, the case of the Pikesville High Principal, Eric Eisworth.

[00:02:34] [SPEAKER_00]: He was falsely accused of making hateful comments in a manipulated audio recording.

[00:02:40] [SPEAKER_00]: The incident led to death threats against him and a swift investigation that revealed the audio was fabricated using AI technology.

[00:02:48] [SPEAKER_00]: The perpetrator, Dazon DJ Darren was eventually arrested for his role in creating the deep fake and other misconduct.

[00:02:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think the best person to talk to is a journalist, someone who has to consider sourcing and truth on a regular basis.

[00:03:06] [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm joined by Jessica Davis, editorial director, channel brands at Cyber Risk Alliance.

[00:03:11] [SPEAKER_00]: Do you may know from Channel ED now, but she's worked for Information Week, MSP Mentor, Channel Insider, eWeek Info World and the Philadelphia Business Journal.

[00:03:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Jessica, thanks for joining me.

[00:03:24] [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me, Dave.

[00:03:25] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm really excited to be here and talk to you again.

[00:03:29] [SPEAKER_02]: It's been a while.

[00:03:30] [SPEAKER_00]: It has.

[00:03:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And I wanted to come with something fun.

[00:03:33] [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to like, let's set a baseline here particularly.

[00:03:36] [SPEAKER_00]: I really think it's important.

[00:03:37] [SPEAKER_00]: You spend a lot of time as a journalist and you think about sourcing and where information comes and how you can validate it.

[00:03:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with the baseline.

[00:03:45] [SPEAKER_00]: Tell me about your process for thinking about the truth now, like before we even layer in AI.

[00:03:52] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.

[00:03:53] [SPEAKER_02]: And I got to say, Dave, these stories that you pulled up frightening.

[00:03:57] [SPEAKER_02]: They're very scary.

[00:03:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Is reality, are we even here?

[00:04:02] [SPEAKER_02]: You know, who knows?

[00:04:06] [SPEAKER_02]: Processes for sourcing information.

[00:04:09] [SPEAKER_02]: I, every time I see a story like the ones that you just shared, Dave, I ask myself, can I be fooled in this way when I'm working on a story?

[00:04:22] [SPEAKER_02]: And I refine my methods, I think from there.

[00:04:26] [SPEAKER_02]: But and it's getting trickier and trickier.

[00:04:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I would say images have gotten easier.

[00:04:36] [SPEAKER_02]: I think as a society, as consumers of memes, we've all gotten a little more critical thinking when it comes to photographs, when it comes to images.

[00:04:54] [SPEAKER_02]: That said, plenty of images are scary in terms of are they real or are they not real?

[00:05:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And as a journalist, I think we rely on trusted sources in terms of the photographs that we trust and that we would share.

[00:05:17] [SPEAKER_02]: We would not grab a photo from social media and identify that as being the truth.

[00:05:24] [SPEAKER_02]: We would not grab a photo that was just sent to us by someone and identify that as the truth.

[00:05:32] [SPEAKER_02]: If we had, if we sent out our own news photographer to take the photo, yes, we would, we would, we had that provenance going on to identify that as being the true image.

[00:05:48] [SPEAKER_02]: We also use over the years in my experience at all those different places stock photographs and and trusted stock photograph providers to provide that provenance of, you know, this is a real photo.

[00:06:08] [SPEAKER_02]: In terms of voice, I think that's a lot trickier actually.

[00:06:16] [SPEAKER_02]: Because you hear about these these deep fakes of people calling up and this is one of the things that I do.

[00:06:24] [SPEAKER_02]: I talked to people on the phone, I talked to people on video conferences.

[00:06:28] [SPEAKER_02]: Video conferences, I think it's probably easier to tell whether it's real or not.

[00:06:36] [SPEAKER_02]: But again, there have been deep deep fakes perpetrated in video conferences as well and it keeps happening and happening.

[00:06:45] [SPEAKER_02]: And it's pretty scary. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:06:49] [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm wondering how I would do if I got a call from someone, you know, when I get a phishing call from from or a phishing call or a phishing text from my bank.

[00:07:00] [SPEAKER_02]: I call my bank directly instead of clicking on the link or calling the number that they give me.

[00:07:10] [SPEAKER_02]: I would think that I would try to verify the source independently before I trusted what they provided to me.

[00:07:20] [SPEAKER_02]: But again, in journalism too, you're trying to work really fast.

[00:07:24] [SPEAKER_02]: There have been over the years, multiple checks in the journalism process where we have a reporter, we have a copy editor, we have an editor.

[00:07:35] [SPEAKER_02]: But as time goes on and more financial pressure has been put on the fourth estate, you know, Google dropped the ad market, it took over the ad market.

[00:07:47] [SPEAKER_02]: So media publications are not doing as well as they did.

[00:07:53] [SPEAKER_02]: We don't have as many as many checks like that anymore.

[00:07:57] [SPEAKER_00]: So I think you've said something really interesting there that I think that is for us to unravel here and it's about the sourcing.

[00:08:04] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's the trust of the incoming source of the photo.

[00:08:08] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think actually that may be part of where I think the opportunity might even lie as we think this out.

[00:08:13] [SPEAKER_00]: And for listeners, like one of the reasons I wanted to talk about this is I'm in a way figuring out where I if I think this is an opportunity for IT services and if this is something managed services providers, IT services provider should come from.

[00:08:26] [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm less worried about it from the perspective of validating truth in the news, right?

[00:08:32] [SPEAKER_00]: Because I don't think most solution providers are going to think about that.

[00:08:34] [SPEAKER_00]: But the example from the Verge article that really leapt to me was this idea of well what about like car insurance, right?

[00:08:41] [SPEAKER_00]: There's a process right now of when you rent a car, you'll take a bunch of pictures of the car and that validates the current state of that.

[00:08:51] [SPEAKER_00]: And then at the end of the process, you could then you would then take a bunch of pictures on the checkout.

[00:08:56] [SPEAKER_00]: And it's interesting when you say sourcing is the key of that.

[00:09:01] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think the insight that may be part of unraveling how much of this is an opportunity is can we use both people in process and technology to verify the right sources.

[00:09:14] [SPEAKER_00]: So let's let me let me sort of extrapolate your your list of principles against my example.

[00:09:19] [SPEAKER_00]: If I if I'm an insurance provider, and I'm letting customers take pictures of their car as the validation will perhaps they have to take pictures within my app.

[00:09:31] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that has access to the camera directly as part of the sourcing, right?

[00:09:37] [SPEAKER_00]: Or perhaps what I do is is in now as part of the checkout process, I can't have it fully self service.

[00:09:42] [SPEAKER_00]: My own team has to do it through, say, company owned devices that are that we manage the apps on them.

[00:09:50] [SPEAKER_00]: So we've combined people in process with the technology to try and eliminate that from a business opportunity.

[00:09:57] [SPEAKER_00]: By the way, I'll just highlight that.

[00:09:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Hey, everything I just talked about there would be an opportunity.

[00:10:01] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's that seems super smart.

[00:10:03] [SPEAKER_02]: And you know, as you started talking about that, I was thinking also about how blockchain and how I'm always trying to think of what is really the use case for

[00:10:12] [SPEAKER_02]: blockchain. And this this actually might be one of those where you're actually, you know, marking, validating that this is real and stamping it that way, stamping not a technical term, but

[00:10:27] [SPEAKER_02]: right?

[00:10:28] [SPEAKER_02]: You know what I mean?

[00:10:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, yeah.

[00:10:31] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think you're exactly right.

[00:10:33] [SPEAKER_00]: So like blockchain would be part of that.

[00:10:35] [SPEAKER_00]: So that's a that's a good add to it.

[00:10:36] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think this is where I want to highlight the hey, can we pull from these principles?

[00:10:40] [SPEAKER_00]: Because the sourcing is what you said.

[00:10:42] [SPEAKER_00]: And I think you're exactly right again, let me get into we get into voice and video and it's even more complicated.

[00:10:49] [SPEAKER_00]: Let's let's think about this.

[00:10:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I'm going to leverage your experience here a little bit.

[00:10:53] [SPEAKER_00]: You know, what are the things that you do in talking like sourcing something you're interviewing people and you need to validate a particular set of facts.

[00:11:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Like how does that work just from a journalistic perspective to hit sources or says or how do I validate you're talking to the right person?

[00:11:12] [SPEAKER_00]: What if it's an anonymous source, give me a little bit of that insight.

[00:11:15] [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm never going to use an anonymous source.

[00:11:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I'm never going to write a story based on something from an anonymous source.

[00:11:23] [SPEAKER_02]: I might I might keep the source anonymous to the public in the story, but I'm always going to know who the source is so that I can validate that that source is real and actual.

[00:11:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And not somebody who has a hidden agenda and is using me and probably lots of people are going to try to do this to me now is using me to to to get their point across or or not even their point across

[00:11:51] [SPEAKER_02]: but but distribute information that's not true.

[00:11:57] [SPEAKER_02]: And and I feel like that sort of my duty is to provide that that that guardrail for the truth.

[00:12:11] [SPEAKER_02]: So so I will have an anonymous source in a story.

[00:12:17] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't like to do it.

[00:12:18] [SPEAKER_02]: I will do it on occasion.

[00:12:21] [SPEAKER_02]: But I will always know who that person is and I will talk to that person in real time.

[00:12:28] [SPEAKER_02]: I will look up that person.

[00:12:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I will hopefully it's someone I already know.

[00:12:36] [SPEAKER_02]: And I will look for multiple sources that are saying the same thing before I go forward with something that's controversial or questionable.

[00:12:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I will I will triangulate that truth to validate it.

[00:12:54] [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so again, the cool thing that we were pulling from these ideas is that it's the multiple sourcing that may actually be the solution to help with faking right so if we're trying to validate some of the sources.

[00:13:06] [SPEAKER_00]: If something happened or something that was actually like someone had the correct intention to voices to distinct people are going to be more difficult to fake than one, you know, and you're going to also get that that validation.

[00:13:20] [SPEAKER_00]: I think that may be part of it and we're talking about much more of a people process solution than a technology one.

[00:13:28] [SPEAKER_00]: The other one I think that you'd have particularly interesting insights into would be where your comfort level in this is around regulation.

[00:13:38] [SPEAKER_00]: As a journalist, you probably lean very much into the idea of free speech and making sure that you've got access to that.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.

[00:13:44] [SPEAKER_00]: But at some level we've got a piece here where I think instinctually it feels like, you know, using someone else's likeness particularly for non consensual explicit reasons seems like that should be.

[00:14:01] [SPEAKER_00]: We probably should have some regulations that give me a little sense of where you feel those boundaries work from a you know that the work and don't work from kind of a free speech perspective.

[00:14:14] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, Dave thanks. Thanks for that question I was I was thinking you were probably going to ask me this one and it's tough. It's tough because you know I am First Amendment free speech but but again if this is if this is information that's not true that's being shared to manipulate the public

[00:14:33] [SPEAKER_02]: I think that's morally wrong.

[00:14:38] [SPEAKER_02]: Should it be outlawed.

[00:14:40] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't know. I don't know and I don't know that regulation is really super effective at dealing with that.

[00:14:49] [SPEAKER_02]: I don't, I don't know. Smarter people than I am are considering this I would say that that I think business has a big part to play in helping people figure out

[00:15:07] [SPEAKER_02]: In helping people learn how to figure out what the truth actually is I mean like you said there's a huge opportunity here for businesses to help eliminate the disinformation that's out there.

[00:15:24] [SPEAKER_02]: And you could probably find the opportunity better than I could.

[00:15:28] [SPEAKER_00]: We're here to talk about it almost in real time so the you know it's interesting that you bring that up because I do think that there is some business opportunity here and I'm not necessarily going to tell solution writers I think they need to go out and build

[00:15:42] [SPEAKER_00]: misinformation businesses. But what I do think is when you're having conversations with customers being able to talk about data validation and understanding where data is coming into the system and being very skeptical of it as part of the process as opposed to implied trust, which is what most of us in business have kind of always done is we take inputs of data and we assume they're a good thing in the security world and I know you cover this a lot.

[00:16:09] [SPEAKER_00]: We're all now talking about zero trust architectures, you know to not trust anything from a technology perspective but I think we also want to get to the point where we maybe can flip this on our heads and we are distrustful of information until we can verify it until we can actually like do that and there's probably some real value for solution

[00:16:30] [SPEAKER_00]: providers in actually helping with those governance frameworks.

[00:16:34] [SPEAKER_00]: How much like you're having conversations with them.

[00:16:36] [SPEAKER_00]: How much are they doing that.

[00:16:39] [SPEAKER_02]: That's a really good point Dave I think that is a big opportunity for solution providers in terms of governance and the data that's coming in.

[00:16:50] [SPEAKER_02]: And I'm not sure how exactly that will go forward.

[00:16:54] [SPEAKER_02]: If I can go back to a story I wrote back when I was at Information Week I was thinking after you shared those stories with me I was thinking about this one.

[00:17:03] [SPEAKER_02]: This was a story about the fact that the Coast Guard gets hoax calls all the time talking about you know fake threats to national security and that it was a huge amount of time because they have to send out teams they have to investigate and you know it's a big problem.

[00:17:25] [SPEAKER_02]: What they ended up doing was partnering with a researcher this was before this was way before Generative AI.

[00:17:32] [SPEAKER_02]: They partnered with a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who applied data analytics to sound so that she was able to determine where these

[00:17:54] [SPEAKER_02]: recordings where these calls were coming from based on the ambient sound which is what reminded me of the article about the school principal.

[00:18:05] [SPEAKER_02]: And she has refined this method and used it to detect deep fake voices as well.

[00:18:13] [SPEAKER_02]: This was way back in 2016.

[00:18:16] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't even imagine how much farther that technology has gotten.

[00:18:21] [SPEAKER_02]: So I know that there are researchers and based on your story too that there are researchers working on figuring out reverse engineering figuring out how to determine what's real and what's fake.

[00:18:38] [SPEAKER_02]: And I think there's a big opportunity there too.

[00:18:40] [SPEAKER_02]: And that's something that's going to be built into platforms going forward.

[00:18:44] [SPEAKER_02]: The question is you know the problems always come before the solutions come to them.

[00:18:49] [SPEAKER_02]: You know and the issue is going to be scaling those kinds of solutions fast enough to keep pace I think.

[00:18:57] [SPEAKER_00]: I'd agree with you and I think it's interesting you say it that way because the framing of the problems always come first in a way you know solution providers MSP the people are talking to here are the collectors of problems right in a way that and they can go back to the you know the ecosystem of people that they work with

[00:19:14] [SPEAKER_00]: and sometimes may not immediately have an ideal solution to it but can I bring those use cases and problems that need to be solved back to the channel.

[00:19:24] [SPEAKER_00]: You know I've been very pro distribution in terms of this conversation I think that there are a lot of solution architects and services folks working within distribution right now that are literally trying to hear these problems and then look for solutions on behalf of the solution provider so there's actually probably something there.

[00:19:44] [SPEAKER_00]: I love that use case you just brought up because the Coast Guard can't be dismissive of an incoming case they can't be so skeptical as to not respond because of course people die when they do that right and so they have to lean into trusting yet they also have to make sure that they're not wasting resources

[00:20:05] [SPEAKER_00]: that's a fascinating balance was there was there some insight in what were the insights that they were talking about in terms of the way they weighed that balance when you were doing that story.

[00:20:17] [SPEAKER_02]: They couldn't I mean that was the problem they had to go out and investigate each case and it was a you know it's it's not like they send one guy out.

[00:20:26] [SPEAKER_02]: When you're the Coast Guard know they got to send the boats and the helicopters and it's hugely resource intensive and and costs a ton of money and they can't not investigate it so and and the one of the other use cases they had was people calling in fake orders to restaurants and then not picking them up.

[00:20:49] [SPEAKER_02]: You know that's that's not as big a deal to national security but if you're that restaurant and you're you prepared this meal that's that's a loss that you're taking on that kind of a hoax so yeah there's their business use cases here too.

[00:21:06] [SPEAKER_00]: You know it I'm really glad we have this conversation because in a way you've given a couple of the pieces here and I freely admit that I when I came into this conversation not expecting to come to an absolute answer but instead to start defining like is this a problem and I'm leaving this conversation saying yeah I actually do think there's some opportunity here for solution providers to be involved that it's going to be about are the typical combination there will be some technology to this but much more than anything it's going to be people and private

[00:21:36] [SPEAKER_00]: to the process. Now as we think about this I want to actually cover a little bit of thing you I want to highlight two pieces that you reported on first and then we'll dive into the specifics. On August 19th you had this article talking about service leadership.

[00:21:50] [SPEAKER_00]: Managed services providers are experiencing a tougher period when it comes to sales than they have in a while according to newly released service leadership data. Specifically MSPs are showing a deceleration in revenue growth.

[00:22:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Service leadership VP and general manager Peter Kujawa told Channel ED that over the last three to four quarters MSPs have said they've had a tougher time growing revenue. And then the next day on August 20th you wrote this about SMB optimism.

[00:22:19] [SPEAKER_00]: While managed services providers have reported slow growth in revenues in the past few quarters American Express's AMEX Trendex Small Business Edition report found that 90% of small businesses surveyed are optimistic about the future. They believe their companies will achieve their goals this year.

[00:22:38] [SPEAKER_00]: So Jessica this is kind of an interesting two day dynamic here right on one hand we've got a deceleration in MSP revenue but we've also got small business owners that are optimistic about the future. What was your big takeaway and the conversations you're having with MSPs about what's going on on this decline in revenue?

[00:22:59] [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah we're kind of in a weird time right now right it's post pandemic, post COVID as Peter mentioned in that service leadership research. There was a COVID bubble for MSPs where they were helping people get their tech up to date to enable their staff to work from home.

[00:23:25] [SPEAKER_02]: So there was a lot of business then and business was growing in a fast clip. Now revenues are not declining the revenue growth is lower than it was. Peter also pointed out that this is an election year and in every election year we've seen a bit of a dip.

[00:23:48] [SPEAKER_02]: You know nobody who's people don't like uncertainty and uncertainty is a big factor in an election year so everybody is sort of waiting to see what's going to happen before they go ahead with projects. That was the service leadership conclusion about the numbers.

[00:24:07] [SPEAKER_02]: Now I asked Peter of course what's it look like for next year and you know no more uncertainty we don't know what's going to happen but whatever happens by then we'll know what it is. So no uncertainty in that way and the other piece of that was no uncertainty and interest rates.

[00:24:30] [SPEAKER_02]: Interest rates are going to be coming down. So there's a little more optimism for 2025 when it comes to project IT projects, sales that type of thing but not so much now everybody sort of holding back and waiting to see what's going to happen.

[00:24:50] [SPEAKER_02]: Now that SMB optimism I thought it was interesting that a lot of the SMBs were talking about how they were using AI and how they were planning to use AI already using AI. And I think there was a little difference between the generations and how they were using AI for different things too.

[00:25:08] [SPEAKER_02]: I can't remember off the top of my head. I should have written it down but I wonder too if some of the work that might have gone to service providers is being performed by AI this year.

[00:25:28] [SPEAKER_00]: That's an interesting thought because and it's interesting because you're talking about here in terms of your impression of the market is completely aligning with the market data that have been reporting at the larger sets.

[00:25:41] [SPEAKER_00]: We've interestingly strong jobs data. We have generally good growth. We brought inflation down but we all describe this as a vibes economy in that people don't necessarily feel the data that we're seeing in terms of the execution.

[00:25:55] [SPEAKER_00]: So it makes perfect sense to see that we're doing that and I hadn't quite layered on the idea of it being a full bubble that we'd actually coming out of the pandemic that there was a bit of an IT bubble because of course during it everyone was talking about how solution providers are heroes

[00:26:10] [SPEAKER_00]: and this is a great time and it's validated that but of course there would be something of a hangover and it's unfortunate timing that it's probably aligning with an election year when there's also some general slowdown.

[00:26:23] [SPEAKER_00]: It's encouraging to hear there might be something but I love to talk about a little bit more about what you're hearing on the AI front because I'm seeing the same thing in terms of the way that I look at it from a market perspective because we're seeing much more interesting adoption of AI among younger business owners and then younger solution providers versus I think there's a generational gap here.

[00:26:45] [SPEAKER_00]: When you're looking at some of the AI use cases and the conversations you're having around that with both vendors and solution providers is there like are there trends there that you can see or you're laughing right on to age or what's the one that you're kind of highlighted.

[00:26:58] [SPEAKER_02]: I have an anecdotal piece instead of friends which is I was talking to an MSP based on the East Coast and talking about and this is an MSP that has been sort of pioneering with with generative AI.

[00:27:17] [SPEAKER_02]: And he told me that he brought in interns to help with with their AI and I said oh are they interns from this particular college that you went to.

[00:27:28] [SPEAKER_02]: And he said no they're from high school.

[00:27:33] [SPEAKER_02]: They're high school interns who are just totally on top of how to use generative AI.

[00:27:39] [SPEAKER_02]: They are teaching the rest of the staff how to use it.

[00:27:42] [SPEAKER_02]: They are whizzes when it comes to generative AI.

[00:27:47] [SPEAKER_02]: I thought that was fascinating and yeah.

[00:27:52] [SPEAKER_00]: That is fascinating.

[00:27:53] [SPEAKER_00]: In fact I'm going to link that to another story.

[00:27:55] [SPEAKER_00]: I just reported on Commonwealth Bank in Australia who's now actually implemented a full they call it chat IT a full IT service chat bot that's helping their own employees with IT issues all using generative AI.

[00:28:12] [SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of that falling out.

[00:28:16] [SPEAKER_00]: Jessica this has been super fascinating and I'm looking forward to having you on but I know you've got a couple of things going on.

[00:28:22] [SPEAKER_00]: What do you have going on that listeners should know about.

[00:28:25] [SPEAKER_02]: So I want to tell everybody you know the two brands at CRA are the two channel brands are Channel E2E also MSSP Alert.

[00:28:35] [SPEAKER_02]: And we have our big MSSP 250 list.

[00:28:39] [SPEAKER_02]: The deadline is Friday so if you haven't submitted your company to be on that list yet you have until Friday at midnight.

[00:28:46] [SPEAKER_02]: We'll make it Pacific time just to be generous here.

[00:28:51] [SPEAKER_02]: And usually we announce the full MSSP 250 list in a webcast sometime in September and October or October but this year we're taking that on the road to our MSSP Alert Live event in Austin, Texas is going to be October 14 to 16.

[00:29:11] [SPEAKER_02]: We hope you can join us there.

[00:29:13] [SPEAKER_02]: If you want more information about that you can hit me up at Jessica.C.Davisatcybrriskealliance.com.

[00:29:23] [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah I think we're going to have a big party at that event as well celebrating the MSSP 250 so it's going to be a lot of fun.

[00:29:33] [SPEAKER_02]: Dave spoke at the event last year when we were in Washington DC and it was fantastic.

[00:29:39] [SPEAKER_02]: We talked about AI then too so.

[00:29:41] [SPEAKER_00]: That's going to be a continuous conversation.

[00:29:44] [SPEAKER_00]: It was a great event and I really appreciate it being.

[00:29:47] [SPEAKER_00]: Well Jessica this has been great fun.

[00:29:49] [SPEAKER_00]: I look forward to having you back and listeners make sure that you sign up for all of that information.

[00:29:53] [SPEAKER_00]: Join her for at the event and sign up to both of those properties.

[00:29:58] [SPEAKER_00]: Jessica I will have you back again soon.

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for joining me.

[00:30:00] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much Dave.

[00:30:03] [SPEAKER_00]: Now I want to highlight an upcoming interview.

[00:30:05] [SPEAKER_00]: I spoke with Hugo Milan and we discussed the concept of a mixed labor strategy in hiring and its importance around hiring practices.

[00:30:13] [SPEAKER_00]: He's emphasizing the need to utilize various forms of labor such as temporary workers and remote workers to create an optimal workforce.

[00:30:22] [SPEAKER_00]: Let me give you a preview of that interview.

[00:30:25] [SPEAKER_01]: The holy grail of AI application in general in the recruiting space has for a long time been the AI would ingest a job description and thoughtfully pass it into skills and experiences and other requirements.

[00:30:39] [SPEAKER_01]: At the same time it would ingest a whole bunch of candidate profiles and then it would start matching.

[00:30:46] [SPEAKER_01]: You could even conceive of watching recruiters making the match and learning from how recruiters make matches and eventually taking that over.

[00:30:53] [SPEAKER_01]: Frankly we've not really seen that done successfully except in very specialized instances where either the skills are extremely simplistic or where the skills are extremely precisely structured.

[00:31:07] [SPEAKER_01]: If you're only looking for a set of very specific qualifications that are very precise and you don't care about things like long term career aspirations, cultural fit or anything of that kind then the AI can do the job.

[00:31:21] [SPEAKER_00]: My Patreon supporters already have this interview if you want to listen right now.

[00:31:27] [SPEAKER_00]: It'll drop on the weekend on YouTube and on the podcast feed.

[00:31:31] [SPEAKER_00]: If you're interested I really do encourage you to listen it was a fascinating interview.

[00:31:35] [SPEAKER_00]: You can sign up at patreon.com slash MSB radio.

[00:31:39] [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to thank SalesBuilder our Patreon sponsor whose support makes this show possible.

[00:31:44] [SPEAKER_00]: Focus on your IT sales workflow with the power of automation and visit them at salesbuilder.com that's B-U-I-L-D-R dot com.

[00:31:53] [SPEAKER_00]: And vendors you too can get your name mentioned on the live show.

[00:31:57] [SPEAKER_00]: It's a simple monthly subscription visit patreon.com slash MSB radio for more information.

[00:32:03] [SPEAKER_00]: And listeners you can support the show.

[00:32:06] [SPEAKER_00]: The number one thing you can do to help grow the audience is like share and follow on your favorite platforms.

[00:32:12] [SPEAKER_00]: Make sure to tell a colleague about the business of tech.

[00:32:15] [SPEAKER_00]: And if you really like the show and want to get content early support directly on Patreon with our give what you want model.

[00:32:23] [SPEAKER_00]: You set what you think the content is worth and it helps drive the show.

[00:32:27] [SPEAKER_00]: If you have a question and are listening to the recording send it in at question at MSB radio.com.

[00:32:33] [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for joining me for the Business of Tech Lounge and I will see you next time.

[00:32:48] Music