The following transcript has been edited for length and readability. Listen to the entire discussion here on The Broadband Bunch. The Broadband Bunch is sponsored by ETI Software.
Joe Coldebella:
Hello. Welcome to another episode of The Broadband Bunch. I’m your host, Joe Coldebella. We are in historic downtown Wilson, North Carolina at the 2023 Gig East Event. Gig East is an annual event that exists to bring together local entrepreneurs, business owners, community partners, and industry thought leaders. We are lucky to be joined by the keynote speaker for this event, Stefan Youngblood. Welcome to the Broadband Bunch, Stefan.
Stefan Youngblood:
Great to be here. Boy, this is amazing. This was a really great day today.
Joe Coldebella:
It was awesome. Before we dive into all the cool things, I would love it if you could just share your story with our audience.
Stefan Youngblood:
Sure. I’m a dad of three, and I have five grandkids. I grew up in the Washington, DC area and am part of a large family. My mom and dad were people that just told us to figure out a way to go to college. It was big to them. So one after one Youngblood — first, second, third, fourth, fifth sixth — we were one year apart. I never thought I would use my education, but I did end up going into teaching, traveling the world, and I taught for 10 years. And I work as an entrepreneur right now. I have had some amazing life experiences. I was able to do Mount Everest base camp. A few years ago I went to Nepal, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, Indonesia. I recorded projects in different parts of the world. I taught in Romania and Burma.
Joe Coldebella:
Wow. So that’s great. That’s so awesome because I think that what you’re doing is you’re touching on both things. Two educations, right? There is book education and, and then life education. And that’s so important.
Stefan Youngblood:
You know, I think life education probably has been massive in my, the ups and downs, you know, uh, that have happened, have been pretty significant, and I probably use that part more now.
Joe Coldebella:
Right? You have the foundation and then life comes at us all pretty fast. So we’re here at the Gig East event in the city of Wilson, North Carolina, population of about 50,000 folks. They’re doing some amazing things here. I would love it if you could talk about the event in terms of your experience as a keynote speaker and the feelings that you are getting from the event.
Stefan Youngblood:
So first, this was extraordinary that out of Wilson would come something like this. People think of it as maybe a smaller city or town feel, but this was incredible. It was sort of making a big step into the future. And here’s what’s wild — I told the organizers this — they got me talking about this and decided to do it. It was back in the days of Chat GPT. I say that because now we have GPT 3.5, then 4 which led to prompt engineers, ai, and all of this.
So this conference wasn’t as much about AI back then as it was about Chat GPT, but our world has changed so much. They stepped right into it and had an amazing group of people that were panelists and speakers. It was also very much a take-home advice, take-home education type thing. So that was cool to see. Very well organized too.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. I think this is something that all small cities that want to be involved in the digital economy need to embrace. Because I think we’re seeing that in big cities people are looking for alternatives. And I think the City of Wilson has done a phenomenal job of setting the table, and they have some great things going on.
Stefan Youngblood:
I told one of the organizers, Emily, that I need to let them know this and let people know on the outside that this is what small towns need to be doing so they know this is a pathway to growth. Maximize AI and the new tools that are out there, digital technology, step into that because it’s going to help your town or your city.
Joe Coldebella:
So your keynote address was about AI. I was talking with someone at my table, and we were just kind of bantering back and forth. And I said that I was going to be interviewing you. He was like please ask him what was the thing that started it all. What was the thing that got Stefan interested in AI?
Stefan Youngblood:
Yeah. So I have got to tell you, I’m not a sci-fi person. I’ve never read a sci-fi book, never even walked into that section in a bookstore. That whole thing is just not me. However, at the beginning of December, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, made an announcement. And he just said, “Hey, you guys, just try this. See what you think.”
Well, I was in some of those first rooms in some social media apps. At first, I thought, “What are these guys talking about?” Do you know? They’re acting like this is going to change the world. Well, as I listened, I thought, oh, this makes sense. Wait a minute; wait a minute. I understand this. And they got deeper and deeper. It was understandable to me. So it made sense. And when I saw that, it wasn’t as much as I saw the future and sci-fi, I saw something that’s very real that works. And when I realized it can change big things and little things in lives. So I jumped in.
Joe Coldebella:
So it’ll be interesting for folks to look back 20 years from now to see if it really is this seminal moment. I really think that one of the other ones is the iPhone, right? Well, how could a phone be such a transformative kind of thing? But I think this might be the next pivot.
Stefan Youngblood:
Well, think about this now. Everybody’s got an iPhone, a cell phone, an Android. They’ve got devices. This is different because the world’s full of devices right now. And any of them you can pull up AI on. So it’s much bigger than that. The tools that you can do for it, for it to be available on any device, it’s out of this world, really.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. It’s crazy. So, earlier you said that AI is not synthetic. AI is real, and it’s here. Can you sort of unpack that? I think that had a lot of incredible places we could go with it.
Stefan Youngblood:
That’s attributed to a professor at MIT. And I have to tell you, it’s easy to look at some things that might seem like, well, I can’t see them. I don’t feel them; I don’t understand. But if you try Chat GPT and put in these things we call prompts and watch what can be created at your fingertips, it really changes everything. It’s very real because you can prompt and answer and get an immediate response.
You know, they talk about large language models and natural language processing. I can talk into it, and I get a response. I talk into my phone, and I can get a book back. And I can tell it to create for me a lesson plan for a fourth-grade class about Harriet Tubman that’s 20 minutes long with an activity. And within 30 seconds, it’s there. By the way, I did that with my mother. She’s 89 years old, and she couldn’t believe it.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s awesome. I love that story. Is there a way that you could create the story in the voice of Harriet Tubman? Maybe not her but someone else in history. That would be incredible.
Stefan Youngblood:
Unbelievable. By the way, during the demonstration I showed this morning, I was using a tool called D-ID. They do some amazing voiceovers with all types of different voices. And I accidentally pressed the wrong button. And the voice that you heard this morning was a woman’s voice over a man. I shouldn’t have played that one. You know it’s not very realistic. But listen, the voices that you can pull up and have them read books, read stories, create things, we’ve never been able to do it right at our fingertips. That’s the part that’s really changed.
Joe Coldebella:
Everyone’s minds are totally blown, mine included. Is this literally just a tool? Or is this just the new shiny object? We’re all excited, but is it just the evolution of the internet?
Stefan Youngblood:
Yeah. So I think it’s the internet evolving for sure. We wouldn’t have this if it wasn’t for, you know, us having a place on the Internet. However, the idea of taking all that information that’s out there and placing it at our fingertips and allowing us to choose what we want to create, what we want to be, what we want to do, it’s really putting a lot of power and control in humans’ hands that we just haven’t had before. It’s been sort of reserved for coders and people in computer science and data trainers. But now, we can do it from our fingertips.
Joe Coldebella:
Well as you were saying that answer, I was like, that’s exactly right. I think it’s just another step because the internet in my mind is the collective mind of everyone in the world. And so what we needed to do was gather all that information as we’re also contributing more to it as well. But now we’ve got all that data to pull from to create these great experiences.
Stefan Youngblood:
I was wondering at the beginning of December, what the heck is happening here? Who’s doing this? You know, I was putting in some prompts to prompt Chat GPT. And I’m wondering where these answers are coming from. And then they would say something like, you know, we put together all this. Yeah. But who did that? And I kept going back and finally, they said, “Well, it’s a company in Silicon Valley called OpenAI.”
You can look them up. It was 120 people back then. People who had put information in. It was processed in such a way that we could go and grab it in a millisecond and get an answer back. It was sort of a slightly predictive model where it’s predicting kind of like a spell check or something like that. And it spells it on the way or gives you a suggestion for the next three words. Now we can put something in, and it’ll give us a whole paragraph, a story like I did this morning, or an entire book.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. And it’s interesting as well because we are at a technology conference where everyone here is, I would assume for the most part, open to new technology. Then you asked the very simple question, “Who here is afraid of AI?”
I was shocked at how many folks raised their hand because I’m actually a full 180. I think it’s the greatest thing since Atari. When you saw those hands go up, what was your initial reaction?
Stefan Youngblood:
Well, I was surprised. I thought, oh, crap, I might have to change my message a little bit. But how about this? Let’s turn that around a little bit and say, a group of people who were afraid of AI walked into a place to learn about AI. So they weren’t totally afraid. They’re more curious about it. And that’s a lot of bravery right there. Somebody said that humility is realizing you can learn something from anyone. And the idea that all these smart entrepreneurs can get together, they know there’s something out there, but help me to figure this out. Help me to understand.
Joe Coldebella:
I love it. You’re a hundred percent right. I think we fear things that we don’t understand. We fear things that we don’t see. And it’s one of those things where you see something off in the distance and you are like, “Oh my God, what is that?” And then as you get closer and you are like, “That’s just like a little puppy.” I think we need to embrace this moment.
Stefan Youngblood:
So I was trying to start with this explanation by saying that you’re already in it. How many people have Netflix? So, you know, that sort of predictive — if you like that movie, you’re going to like this one. How many people like Spotify? Oh, I got that. Pandora, you just keep on going. Facebook, Amazon Prime. Hey, I’ll give you four other things that you might like just like that box of crayons you bought. So this whole idea that we’re already inside of it, I wanted that to be a natural step that this is already happening right now. This is just the next step of putting some control in your hand.
Joe Coldebella:
I think it’s been behind the scenes. And now the curtains are going up. And now it’s time for everybody to get on stage and perform. But now that it is out there into the world it brings up the question of ethics, and it’s one of the questions that rattles around in my brain as well. And I was surprised that one of the first questions that someone brought up to you was about ethics. And I was wondering if we could talk about how we should approach this.
Stefan Youngblood:
Well, I’m in those discussions all the time. And it’s gotten so deep that I’ve been asking the question, “Wait, who’s deciding what ethical means?” I think that Sam Altman is doing an amazing job at trying to steer this as a CEO of OpenAI. He’s going around the world, and this question is coming up as world governments and leaders discuss the ethical approach. One person’s ethical approach might be different than someone else’s. These discussions get so profoundly deep that they start to talk about, “Well, what is human? What is life?” And if ethics has to do with those two things, do we have to redefine some things here?
Joe Coldebella:
You showed the example of AI Tom Cruise. It’s amazing in just a few years how incredibly accurate that is to Tom Cruise. And so it gets scary there a little bit. It’s also a lot of fun, but are there going to be any guardrails?
Stefan Youngblood:
Yeah. I think that hit a billion, some views of that. It’s over a billion. It’s just unbelievable. So did he approve that? Probably not. A few of them have come out recently that have sort of rattled Twitter and all of that. But in this case, I don’t know if we’re going to be able to have some sort of guardrails on that. Someone talked about a sort of watermark, maybe on a video or maybe an audio watermark. But personally, I feel like this is way out there right now.
Joe Coldebella:
Well, I think the problem is that the amount of content that is produced every day is just — it’s a tsunami. Then there are people that are going to do it, and there are people that are not going to do it. You also gave a great example in terms of some lawyers that used Chat GPT for some casework, but they were wrong. And so it’s like, now who’s to blame there? Is it the lawyers’ fault for submitting the work, or is it the person that supplied it? It’s crazy. And I think we’re still in the Wild West period.
Stefan Youngblood:
So I wonder whether some laws are going to need to be defined. Some cases are going to need to happen to sort of set a precedent. And there will be some new studies and how we approach this. Can you use 10 seconds of someone’s video or something in this? How much of a person’s face could you use — of Tom Cruise’s face? But it’s not Tom Cruise. It’s you and I, it’s somebody grabbing my face and putting a voice in it. And if you make me taller and look better, that’s cool.
Joe Coldebella:
I’ve been told I have a face for radio.
Stefan Youngblood:
That’s good. So listen, this is going to come up a lot, and here’s what it’s going to draw close to. And it’s an issue. It’s the question of what’s real and what’s not, and the perception of what’s right in front of us. So for us to figure it out as adults is one thing, but for elementary school students to see something and not know what’s real or who’s saying it. Our world is moving into a place that, uh, this is going to be one of the main problems. We don’t know exactly what’s in front of our eyes, or what we’re hearing with our ears.
Joe Coldebella:
So that’s a great segue into where I wanted to lead next. I’ve got some friends who are teachers. And they’re scared and excited because they’re afraid that it’s going to become a cut-and-paste kind of world. And for a student that’s not a good thing. But for business, it’s everything. So how do we tackle the question of schooling? And once you get your take, I’ve got a very interesting idea.
Stefan Youngblood:
Let’s start with K through eight. So, man, I got to tell you for elementary school kids, there must be some dampers on this. And we’ve been throwing around some answers and some options in some groups that I’ve been in. But you can’t just offer this in its present state to any kid without any boundaries on it. So here would be a great thing if somebody’s listening to this podcast, just ask Chat GPT, “Should you be able to use Chat GPT in elementary schools at that age, with there being no boundaries, no guardrails on it, just as it is now. Should it be released into elementary school?” Try that and see what Chat GPT says.
Joe Coldebella:
So as I was doing prep for our discussion, I saw that someone asked Steve Jobs about how he deals with his kids on the iPhone. And the same question was asked to Mark Zuckerberg in terms of his children on Facebook. And they both gave the same exact answer. They don’t let their kids on either one of those platforms.
Stefan Youngblood:
I have some friends that work for Google. They do amazing things, and they feel that their kids are advanced, so they’re giving them everything, all the tools and all the knowledge with parental supervision. But I think there must be a different type of supervision that doesn’t allow some things. You can’t let that happen.
No. Let me think about that for one more second. It’s going to happen. AI is already in so many of the kids’ programs. That’s what’s actually developed a lot of them. It’s sort of the part of AI that’s just out there. Just give them Chat GPT, and let them go. So there are different parts of AI. It’s already being used in elementary schools. National Geographic is doing it behind the scenes and some of the great things we would offer our kids anytime. It’s just the random full usage of it by itself that can be a problem.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. As we’re talking back and forth here, I am reminded that we were in a pandemic. And the amount of growth that was stunted because of homeschooling by no fault of anyone’s, because how do you prepare for that? You don’t. But we need to really think about how we move forward with this. I’m getting on my soapbox a little bit, but I think that we should allow kids to be kids. And allow kids to run wild and discover things without looking through or holding something in their hand.
Stefan Youngblood:
Yeah. I know a young man. He’s 13. His name is, uh, Raul, and he’s in India. He’s a genius; he’s brilliant. His Twitter channel that’s out of this world. He knows AI better than anyone I know, and he teaches the world about it. And someone came into a gathering that we had the other day on social media, and we’re kind of talking to him about maybe getting outside and what kids should be doing.
But I think it’s different for everybody. His dad is in the room when we talk by the way. They would never let children in some of those places by themselves. But I can see that not everybody is going to fit in the same mold where my kids should and shouldn’t do that. I’m just saying elementary school as a whole and some programs as a whole must be moved into in a careful way.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah. And I thought you made a great point in your presentation about customizing education. I would love it if you could sort of unpack that as well because I think that that might be sort of at least a silver lining in terms of just letting these kids get the education in a way that gets them really excited about what they’re doing.
Stefan Youngblood:
Yeah. There’s a very, very popular global program called the Khan Academy where people learn all types of things. Sal Khan is the CEO and he started it. He actually did a TED Talk about two months ago, and he introduced this brand-new part of their business. Instead of it just being online, it’s going to be a customized education for anyone where AI is integrated into your chatbot, in your personal phone. And you’ll be learning the way you learn at your own pace. And because AI is assisting you — I like to call it AI-assisted intelligence also — it enables people to sort of catch up and sort of be at the same place. But he believes that in years coming, education is going to be customized for every child on planet Earth.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, that’s great. We all learn different differently. And it’s great. You spoke about a woman from Canada helping some kids in Ethiopia. Can you share that story?
Stefan Youngblood:
So imagine this, here’s the sort of connection. Covid comes, some social media has blasted off in its popularity, virtual everything, churches, virtual online, and some things like clubhouses, you know, they exploded. Now we’re sitting around having conversations with people on social media. Well, that became an open door for a bunch of us — I was one of them — to talk to people from all over the globe. She comes into a room and is just listening for the longest time. And we’re in there talking, and then she starts to pick up on some of these skills and tools that she can use. She’s Ethiopian living in Canada and a mom of two kids. And she found out that these skills can be beneficial to her. She started learning AI skills and then realized they could be beneficial for her country.
Her name is Saday, and she’s extraordinary. I watch how much she’s grown and how much she’s influencing people. She’s gotten on TikTok now, and she’s teaching people how to do this and teaching a 15-year-old in Ethiopia. So just watching that sort of course of events from Covid to social media through this whole type thing, into ai, into a new way of learning into the, the heart and the mind of a young man in Ethiopia who’s now able to make money from this, you know, making blogs. He can create a blog or artwork for someone’s website.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s great. We are sort of creating this whole new way to go at problems. When we talked about it, there were terms that I had never heard before. I always refer to myself as an editor whenever I do anything in Chat GBT or anything. But you used the word “prompting”. Which I’d never used or heard before. But I thought was really good.
Stefan Youngblood:
So I want to say something that’s cool. The idea of prompting has been around in technology for a while. But the idea of being a prompt engineer is new. In December I’m sitting around listening to some very smart people put questions, sort of a little nudge, in this block there and try to see what AI would come up with. It was in Chat GPT. They kept doing it in these amazing things. They knew they were prompting it to have a response. And they kept doing it. And it got so technical that, listen, if we do this in a better, more detailed way, you’re kind of engineering a prompt to get the absolute best response. They said, “Guys, I think in the future there might be something like a prompt engineer.”
We blasted off into the world of prompting a prompt maker, prompt creator, like a content creator. But now they’re using prompts to create their content. There are some that were advertised $335,000 salary for prompt engineers. I was in a conversation with a very high-level PR in marketing. And they said that the wave of the future is for large companies to be hiring prompt engineers. And above the prompt engineers, they’ll have entire departments that answer to a prompt strategist. So we don’t sit around and write things totally on whiteboards and all of that anymore. There’s a third person in the room with us. And normally in this, I could have my phone out and kind of pull up some cool things at the same time. So prompting is an unbelievable skill to have in the future.
Joe Coldebella:
I think that’s really a great point. When you put a generic question in Chat GPT, you’re going to get a generic answer. What you need to do is you need to take ownership of the tool and make it your own. That’s going to be interesting to see how that evolves. I mean, will those become majors? Will they be subsets of marketing, subsets engineering? I don’t know. It’s going to be interesting. It’s going to be fun watching it evolve.
Stefan Youngblood:
You know what, it sounds like you just now went to college and university and your paradigm was that we got to fit it into the context of college and university. I want you to know that there is a large group of people in society that are starting to understand that these tools might be more advantageous for you to know that the four years of a degree. And I won’t go into any of that. As I said, you know, my family, we all went that way, into a college degree. But there are things that you can learn now, and you should. We don’t know what the tech field is going to look like in the future. But you need to be learning some of these skills because it’ll just help you in the long run.
Joe Coldebella:
I couldn’t agree with you more. This is a little scary, but I think there’s going to be a barbell effect. There are going to be people who embrace it, who understand it, who use it, who excel from it. Then there’s a smattering in the middle, and then there’s going to be a lot of folks left behind. And I think it’s important that we make sure that we at least give them the opportunity to raise their hand. Hey, listen, guys, the train’s leaving the station; get on it. You don’t have to take it all the way to the end of the line, but it’s important for you to at least get on to see what’s there. I thought someone made a great point today. It might be beneficial to you somewhere down the line, so let’s at least discuss it.
Stefan Youngblood:
Sure. Well, I think it is at the extreme places in our future. It’s not going away. These things are here to stay. We ended up talking about the whole existential parts of this and where humanity can be going as robots. There’s a part of this called AGI. It means artificial general intelligence. If you go to the website of Open AI right now, you’ll see it at the top. And on the second page, it says something like, “Our goal is to achieve, artificial general intelligence,” which in essence is creating computers that are smarter than us as humans. And they say that the role of it is to help us have a better life, pretty much to help humanity, help cure diseases and foresee some different things, difficult things ahead. So we get to talking about that. And then we decided to write a story.
So I’m telling you that we went from one extreme to another. There were new people in there who were like, what is this? What the heck is this you’re talking about?”
And I said, “Well, name four things y’all. Let’s just watch AI do something cool.”
And somebody said, “Aluminum can.”
Somebody else said, “Mars.”
It was ridiculous. Somebody else said, “A roll of toilet paper.”
And there was one other thing, it might have been a chocolate bar. It wrote a story. And I’m telling you now, I wasn’t alive in the 1950s, but this was like a radio that you’re glued to because this story is just amazing. By the way, we had it written in the style of Tom Clancy. We did it again this morning. And we had people just pick up random things. We watched this crazy story, and it was fun to read.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s the first fundamental rule of advertising in terms of creativity. What you do is you take two ideas that you know, and you bring them together and then you twist them. And that’s how you create something new. So all this is, is a tool that allows us to dive deep into our imagination. I’m super excited about the opportunity to learn about all the different things. This leads me to my next point. Chat GPT and Google Bard are sort of like Coke and Pepsi, but there’s so much out there. It’s amazing. And I would love it if we just touch on those a little bit just to allow folks to whet their appetite.
Stefan Youngblood:
When Chat GPT was released, it sort of got out ahead of the races, and it burst on the scene. But I don’t think any search engine was just going to allow that to happen and not have an answer. So Google started getting Bard together. Microsoft put a lot of money into Chat GPT. And I think that market share for 2023 might look different between those two giants than it did in 2022 because of how Chat GPT has taken off.
But besides them, there are newcomers in the field. There is you.com. It’s a browser-based chatbot that enables you to chat and get answers directly from your browser right from the internet. Whereas Chat GPT says that it only has information up to September 2021. Then Perplexity AI comes on the scene. I use Perplexity all the time. It’s so amazing because it cites the sources where it got its information from.
Joe Coldebella:
And are those active links as well?
Stefan Youngblood:
Active. Yeah. So imagine you’re searching for something, and somebody says that it is a bunch of garbage coming out of Chat GPT. But you go to Perplexity. And you find information that has sources, I’m following every one of these sources just like I would in a library or something. You look it up, then track it down. That’s what these new resources enable you to do. So I would just throw out you.com, poe.com, perplexity.ai, Chat GPT, and then there’s Bing, you know?
Joe Coldebella:
Sure. You also mentioned Flow GPT. Could you kind of touch on that one?
Stefan Youngblood:
Yeah. So Flow is a directory. Flowgpt.com is a directory of different tools and platforms that are made with ai. So you can say, “I want an AI that turns my text into a picture.” You put that in there and watch. You’re going to get 40 different tools that enable you to do that. That’s what chatbots and AI enable us to do, create new things through artificial intelligence. So that’s a directory, just like Easy with AI is one. Just if you think about it, just what do you want? Well, there’s an AI for that.
Joe Coldebella:
So, I think one of the things that folks need to do, even if they don’t think that it’s going to be part of their lives, is to at least examine AI just to understand it.
Stefan Youngblood:
If you started with this, just go there, and say, “Write a story about a dog, a boy, and a tree.” Just do it. And if you watch that happen, it’s kind of fun. It’s magical; it’s interesting. And the curiosity that it strikes up will make you ask another question. And if you ask three questions that are very interesting, then you move ahead and say, “Well, can you rewrite my resume?” If you do that and watch the magic of it in front of you, you’re going to be kind of hooked on having it be used as a tool that helps you with productivity in your life.
Joe Coldebella:
Yeah, that’s great. As a young copywriter, one of the first rules we were given is writing is rewriting. And so this is sort of the same way. This is a process. So if you want to do a resume, don’t just put in the information, do it once and then put it as a PDF and send it off. Use it and then course-correct it from there.
Stefan Youngblood:
Yeah, lots of my friends right now are creating images. That’s a very big thing with text. So turn this text into a picture, they’re using programs like one called Mid Journey. There’s a new one that’s out. Gen 2 just got released and listen, I can put a text describing something a prompt in. And it’ll create a video. So it’s text to video. That’s extraordinary. Not only that, but I also saw one the other day that was text to music. So you put a text and the type of music you want, soft guitar, piano; and it creates music. Oh, you don’t like that one? Just regenerate. You’re writing your own music even though you can’t write music. You’re speaking music into existence.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s crazy. All the audio engineers and all those folks are going to be upset, but those guys are experts. You shouldn’t think that the world is coming to an end. Think that the world is expanding because you’ve got the expertise and you take that expertise that maybe someone who is good, you can make something awesome.
Stefan Youngblood:
So I play piano. I studied it in college in a conservatory and studied music. Well, that’s one thing, but creating music and using the electronic part of it to produce and use it to clarify music and make it cleaner and put a production out. Everyone’s been using digital stuff. This is just a new tool in the digital process. And how about this one? I don’t know of many vocalists who sing a song and just release it without some sort of pitch correction in their voice. The greatest people who sing, some of them do it live. And you would never know that there’s a tiny bit of pitch correction, making sure that what you hear is in key.
Joe Coldebella:
It’s crazy. Stefan, this has been a phenomenal visit. Before I ask my last question, two things. The first thing is, you talked a little bit about chatbots, and I was wondering if you could just touch on that just a little bit. I think that’s something that can have a practical application that people can use every day.
Stefan Youngblood:
So think of a chatbot as a tool that transmits information that you can relate to. So Chat GPT is just a chatbot, and it’s owned by Open AI. Perplexity is a type of chatbot. But listen, now you can create your own. So those are created with information that’s fed into them. You decide what that little tool is going to have. You go to a place like chatbuilt.com and you’re going to see a bunch of tools there. And in 40 seconds you can create this little chatbot that you own, you name, and you fill it with your own information. You can say, “Crawl this website, this URL, and this one, these 15 sites for information that would relate to my topic.” And let’s say it’s about plumbing.
Joe Coldebella:
These are all no code, correct? It’s all just attached.
Stefan Youngblood:
Exactly. You just grab it and drop it. And it grabs everything for you. And then, oh, I have some files on my computer, some PDF files. It conglomerates all that into one little piece of information. You send it to your friend, and it’s your own personal chatbot that you can stick on your computer if you want. Put it as your welcome screen. You know, as a matter of fact, people are taking a chatbot, turning it into an avatar of a face, turning the voice of it into a person. And now when you go to their website, a person is there talking to you with every bit of information that’s been put into that chatbot.
Joe Coldebella:
Crazy times. We live in some crazy times.
Stefan, if folks want to get ahold of you and learn more about you, where can they go? I know that you do a lot of great things.
Stefan Youngblood:
The easiest way is I have a tool called prime prompts.com. My information is on there, and we put a lot of different tools out that’ll help people in this area of ai. And we also help people in their place of employment. I have a job agency, it’s called Hireblack.com, H-I-R-E B-L-A-C-K. Our jobs come curated through Career Builder. I think we have 203,000 jobs there right now.
Joe Coldebella:
Phenomenal. Awesome. Final question. So we had a group of folks there that were afraid of AI. Will that fear go away?
Stefan Youngblood:
Um, honestly, probably not because it’s evolving into some things, and it’s evolving in into more unknown. Yeah. And we’re always going to be at the place of, you just don’t know what you don’t know.
Joe Coldebella:
That’s a great place to end it. Stefan, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for speaking today. Hopefully, in the future, we can have this conversation again just and see where we’re at in the world of AI.
Stefan Youngblood:
That sounds great. I appreciate it.
Joe Coldebella:
All right. That’s going to wrap up this episode of The Broadband Bunch. Until next time, we’ll see you guys later.
