From Hype to Workflow: Making AI Actually Useful

Automatically transcribed, so there may be the odd slip.

Alastair Greenerhello and welcome to the Alastair Greener Generationally Speaking podcast, where we look at bridging the generation gap by debunking myths, tackling stereotypes, and sharing practical tips on how we can build stronger intergenerational connections. Today's guest builds AI workflows with his team delivering intelligent agent systems that replace manual work and drive real scale. Well, it's a real pleasure today to talk to the founder of Get AI Powers, George Cairns. Hi George. First of all, you can tell me what Agen means.

George CairnsSo it basically just means that we build systems that just replace the manual effort that a human does on the computer. It's agentic. So it just works by itself? Yeah. Like pretty much like a human. Yeah,

Alastair GreenerOkay, brilliant. Thank you for that. And so anyway, welcome to the podcast. It's great to talk. I'm really excited to be talking about AI with you because it's on the tip of everybody's tongues today. Whether it's through confusion, whether it's through. Um, just sheer intrigue, but we all know it's here to stay and it's gonna be very much a part of our future lives. And we're certainly gonna talk in a while about the different generations, their interaction with ai and, you know, how you in your work can help us all, um, get closer and maybe AI is the way to do that. But first I wanna talk a little bit about you and your generation, because you are a millennial. Would you say most of the millennials, uh, or most of the people working in a are, are millennials, gen Z, older or younger?

George CairnsI would say that typically around my age, I, I would say around like 20 to 30 years old. Uh, and there are a few people that I'm, I'm working with that are, uh, embracing it and they are even older. Um, one of my, one of our strategic partners, he's, I think 60 years old. He would be really annoyed if I got that wrong. But, um, I think he's, I think he's around 60, but, um, he's like even more. Uh, embrace the AI world and he knows things that even I, I'm struggling to comprehend. So, uh, yeah, it's just, yeah.

Alastair GreenerThat backs up some of my research that I did for my book, which showed that actually a lot of, um, gen X and boomers are far more into technology and innovation than people often give them credit for. So, uh, that's really, really good to hear.

George CairnsI think it's because the older generation have gone through so many developments over the years. They went through the the um.com boom. They, they're used to whole infrastructure changes, digital revolutions. So I think from, from what I've gathered from working with boomers and even Gen Xs as well, that they have articulated to me, look Ai. This is just another thing that we have to go through. And whereas we don't really, we we, the only thing that, um, millennials have gone through is like the social media kind of boom and that, and that is nowhere near to what they have gone through, which was like the the it.com era, which was, which is, it's huge.

Alastair GreenerI would absolutely agree with you. And, and what's interesting for that generation, they learned how to program video tape recorders. And trust me, that was a real marathon. If you manage to master that, you can manage to master anything. But, uh, yeah, no, I, I absolutely agree with you. They are a lot more agile, not all. But a lot are a lot more agile than we give them credit for. And so when it comes to millennials, uh, which you, you know, being a younger millennial, would you say you are fairly typical of your age group or are you, do, do you think you break the mold?

George CairnsI think I am breaking the mold and there are a few people when it comes to the millennial generation, if you haven't. Uh, and also from my background, I've been doing sales for the past, what, 10, 11 years. Um, I've had the security of having a, a con, like a job and like a turn up for work, work the nine to five, I turn off after nine, five o'clock, and that job security. I am finding that a lot of people are still in and they kind of, they see this AI wave coming and they aren't actually taking it seriously. And I think that there are few people who are taking it seriously and realizing, ah, we could, we, we need to upskill ourselves. But one interesting fact that I wanted to share with you actually today is that. I do AI master classes, and the typical people that tend to join up them and join them are not millennials. They are typically people that are older than me, or they are people who own a business and they're forcing millennials to attend, um, because they realize that they, those guys need to upskill. I'm, I'm trying to promote these workshops all the time and I'm saying to people, look. If you are in a nine to five job and half of your job is sitting at a computer, you need to upskill yourself and start learning things that AI can teach you. So you have job security and you can, you are dependable and you are malleable to a business. And I think that there's so many people that are in my situation, like previously before I started this, uh, agency that are sitting there not realizing what's. Just an arms length away. They could just easily upskill themselves and people are just, I don't know. I think they're a bit afraid. Afraid. I dunno how they're feeling really.

Alastair GreenerI'm, I, I have to say I'm, I'm quite staggered to hear that, to be honest with you because maybe because of the space I'm in. I'm, I, I hear things. But I, I'm just staggered that there are still some people who are being a little bit of, you know, ostrich in the sand about ai because it's clearly the next stage of the digital revolution, but one of the biggest stages, and it's almost like a, the, you know, industrial revolution all over again. I was listening to a program the other day talking about people losing their jobs potentially and talking about actually. You know, um, they talked about that in two times about knitting and the knitting machines were going to make people lose their jobs. Yes. They had to reskill and things change, but actually people didn't lose their jobs as such. I mean, would, would you agree with that as a, as a concept?

George CairnsYeah, I think personally there will be. Position where people will lose their jobs. But then when the companies realize that they've just got rid of loads of people, they'll then realize, oh no, we still need those people to do this. And then we still need those people to have the. One-to-one interactions with our customers, so then they'll have to rehire again. And I think the, what I'm seeing with clients and other larger organizations, they end up implementing an AI system and they're like, okay, cool. It's, it's, um, helping our business development reps save X amount of times, X amount of time. And therefore those business development reps have more time to focus on. Like client interactions and things like that. Are they stopping hiring? No, they're actually just reframing their hiring kind of structure and the job spec. Instead of them saying in their job spec that they need experience with certain software and they need good IT skills, they are now like really dumbing down on the fact that that person needs. Human interaction skills and they need to be a very good communicator.

Alastair GreenerAnd what about those entering the workforce? Because of course, gen Z who went to university, it was just starting AI when they went, but now they're coming out and I, I know there's quite a lot of anxiety around, you know, am I going to be. You know, is, is my job even going to last? Am I going to be made redundant? Is there an expectation because I'm Gen Z, I'm young, that I will know all about ai, and in fact, I don't really know an awful lot about it.

George CairnsYeah, a hundred percent. Like graduates are really unfortunate that they are coming out of university. And they are not primed for the workspace and the working, the job specs, and they haven't been told that this is happening. So they're coming out expecting jobs. Available to them, and those jobs are not available because those typical entry level jobs are being taken over using ai. But that I don't think is, I believe that that, I don't think that that's AI's fault. That's neither the. Graduate's fault. Personally, I think it is the executives and the owners of these large organizations that they're not realizing that these graduates, that these graduates still need to be employed by them. It's just that their entry level job needs to change. The entry level job needs to be a bit more senior. They just need to have the state, which they have the skills. Actually, they need to have the skills to train these, these, uh, graduates faster because the entry level jobs don't exist anymore. And they need to have the, the skills and the technology to train them faster, which they do have. But again, these business owners and and executives, they need someone to hold their hand to. Through this transition, and instead they're, they're just focused on return on investment. Let's save money by implementing AI automations. Yeah.

Alastair GreenerYeah, and it's a really interesting reframing that's gonna have to take place because you know, at the end of the day, the organization, when you recruit somebody, that person needs to bring value to the business in some sort, and for the organization to understand how that value is gonna manifest itself. That's gonna be the challenge for them because as you quite rightly say, they're gonna have to, you know, rework what that job description is, what that entry level job description is. But at the same time, if you are a big organization and you are taking on, you know, maybe a hundred graduates a year worldwide, that's, that's one heck of a job to, to do, isn't it?

George CairnsYeah, it's gonna take, it is gonna take a long time. And I, I believe, and like my business partners also believe, like my, I work with a, a guy called Aaron, uh, Godwin Patel, who is uh, an AI. Data scientist and he runs a, a research and development company in, in London, and he's been working in AI for the past 12, 13 years. And he said that the transition that organizations have to make is not just from. The infrastructure level, but it's on the human level as well. And unfortunately it's very easy to change on the infrastructure level and it's gonna take time for them to change on the human level and which is kind of goes into my next point. We are going to see a very small, I don't wanna call it dystopia, but it's gonna be a bit of a struggle for a very short period of time before their, that everyone realizes that this is. Be they need to focus on the humans as well. Yeah, so I, I really focus on the human aspect. When we implement a system, uh, which I don't think a lot of people do, when we implement a system that's automating everything that they're doing on a computer, we make sure that that human, that is, that we're helping to automate their, their job role. We make sure that there is something that they can do that's going to be bene more beneficial to the business. Like, which is why I tend to focus on what my old job used to be, which is business development. 'cause if I was able to not spend time at a computer, I would be able to go out, go to events, meet people face to face, and have that human engagement, which is more beneficial, which generates more opportunities, more connections, and ultimately more sales.

Alastair GreenerThe, the challenge for an organization, especially a large one, is they're going to have big legacy systems, which is why newer, younger companies are usually more agile because they can adopt. Technology, they can adopt AI ease in, in easier because they don't have those huge legacy systems. So if you are a massive organization, like a big bank or insurance company right now, and you are looking to work the system in a way that you can take advantage of AI, but somehow express your way through that change of legacy system, what kind of steps do you help them with?

George CairnsYeah, so we look at APIs. So if they are, have got a legacy system,

Alastair GreenerAPIs.

George CairnsAPIs are just, uh, it's kind of like an API key is just like an application. Um, I don't actually, I don't actually know what it's, it stands for. Aaron, uh, knows what it stands for, but I always thought of an API. Being a kind of key and it, and they do call them API keys and that bit of that key, that bit of code allows you to access a a system and take information out of it and pull it somewhere else. A lot of these legacy systems tend to not have good APIs. Um, and so construction companies tend to have this, uh, banks and, uh, mortgage companies in and insurers, those platforms that they have. Yes, they might be old, but they tend to have actually good APIs. But I would say that if you have a good API with the platforms that you are using a hundred percent, anything is possible. But if you don't, you have two options either. Transition to a new platform or build something yourself. And that's

Alastair GreenerAnd actually I.

George CairnsYeah.

Alastair Greeneras we were talking, I just looked it up. It, it actually stands for application Programming Interface. There you go. So any, anybody listening can now find out what that is? But let's get back to the human thing because this is the, the part that obviously I find really interesting is, is how different generations are going to grapple with the change. Some will find it straightforward and easy, especially those of who are more technically minded. Um, plus of course. People themselves. They need to be agile, they need to have that, um, you know, that willingness to learn. As you have said, some older people actually are. What about young people coming into the workplace? Let's say you've joined an organization within the last couple of years. And AI is, is emerging. It's getting, uh, uh, to be a bigger and bigger part of that business. What sort of advice do you give them to help them keep up where they feel comfortable and not intimidated by it?

George CairnsLearn how to use ai, so it just educates you on on every other role that you could possibly do. For example, coding. As you can tell, I dunno what API means, but I know how to build a website and connect it to another website, for example, and get a, a platform and connect them to how, how do I know that if I've got no technical expertise, it's because I've just educated myself on how to use orchestral platforms. Another big word, sorry. Um, like make an NHN and Zapier. These platforms, connect other platforms together, and if you are, and if you are a, a Gen Z or even like a, a millennial or just any, anyone who's around my age. The first thing that you should be doing, no matter what role you are doing, is just understanding how AI will be able to educate me on using these platforms. So it will upskill me. So any, any certain challenge that I have in, in my job or if a a c-level executive or a CEO of the business has a challenge, I can put my hand up and say, oh, I can fix that. And suddenly I've just become dependable.

Alastair GreenerBut that's okay. Jordan, I'm gonna hold you to account here a little bit, if you don't mind. Um, purely because yes, that's fine. If you are of that sort of mentality, if you have that sort of viewpoint of life, you know, there's a lot of people who are in administrative jobs, they're in jobs which are not technical. They don't need to use platforms. They are purely users. So, so effectively, if you like. Someone today who uses social media knows nothing about the mechanics behind it and how it works. They're just a user. They might be using chat, GPT or Claude or one of the other platforms, uh, copilot for example. I, I've, I know quite a few companies who've basically make copilot their, um, their choice of platform for ai, but for those people who are just users who are not going to get involved in any of the. Behind the scenes things. What about them? Because to be quite honest with you, the sort of things you were talking about there, I'm thinking, my goodness, me, if I was Gen Z, me, I, I would think, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna sink here.

George CairnsYeah, and if you have the, that, if you had a, a negative mentality about it. Isn't a get up and go driven type of attitude then, and you are not willing to learn then unfortunately, yes. Like your job will eventually be replaced and you are, you will need to learn something else because if you want

Alastair Greenerare you, are you saying that everyone is gonna have to learn the sort of like the technicalities of ai or

George Cairns' cause I, I

Alastair Greenerbe like other things? No, but you, you are talking about platforms. You're talking about things that, you know, I, and I would say that I'm, you know, I have a knowledge of AI I use. Ai, but I use it for writing. I use it for certain things and for lots of people, that's all they would ever use AI for in the future. They're not going to necessarily be having to use extra platforms outside of copilot Chat, g, pt, and, and and, and so on. So those are the kind of people that I'm thinking of who, yeah, they, they have a willingness to learn, but there's only so far that they want to learn. Um, but they're still open-minded.

George CairnsOkay, cool. So if they is something that they're currently doing on a computer, that is, they feel. That they is a waste of time and they could be doing something better with their time, then I would suggest having a conversation with chat GBT and saying, I do this on my computer. Is there a better way, a more automated way of, uh, doing this? Can I, can I automate this in some way, this process? Then suddenly you, you've just started to go down the rabbit hole, the educational rabbit hole, without you even realizing it. And then if they are able to have a guide from chat, GPT or Claude that says, yeah, this, all you need to do is do this, do this, do this. And it's just a guide, no technical experience needed. You just follow that guide and. You can automate that process that you don't really like doing. And if they have that small little curiosity of just being like, oh, I wonder if I just have a chat with Chait to see if this is possible. I mean, people say that it's possible, but I dunno where to start. Let me see if this can guide me somehow. And oh my God, it's gonna guide you. You are gonna go down that rabbit hole. It's kind of a bit like YouTube where you click on a, a video of. Someone, I don't know, showing you how to prove for catch bread. And then suddenly you go down, you click another YouTube video and click another YouTube video, and suddenly two hours down the road you are watching, uh, Kaz Dance on a Hoover. Like how did you get there? It's got kind of the same thing when it comes to Chuck GBT and asking it those that you, you're not too sure whether it's gonna be able to answer it and, oh my God, it can answer it.

Alastair GreenerWow. I, I have to say it, it's your, you know, I'm, I'm somebody who considers himself sort of reasonably, sort of conversant with, um, ai, although not in, in a commercial workplace environment, but just running my own business. I. One of the things that I think's really interesting here, if I can bring it back to the generational aspect, is, is how it's going to impact all of us. And I, I absolutely take your point that if you are Gen Z right now, you probably need to have a do your research and with the help of chat GT and Claude to find out what's out there in terms of, um, AI and what you could be doing. So, so that's, that's Gen Zs, that's what they can be doing. For those people who are millennials, who, let's be honest, the majority of the HR function in an organization is probably gonna be millennial nowadays, and certainly many of the senior, um, managers are as well. For them, they're going to have to embrace should they be bringing in external people to help them, should they be going down the sort research route? What kind of things should they be doing with their organization that's gonna help them become, you know, more aware so they're not left behind?

George CairnsYeah, you'll probably, you'll probably expect me to say that they just need to hire me, but I'm not gonna say that I actually think that they need to do the research. One of my, one of my main challenges when speaking to HR companies and, and HR departments and sales marketing, all departments, really is the education side. I have to do a lot of educating, educating them on what you can and can't do with AI and with chat gpt or copilot. Copilot, by the way, is just. The most, like, you just, why are you even bothering? It's just like very quick win. They, they see a Microsoft renewal. And then the Microsoft have tagged a bit of a few, couple of licenses of copilot it. They have 200 licenses of copilot that get implemented in the business. Only four of them actually use it. And they, they're like, oh yeah, we are embracing AI when in fact they're not. Um, and that's, that's another subject. Uh, I just need to get that off my chest 'cause I see it all the time. But going back to HR and, and just millennials in general, they just need to educate themselves on. Uh, basically have the, have, just use it and also have a subscription to not just chat GBT 'cause chat, GBT is a generalist. It's, it does okay at pretty much everything, but there are large language models out there that are amazing at one particular thing. Like you, you have clawed that is amazing at coding and writing text. Is it good at everything else? It's okay, but it's, it's surpasses everyone at that. You've got Google Gemini, that's their image and video generation models are by far the best. Then down chat GPT, right? It just surpasses them. But then you have other large language models that create websites from, from nothing. But can it write some text? Not really. Um, so I would just be on the education side

Alastair Greenerso let's say we are looking at millennials because we know Gen Z, we know what they need to do. They probably do need to do a bit of. Background work, do the research that you talked about. But if you are in a management role and you know you need to evolve your business, what can you do to make sure that you are not being left behind? You know, do you need to bring people in? Do you need to do it yourself? The research, you know, where, where do you go to make sure that your business is keeping up and is as agile as it needs to be?

George CairnsSo you probably think that I'll say they need to hire me, but I think they need to do the exact same thing as everybody else and do the research. Go down the rabbit hole of ai because the, one of the main challenges that I have is speaking to someone that isn't educated and doesn't know. What, uh, chat GBT is in comparison to an AI agent, and they dunno what an AI automation is. I have to educate people first before we even start talking about how we can scale their business without them needing to hire anyone, uh, quickly. Um, so yeah, I think education is the, is very important. Uh, and it, because I, I speak to millennials and people that are even slightly older than me. They think that chat, GBT is an AI agent and it's not. Um, unfortunately that's probably because of like PR and marketing around AI and that the word AI agent is just a really cool tagline. But when you are educated, you realize it's not an AI agent. Um,

Alastair GreenerBecause a lot of people, let's be honest, are quite frightened. They're quite frightened by AI at the moment because, not because they necessarily see it as something that's going to harm them, but just something that's just almost overwhelmed. There's so much to try and understand with it, to keep up to speed with things.

George CairnsThat's exactly why I feel overwhelmed. I, I'm, my business runs on AI and even I feel overwhelmed because it's one of my main challenges is trying to keep up with everything. If it wasn't for the community that I'm a part, I'm part of, uh, a community, a community called Start your AI agency. I'm one of, I, I joined that community and if it wasn't for that community, I would struggle in keeping up with everything. Um, we, we are a community of AI agencies across the world, and we all partner with each other and all share, uh, use cases and stories of, of clients. And if it wasn't for those guys and if it wasn't for Aaron as well, I wouldn't know where to begin, and I, I would, I would probably get left behind, which a lot of people that are trying to do what I do are starting without the, the, the power of community behind them. And, um, I, yeah.

Alastair Greenera really good point because, um, what would be your advice then to people to say actually, because the, the alternative is people just put their head in the sand and say, you know, let someone else deal with this because it's just too much for me. So what advice do you give to people of all generations on how to have a measured approach to AI that's manageable?

George CairnsI would say, uh, you've got probably three, three avenues really. Um, first of all. Confused and need some clarity on, uh, the ability of AI and, and what's new and what's not. Literally have a conversation with a, a large language model and it, it's literally your IT assistant, it's your friend. Unfortunately, it's your, probably your friend, uh, which is a concerning part, uh, which I dunno if we've got time to go down that rabbit hole. But, uh, it's, it's your like advisor and it's there to just help you along the way. But then also I would then look to human connections. Have, have those conversations with people within your work about ai, people outside your work about ai. Uh, people like me, like if, if you ever see me on LinkedIn or Instagram, follow me because I talk lots of like random stuff about ai, random news about ai. Just embrace AI through other avenues like social media and also human connection. And then finally. Contradictory of my agency. I would also look at the other aspect of ai, the, the, um, apprehensiveness, the AI safety, the, the kind of the, all these scaremongering stories of ai. It's good to also dip your toe in that understanding that as well as all the benefits of ai. You need to make sure that you are agnostic with all of this. Uh, and you don't put yourself in a group that is terrified of, of ai. 'cause if you do, you're, you're pretty screwed. And if you embrace AI and think that it's the best thing ever, and it's going to change the world, and everyone's, everyone's great and everything's gonna be flowers and singing, that's also a very concerning place to be as well. So you need to be in the middle.

Alastair GreenerWow, George, I must admit, I've got overwhelm actually just having our conversation because I just, you suddenly realize, you, you, it, it's that whole thing. You don't know what you don't know. And, um, it's, it's been a fascinating, um. Toe dipping exercise into far deeper AI than I must admit I was even bargaining for. Uh, thanks very much indeed for your time today. It's been great chatting to you. You've seen given us a lot to think about and the fact is we need to do some legwork now and, uh, get to learn a little bit more ourselves.

George CairnsYeah, yeah. Like talk to message me on LinkedIn and Instagram and all these avenues. I'm, I'm very active on there. Um, but yeah, listen to podcasts. Just try and embrace it because you, it's so rapidly changing the world and it's rapid, it's rapidly changing our generations, the generations as well. It's, it's. It's scary how crazy social media has changed, uh, actual generations and especially the younger generation. And unfortunately, my son is going to be bought up in the world of ai. That's terrifying. However, if I know how to use it and how to put guardrails to it, I'll feel safe about him using it and I'll be able to teach everything that I know to him. So I'll feel safe, safe for him to use it. Yeah.

Alastair GreenerThat's a whole other conversation because you're quite right. Generation Alpha will be the AI generation without doubt, and they'll grow up with it being as natural as social media is to Gen Z today. George, thank you very much

George CairnsOh, I, we could, we could carry on to, we could carry on talking. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm I,

Alastair Greenerwe could. And I think we need to bring that one. I tell you what, let's, let's have another chat in, in a year's time, and it'll probably be a, we probably won't even recognize the chat we had today. Uh, but George, thanks so much indeed for your time. Uh, thank you for listening, and we'll be back in two weeks time. And George, we'll put all the links in the, um, in the show notes so everyone can catch up with you, follow you and get a greater understanding of what you do and ai thanks a lot everyone. See you in two weeks. The Alastair Greener Generationally Speaking podcast was presented by me, Alastair Greener. It was recorded at Granary Studios and produced by James Jones. Please follow us and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. To find out more, visit generationally speaking.co.uk.