The AI Reality Check: Why AI Adoption Strategy, Not Tools, Will Decide the Winners

This is straight straight straight out of Crumpton with your host, Greg Crumpton. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to another episode of straight out of Crumpton. I am Greg Crumpton, your host for the afternoon. And, man, I am, like, really excited about a lot of stuff that's going on in life right now. I'm kinda scared of some stuff going on right now, but we won't talk about that. But I'm very excited by some stuff, and one of those things is AI. And I know we all hear about it continuously watching the news or online or what have you, but there are some really cool aspects of AI and how we are going to use it, how we already use it, and how it's going to shape our lives in a good way. And not to be scared of it and to kind of embrace it and understand it a little bit more as opposed to just hearing about it and not knowing much about it. So given that, one of my coworkers is her new task is figuring that out for our strategic services operation at ServiceLogic. So today, Ms. Elizabeth Barber, who's the senior manager of service at Strategic Services at ServiceLogic. Now that's a lot of service right there going on. It is a lot of services. So Beth is what I call her, Elizabeth, is joining us to talk to us a little bit and hopefully educate me on what I probably need to know, don't know, and should know. So with that said, Ms. Barber, welcome to Straight Out of Crumpton as a returning guest after a six year hiatus. Well, I am thrilled to be here. It's hard to believe that I was last here six years ago, and now I'm back. So I just can't let it be another six years before I come back again. Well, I can't believe I've been gum bumping into this microphone for six years now. You and I are just looking at some dates before we hit record, and I was I was quite surprised. But, you know, they've been fun, the episodes have, but they've also evolved. And, you know, like the episodes evolve, like life evolves, so too does our business and our relationships with digital tools and and digital assets. So what you're doing is really cool. But before we jump in, just give give the crowd a little update about you and what you do, how you do, and why you do, and how in the world you became the senior manager of service at Strategic Services at ServiceLogic. Happy to do that. So I've been here at ServiceLogic Strategic Services before it became Strategic Services when we were part of the corporate team. So it's celebrated my eighth anniversary. And talk about evolution. Our business at ServiceLogic as a whole has evolved a lot over the course of those eight years. So I really started off in those early days when this business unit was a grand total of three people getting your hands dirty into everything. I started working with Salesforce before it even went live. We took it live. And where I'm at now with the AI side of the house really is just a natural outflow of all of that because I have all of that tribal knowledge since the beginning of time, and it just lent itself built upon itself like bricks as these eight years have gone on. And so it became really clear, I think, to everybody in twenty twenty five, if you don't have an AI strategy, you better get one. And it also became really clear that there is so much going on about AI, and it's moving so fast. Somebody needs to be able to have some time to think about it and sort of curate everything that's out there, which is what my role is today. I am not the most knowledgeable person about AI that you will ever run across. And sometimes I feel like I'm only two steps ahead of everybody else right now. But what I do do is source information from all of the places that it's coming from and try to curate out what is meaningful to us in our business unit. Well, so your business unit, give give the folks just a little flavor of what that is versus our traditional HVAC contractor that ServiceLogic owns and operates. What what is strategic service is all about? Why have a weird name for a unique department? We are the only business unit in the entire ServiceLogic universe that does what we do, which is basically what people would refer to as national accounts. We are the department that can work with a client that has a large regional or national footprint but wants to have a one stop shop for their HVA services. So then we work with that client, figure out what they need, and then we then, in turn, work with all of the service teams across the country in Canada in delivering that opportunity to them in a way that they can execute on it, making sure they have everything that they need to know. And then we become a one stop shop for them in in terms of returning all of their reporting, their finding, their quoting, and we sort of sit in the middle and quarterback that entire flow of information up and down so that everybody has what they need when they need it and can do what they need to do. Well, I think that's why you guys are your group is such a prime candidate to lead the AI march because you have so much data. You have so many clients. You have so many contractors that you support and utilize that it just seems to make sense because most HVAC companies have squat for good data. We just have a bunch of data that, you know, I mean, it's kind of useless until you get it cataloged, naming conventions, and all that stuff squared away for consistency. Am I am I thinking right on that? Oh, you're thinking absolutely right. In fact, I always tell everybody that starts here in our business unit, I know you work for ServiceLogic, which is an HVAC company conglomerate, but we are not an HVAC company at strategic services. We are a data and communications company. There's only one person that works in this office that could go on the roof right now and fix anything. The rest of us are here for our operational mindset and our ability to deal with large amounts of data and communicate at a high level. So I always say we're a data and communications company, which, to your point, is spot on. We are uniquely positioned to champion the AI cause. And, hopefully, in my vision of things is that we're gonna be the standard bearer for the organization about how you can bring it in house and use it. So that's my personal goal for this. Alright. So when I cut the TV on and watch your favorite broadcaster puking the news in the evening and we hear about AI, what what's the difference between what I hear about and what you are are learning and how we're going to implement AI generatively, search wise? I mean, there's all these different little veins that, you know, the the general public doesn't get explained to them very well. And and I only know this the hard way from, you know, working and and digging around on the Internet and and understanding that there are different routes. Even with search, you know, we got the the thing today, there was a webinar on SEO is dead and GEO is the wave of the future. You know, I've never heard that term until a month ago. So how do you think it's going to impact us? And everything has to have a purpose. So we've got to be doing something that helps our customer, or it doesn't matter. So why are we, as a people, why do we care about AI? I was on that same, webinar today, so I know exactly what you're talking about. So we need to care about AI because and this is a disruptive technology in the same way that computers and email was back in the day. You know, back in the early nineties, everybody was faxing everything all over the place. Not adopting AI would be like not adopting email back in the early nineties. That's the kind of disruptive technology this is. But unlike email, which was pretty much dominated by Microsoft back in those early days, there was, like, one channel to go down. The thing about AI is that there's a million channels. And, like, gremlins that had water thrown on them, they seem to be multiplying overnight. And it can be really confusing to know, like, which one should we pick? Because by the time you make a decision and go down that route, there's seven new ones, and then you have, fear of missing out because you think you should have picked something else. And that's the confusing part of where we are with AI right now. But, fundamentally, there's only a handful of big players in the space. It's your OpenAI that does your ChatGPT. There's Anthropic, which does Claude. There's Google, which does Gemini, which we've all heard about. There's Microsoft, which does Copilot, which also licenses from OpenAI and from Claude, from Anthropic for Claude. And now we're getting into the world of Apple because they just announced they're gonna be licensing Gemini to power Apple's own AI and their Siri. So you've got these individual things that are big players on their own, which would also include, like, perpec Perplexity or DeepSeek out of China. And then there's all of these other people that are borrowing from each other's AIs to enhance their own AI. So that makes it it's like this big mesh here. But they're all specialists and a little bit of a different thing. You can use them all to do almost anything, but some of them are better at some things than others. Quad is really good for your long form writing and for coding. That's what it's known for. ChatGPT is more your utility player. Copilot is specializing in streamlining your office processes. So they all will have a place, but it can be really confusing to figure out what's what. Alright. So I'm a Grok fan because I think Elon Musk is an interesting dude. And for whatever reason, I think it's less biased. It gives me more net neutral answers without any kind of funky political twist, which I think people implant into the other, in my opinion. Well, Brock is certainly on the hot seat for that, for their recent, kind of letting a little bit of the Wild West out into the wild in terms of how they did not put enough guardrails around their image generation, which if you saw the news article that came out on the Bikini Challenge and how that really went sideways and caused a lot serious harm to people. There are real dangers with AI, but it's like anything else. Any any kind of tool has its dangers, and it just depends on how people wanna utilize it. You had some bad actors who thought, hey. I'm gonna take this picture, you know, these pictures, and we're gonna nudify them. And and that got really dangerous really quickly. And they tried to put it back behind a paywall, but it's not enough. They were able to work around it. And so they've got they're getting called on the carpet right now, Brock is, about that. I wonder why I won a bikini contest. So that's That's why. That's why. And I laugh because in those very innocent use cases, it can be kind of funny. Elon Musk posted a picture of himself that he had had, you know, put himself in a bikini. But there was a lot of really disturbing imagery created around that, which is why you're having so many people be so vocal about the dangers of AI. And anything can be weaponized in the wrong hands. Literally anything can be weaponized. But it doesn't mean it's not worth having the conversation about, because we do have to talk about all of the aspects. So there's many of the benefits that are gonna come along with AI in terms of basically giving us all a staff of personal assistance. We also have to be mindful of the flip side of what AI can do when turned loose in a destructive manner. But, you know, that there's so much to be said for a couple of things, and this is all my opinion, obviously. But having moderation in anything is good, whether you're having wine or or whether you're having AI. You've gotta have some discipline about it. You've gotta understand if you have too much wine, what happens? You you may wind up in the bikini contest. Or if you have too much AI and you're not in control of it, it will come up and bite you because it is a tool just like any other digital product that we use. We we can decide how to use it, and we've gotta figure out how to use it safely. You you've gotta because, you know, it's like a it doesn't know right from wrong until somebody tells it right from wrong or or makes it right from wrong by giving it directly. It's not anything by nature. It has to be launched in or or I don't know what the right word is, but it has to be set upon a course for good or for evil, in my opinion. And then it's going to vary a vary a itself accordingly based on what it finds to support the thesis of of launch or of inquiry. I mean, that's how I view it, and and I may be wrong. I don't know. But I think it goes back to intent. I don't think that you view it wrong. I I think I view it exactly the same way you do. I view AI like fire. Right? When fire was invented, it was a great tool. It kept it keeps you warm. You cook food over it, but you can also use fire to set a forest fire and burn down three million acres of forest. That's fire used for bad. It's a tool. And in the hands of some people, it's lifesaving. And in the hands of people with ill intent, it can be deadly. So AI to me is no different. The the digital version of fire, right, to me is what AI is. I'm and I'm very optimistic. I'm a really optimistic person about AI because I believe that the good it will do can far, far outweigh the negative pieces that come with it. What's the, as you've been doing your research and and study, what's the most interesting nugget that you think you've discovered about AI? Here's my most interesting nugget is that nobody has any idea what they're doing when it comes to using it, when it comes to learning it, even when it comes to implementing it in their companies. That's why I took on this role last year. I went and found a bunch of people that work in IT and AI, and, like, they were doing what I was gonna be doing, which was implementing in their company. So I asked for some time on their calendar. We sat and talked about it. None of them had a strategy, had a plan, had a road map. It was like, yeah. We're all trying out these tools, and I asked them. I said, do you have a training program to teach people how to use them? And it was no. Across the board, people are figuring out what to use, how to use it, teaching themselves how to use it. There was no path to follow. So I'm here bushwhacking my way through the AI jungle here trying to figure out, you know, there's no path for me to follow here, so I'm gonna make one for that's right for our business unit. What we're doing may not be right for everybody, but it could potentially be a pathway for other people to follow. And I'm taking a really back to basics approach on that. So that's the most surprising thing I've learned. Nobody has any idea. Well, I I think, though, back to your fire analogy, the early caveman probably burnt down a lot of crap. They figured. Because they didn't know how to control it. Right? So back in the day, they didn't know how to control it, or it was weaponized by one caveman tribe that wanted to take over land from another caveman tribe. So they went over there and set their village or whatever on fire, you know, deliberately because they weaponized it. Right? So and I think AI is very much in the same position right now, but I don't think it'll stay that way forever. People people will get their arms around it. There will be guardrails put in. There will be a lot of discussion around this, a lot of contentious discussion because they're afraid that those guardrails will hamper innovation with it. But you gotta have some balance. Like you, moderation, some balance. Right? It's changing so fast. We have to control it or it will escape. But what what's cool about it and what's scary about it is as hard as you wanna control it, it's like a freaking you know, like an osmosis. It just keeps spreading because it's training itself, and it's getting smarter. And, you know, we think we're really smart, so we're gonna use our brain to try to harness it. We've gotta figure out how to train it to harness itself because it can move at speed and and thought process that we have no freaking clue about. That's the exciting part to me is is how we can take a a little seed that's been germinating in the human brain. Let's take cancer research, for instance, and the number of tests that we can run via AI versus running in clinicals like we do now is exponentially faster. So we we always have to retrain ourselves to be able to think, okay. We've got a new tool, so I don't have to go figure this out. I've gotta go figure out how to get AI or whatever we wanna call it to help me figure it out, like writing a, an email. Some people just write poorly, but they know what they wanna say. So when you get that rudimentary message out, you can enhance it with AI. The the challenge is not allowing it to take your own voice away. You know what I'm saying? Like Yeah. Yes. I do. You've read emails that you're like, there's no way in hell that person wrote that. I I get them. Like, I know you, and you don't even talk like you don't even know what that word is. How how are you suddenly using it, typing that word? So but all of that, the systems are gonna learn our normal cadence. They're gonna learn how we speak. And that's the exciting part is that it is customizable to us as long as we control it. And I know that's like saying, I want my cake and eat it too, but we gotta burn the caveman's house down before we get to that point probably. Well, I mean, I think that's one of the things that's great about humans. We have innovated over the centuries because we have always wanted our cake and to eat it too, haven't we? I mean, isn't that really what's driven a whole bunch of the innovation we have today? At some point, somebody wanted to fly like a bird, and now we have jet airplanes, right, that can take you all the way around the world in twenty four hours. Right? So I think that's the great thing about humans. But you're right about being able to customize it. So one of the things I've been working on is customizing my Copilot to write in my voice. Found a prompt that took a sample of my writing and gave me an analysis. And then I had it. I'm like, okay. Now write me some custom instructions that I can use in my Copilot so that when it does generate an email for me, it sounds like something that I wrote. But the thing we have to not do, and I think this has been one of the things humans have struggled with with technology and with media over all this time, is we've sort of abdicated our responsibility to be savvy consumers and to think critically because we live in the sound bite. We are going to have to reclaim our ability to think critically about what it's giving us and to ask it, is this really representative of what it is that I'm trying to do here? And that takes some time. Right? That's you just can't set and forget this stuff. You still have to be the human in the loop is what they call it. You have to look at what you're getting and really think about really think about it. It's not just a license to turn your brain off and, you know, go out and play around a cornhole and automate all of these things to operate as your digital clone in your absence. That's dangerous. Well, I I and and I don't know. I think about it. Is AI going to stimulate or at least encourage an information class so that people who who choose to engage and who want to control their AI as opposed to put everything on autopilot, is that gonna be, like, some superior class of of people that get bias cast against them because they are different in that they actually are controlling of their information rather than just put everything on autopilot and be one of the ninety nine percenters? I don't know. I just because people are lazy by nature. I know a bunch of them. And it's, you know, a lot of people would rather hit the easy button as opposed to learn how to do something. And I just think about, you know, because there are inquisitive people, is it gonna be is there some kind of weird class warfare against that? I think that already exists. I I don't think AI is the thing that will make that happen. I think it is already here because the Internet has commoditized knowledge, and it's done that for a long time now. So the people that wanted to elevate themselves, you know, already had all the knowledge available, and and and it's available to anyone. So I always say that education has never been more accessible or cheaper at any point in human history. It used to be expensive to get an education. Now you carry you literally can carry around a degree from MIT in your pocket every day if you just wanted to open it up and go study those things. The barrier to entry is practically nonexistent now if you really wanna learn something. So I believe that's already here. I just think it makes it faster. And a lot of times that the people that do want to, if you wanna call it superior, elevate themselves through knowledge, it kind of happens invisibly. It's not always real obvious who those people who have made that choice are. No. I think that's the cool part too is that when when you stumble upon somebody who may look a bit disheveled and crazy and then, you know, they're reciting something, you go, holy crap. You just like you didn't expect that from that person based on some bias we had, whether it be physical, mental, or whatever. I think that's the cool part about knowledge is that you don't know who's holding it. That's true. And that that really ties into something that I see every day. You know, even here is that people don't know what the person next to them is doing, learning, planning. Right? Your peers may have a whole game plan about how they want to elevate themselves in twenty twenty six, and you would have no idea because they're still going to happy hour with you. They're still doing all the things they normally do. And then boom, overnight, they're gonna do something. They're gonna get some kind of opportunity, or it's gonna come out of nowhere that they've achieved this thing. And some people are gonna be sitting there like, well, what happened? How come I didn't get that opportunity? How come nobody asked me if I wanted to do that? Well, the thing that people don't realize is that nobody asked them either. They just made a path. They created it. They just never told you about it until they were ready to go public with it, and I see that happening every single day. And I think that's really like you, I think that's really interesting. They always say gosh. What do they say? Something that I've run across on social media that you you do you do the preparation and you do the work in the silence, and you never let anybody know until you're ready to launch. And I think there's I think a lot of people do that, and then everybody's all surprised. And then what they wanna say is that person got lucky. They ain't lucky. You just didn't see everything that they were doing in order to be ready when that opportunity came around. And that's what I think is Took ten years to get. Yeah. It took ten years to be an overnight success. Exactly. Yeah. And and there's people doing that now. And I love that. I mean, I really I really love that. I always love knowing that these people have these things that they've got in the works that they don't share with a lot of people because, know, what may not work out. Know, not everything we all try works out all the time, and so you don't want to make these grand proclamations about what you're going to do. Some people, they're doing it undercover. And that's kinda like when you hear about these people with secret lives. You know? You're like, what? I didn't I didn't know that he had three wives and two kids in another city. But, no, that is cool. That that that all comes down to that word that I love is compound knowledge and, you know, taking what you learn and just keep building on it and tweaking on it. And, you know, whether it's an idea or, you know, some crazy thing you wanna do, it's just that's your motivation and your drive, and that's what gets you up to go to the gym an hour earlier. Whatever you're doing, there's something always there that nobody else has any idea about because the motivation's private. And sometimes motivation is it should be only private because maybe it's, you know, been something you've been through or whatever that you don't really want everybody to know, but that's your motive that's your motivator to get up and get after it. I love that. Yep. And then and then along the way, you've made your own luck. Because luck is nothing more than preparation meeting opportunity. And that's kind of, how I ended up in this in this role here is because we knew at some point, it became really clear we needed somebody to do this role, and I was the one that was really interested in it and had been pursuing knowledge about AI, you know, seeing it coming. And I was one of the early adopters when ChatGPT first came out, you know, what, in twenty twenty two, I think that was first released. I was in that first batch of people that signed up for it. You had to be on the wait list and wait to get access to it back in in those days and, you know, started playing around with it. So when it determined that we really could use somebody in that role, I think I made the shortlist because I had already been beating the drum around this saying, hey, this is coming, and let's talk about this, and this is really cool, and all of that. So I think that was a good thing for me, but I was I was ready. Well, I don't wanna get too far off of our AI conversation, but what you just described to me is is you to a tee because I know you. You you're an avid advocate for your people, bringing them up, and and helping them get to the next level that they want to achieve. Tell us a little bit about your your your mentoring, how you're nurturing people, and helping your folks grow within and outside of the organization? It's my favorite thing, Bray. Absolutely favorite thing because I'm so curious about people. I find people so interesting, and everybody has, like, their sweet spot of talent, the thing that they bring to the team that nobody else brings. And you have to have people that come from all different backgrounds in order to make a whole team where all of your blind spots are covered. And one of the most interesting things that I've learned about working here is that we have a lot of people that come into our business unit that come from the food service industry at some point in their past. And a lot of people, you know, you get your start. You're working in restaurants. You're a server. You're a manager or whatever. And I think it's one of the most underrated experiences you can have in your past. To come into a place like this where we do a lot of account management, which a lot of the times is about putting out fires, the experience of coming of having that in your background teaches you, you know, how to think quickly, be on your feet, do things to smooth things out, make that phone call, and that translates really well. And I love to be able to take people who never really kind of thought about this kind of a job and be able to show them how this can be a great career for you, and these are the ways that you can grow while you're here. But that's different for everybody, and that's the fun part is trying to figure out where are people and what can I put in front of them that will help them grow? And that comes from understanding that that path looks different for every single person. It's not the same for everybody because everybody is starting from a different spot. Everybody comes with different experience in their past, and they come with a different place that they want to go. So you have to think through that before you can help them grow, and you have to earn the right to speak into their life. That's the other thing. That doesn't come automatically no matter what your title is. You have to earn the right to speak into their life, and that is something and maybe it's a little bit of my military background as well, where you knew that no matter what your rank was, you had to respect the position, but the person still had to earn the respect as a person. And I've always brought that along with me. And I'll I love all of that, but there's something inside of certain people that make you want to do that for people. You know? It's like, I know you and your husband both have the desire and work at helping people. I'm just always fascinated about what motivates people to wanna do for others. You know? How it is that an innate thing and and you polish it? Or, you know, does it just bubble out and you're like, can't I just go to work and do my job without having to want to help my team? And and we all have days like that where we're just like, look. I'm I'm banging my hours today. I just I need a day. You know? I mean, we all have that. But your your natural style is to do more for more people. And I'm just curious of and there's probably no right or wrong answer here at all, so don't feel pressured. But something makes you wanna help your crew. Have you ever thought about what it is or tried to identify it? Actually, I think I know exactly what it is. So you know we're a wrestling family. Right? Come from Iowa. Born and raised in Iowa. Huge wrestling state. Right? My sons were wrestlers growing up, and they were good athletes. And I think the thing that got me hooked on exactly what you're saying, is that I want to help people is because there is nothing like watching somebody get their first win, their their first big win. So imagine that you've got a a wrestler who has started, their first season, and they are just getting their people are just mopping the floor with them. They're losing and losing and losing. They're getting pinned, and they're they're losing all the time, and they're discouraged, but yet they're in there. They're in that practice room. They're working every day. And then something happens, and suddenly, they don't get pinned so quick. And you can see that glimmer to be like, oh, I made it into the third period. Right? I didn't get pinned. Okay. So they go back. They work. They work. They work some more. And then you watch them and they wrestle out the other end. And maybe they still lost, but maybe they only lost five three, and it was closer. But then the day comes, and they're on the mat. And and I'm using this as my example, but I watch this happen for people in a variety of manners. But they're on the mat, and that first day that they get that first win and day one and their hand gets raised and the look on their face and I get a little choked up talking about this, which may be which may seem silly to anybody who's listening this, but I've watched it enough to happen to know that that moment where you get your first win is a defining moment of somebody's life. Because if you can do it once, you can do it again. And to watch those people, after they get their first win, go out there and then get after win after win because then that helps them, and it helps everybody around them, everybody in their orbit, which ties into another one of the things that I really believe in, which is a rising tide raises all boats. So I wanna help everybody get their own rising tide because that helps all of us. And I hope that doesn't sound silly. But No. I think it's I mean, I I get it. I I I love that. You know? I think about the first cars I've helped somebody buy, not meaning going to the dealership with them, but giving them an opportunity. And all they wanted was a car to get back and forth to work and or or the first house or, you know, whatever. The first for people, let alone on the mat physically, you've seen that. And, you know, that's the longest six minutes of life is is, you know, a wrestling match. Because it's really you're a spectator, and that, you know, that competitor is your son. It is a long six minutes as you're watching it because you're willing so much out of your own psychological energy. You're willing them to win. Right? And I feel myself doing that here. I'm willing people to win. And sometimes I think I want it for them more than they want it for themselves. And I just wanna shake them and say, don't you see what you're capable of, what you could do? Just try. Alright. I totally freaking get that. Because I think if you're in a if you're in a spot in life where you're trying to help people, whether it's a homeless vet or whether it's a twenty three year old young lady getting her started at a job, it is really difficult to will motivation. It's there's got to be some kind of a little spark in there so that you can fan that blame. Because creating that spark is difficult. Because I I've worked with people who are just beat all to crap and can't muster a spark. Now I'm not saying you give up on them, but that's hard when the the tide has just beat them down to a pulp. But if you keep trying, you usually can get a spark. You just don't know what's going to be the the the the seed of that spark. You just gotta keep you just gotta keep going, and you you drive home. You're thinking, my god. What can we do to break through? And then Yeah. And then but when you have that breakthrough moment, to your point, it's very, it is emotional. And and I think that's what keeps good people like you doing what you do. So thank you for what you do. I know what you do to a degree, and I I have high appreciation for it. Well, it's an honor and a privilege for me to be able to do it. And really, honestly, I feel like I'm just paying the universe back for the people that did that for me when I was much younger. I feel, to some degree, it's my responsibility as a good citizen of the world to take that forward into the world because people did it for me, right? So I want to do it for other people. And sometimes I'm happier watching other people achieve and win and do things they couldn't even imagine they did than me doing it for myself. It's more gratifying to watch them do it than than me doing it for myself. Well, I think the older you get, the more that becomes I don't know, funner is a word, but more fun. You get to witness it, you know, there's just so many awesome things that if you just stop and pay attention to them with people and their development and and little things that you learn later that you did for someone that you had no freaking idea about at the time that was so instrumental in their life, and they tell you twenty years later, and you're just blown away because you weren't even you didn't know they were in a spot where they needed that or they needed a word of encouragement or a hug or whatever. But it's always so cool later when you learn that thank God I was being a decent human that day and did that. You know? Because we all have days where we're not decent humans, and we need to be put in the dungeon for the day. But And I I think this really even though this doesn't seem like it ties into our conversation, it really does because I I truly believe that the more that AI becomes a tool that we all use, the human element of us as people is gonna become even more important. Right? AI is a tool that can be used, you know, to to fake this whole podcast that we're doing. I mean, really, somebody could use AI and recreate this whole entire thing, you know, deep fake your voice, mine, and stripped out a whole conversation. And for for all the world, it would look like we had that conversation instead of this conversation. But humans need need that little bit of humanity. And I think I think that is gonna become ever more important as AI becomes a bigger part of our life, and we have to keep AI in the role in which it is our employee. It is our staff. Right? It is our assistant, not a person that replaces us in the world. Right? Because AI is not good. Like that, Mitch Joel piece that came out today of what AI isn't good for in terms of An AMR Mac. Yes. Yes. So it it it can't navigate the human consequence. Right? That was, like, think was one of the lines in that was it's not good at context, not good at navigating human consequence. That's what we're needed for, and that comes through genuine, authentic conversations and relationships. And that'll be needed more than ever even while we've got our whole staff of AI assistants working for us. Alright. So yesterday, when I did a podcast in two hours and eighteen minutes ago, I said the same thing in a summary of talking about everything digital and automated everything. That's all cool for production stuff, but you still have to have one on one, eyeball to eyeball, more in person than on Zoom when you can, coffee cups in hand, talking about real stuff. You can't take that away from humans because we need that. We need that two way tactile conversation for our existence. I mean, you sit at home and talk to Howie in the evening about things that happen in your lives for a reason. It's because that's how you connect with each other. It's how you know that your dog needs a new bark collar or whatever you guys might be talking about at any given time. But that two way conversation in person is is just, I mean, that can't be replicated very easily. I'm not saying it can't be yet, but it's, to your point, super important. Yeah. I and I do I do think that we should all be encouraging that connection, those conversations rather than people turning to ChatGPT as their online, you know, therapist. There just is no substitute for that person to person connection. But I think that these are all the waters that are necessary to navigate because this still is all brand new. I mean, the seeds of AI were were set decades ago, but it really burst on the scene kind of three years ago, which in terms of a technology, it's still a baby. Right? It's just growing very fast. And some of these things, we have to get through these growing pains and figure all of that out. I don't think it means that that we should throw the whole thing away. You know, there's a I don't think you could even if we all decided as a collective we're gonna throw AI away. I don't think you could at this point. It's it's out. It's there's no putting that genie back in the bottle. It won't let you throw it away, at this point. It won't let you. You know? So Have you seen We we better figure it out, and I think we figure it out through conversation. Absolutely. Agreed. The Thinking Game, the movie, have you seen that? No. I have not seen that. What's that about? It's on Prime, and it's about AI and how it can be. So check that out. All of you, check it out. I'm not getting paid by Prime. I promise you. I'm paying Prime because I see that dude in my house, like, every day, dropping off stuff. But I've been married for three years, so that's part of it. Right before Christmas, Howie was in the garage, and he was doing a project. And the Amazon the Amazon guy came, had a package for delivery, gave it to Howie, and then he said, see you tomorrow as he went back to his truck. That's how much actually comes to our house. I totally understand that. Understood. Well, Beth, I know we could go for another while, but you've got, strategic services, services, service logic to go service. So I know you're a busy lady. I really do appreciate you taking time, sharing your knowledge with us and and what you learned and and how, you see it, the technology fitting into or or just really trying to get a feel for how it's going to fit into your life and our customers' lives at ServiceLogic. I do wanna comment on that beautiful book over your left shoulder, though. That's very, very attractive, so thank you for having that there. I couldn't help but notice the, colors. Anything parting comments you wanna bestow upon us as we get ready to head toward the barn here? I just wanna tell everybody to take everything that you see and hear about AI with a grain of salt. Whether they're telling you that it is, you know, the best thing since sliced bread or it's the devil incarnate. It's not either one of those things. It's not as a magic pill. It's less Harry Potter and more Sheldon Cooper. It just isn't in reality, in how regular people are using it day to day, that good or that bad. Just take everything you see in here with a a grain of salt about it. That's what I that's what I would tell everybody. That's that is a solid nugget. Now I'm gonna add a personal service service announcement, PSA. Alright. If you are searching for information, use Google or something like Google because an AI query takes five times more electricity than a simple Google search. So if you're not looking to if you don't need AI, don't use AI for a simple query search. Like, is Mariah Carey dead? Use Google for that kind of stuff because the number one thing that's affecting our US data centers is the lack of power. And the more we're using power intelligently and not overloading the electric utility by asking Mariah Carey kind of questions, should be knowledgeable about what you're asking and how you're using the tools because, I mean and I'm not a Greenpeace guy. I'm not I'm not selling power. I'm just saying use your resources appropriately because data center power consumption is a big deal, and we wanna use the power to harness really cool stuff as opposed to alright. Carrie, question. There you go. PSA done. I was gonna say I do believe that power and access to power is gonna be one of the biggest topics of the next decade. Power and water are going to be it. And isn't it interesting with all of the technology in the world that exists that is so high level, at the end of the day, none of it can actually run or function without the most basic building blocks of the planet that we live on. Same as the human body. That interesting. Ain't that interesting. Water and energy. Gotta have them both. Alright, folks. Wow. Beth, you're a you're a bevy of knowledge. Thank you for sharing, your your insights and what you found. It's super cool for me as as a friend, as coworker, and as a, contrarian thinker, to get to talk to folks like you who are digging in and getting real with it and understanding it rather than just reading what's in the headlines. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for all you do for us as a company as well. I know I'd be remiss if I didn't say that. So thank you. And folks, thank you all for sticking with us. I hope you, I hope you got a little something out of this. We just try to keep it real. This is a real conversation that's happening across the country, across the world, and it is it's just knowledge that we need to know and and embrace. So love it. Absolutely love it. I mentioned Beth had a book over her shoulder. It is my book, one of them, Deep Knowledge. The other book is Deeper Knowledge. It is out now as well. So you can get both of those at Amazon or Barnes and Noble. You wanna learn more about the books, to deep knowledge dot m e, deep knowledge dot me, or as usual, go to greg crumpton dot com, and you can see all the good stuff happening right there. So thank you for Beth Barber. I'm Greg Crumpton. Until next time, straight out of Crumpton. We'll leave it here. Thank you.