While Joel takes some time in the "happiest place on earth" Chad pulls in industry pro Quincy "Queen of Chatbots" Valencia to fill in and add needed snark to this week's episode.
Indeed hops in the trojan horse for a trip to France where they are introducing a pay-per-results pricing model, after retreating from launching full-scale PPSA and PPA models in the US.
IS JOONKO GOING DOWN? After allegations of fraudulent conduct by Joonko's CEO?
FUTURE OF AI WORK
McKinsey predicts AI's impact to occur by 2030, more than 70% of organizations struggle with the risks of using AI tools and that's just scratching the surface - ENJOY!
TRANSCRIPTION SPONSORED BY:
Intro: Hide your kids. Lock the doors. You're listening to HR's most dangerous podcast. Chad Sowash and Joel Cheesman are here to punch the recruiting industry right where it hurts. Complete with breaking news, brash opinion and loads of snark. Buckle up, boys and girls, it's time for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Chad: Welcome to the Chad and Cheese podcast. I'm Chad 'Passed the Pierogi' Sowash.
Quincy: I'm Quincy 'Way to Fly for Your Fake AI' Valencia.
Chad: [laughter] And this week's show, Putin's chef lays an egg, Joonko is falling apart right in front of our eyes, companies are planning for the future of work with AI. And the question of the moment is, will Indeed bring results or bullshit to France? Let's do this. All right, live from Krakow, Poland, kids. Cheesman is off enjoying Orlando with the family this week. There's a great Book of Mormon joke in there somewhere, I just can't find it, which is why we have once again an honored guest, Quincy Valencia, filling in for the Mr. Cheesman.
[applause]
Quincy: Thanks Joel for never working and always being on vacation, I really appreciate you for that. And I'm coming to you live from the Redneck Riviera of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
Chad: Oh, that is the Redneck Riviera. So, Quincy, for those listeners who have been asleep for the past two decades and they don't know who you are, give them a quick Twitter bio.
Quincy: I've been in this space for almost as long as Chad Sowash, 25 years. He's older than me, so he always wins. HR, HR tech, provider, practitioner, product creator, and currently working as an HR tech analyst. So if it's a thing in the space, and now I'm a podcast co-host for a day.
Chad: Yes!
Quincy: So if it's a thing in this space, by God, I'm doing it.
Chad: Goddamn it, I'm doing it. That's right, kids. Practitioner, vendor, analyst, all the boxes are checked. That's one of the reasons why we have Quincy on the show. And she knows all the skeletons in my closet, that's another reason.
Quincy: That's true.
Chad: So I'm in Krakow, Poland, and this week, Putin's chef Yevgeny Prigozhin... What is it? How do you fuck say it?
Quincy: You're asking me?
Chad: He turned his Wagner troops and tanks toward Russia. And it's a much different feeling when you're watching this play out from a country away. Here in Poland, we've got Belarus that is a country between us and Russia, and then we've got Ukraine just to the South. Was this a big issue? Was this a big point of news in the US?
Quincy: It was all over the news and I try not to watch the news. But yeah, it was everywhere. It was definitely a story, as it should be.
Chad: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Quincy: You know, when people tried to overthrow the government here, it made me mad, but when they try to do it there, I thought it was the right thing. So maybe I need to reevaluate my standards.
Chad: Yeah, I don't know, because I think the entire world stage looked at us when that happened, January 6th happened, and they were like, "What the actual fuck, this should never happen in the US." But Polish that I've talked to here, Polish citizens, they're like, "Yeah, no, we expected something like that to happen." And again, I think a lot of it has to do with the optics of what we've been able to, whether it's our story, propaganda, whatever the hell you wanna call it, we're really good at driving a message. Russia is really good at throwing a bunch of bodies at bullets.
Quincy: Which is unfortunate. And in that particular case, I'd have to say I would be on the side of the usurpers because maybe I'm okay with it, overthrowing the government, if the government's crazy, I don't know, maybe that's my standard, I'm not sure, and dangerous and murderous.
Chad: Dangerous and murderous. Well, my first shout out is going to go out to, guess who? It's the Polish people. Where's my shout out sign at? Anyway, screw it. The Polish people. Much like last week when I was in Vienna, Julie and I received the red carpet treatment. But Agnieszka Porebska, the CEO of Talent Alpha, headquartered here in Poland, she went the extra mile by bringing her family to Krakow and personally taking us to two museums with walking tours. And at the end of the day, we had beers with a group of vendors and practitioners here in Poland. So the Polish are incredibly warm and welcoming people. So big, big shout outs to our friends here in Poland.
[applause]
Quincy: That sounds like a great time and I'm really happy for you and all of you. And that's a great use of your time, too.
Chad: I think so. I think it's all about diplomacy. That's what I said last week. This is a diplomatic mission for the Chad and Cheese podcast.
Quincy: Is that how you justify writing it off on your taxes?
Chad: No. It's a good idea, though. I never thought of that. [laughter]
Quincy: We'll talk. All right, well, my first shout out... Is it my turn? Do I get to go?
Chad: Yes, you get to go now. Yes.
Quincy: So I did mention that I am an industry analyst now in the HR tech space, and I've only been in this seat for a little over a year, so a baby, if you will, but there's someone I wanna give a shout out to, her name is Lisa Rohan. Lisa's been an analyst in this space at IDC for 20 years, I think. She's one of the OGs in this space.
Chad: Wow.
Quincy: And she is moving into retirement happily. Good for her, congratulations to her. She's a legend, she's forged paths for the rest of us that we may not have had. The space is it's pretty male dominated. There's some great women analysts in this space. We've got Madeline Theranos, Sarah White and some others, but Lisa was there first. And I don't know Lisa well, but I certainly know her legacy. I had the honor and privilege of meeting her and actually sharing a table with Lisa at an event we were at together last month, I think. Maybe it was April, I don't know, the month's weren't together, but she was phenomenal, her questions are on point and smart and everything she has brought to this industry has been meaningful. So, thank you for all you've done, Lisa, congratulations on your well earned retirement.
Chad: Amen. Can't get enough good people, not to mention, you've got leaders like that who help others actually hand up throughout their career. So that's awesome. My second shout out goes to VanHack. That's right, kids.
[vocalization]
Chad: A Vancouver, Canada-based software company dedicated to connecting international tech talent with employees or employers, in Canada, in Europe received 3 million in funding this week. That's right, kids. It's a marketplace for talent. No ChatGPT necessary.
Quincy: What?
Chad: Congrats to CEO Ilya Brotzky and the VanHack team.
SFX: Take off, we're doing our movie. Don't wreck our show you hoser.
Chad: So Quincy, quick question, what are your thoughts on funding in this area of the era of GenAI? Because right now it seems like those who are generative AI or if they're getting more of a look than everybody else, other than obviously the VanHacks of the world?
Quincy: In some ways they should. I mean, it is the next new great thing. My cautionary tale is twofold, first of all GenAI in general is not new, it's been around since the '60s. The technology is advanced and really took a turn forward, and I think it was the mid-2010s. There was a new piece of technology that bolstered the ability of generative AI, and then certainly we all know, I'm not even gonna say the name, it who shall not be named in November of last year, who came out. And it really does have the ability to be transformative. Every single person though who's coming out right now is saying that we're using generative AI or large language models or blah, blah, blah. And they're not. And that is the reason for my way to fly for your fake AI nickname this week twice.
[laughter]
Quincy: I spend a lot of time with vendors twice in the last 2 weeks, I've been shown products where they're touting their generative AI capabilities and that's not what it is. One of them was a traditional chatbot, which by the way, there's nothing wrong with it.
Chad: No.
Quincy: There's a ton of place, and it's useful and there's reason to use that. And the other was basically RPA, and everyone's trying to spin their product offering as if it's GenAI, as if that's the only thing. GenAI is one form of technology, it deserves the funding so that we can advance it, but the security protocols around it that we need mitigate some of the risk associated with that, which is gonna have to come certainly at the org level, but at a larger level around the technology itself, but guys, you don't have to be in GenAI to create new shit, so good for them for getting funding for something that's still really useful.
Chad: Amen. Out of Canada, and we also dropped an interview this week with Georgios Markakis from Venero Capital, he answers that question in our episode, that is HR Tech Funding and M&A. So check that out.
Quincy: Alright, so my second shout out is to the entire State of Ohio.
Chad: Oh no.
Quincy: Right, for two things. First, I've been to all 50 states, Chad, did you know that?
Chad: All 50 states. Yeah, you actually lived in South Dakota, which nobody wants to do that. But yeah.
Quincy: [chuckle] I know. So I've lived in all 50 states and never ever have I been to a state with worst highways than the state of Ohio, so congratulations on fine funding of your highway programs there, Ohio, for making me never ever wanna go back. And the other reason I never wanna go back to Ohio is because their's stupid shit like this, an Ohio State Representative, and I can't remember his name, and frankly, it wasn't worth looking it up 'cause it was so stupid, has put forth a bill to end all remote work, he doesn't want it, should be illegal, shouldn't be allowed, to which I say, which CEO in the state of Ohio took this guy on his private jet somewhere and is the biggest campaign financer for him, because why in the hell else would you do that? And why should government care? It's the stupidest thing, there are a lot of stupid bills, and I live in the South, so if you wanna talk about stupid bills, we could have a whole other show on that. But that's, not only is it ridiculous, but it goes right along with my 1.1 shout outs with my part B to the CEO of PayPal, who just jumped on the remote work doesn't work, and everyone should go back to work bandwagon. It's ridiculous, it's been disproven repeatedly, and in fact, the opposite has been proven true. And this guy just needs to sit down.
Chad: Yes. So it's gone all the way up to pretty much the Supreme Court.
Quincy: It has.
Chad: Where all the hand greasing, palm greasing, that's been happening. So yeah, transparency is huge, Jona actually talked about the death of journalism, which is really has started to kind of like atrophy over the past 20, 30 years.
Quincy: Oh yeah.
Chad: And a lot of that has to do with trying to ensure that this transparency doesn't happen more. When you have local people on the streets, we don't have as much transparency in our local government, and then it just continues to bloom up. So yeah, it's a huge issue. And when we have individuals who are actually weighing in on topics that they should just be shutting the fuck up about.
Quincy: It has nothing to do with him.
Chad: At all. At all. Well, my last shout out goes to Datapeople, a New York-based SaaS recruiting predictability platform provider, that's a mouthful, raised 13 million Series A funding. Another non-GenAI platform getting funded? I don't think so.
[chuckle]
Chad: Datapeople brings data-backed objectivity, efficiency and predictability to talent acquisition beginning with the optimized job description. And my question is, companies like this who lean very hard on this type of tech, like a Textio, they do have some domain expertise, there's no question around this area. Although, when being able to train AI and having enough data to be able to back and pretty much replace a Textio or a Datapeople, I feel like this platform is going to be pretty much scrunched into a feature on every single core talent platform that's out there. What do you think about that?
Quincy: As it should be, in my opinion. And it's already showing up. I wrote about this week, Oracle released some new tech using GenAI that actually does some of that. It helps... It's assisted authoring, which is really really smart. The risks... Well first... And I think everyone should be doing it by the way. Particularly as more and more of the work leaves the seat of HR or recruiters or other people who've been trained in our expert supposedly in these things, and lands firmly in the lap of hiring managers and it's, "What do you mean, I gotta write a job description from scratch?" They don't know how they haven't been trained. And they're gonna unintentionally turn away some candidates. So I think it's a really smart thing to do. Have to be careful because depending on what model you're using, again, we all know you can automatically bake in bias.
Chad: Yes.
Quincy: Into those job descriptions. So it has to be careful how it's applied but I don't see any reason why you wouldn't wanna do this. And I hope that after this round of funding and a few short years we see them making bank, if it works, getting acquired by one of the platforms that needs to include it.
Chad: Yeah, I think this to me sounds, again, like more runway to be able to look very deeply at different acquisition targets. So you're the acquisition target but acquirees, right?
Quincy: Yeah. Yes.
Chad: That's the biggest key, because this is going to be a feature, kids. This is not a platform, this is feature and...
SFX: Just the tip.
Chad: That's just the tip from Quincy and Chad today. So, free stuff. That's right, kids. Oh, my God, we give away so much shit, there a lot of stuff. For instance, we give away beer, craft beer.
Quincy: I've never gotten any.
Chad: Aspen Tech Labs. That's right. Aspen Tech labs, they don't actually deliver the beer, nor does Chad and Cheese, we have UPS and FedEx for that. But one person every month is going to win a box of craft beer from our friends in Aspen Tech Labs. Then you have whiskey. It's coming from Textkernel. Everybody knows Textkernel. They are the scraping and AI. Oh, you've heard of that word before, right?
Quincy: No.
Chad: AI. They've been doing that for decades, kids. And they are sponsoring a couple of bottles of whiskey. One from Chad, one from Cheese. Mine's always better.
Quincy: Right.
Chad: Then you have T-shirts from JobGet, which everybody loves as well. I think you have every single one of them, don't you?
Quincy: I do and I wear them all over the world.
[laughter]
Chad: Always selfies, when you have your Chad and Cheese T-shirt, you got to take a selfie no matter where you're at. Then...
Quincy: I do.
Chad: I know. I'm telling everybody else. That's what you do. You are the standard.
Quincy: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Chad: We also have a new giveaway, a $250 Airbnb getaway gift card.
Quincy: What?
Chad: Yes. From Abode HR, they want all of the talent acquisition professionals that are out there, they want them to be able to get the hell away from all the noise, sit and think for a minute. You can do that in an Airbnb wherever you want. Take the $250, take a long weekend, do whatever you want, but you got to get away. And especially for the Abode folks, you wanna focus on that new cohort that's coming up and that's Gen Z. That's their specialty. Last but not least, if it's your birthday...
SFX: Happy birthday.
Chad: It's rum from plum. Now, birthdays will be back next week because I don't wanna mess with Cheesman's, his whole flair with birthdays. But again, Rum from Plum, if you haven't done your Plum Assessment yet, go to Google, type in Plum Assessment, go take it, have a good time. This can all be found at chadcheese.com/free or just click on free in the upper right hand corner on chadcheese.com.
Quincy: Do it.
Chad: Last but not least, next week is RecFest at Knebworth Park, ten stages, 5500 people, they're only allowed to have that many. They sold out a few... I think, last week or something like that. So if you didn't get a chance to go, sucks to be you, maybe next year, but it's gonna be a blast next week in Knebworth Park. But if you haven't been able to get to Knebworth Park and maybe, I don't know, maybe in the US or maybe you wanna visit the US, RecFest is coming to Nashville in September. It's the very first time. And Quincy, are you going to Nashville?
Quincy: I'm not.
Chad: Okay. We're gonna rectify this because this is the place, everybody's gonna be there. And without Quincy being there, not everybody's there. So we've got to get Quincy there. It's where TA leaders bring their teams for all hangout days, right. There meetings, interact with other practitioners, learn from obviously a bunch of different vendors and practitioners and find out exactly what's happening in the Tech space. So just go to chadcheese.com, click on events in the upper right hand corner. Are you ready?
Quincy: Ready.
SFX: Topics.
Chad: Oh, shit. Indeed goes to France. Who saw this coming? This comes from RH Martin. Indeed, France is changing its pricing model, making way for pay-per-application. "It's France and Canada's turn to make the change, which is scheduled for the beginning of July. What change, you might ask? The first results with the pay for results system obtained in the US and UK are satisfactory." Is that how you really... You wanna go with satisfactory?
Quincy: Satisfactory?
Chad: "We particularly follow indicators that have baptized positive outcomes." Said by the Indeed France Managing Director Matthieu Eloy. Okay, Quincy, is Indeed bringing innovation or bullshit to France and Canada.
Quincy: Well, first and foremost pay-for-performance is not innovative. Appcast and others have been doing that for years in other realms, but same thing.
Chad: Yeah.
Quincy: So no, that's not innovative. Much like some people that I know who host a really popular podcast, I'm skeptical of anything that Indeed does. I'm not a fan. They're good at pushing propaganda. You know, we'll get you a thousand applicants, but only one ever gets hired, is not the way to go. Depends on their pricing model. And we'll see if it works and maybe it'll work better there than it has other places with their, what do they say, satisfactory results?
[laughter]
Chad: That's... Yes. Yes.
Quincy: I mean, is that the way to launch a product. Satisfactory? Who approved that? But I don't know. I'm skeptical. It's not innovative. It may be innovative there. I'm not an expert in recruiting in France or Canada, for that matter. But we'll see, we'll see what happens. I'm interested, Chad, as always, to know what your thoughts are about something Indeed is doing.
Chad: Hmm. I'm gonna start off with that. So first off, they talk about pay-per-performance results oriented, and they're really focusing on this Pay-per-started apply, which literally should just be the acronym should be S-H-A-M, because it's a sham.
Quincy: Wait, it's pay-per-started apply?
Chad: Yes, yes, yes.
Quincy: Oh, I missed that part. Yeah, it's shit. Don't do it. Save your money.
Chad: So, it's exactly what PPC is, it's just repackaged. It's a different colored lipstick on the same damn pig with expensive... More expensive rates. So, now let's talk about PPA.
Quincy: Wait, before you do that.
Chad: Yeah.
Quincy: I have to roll back what I said.
Chad: Good.
Quincy: And not compare this then to what Appcast and others have been doing quite successfully for years. Because what they're doing actually works. This is different. I agree. I missed that little part. The pay-per-applies start. And that's... You're right. PPC repackaged. So, sorry Appcast, I take it back.
[laughter]
Quincy: Tame.
Chad: Okay. So then we'll roll into the PPA side of the house. The pay-per-application. This is nothing more than suffocating trusted partners through Indeed's new mandated registration. Remember back in the day when they actually kicked platforms off for mandated registration?
Quincy: Yes.
Chad: Now they're doing it. This is the newest Trojan Horse built to, once again, suck the life out of trusted partners. Indeed claims a monthly audience of 300 million unique visitors to its engine worldwide, including 7 million in France, which they would not have, I repeat, Indeed would not have without their trusted partners. They can't reach that kind of traction and/or audience. Now, let me tell you a little history. Little story. You ready for a little story?
Quincy: I'm ready.
Chad: Back in the day, Monster.com and CareerBuilder...
Quincy: Heard of them.
Chad: Yeah. They both started working with Indeed and in their first Trojan horse. And they got a little bit of that traffic and then they got hooked. And then the next thing you know Indeed is sucking all the traffic and all the life out of the Monsters and the CareerBuilders of that day. Now, that was before mandated registration. Mandated registration means everybody out there in the trusted partner network, it means, everybody that you push their way, they don't need you for next time. They're sucking the life out of whatever you are sending to them, which means your money stream, your revenue stream from Indeed is going to atrophy, it's gonna go away, and then they're gonna kick you to the curb. This is what history shows us, kids. So to think that this is something that's gonna be big in France, I think is kind of hilarious. But we'll see. They're pushing the propaganda, they're boiling the frog, and they're doing what Indeed does.
Quincy: Oh, I don't say boiling the frog. I don't like that.
[laughter]
Chad: Leave the frogs out of it, Chad.
Quincy: Nobody likes it, but that's what they're doing. All right, I'm going down. That's the newest single from Joonko. That's right, kids. Here directly from The Post. Joonko, a New York City based startup that created an AI powered job board to improve diversity in hiring, is on the brink of collapse. I'll say that again, is on the brink of collapse after its CEO allegedly duped investors with an elaborate scheme to exaggerate the size of the company's business. Joonko founder and CEO, Ilit Raz, resigned after internal probe found she had "Engage in egregious, unethical, and fraudulent conduct, which caused harm to the company and its shareholders". The startup's board of directors said in a statement obtained by The Post. Raz allegedly misled investors by claiming Joonko was working with 150 companies, "When at practice the number was significantly smaller." News of Raz's alleged scheme... This is where it gets fucking crazy, man.
Quincy: It's already crazy, man.
Chad: Yeah, but it comes after the company raised $25 million in cash from investors last fall included the submission of, listen, fake invoices that were attributed to real people and real companies, fake wire transfers, and even fake bank accounts. A source with knowledge of the situation told The Post. Joonko received 38.5 million in funding. Their last round, as I had said, September of 2022 is a series B and that was 25 million. Quincy, does Joonko live through this or are they already dead in the water?
Quincy: No, I don't see there's any way they can live through this. The blow back is gonna break them. They won't get any more money. First of all, has she not ever heard the name Elizabeth Holmes and the company Theranos? You can't do this. Why they would, I don't know. I'm familiar with the product, it's actually a good product. So I'm not sure why they would do that. And they actually do or did, I have some notable companies and logos that they could actually tout. So why they would do that is beyond me. The only thing I can think of was to bolster that round of funding and, did they need it? I guess. I don't know what was going on in the background. Everybody needs money. 38% of startups in 2021, I just read this, failed because they didn't have enough cash. That was the number one reason why they failed. Number two was because they were offering a product or service that no one wanted or needed. That's a good reason to fail.
Chad: Oh, yeah.
Quincy: But if you need the cash, that's fine. But I don't understand, you don't have to do that. And it takes a lot of work to put that elaborate of a scheme together. One would think and hope that if she used those powers for good instead of evil good, could have come out of it. I don't think they have a chance. What are your thoughts?
Chad: Yeah, yeah. I think, from my standpoint, you gotta wonder how long before investors rip those funds back. Number one, we do know Aubrey Brown, who we interviewed and he was actually leading the DEI efforts over at Airtable before he took the VP of Strategy Position there at Joonko, He's literally I think the only person that I would say could prospectively right the ship if they kept their funding. The guy knows what he's fucking doing. It is, from what I've heard, a good product. So, I think you've gotta have the right person in place, number one. Number two, you've gotta have that funding so that runway's got to be there. And, I don't know, I think he's a great guy. Incredibly well spoken, everything that you want out of a founder.
Quincy: Yeah.
Chad: Right. He's a great just face person. And I think because he is a practitioner too, he knows how to get inside the minds of the people that should be buying. So I think they have a chance, but it's a very, very, very, very thin chance.
Quincy: Well, what they've done, what she's done in this case is really... There are other products who do this in the market, SeekOut does something similar, right? Which we know and love that company. So there are others who do the same thing or something similar and she's opened the door completely...
Chad: Yes.
Quincy: For organizations to make the switch. And it's not a technology that's so deeply embedded into an organization that's particularly difficult switch.
Chad: Yeah.
Quincy: So I think the other companies who do the same thing are poised to come in and say, "Hey, we are not gonna lie and cheat you, and take some of that business." I never want a company to go under, particularly if it's a good company offering a good product the market needs.
Chad: Yeah.
Quincy: I just don't know, in this case, even with the right person at the helm, that it's gonna be able to do enough and do it fast enough to fix this. I don't know. Good luck to them, but...
Chad: Yeah.
Quincy: She is... The theme of today's show, by the way, is people will see as we go on, is for fuck's sake people, what are you doing?
[laughter]
Quincy: Starting with Ohio and moving in here, and I just, I don't understand people. I just don't get it.
Chad: I don't either. And the hardest part about this for me, I think is that we've seen DEIB as a nice to have instead of a need to have. And when you are a platform that is not seen as a need to have, and this happens, it just automatically sends everybody running away from you, which is not a good thing to be kids. We will be right back. Alright. How about a little future of work? Quincy, what do you think about that?
Quincy: My future is retirement. I don't wanna work. [laughter] Wait, I didn't say that out loud. If my boss is listening, I do wanna work. I love my job. I don't wanna be unemployed.
Chad: Woo. Yeah. Okay. Well, you still got some time for that, don't worry. So this is from Forbes, Gone, our CEO requests to McKinsey for explanations of how AI technology works and whether it's over hyped or not. Now, five questions dominate the conversation these days.
Quincy: What are they?
Chad: Rule number one... Good question. What are the specific use cases? Number two, how do I get started? Number three, what are the risks I need to manage? Number four, what are the implications for present and future employees? And the last one, how do I learn fast? [laughter] Yes. That's the top five. So previously McKinsey predicted AI would take effect in 2040. They've bumped that up to 2030. Right? Open AI has cracked this bitch wide open. Their winners will be those who move fast and quickly figure out how to integrate these new technologies into their IT stack and workflows and reimagine how they manage talent and design, their operating model as a result. But wait, there's more this from HR Dive, more than 70% of organisations are struggling to keep up with the risks of using AI tools, citing significant risks that have emerged, which could lead to financial loss, reputational loss, or damage, the loss of customer trust, regulatory penalties, that sucks. Compliance challenges, litigation and more. It's the wild wild west out there, and James West and Artemus Gordon aren't here to save us, kids. So what's the CEO to do, Quincy?
Quincy: Well, first of all, they're asking the right questions. Means a lot of questions, but they're asking the right questions. I talked to customers, and it's 10 years ago, every time I talked to a client it was, "Hey, do you guys got any of that AI stuff?" And 'cause it was a checkbox on somebody's performance review and they had to have it.
Chad: Yeah.
Quincy: And now it's not that anymore. It's, what are we doing and how are we moving the product forward with the use of AI? They still don't necessarily know what it is, but buyers are becoming more educated. They're certainly more sophisticated. And they know that this is not something that's gonna go away. And they need to really evaluate their tech stack and the products that are coming to them for how it'll be used for the security protocols behind that technology is very, very important. And so my advice to some of the smaller guys is make sure that you can have the same sort of story as some of the big guys, because people know and trust their security, so you better make sure you have that too. But I do think the CEOs are asking the right questions and the vendors need to keep up. But by the way, don't lie to the analyst your briefing and tell them you have something that you don't 'cause that will never end well for you.
Chad: It won't. That's what a vapourware has been around ever since the... Even before the internet. It was salespeople are selling shit that doesn't exist that they saw could have prospectively been on a roadmap at one time.
Quincy: Say it isn't so, Chad.
Chad: You know it's so. That is a huge issue. And I really believe, and this is where we have to start taking control over the risks. That's not gonna stop. Right? Those things are not gonna stop. But what we have to do as practitioners and leaders, and also vendors, co-founders and whatnot, is we have to ensure that we are doing the right things from an auditing standpoint.
Quincy: Yes.
Chad: To ensure, right? That first and foremost, our deliverables are on par with what we're promising. And we can't... If the little Joey over there selling something and has a side conversation, it's not something that we can manage. It's everything that we're putting out in the public. And some of the things that I've seen out there over the years have been total bullshit in the first place. Out in the public through mass marketing and their PR people, it's just total bullshit. So, we have to make sure that we align with those things because trust in this market means more than anything else.
Chad: ChatGPT and OpenAI showed us one thing, it's that transparency and giving the individual and opportunity to use it, feel it, touch it, and understand that it's not perfect, but it's growing, it's living, and it's moving, and it's learning, is that you are going to have to be more transparent, you're going to have to put that technology in the hands of people well before they buy that shit. So, anybody out there today that's thinking about, from a vendor standpoint, you've gotta start thinking about how you can prospectively do much like, not exactly like, but much like OpenAI did, put the power of the tool in the hands of the practitioners, help them understand it's not perfect. Make sure you get it in front of the analysts and everybody, because I'm telling you right now, transparency will save your ass in the end. And everybody was looking at OpenAI at first, like, what the fuck are they doing? Putting this this thing out there for the masses and look what it did.
Quincy: Yeah. Yeah. I partially agree with you. I'm gonna just sit somewhere I don't think that it's... I do I believe in transparency, so I 100% agree with you there. We know we've always been aligned there. I don't know that it's necessary for every single technology vendor to go to every single perspective buyer and say, "Here's how we do every single thing in the backend." I don't know that that's...
Chad: Oh no, you don't need to do that.
Quincy: I don't know that's necessary. I don't even know that anybody would care to want to. I used to have a boss a long time ago that would say, "I don't wanna hear the labor pains. I just wanna see the baby." And I think it kind of... This fits the same... Well.
Chad: I hope that was a female who said that.
[laughter]
Quincy: It wasn't. This was in the early '90s. Yeah, let's go back to our DEI&B discussion. Anyway...
[laughter]
Quincy: But really, practitioners and people who are gonna be using it, they care about the practicality of it, they wanna know it's their CTOs wanna know a little bit more. I don't know if they have to put it all in their hands, but transparency is absolutely key. Again, buyers are becoming more sophisticated and more intelligent... Eh, no. More sophisticated, more educated.
[laughter]
Quincy: And organizations need to have statements. So, I actually talked to a client about this this week. I never recommend that all of my vendors go, all of my clients go and up in their entire roadmap to figure out a way to insert this new stuff. Most of them are because they're smart. But you don't have to, but you need to have an organizational position on it. Are you taking a more conservative approach? Are you taking a wait and see? Are you making sure you have more security protocols? Is it on your roadmap? Are you working on it? Are you not? Have a statement. Because you will not go in, your salespeople will not go into a meeting without somebody asking about it.
Chad: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we actually talked about this on the stage at Unleash America. This is all about build, partner, or buy, if you are a vendor. If there are ways that you can actually, practically get some of this text, some of this generative AI or what have you, into your stack, there are point solutions that are out there that you could partner with. If you can maybe possibly build it yourself or just buy that shit, the market is fucking perfect for that right now. Yes.
Quincy: You buy it. You don't have time to build it yourself unless you already have, a team of developers sitting on the bench with nothing to do, buy it. You have the cash, go get it.
Chad: Well, go buy it, I would partner first. So you get that little taste to see if it works and see if they're not bullshitting you. And then once you get it, once you get it and it's like, okay baby, you're mine. That being said, we're gonna talk about ChatGPT and jobs. So this is from Business Insider jobs are now requiring, that's right. I just said requiring. Experience with ChatGPT probably like 15 years of experience or something.
Quincy: What's the theme of the show, Chad.
Chad: Yeah. And for fuck sake people.
Quincy: God.
Chad: And they will pay as much as $800,000 a year for this skill. I don't believe that, I'll have to see that one. A recent study from Resume Builder found that 91% of companies with open positions were looking to hire workers who knew how to use open AI's Buzzy chatbot. Respondents said ChatGPT helped boost productivity, save time, and bolster the company's bottom line. Companies are already using the chatbot to generate marketing material, develop code, and court briefs. Much more on that one later. Here's a quote. "AI won't take your job." The economist Richard Baldwin said during a panel, at the 2023 Work Economic Forum summit, "It's somebody using AI that will take your job." And here are the categories that they think will, AI will start being used very quickly. Marketing, yes. AI and ML engineers. Weird that that wasn't first. Software developers, AI model trainers, copywriters, teachers, product managers, and recruiters. Yes. Recruiters actually made the list. So, talk to me, Quincy, is this the Iron Man suit, the AI platform vendors have been touting for years? Or are we just training our AI overlords to replace our asses?
[laughter]
Quincy: No, we're not training anyway, everyone said that. No, our AI overlords are not going to replace us because there's too much error and there's too much bias, potential for bias, and you still need humans to take what it's spitting out and tweak it. Couple things. First of all, ChatGPT experience is not even the right thing to say. Organizations who are looking to move into this space need to be looking for people with experience with large language modeling. And it's not all ChatGPT. So the fact that they're saying that tells me what the hell they're doing in the first place.
Chad: It is buzzy. That's all they are doing. It's marketing.
Quincy: It's a very buzzy. The second thing is people asking for 15 years of ChatGPT experience should be fired on the spot. And the third thing is no, you know... Well, some jobs I think will become different and will shift just like with every advancement in technology that we've ever had. But no, I don't think it's going to take your job, unless you use it exclusively and do some really bad stuff and then you're going to get fired. Looking for people with these skills is the right thing to do. I think it's really smart. I do think the applications that he said are the first place it's going. We've already seen it, but know what you're talking about before you put something out there in the public is all I'll stop there, Chad.
[laughter]
Chad: Well.
SFX: That escalated quickly.
Chad: That escalated very quickly. I mean, just from the standpoint of, as you'd say, using ChatGPT, it's more buzzy in marketing, trying to pull people in with these new buzzy words. Much like years ago when everybody was slapping AI on a product and then they started slapping DEIB on a product, this has nothing to do with anything other than trying to sucker people in just to be able to take a look at the job. I mean, $800,000, I don't need to see ChatGPT for that, but yes, it is something that we're definitely going to be talking a lot about. And I'm just going to go ahead and pull back for a minute because we're going to talk about it right after this break.
Chad: Now we're headed down that not-to-do lane of ChatGPT from NBC News, A New York federal judge on Thursday, sanctioned lawyers who submitted a legal brief written by the AI tool ChatGPT, which included citations of non-existent court opinions and fake quotes. Judge P. Kevin Castel ordered the both Peter LoDuca and Steven Schwartz, they're both attorneys, along with their law firms LEVIDOW, LEVIDOW & OBERMAN. Holy shit. To pay $5,000 in fines. That's it. $5,000. Quincy. This is fucking ridiculous. This is fucking ridiculous. And again, ChatGPT has gone awry. This is, again, I think a cautionary tale for not just lawyers.
Quincy: But again, I mean, this is it. This is what we've been saying all along. The first thing we said was for fuck's sake, people, you use your brain. The second thing we said is, there are risks associated with using these types of models. You can mitigate that [chuckle] with the right security protocols and the right practice of how you apply the model. But you can't just use a publicly available tool like that and expect it to be okay. And for this man or their firm to only be fined $5,000 is not setting, it's not setting the right precedent because we're talking about legal hearings and I don't know what it was, but these legal hearings and these legal rulings have the potential to impact people's lives. And you can't just say, "Oh that was dumb. Five grand. There needs to be a bigger message sent." There will be if it wasn't that guy. And I can't even with people today. There's my salt again, I don't understand.
Chad: For fuck's sake people.
Quincy: And it's not like people haven't warned about it. Chad, it's not like people haven't warned about this very thing. I typed into ChatGPT because I felt like it. Who did it? Was it William Tim Cook maybe to write an obituary about me? And I wrote it an about 20 different prompts and it still didn't know who I was. So if it can't even get that right, there aren't too many Quincy Valencias for crying out loud. Don't rely on it for legal briefings...
Chad: No.
Quincy: Or professional work, or anything you're going to attach your name to.
[applause]
Chad: I have to say though, Quincy, let's just celebrate that humans are still in control for now.
SFX: Shall we play a game?
Chad: We out.
Outro: Wow. Look at you. You made it through an entire episode of the Chad and Cheese podcast. Or maybe you cheated and fast forwarded to the end. Either way, there's no doubt you wish you had that time back. Valuable time you could have used to buy a nutritious meal at Taco Bell. Enjoy a pour of your favorite whiskey. Or just watch big booty Latinas and bug fights on TikTok. No, you hung out with these two chuckleheads and instead now go take a shower and wash off all the guilt, but save some soap because you'll be back like an awful train wreck, you can't look away. And like Chad's favorite Western, you can't quit them either. We out.