A look back at 25 years of Chatter That Matters!

It's a 20. I'm Ken Connors and for Andrew who's been enjoying some time off over the holidays and recharging. I'll be back here on the air for you on Monday. One of his regular guests every week. I always look forward to this conversation. I always walk up to the counter in the kitchen. I turn the radio up a little louder at a 20 on Thursday's Tony because you always have something interesting to say. How are you? Oh, I'm great. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. How'd you spend New Year's Eve? Were you at home?

We were. We had a wife from South Africa over the last couple of years. Most of her family has moved here. So the family time is precious time. So we had a great, but quiet New Year's Eve, nice dinner and some conversations, some board games, just lovely. Nice. Somebody been asking. Maybe a timer of reflection as well. And I only say that because I'm staring at your LinkedIn posts that you posted yesterday and look back on the last 25 years.

I mean, when you think about, you know, it's been 25 years since the turn of the millennium, and it surprises me when I sort of at quarter century, and what a road we've traveled. I mean, you think of the financial crisis, the terrorism, the climate, you know, it hasn't been easy for humanity, but at the same time,

On the other side, we've seen such amazing technological breakthroughs. So the post was designed to sort of put a balanced perspective and then maybe to put forward for the next 25 years, is there a way we can get a little bit more in control of our destiny versus just feeling like we're a pinball in the middle of a pinball game? And the big elephant in the room moving forward over the next 25 years is AI, right? And everything that brings with it.

Without question, I mean, I've been talking about this for a decade, I mean, accused of being a Luddite, but the more I work with it, because I have an AI company, the more I realize that so many people that are in the transactional side of business, and this includes lawyers and accountants, people that are dealing with very complex pieces of information, but there's a formula to it. AI is going to do things faster, better, and more efficiently. It doesn't make mistakes.

It doesn't take time off. It doesn't have holidays. And so therefore, for capitalists who are always chasing the bottom line, it's a very appealing thing to put a bot in instead of a body. And that's the thing I worry about the most is what are people going to do as AI starts taking away hundreds of thousands of what many say, hundreds of millions of jobs over the next 10 or 15 years.

You know, when I think of professions that maybe AI can't really conquer and eliminate humans from are like the laborers, like the trees people, like the plumbers and the electricians, for example, I mean, you know, do you see AI impacting that at all?

I think AI can improve what they do by, for example, diagnostics of what the actual problem is, coming up with the actual solution, even right to the doctor's office. Plumbing a trade, for sure, it's going to empower them. My whole point about AI is you've got to make a choice. You've either going to ride this wave and say, how can I use it to my best advantage?

How can I embrace it? And I would say to anybody listening, stop scrolling, stop hanging out in TikTok and Instagram, start playing with Google LLM or cloud or perplexity. Just start playing with this product and chase your passions with it. And you'll see that it could be very empowering.

If you don't, it's going to hit you like a sledgehammer because you're going to be even waiting two or three months now because of how fast it's moving. You could have a best before date stamped on you. And this isn't about fear. This is just the reality of this is happening. There's no stopping it.

take advantage of it and start learning how to work with it. I mean, your role, I'm sure you're using AI now to help research your guests, your subject matter. But I can honestly say, I could take your show at the second it's over and within minutes have it up as a podcast in 25 different languages with your voice.

and sending it out around the world. And then down the road, I could just take the three pieces of information, your research, and I could do that actually right now, and to have a bot do your interviews. So you've got to be on top of this, or you're going to be replaced by it. And that's my message for the human race, is we can't stop it, and don't deny it, just embrace it and do the best you can with it. Tell me about your next guest on Shadow of the Matters, Jennifer Leidler.

Yeah, I ended the year and beginning the year with four women that have really impressed me. And Jennifer Laidlaw's, I chose her to start the year off. She's just someone that came from sort of a farm girl and fell in love with horses, hit some health issues along the way. And through all of this, she started to really understand what matters most to humanity.

And it's become this incredible advocate of change within organizations to put more heart into how we approach life, how we approach business, how we approach our bottom line. So it's just a wonderful way to sort of kick off the new year and remind us that if we put the human back in humanity, that a lot of the problems that we face, we can overcome because humans are very innovative and resilient.

I love it. Jennifer Laidlaw is Tony's guest cheddar. That matters wherever you find your your podcasts. You know what? All the best to you in the family moving forward. Happy 2025, Tony. Look forward to chatting again in 2025 when you come and the big guy. Absolutely. Thanks, Tony. All right. Have a good one. Bye.