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Hello and welcome to the show. Apologies that I've been away for a couple of days and that's been because I've not been feeling very well. So for those of you who have listened to the last audio sessions, I mean with all the coughing and the hacking, I'm sure you guys figured out that something was not right. So I figured let me take a break and spare you guys all the coughing into your eardrums. And then plus I've also been engaged with some client work.
So it's been a pretty busy period for me, but I'm back because today I had a speaking engagement over on LinkedIn. I just finished doing a LinkedIn live session with Doctor Ojugo. Sorry, not Ojugo. Oju Ojugo. Sorry. I hope I'm pronouncing it well. And The thing is, I've been calling her Ojugo for a while. And then one day she told me that, you know, my name is not Ojugo, right? I was like, oh, I'm terribly sorry. I had no idea because I went to school with a bunch of Ojugo's and nobody ever corrected me.
That is not Ojugo. So I was with Doctor Oji Ogo over on LinkedIn and we did a teaser session ahead of a conference that we're going to do next week. That is the small and medium scale conference, and it's going to be about how to use AI in your businesses. Now, of course, if you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that I am not an AI specialist. My specialty is in solving sales and in handling business development problems.
However, when AI tools came out, I readily adopted them and I used them every single day in my business. I even use it in the recording of the podcast. Now, I am a human being making this episode right now. So this is not an AI generated voice. Don't fret. However, having done over 920 episodes, I quickly realised that AI is a lot smarter than me when it comes to coming up with clever business titles. So I just stopped making business titles and I use AI
tools to come up with the titles for my podcast. So I recorded by myself, but then I tell AI to give me a title and then I just run that title. Because for those of you who've been listening from the beginning of the podcast, you realise that in the early days, the podcast title was just the first few sentences that I used on the podcast because I couldn't bother to come up. Because this whole thing of coming up with titles for posts and things like that, it's, it's hard work.
So I just use AI to do that. So this is one of the many ways that I use AI in my own business and then also when trying to solve business problems for my clients. So because I use AI every single day in running my businesses and also to try and troubleshoot problems that are going on in my clients businesses. I have been called time and time again from last year up until now to talk about the use of AI in businesses and how we can use AI tools to grow our businesses.
So we're going to be at the SMB Vcon next week. And for those of you who are interested, yeah, please sign up. It's going to be rather long, I admit, because there's a bunch of our speakers. I think we're about close to 15 speakers from, we're all Nigerians, but from different parts, currently living in different parts of the globe. So I'm here in Abuja, Niger, Dr. Ojugo is here in Abuja. We have some Lagos based professionals, we have some professionals out of America,
one person in Washington, another person in, I can't remember where. There's another one, most Nigerian business based professional in Dubai and I think in Oman. And so there's a whole bunch of us and we're going to be talking about different things, going to be talking about IT, infrastructure, project management, sales, marketing, web. As in it's, it's plenty. It's going to be a long, long, long, long, long session.
So it's two days, each speaker having about I think 45 minutes worth of talk time. My own session is going to be maybe 15-30 minutes. I'll be aiming for 15 minutes so I can spend most of my time in question and answer because lots of people have questions around these sorts of things. So SME Vcon, you guys should be keeping out in mind out towards that. And also don't get confused if you see me on the stage talking about AI.
I'm not an AI specialist. I'm a business. I'm a business consultant. I handle sales, business development, but I happen to use AI. So that's the reason why I'm speaking about it. So don't be confused. I'm always going to be sales guy. I'm not going to be the AI guy. So in the teaser session that we had over on LinkedIn, we discussed a bunch of stuff and there were a couple of questions. So I figured, let me just hop on the microphone real quick and share with you guys.
So one question that was asked was about my mindset towards adopting AI tools for Nigerian businesses. And my own approach was please that we should all be using AI tools because it has huge benefits when it comes to ideation and strategic thinking. Ideation just means coming up with ideas. AI very good tool for coming up with ideas. We should be using it. It also helps us to clarify our. SO excuse me, our strategic thinking.
Another thing I wanted to let the people know who are there was that we should ignore all this doomsday crap that we hear on on TV. People keep talking about AI is coming for your children, AI is coming for your jobs, AI is ruining the economy. AI is doing this, AI this, AI taking over the world, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's just absolute nonsense because AI is not really intelligent. The modern fathers and mothers of AI computing were very very good scientists.
Unfortunately, they are very bad philosophers. That is the reason why this term AI has caught on. Because these things have mimic human behaviour. People just think that they are intelligent. They are not intelligent because intelligent requires autonomy, it requires self direction and it requires self-awareness. These AI tools are not aware of themselves. I'm intelligent because I know that I exist, I have some autonomy and I can determine what it is that I want to do and I'm self directing.
So that is why I as a human being can be dangerous because I can decide to wake up one day and crack your skull. So I am dangerous because I'm intelligent and I'm aware AI is not. It has no autonomy. AI does exactly what we tell it to do Char GBT is going to do exactly what I tell it to do and nothing more. I'm not going to tell char GBT to write me a 3000 word essay and then Chachi PT is going to say no I won't write you a 3000
word essay. Instead I'm going to draw you a picture. It's not When you do that, it'll do exactly what I tell it to do. So stop. Just ignore all these doomsday scenarios. Until these things become autonomous, self directing and self aware, they are not really intelligent. The best way to think about AI is to think of it as computerized problem solving. AI is just computers solving problems. So you guys stop being scared shitless.
There are some issues that we need to address concerning privacy, but we'll get to that when we get to the section where people are asking me questions in Q&A. Then I also told the people how it works. It works through pattern recognition and statistical analysis. So it's nothing magical. It is information that has been fed into the Internet, and the Internet is just using pattern recognition. What is similar with what statistical analysis, what seems to line up with what?
And then it gives you an answer because of that. That is the reason why people say AI is biased. And that's also another thing that just gives me a headache. You have very very very brilliant people scientifically but very poor philosophers talking about how AI has bias. Non living things cannot have biases. I cannot say my car is biased. My car is not alive. So people stop saying AI is biased. It's not biased, it's a tool.
Garbage in, garbage out. If you feed it information that is not universal and inclusive, you will not get a response. That is universal and inclusive. So AI is not biased. So people, stop all that crap, please. And that's also the reason why you can use AI tools to find out a lot. For instance, let me come to the Nigerian context. You can find out a lot of stuff using ChatGPT about Igbo people or Yoruba people. But you're not going to find a whole bunch when it comes to Indani people or when it comes to Teev people.
That's my own race. Or when it comes to certain tribes in the Middle Belt or maybe the jungle region of Cameroon, precisely because we have not put that kind of information out there on the Internet. So these are some of the limitations concerning AI. But please, let's stop blaming AIAI cannot think it is not biased. The reason why AI doesn't, it's not inclusive and gender whatever is because we have not put inclusive gender whatever information there.
So the moment we start putting information about TIF people and Doni people and then the tribes in Northern Cameroon, we will find that kind of information. But until then, AI is going to be limited. And it's not because AI is biased. So please stop listening to all these very brilliant people scientifically, but they are very, very, very poor philosophers, and they're talking a whole bunch of crap out there. So don't let these people scare you, OK?
Then I also said that the benefits is that AI is going to help you think faster, come up with more ideas. And so that's the reason why we should use it. And our job when it comes to AI is just to execute, take feedback, iterate. So if AI gives you 5 ideas, you try 2 and the two are rubbish, throw it away. If it tries three and three seem to work, but then number two of the idea seems the most promising. Take the feedback and then double down on #2 so that's how you use AI.
So ignore the crap and then double down on what it is that works. Then I also spoke about how AI tools are free and easy to access because, OK, well, there's some that you need to pay for. But The thing is, for my work, I only focus on the free tools that are readily available because I do not want to go into an organization to talk to some people and say this is how we solve some problems. And then they now tell me that,
oh, I'm broke, I don't have money. I'm always trying to come up with practical solutions that don't involve you spending more. Now, of course, you will have to pay for my time. I am talking to some people for free, like Zainab. Who else? So I can't remember their names, but they're mostly students so far. I have a couple of people in pH port, Arcot, UI, let's see where else. So there's some schools for instance, I don't know if I'm trending there or anything, but and it's nice to have you people on board.
So yes, I talked to the students for free. You will have to pay for my time. But if I'm going to give you people any advice around AI tools, I'm not going to talk about anything that you have to pay for. So free stuff, the LLMS, the large language models, and then the GPTS, the generative pre trained Transformers, these things are already on your phone. If you bought your phone in 2024, it's already there. If you bought your phone in 2023, it's already there.
If you bought your computer in 2024, it's already there. Because like the Macbooks already come loaded up with a copilot. That's one of the AI tools, one of the GPTS. And then Gemini is a default. It's already on your Android phone. So if you use a Xiaomi like me, I'm a Xiaomi 13 C person. If you're a techno person, if you're a come on person, if you're a Nokia person, if you are a whatever person, this thing is already on your phone.
It's dole is given. So no need to go and buy anything. If you're an Android person. When you open your phone, you load it up, you will find a a tab there, a folder already created called Google. It's like that on most devices. Tap on Google, the thing will just come up. You will notice one icon that is white, but it has a star in the middle of it and the star is running horizontal to vertical. Only four points, that is Gemini.
Click on it, you're good to go. It's that simple. It's already there. You don't have to look for it. You don't have to download it then for those of you who are iPhone people, copilot is ready to default on your system is already there on your Mac. If you don't, if Gemini or copilot is not your thing, but you use WhatsApp and Facebook a lot, Meta AI is already embedded. Just hit the search function. You'll be able to use Meta AI
default tool. And then for those of you who use Snapchat, and that is one of the reason why I love talking to you guys, because every time I talk to you guys, I come away learning something. And this is when I was talking to the lady from the University of Port Harcourt, the one who is a chef and an online caterer, and we're trying to solve some problems in our business. And I told her about Gemini and she's like, what is that?
I was like, oh, that's AII, just like, oh, AI oh sure, no problem. I have that on Snapchat. You know, I was stunned. That's like, it's like Snapchat has it's own. Yeah, she's like, yeah, that's the one she uses. And we used it and it was pretty good. So if you don't know any of these things, what you've been using Snapchat Snapchat has its own AI. I've heard some people say TikTok has its own AI, but like I've not tried that out so don't don't quote me.
I have heard it's them say them say I have not seen what Snapchat that one I've seen confirmed. So if you're a Snapchat user and you don't want to bother with all these other things that I've spoken about, just open your Snapchat and just continue and you'll be fine. So my second take was that it's absolutely free. Nigerian businesses use it. The thing is already on your phone anyway. You don't have to download anything else and The thing is already on your computer anyway.
So just go ahead and use the thing. The only thing I recommend is Bluetooth keyboard because when you're using generative preterm Transformers, you're going to be doing plenty of typing. Type, type, type, type, type. Typing is a lot easier using keyboards in my own opinion. There's a friend of mine, she's in the social development space. She says no, no to Bluetooth keyboards. She has found a way to type at the speed of thought.
She uses her thumbs and if you watch her work, it's like watching the flash. So if you're one of those people that is very good at typing on your thumbs, then yeah, ignore me. Don't go and buy Bluetooth keyboard. Ignore. Oh, then again, Doctor Ojugo Ojugo or yeah, Oju ego. She pointed out during the LinkedIn live that they are audio tools there. So you don't even need to learn how to type fast, you can just talk. And the audio tools are beautiful, they work.
The problem is, well, at least where I live in Abuja, Internet is crap. And then when I travel to Markudy to go and see mum, see, Internet is crap. So if you're going to do the audio tools, then dictating becomes a problem. But summary, these tools are free Then OK, there's the issue of should businesses adopt it? Not all businesses. And my opinion was yes, you don't have to be a ten person business, 20 person business to adopt AI.
Start learning how to use AI tools when it's just you and your wife or you and your brother or you and your husband or you and your classmate. Figure out how to use the AI now. Come up with your policy now and then, that way when you grow from three people to 5, from 5 to 10, from 10 to 20, from 20 to 50, all you're doing is just trying to scale or institutionalise all the things that you've learnt and then to roll it out.
So start now. In the small days, if you already a twenty person company and a fifty person company, trying to figure out your AI policy is going to be hard because you know it's not organic. You're trying to start from the top and figure something out all the way down. If you're small, then please, by all means start now. You would have figured out all the challenges organically. Then the question and answer was where we started getting into the dangers of AI.
Some people spoke about generic content and I said, yes, by all means, I agree AI is going to be generic. Very. In fact, some people say AI is not artificial intelligence, it is average intelligence. And I said, of course, what? What were we expecting? Are we expecting these devices, these these things to work miracles? I told you guys how it works. It works through pattern recognition and statistical analysis based on data that was fed in.
So of course it is going to give you the average. The onus is on you, the business person, to have subject matter expertise. So long as you are the expert, you're fine. You put a prompt into ChatGPT, it gives you generic information. If you're an idiot, you're going to take generic information, and then you're going to run with it, and you'll run into problems. But if you are the subject matter expert, you will know that char GPT has given me 12345
number four and #5 useless #3 average number one and two promising especially that number one. You will now take that number one and start making more prompts to delve in and to explore. So that's how it works. So stop complaining that this thing is generic and not using this tool. My friend, Take your phone, use this thing that is already free. You are a big boy, you are a big girl, you are an adult. There's nobody who is listening to this podcast that is less than 18.
If you are already the subject matter expert, just open up this thing and you'll be fine. The one that is too generic, delete the one that is rubbish, delete the one that makes sense. Lean in and explore. You are the expert. Stop worrying about generic information. Now the one that I agree, deepfakes, that one is a problem. I can be chilling in my own house and somebody will go and take something and make a video and show that.
Show the video. Maybe, I don't know, maybe me stealing, stealing more and more in Zamfira, for instance, and I've never been to Zamfira and God willing, I will never steal my more things won't get that desperate. So yes, there's, there's, there's a problem there when it comes to deepfakes. But my solution was that we should try and put out as much content and take advantage of the Internet so that we already have some thought leadership and personal and public profile so that people can say this is not the kind of thing Tavishyima would do.
Because I already have a podcast that has over 920 episodes. You guys kind of know that this guy can do this kind thing. This guy can't do this kind of thing, so that's my own way around it. But deepfakes, Yeah, Yeah. Now there's a problem, especially if you're a politician. When the next electoral cycle comes around, no more. It's going to be bloody. Because even before AI, people already started making fake information.
They will say Peter OB said this, Peter OB did this. This is without AI. Not now. Talk of a time when you can actually use these tools and then create a video of Peter OB saying or doing something or a video of Tinaboo saying or doing something. So with that, I agree with you. Deep fix is a problem, yes. But then on the challenge of putting out content that has no human voice, my response is still the same about the generic thing.
We're big boys, we're big girls. There's nobody here that is less than 18 years old. Can you just exercise your subject matter expertise, put on your brain and you'll be fine. Stop expecting this thing to write the article for you. Instead of saying charge GBT, write me a 2000 word essay on. OK my own thesis was on the the. What did I write on again? When I was in uni, my thesis was on the fuel the carbon Carbon emissions trading scheme a a way to just environmental issues.
Let me just put it that way. So instead of saying charge GBT, write me a 10,000 word thesis on the European European emissions carbon trading scheme. So excuse me instead of doing that and then having generic content with no human voice in it, instead sit down and say in ChatGPT. I'm a student, I'm currently studying law. I want to write a thesis on the carbons emissions scheme because I'm worried about the environment and I want to see what business solutions we can use to create a safer earth for our children.
In my thesis, I want to explore the topics of 123 and 456. I'm influenced by the writings of this, this and that that That and these are the angles I want to explore in my thesis 12345. With this in mind, what other issues have I not paid attention to and what other possible research avenues are there when it comes to this topic? Then you hit send and then Chachibiti is going to give you a list that, OK, apart from 12345 that you have written, you might want to pay attention to 5678 by professors in this school, this school and that school.
And you might also possibly want to explore this and this and that and that. You now, being the adults that you are, will look at this list and you will see that some of these things make sense. Some of them don't. Excuse me, the one that doesn't make sense. Delete. Don't that make sense? You now know that OK, this is a possible research area. You now carry your two left legs, walk to the school library and start doing the research and write the paper.
Have you used ChatGPT to come up with the paper? Yes. Is there anything that I've discussed so far that has been unethical? No, because this is something you would have done with a human being anyway, back in the old school days, back in the day when we didn't have these tools. And that's how I wrote my thesis. I didn't have ChatGPT and all these things. So I sat down and then I thought, and I had some questions and I went to my professor and we discussed a bit and I discussed with my classmates, and that is how my thesis was formed.
It is the same thing. It's just that instead of asking your professor, you're now asking ChatGPT and is using information readily available on the Internet. Stop worrying about this whole thing of human voice. If you sit down there and you want this thing to do the work for you, then of course you deserve whatever it is you're going to get. You get in your business or in your in your grade in university. But if you're using this thing as an ideation tool, coming up with an idea or a strategic tool, thinking about the layer of the land and where should I
go? Should I go left? Should I go right? Should I go here? Should I go there? You will be fine. Use this thing to come up with the ideas. Flesh it out yourself. When you're done, you can now take your thesis and throw it into char GPT and say char GPT. This is my thesis. I beg correct the punctuation. The place where I supposed to have put full stop, put it the place where I'm supposed to put, come and put it and then run it and it will edit the thing for you.
Voila, problem solved. This is how we use ChatGPT and all these tools in our businesses and in school. Stop worrying about generic. Stop worrying about human voice, OK, human voice, generic content. It's a problem because people are being lazy. Somebody wants ChatGPT to write the LinkedIn post for you. Of course your content is going to be generic. Many more of that in future. Then some people wanted to know why to attend my own session and math sounds very simple.
You could attend my session because mine is going to be the best session and it's going to be the easiest session. Most people when they talk about ChatGPT and AI tools, they're talking some high level conceptual stuff. But The thing is to grow our businesses right now or to pass your exams or to fix your family, you don't need high level conceptual nothing. You just need this free simple tools that are here. You need to learn how to prompt and you need to be able to come up with ideas.
And that's my focus. You've been listening to the podcast for any length of time or if you've done some work with me in the past, you realise that I'm always trying to solve 1 specific problem at a time. Let's solve this problem, let's solve this problem, let's solve that problem. And that's going to be my focus. And that's the reason why I told people you need to attend my session. But of course, like I said, there are other people that are going to be there.
Business development people, name day web development people, they're there. Project management person, the woman is there. What? Again, there's a brand somebody person in my person is there. So yeah, good Ave. should be there. But anyway, that's the benefit of attending my own session. If you do attend my own session. Also the benefit of listening to this podcast. So subscribe wherever it is that you're listening to this thing.
Oh, and yeah, good news, the podcast is finally live. It's on YouTube, it's finally done all 920 episodes. And with the earlier TikTok videos and stuff I've been putting up on YouTube, the content I have on YouTube now is currently at about 1200 or so. So if you are discovering me on YouTube, this is your first time listening to the podcast. You're listening to this on YouTube. Good news, you have a plethora of resources, you have a virtual library.
So by all means, take advantage. Start listening, start exploring. So that was the rundown of the teaser session that I had with Doctor Ojugo, and that's what we're going to be doing next week. So yeah, I'm back. I'm back to the land of living. And you guys should hear some more from me pretty soon. So let me get off the microphone now because I actually have some client deliverables that I'm not done with. So let me get back to that and yeah, connect with me on WhatsApp 08064662140.
That's the phone number. Country code is +234. What else? LinkedIn. Yeah, hook up me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishma Ayede. You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link where you're listening to this episode. So whenever you're listening to this thing, you know, like share, subscribe, the usual. And for you people, the 30% of you who keep listening on web browsers, you guys are now finally free. It's on YouTube.
So just go subscribe on YouTube. No need listening on the web browser. And this way you don't miss any episodes when they come up because you'll be there. You just get the notification on your phone, you get the ping and you know, say a video available, you know, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, that's it. And with that, I wish you all good health. For those of you who've been struggling with, you know, allergies or sore throats or whatever in this wonderful weather that we have so good health.
Wishing you all not just good health of body, but good health of bank account as well because that is absolutely necessary in the times that we live in, especially those of us in Nigeria dealing with hyperinflation right now. So here's to health of mind and body and wallet. So you, you guys have a wonderful day. I'll catch you guys in the next episode.