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In this episode of 5 Minutes with Andy, Virtual, Inc. CEO Andy Freed makes the case that “you’re not going to lose your job to AI, you’re going to lose your job to someone who knows how to use AI.” With “AI everywhere”, the real challenge for leaders isn’t whether to adopt AI, but how to integrate it effectively within their organizations.

Andy explores:

• The rapid evolution of AI and its growing impact on organizations.
• Why leaders and employees alike can’t afford to ignore AI.
• Key considerations for integrating AI strategically and effectively.

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Transcript:

Hi. Welcome to Five Minutes with Andy. My name is Andy Freed. I'm the CEO of Virtual, Incorporated. For the last 25 years, we've been helping membership organizations that are forming, growing and changing.

We work a lot in the technology sector, which is why every year I kick off my January by going to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Now that show is like none other. It's the largest trade show in the United States. More than 175,000 people attend it every year. There’s 4500 exhibitors. There's booths from folks like Samsung and TCL and Sony that are just unbelievable. You know, I saw a 163-inch television there and recognized that's not something I could ever really bring home and have my wife not notice it. So, I didn't get it.

But as I was walking around there, one of the signs that I saw was a sign in the Samsung Booth that says “AI is everywhere”. And everywhere I walked around, I saw more AI. But I'll tell you, it wasn't until I was in the most unlikely of places—and I’ve had to check with my marketing team that it's okay to admit that I was there—but as I was walking around the health and wellness section, there was a section of kiosks that was dedicated to, we’ll, just leave it at AI enabled adult toys. And it was at that moment that I realized, oh my gosh, AI truly is everywhere, and we can't ignore it.

And two years ago at CES, AI was out, ChatGPT had burst on the scene. But what I noticed there was every product was saying it was AI enabled, and maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. But they knew that it was really important to have AI on the box. This year something was different. It was the ubiquity of the AI but also understanding that it was getting more functional. People were showing not just that AI is on the box, but they were showing how things were going to change, and they were showing how AI was going to change our world and be able to make things so much different for us.

For years in technology, we've been talking about people, process and technology as being kind of the holy trinity of how you move things in technology. Well, now with all the sensors that are out there and all of the different ways that we're able to track things, it's become not just people process and technology, but data—people, process, technology, and data. But there's so much data, there's no way for any person to track it all by themselves.

And that's where AI comes in. I left CES with a sense that AI is not just here to stay, which is a given, but that it's catching on and things are happening faster than I've seen any technology adapt in my lifetime. I remember in 1994—I'm old enough to remember when the web became a thing—and I think a few years for folks to say, let's start building websites and let's start making things happening.

By the early 2000s, you'd never hire somebody who didn't understand how to get on the web and use it. It was just a given. You needed to understand how the web worked. Same thing is going to happen with AI. I said it before. You're not going to lose your job to AI. You're going to lose your job to somebody that knows how to use AI.

I left CES with a renewed enthusiasm that it's so important for every company, every organization, and every employee within those companies and organizations to learn about AI, understand how they can use it, understand how it truly is everywhere, and how it's not just going to change our lives or in some ways make our lives easier, and in some ways make us able to do things we could never do before.

It's an exciting time in technology. It's an exciting time in organizations, and we're pleased to be a part of it at Virtual. So, thanks for joining me today. Hope that you enjoyed this. I encourage you to like and follow this and subscribe to Five Minutes with Andy and join me for more little lessons that will only take you five minutes.

Thanks so much!

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