How to Master AI in 30 Days (Without Losing the Human Touch) with Lori Mazor

Most leaders and educators worry that AI will replace jobs. The real challenge is learning how to use it as a teammate without losing the human touch.

In this episode, architect and educator Lori Mazor shares her journey from designing campuses to becoming a thought leader in generative AI. She explains how to build daily AI habits, why most chatbots fail, and the simple ways businesses can integrate AI responsibly while strengthening creativity and customer relationships.

From rethinking education to fixing broken customer service, this conversation is a playbook for leaders, teachers, and professionals who want to keep pace with AI while staying grounded in the human skills that matter most.

Chapters:
00:00 – Why banning AI in schools misses the point
00:36 – Meet Lori Mazor: architect, educator, and AI innovator
01:08 – From campus design to AI leadership
02:48 – Discovering MidJourney and creative AI communities
04:23 – Systems thinking and applying design skills to AI
05:30 – The reality of job loss and adaptation
06:57 – Teaching AI with a human touch
08:11 – Why chatbots ruin customer service experiences
12:14 – Using AI to remove friction and serve people better
16:54 – How kids, parents, and schools can approach AI responsibly
17:24 – Advice for leaders who feel they are falling behind
19:09 – A simple 30 day plan to build AI fluency
20:12 – Real life use cases in health care and family decisions
26:11 – How AI is reshaping education and workforce skills
34:06 – Final thoughts. doing human things in the age of AI

Lori

(0:00) I totally understand the backlash that particular schools have in terms of kids using AI. (0:07) We need them to be able to write, we need them to be able to do credible things, we need them to be able to do problem solving independently. (0:12) And I think particularly with teenagers who don’t have a full prefrontal cortex formed, it’s not helpful with AI.

(0:20) So I think we have to recognize that it exists and we need to teach our kids how to use it responsibly.

Melissa

(0:25) What do you get when you mix a visionary architect, an educational innovator, and a trailblazer in generative AI? (0:36) You get Lori Mazur and she is not here to top theory. (0:40) She’s here to show you how AI is already shaping creativity, leadership, and the way we build our future.

(0:47) From designing campuses to rethink entire systems, Lori’s insights will flip the script on what you think is possible. (0:56) If you’re still asking, will AI take my job, you’re asking the wrong questions. (1:03) Welcome, Lori.

(1:05) Hey, Melissa. (1:06) Thanks for having me. (1:08) Now, your background is multifaceted from architecture to strategic operations at NYU and C-U-N-Y.

(1:21) I’m curious, what inspired you to evolve into thought leadership on generative AI and creativity?

Lori

(1:31) Yeah, not thinking. (1:33) That is what led me there. (1:35) I had been working in the same industry, kind of a trajectory from being an architect to then being on the owner side to then being more involved in the operations of facilities.

(1:45) My whole world was physical assets and real estate. (1:50) Over the past 10 years, with the digital revolution, it became also the space of the Internet and designing websites and making sure that we could communicate online and teach online. (2:01) I’d been in the tech world for quite a while, but never really thinking about what AI was, other than maybe building a lab for somebody who was researching that.

(2:13) When I decided after the pandemic that I really just needed a career break, I’m not very good at making plan B while plan A is in action. (2:24) I just really took a six-month break. (2:28) I used it as a time to just clear my head and both recover from the pandemic, which I think we’ve all been doing for the past five years.

(2:36) Then also spent some time just being present in the world and figuring out what made me happy and what was giving me those curiosity vibes. (2:48) I came across an AI application called Mid-Journey, and it just sucked me deep, deep into the rabbit hole. (2:57) Partially because it was really fun to play with it and to see what was possible using language skills to generate art, but also because I became part of this amazing community of other artists who were doing the same thing.

(3:10) It very much felt like a kind of renaissance. (3:13) We were insiders on something that not a lot of people knew about. (3:17) Then of course, boom, everybody knows.

(3:21) Then that turned into, oh, maybe I have something to offer in this field that is unique that other people may not.

Melissa

(3:29) Yeah, I love it. (3:30) It’s funny how things suck us into that rabbit hole. (3:33) I find it so interesting.

(3:36) I too was sucked into that dark black rabbit hole in my career. (3:43) I love that you mentioned that. (3:45) Now, I’m curious, how do you think getting your experiences in higher education and design with architecture shaped how you approach AI and technology today?

Lori

(3:57) I think that in general, I’ve always been a systems thinker. (4:01) I’m always interested in patterns and the underlying structure of things. (4:09) Also, really interested in the idea of analogies.

(4:13) How do you translate something that might work in one realm over to another realm? (4:18) For me, this has been some of the fun things to play with with AI. (4:24) Really understanding the structure of how it operates.

(4:27) First of all, how does it take language and turn it into something that seems like you’re communicating with a human being? (4:34) Really understanding the technical side of it, but then also understanding the applications, understanding how it can be something that every single person in an organization uses. (4:44) A lot of people focus on enterprise level use cases.

(4:48) While I do do some of those things, the mainstay of my work is really focused on helping individuals like you and me use it and really exploit their own capacity. (5:00) I think just my interest in systems and processes and workflows, that all plays into my AI practice today.

Melissa

(5:13) When I talk to different people that aren’t in the AI or technology space, they always think job loss or automation. (5:24) I know you see it as a tool for human creativity. (5:30) How do you think we can help organizations and leaders reframe their mindset around AI?

(5:39) In a way that’s not a threat, it’s actually an asset.

Lori

(5:44) I think you asked me, are people going to lose jobs? (5:49) That’s the first question that comes up. (5:51) I think my answer early on was, no, let’s not focus on that.

(5:55) AI is a collaborative partner. (5:57) It can help you do things faster. (6:00) It can help you do things more robustly.

(6:03) I’m not going to mince words. (6:06) It is going to take jobs. (6:07) It’s not just going to take individual jobs.

(6:09) It’s going to take industries. (6:12) We are going to see a massive transformation. (6:15) We are still in the very, very early days of this.

(6:19) I think coming to that realization and then not being afraid of that. (6:24) We’ve all had to, I don’t know, I’m on my third or fourth iteration of myself in life. (6:31) We all have to adapt.

(6:33) That’s part of being a biological organism. (6:36) The world evolves. (6:38) We have these incredible minds and bodies that are able to evolve with it.

(6:43) I think that that is the thing that I really try and help people do, is really figure out in this world, what are the most important human things that we have to do on the planet that only we as humans can do in this moment? (6:57) Yes, it may be that there’s a world in which we can create robots and simulations that are identical to humans, that we can clone ourselves in silicon. (7:06) We’re so not there yet.

(7:08) I think in the world that we’re at where we have these machines that can simulate a conversation, where we have certainly a tremendous amount of technology that can automate that we have not even begun to tap into. (7:21) I think it’s really thinking about those human touch. (7:25) Say I teach AI with a human touch because that’s what I’m really interested in.

(7:29) I’m less interested in the technology for technology’s sake and more interested in it in terms of what can it do to help you be the best human you can possibly be during your lifetime.

Melissa

(7:40) I think you make a really good point, like the human touch. (7:45) I think maybe it’s just me, but I feel we’re at a point in the world today where we’ve lost some of that human touch, be it the pandemic going indoors, be it technology. (7:58) I’m curious to get your thoughts on how can a business successfully integrate AI, but then like you were saying, not actually lose the human touch with their employees.

Lori

(8:12) I think the last wave of technology between SaaS applications where people are literally just sitting at a computer like moving their cursor around and clicking buttons has somewhat deadened us to using our brains to actually process information in a thoughtful way. (8:29) People are just trying to get through the tasks that they have in their day and often don’t stop to think about the important moments when a click means something. (8:39) I’ll use an example of one of my students was in finance and we’re all in financial systems and having to click buttons to approve something.

(8:49) We’re mapping a workflow and there’s a moment when he clicks the button and it says approve and I’m like, so when you’re doing that, what’s going on in your head? (8:58) He’s like, I’m thinking that the person before me clicked that button and I don’t want to keep the next person away from clicking that button, so I’m going to click it too. (9:08) I’m like, well, there’s actually a lot of other stuff that’s going on there that we can’t necessarily verbalize.

(9:18) You’re looking at that and you’re clicking the button because you’ve seen this pattern enough times to know that there’s not something here that’s going to trigger a red flag. (9:27) That’s our intuitive brain and a lot of those things go without saying but somebody who’s had 25 years experience in an industry knows when you can click and when you can’t. (9:40) Also, we get in these patterns of just being like a robot where maybe we’re clicking and not thinking and that’s where the real risks are.

(9:49) What I’m looking at is really, how can you get out of those modes and highlight the parts of a process that are really important for us to use our critical thinking, our problem-solving skills, our relational skills, our emotional intelligence, so that we don’t just behave like robots. (10:10) I also think that I’m big on customer service and we’ve done a crap job at that. (10:18) Crap.

(10:20) I have to literally meditate every time I am about to get on the phone or talk with a chatbot with any company that I work with. (10:29) It’s like a spiritual practice because I get so enraged. (10:33) The other day, I had to file a claim with Geico and I didn’t know how to answer a particular question.

(10:40) Of course, there’s this little chatbot there and it’s like, ask me, ask me. (10:43) I’m like, okay, yay, I’m going to ask it. (10:46) I just write out a sentence in plain spoken language and it’s like, I don’t understand that, I can’t help you.

(10:51) I’m like, we are in the age of generative AI. (10:55) There is no excuse. (10:57) There is no excuse for a company like Geico in this day and age to not have a conversational chatbot that allows people to ask questions in natural language.

Melissa

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Lori

(11:58) Like no excuse, I don’t know what people are waiting for, but that signals to me that I’m a company that doesn’t want to help people, right? (12:05) And so I think like if that’s where you’re at, whether it’s in sales, whether it’s customer service, like you need to start getting with the program. (12:13) Yeah.

Melissa

(12:14) And I think you made a really good point because I’ve also been on those chat bots or speaking to them and saying, this is my name, you know, find me in your system. (12:28) And, you know, I have a unique last name and they’re like, we don’t understand you or we, we can’t find you and let me put you to a person. (12:37) And the person is like three hours to get on the phone.

(12:39) And then they got to reroute you to somebody else. (12:41) Who’s also an AI agent. (12:44) And so I feel like it’s, it’s interesting because I would agree.

(12:48) I think, you know, this insurance company is a large insurance company. (12:52) And at some point, like you were saying people get tired of being on hold or circling around, you know, repeating themselves or punching in the buttons or whatever they got to do that they just give up. (13:04) And so I would agree.

(13:05) I think part of it is the customer service piece of it. (13:11) And it’s not just AI, it’s all around our world, right? (13:16) It’s the human interaction to the wait staff, the restaurants, you know, what do you want?

(13:24) Let me take your order and then here’s your food, right? (13:27) And so I think that’s a really good point.

Lori

(13:31) I didn’t think of that. (13:32) And you start to see, it’s like a little bit of like the wizard behind the curtain, but you start to see that a lot of the friction that exists in businesses is they’re kind of subtly intentionally to keep us from getting things done, right? (13:47) It is somehow serving businesses.

(13:49) And I think we just, we are, we are so far past that, right? (13:53) And so I think businesses need to leverage AI internally so that they can then turn themselves back to the business of serving the people and the customers that they’re meant to serve, right? (14:06) And that’s where the value creation happens.

(14:08) And that’s when you start to create joy and relationships and like people want to come to you to do business, you know? (14:15) Yeah.

Melissa

(14:16) And I think it’s also interesting. (14:19) My doctor office is like, we know we have, we haven’t, we know our AI agent is not clear. (14:26) They don’t communicate.

(14:27) We’re just testing it out and working through the kinks. (14:30) So sometimes it seems like I hear from companies that they know the tool is not working the way it should, but they’re gathering all this data to like try to make it better so that their customers are kind of getting the brunt of like figuring it out when you would think that when I buy a tool or an app or software or whatever I’m buying, it should just work. (14:56) Not, I got to like wait for it to get better.

Lori

(14:58) That’s right. (14:59) Like we’re all part of a massive beta test. (15:01) I think that’s also like what’s happening with generative AI.

(15:04) You know, it’s like no longer the era of the floppy disk where, you know, you’ve got like software and it came to you and it was pre-packaged and tested and you were like, all right, like it works. (15:13) And then maybe you’d get another version, you know, a year or five years from then, right? (15:18) This is now, we’re all part of the beta test.

(15:20) I mean, I think we’re experiencing it now with GPT-5 just came out. (15:24) And, you know, like how a company can be so disconnected to their customers is beyond me, right? (15:32) Sam Altman, I think he’s a kind of smart guy.

(15:35) Loved that he admits mistakes, but he like literally tweeted that like, oh, he couldn’t believe that people were so disappointed to lose models they’d been using. (15:44) Well, hello, loss aversion. (15:46) Like we’ve known about this.

(15:48) Like this is, you know, like behavioral economics 101. (15:51) Like, yes, you can’t take something away from somebody and think that they’re going to love the new thing that you put in place. (15:57) People feel lost four times more than gates, like Nobel prize winning Daniel Kahneman.

(16:01) So this is not rocket science. (16:04) And I think that’s where it’s like, yeah, we’re all part of this beta test. (16:09) And, you know, if you’re just using chat GPT, no big deal.

(16:12) Like you’ll figure it out. (16:13) And maybe they’ll bring some of their old models back. (16:15) If you’re a developer like this weekend, everybody was flipping out because all our apps broke, right?

(16:21) Everything all the products people had been building on top of these models, like all broke because they were all like very specific to them. (16:30) And so, yeah, like a little, a little bit of sensitivity there to like, how are you delivering a customer experience? (16:39) Like what is the true nature of human beings?

(16:41) How do we respond to things? (16:42) Right? (16:43) How do you create that like smooth pipeline?

(16:46) Yeah. (16:47) And it makes me think.

Melissa

(16:50) Like people are age or older. (16:53) Like one of the things I question a lot, like my kids are using it now. (16:57) They, if I give them parenting advice, they’ll plug it in chat GPT and see what comes out to like dispute the parenting.

(17:05) So our kids understand it. (17:08) They’re using it. (17:08) They’re getting better with it.

(17:11) I’m curious for people that are in their career. (17:14) It’s moving fast. (17:15) It could be overwhelming.

(17:17) A lot of times people say to me like it’s moving too fast. (17:22) I feel like I’m falling out behind. (17:24) I can’t keep up.

(17:24) So what advice would you give people and those leaders that feel like they’re falling behind or they’re unsure on how to start navigating this transformation in this world of AI?

Lori

(17:38) Yeah. (17:38) I mean, I think that the most important thing is to recognize that like, there’s never a good time to get started doing something. (17:46) You know, the discipline of physics and chemistry and biology has been going on for a very long time and people don’t like stop learning about those disciplines.

(17:57) Right. (17:58) You enter in high school maybe or in college. (18:01) So, you know, I think like there is a learning curve, but you can hop on at any point in time.

(18:07) You can always start with a very beginner intro level class. (18:11) And really the best way to learn with these tools is to just use them and experiment and to do it in a community where other people are doing that. (18:19) Right.

(18:20) And also to just pick one, you know, you do not need to be an expert in everything. (18:26) And honestly, as this landscape gets more and more complex and we get more and more applications that are specific to doing specific types of tasks, just kind of picking, I start everybody with chat GPT, not because I think it’s like the best program out there, but because it will give you a foundation. (18:44) And from there, you learn a set of skills that you can then translate to using just about any application, whether it’s image or video or music or what have you.

(18:55) So, you know, I, I challenge people to just get a, get a subscription so that you make sure you have privacy. (19:02) Right. (19:03) Both for your personal and for your office, use it for 30 days, every day for 30 days, one thing and do it in community.

(19:13) And what you’re going to find is that like after that 30 day period, it’s like anything where you establish a habit, you look back and you’re, you’ve transformed. (19:22) Right. (19:23) And then you can really think about evaluating, okay, now that I understand all its capabilities, where is it really going to be useful to me?

(19:30) And where is like, it just, you know, I’m going to use an Excel spreadsheet to like calculate my taxes. (19:37) Right. (19:37) I’m not going to use chat GPT.

Melissa

(19:39) But that’s a good point. (19:40) Like simple things that we would have to go to Google and sort through people that are paying, you know, for their websites to be at the top. (19:49) Now we can have, we have these tools.

(19:52) I know we’ve talked about this before, where our parents can get the information from the doctor, lay out their prescriptions. (20:01) How do these effects here are my symptoms and they can almost take the reins of their health and wellness. (20:09) In conjunction with the doctor, I’m not saying not use the doctor or not go to the doctor.

(20:15) It’s just take the information that you know, you have your prescription, your dose, your side effects, how you’re feeling and see and analyze it and then share it with your doctor and say, Hey, it looks like this contradicts this. (20:29) Should I be taking this or this level of dosage? (20:32) And I think it’s interesting.

(20:34) I just have this personal experience with my parents. (20:39) And my mother and, and I was shocked at some of these were not supposed to be taken together yet. (20:46) The doctors prescribed it together because they were two different doctors.

(20:51) And so it’s things like that, like taking, you know, what are side effects of this or how can I use that? (20:58) Or this is what I’m just small things. (21:01) Like you said, once a day that can help you.

(21:04) Yeah.

Lori

(21:05) Yeah, absolutely. (21:06) And I, you know, I’ve shared with you and I’ve been going through a similar thing. (21:09) You know, my father was diagnosed with cancer.

(21:11) It took four months to get to a diagnosis diagnosis. (21:15) We were not trying to use chat GPT to diagnose whether you had cancer or not. (21:20) But once we had that diagnosis, we used it to figure out how to communicate that with my dad.

(21:25) Like, I’m like, okay, we, my brother-in-law had and I had this information. (21:30) And I’m like, okay, we have a weekend. (21:33) It’s Friday.

(21:34) Like, do we share this news with my dad now or do we wait until Monday and have the doctor share with him? (21:40) Right. (21:40) And so gave me like pros and cons of each approach.

(21:44) And then, you know, my brother-in-law and I sat there and kind of reviewed it and used it as a way to like make our own decision about something. (21:52) Right. (21:52) But, you know, really just like using it as a support mechanism to help in decision making and processing.

(21:59) I’ve used it to, you know, we were going to send him to rehab and I wanted to look to see if there were any rehab facilities that were closer to me that met his criteria. (22:09) So I put in all the criteria for rehab, did a deep research study, pressed like send at five o’clock at night, woke up the next morning and read everything with all of the like phone numbers of places I could contact the next morning with coffee. (22:25) Right.

(22:25) So like these are the real practical use cases and, and they are infinite. (22:31) And I think that, you know, people often want to know like what the use cases are because it’s really hard to just stare at a blank screen and be like, what am I supposed to do with this thing? (22:41) Right.

(22:41) Like I think that’s the biggest problem is like, what am I supposed to do with this thing? (22:46) But what I find is that, you know, each person has their own use cases. (22:51) And when you do this in, you know, conjunction with 15 people in your office or, you know, 50 people in your office, right?

(22:58) And then you talk about it and you share. (23:01) That’s where some of the cool insights come in. (23:03) I mean, I learned something new.

(23:04) Every time I do a corporate training class, like someone brings me a use case and I’m like, oh my gosh, that’s brilliant. (23:10) You know, like one, one woman built for her entire office. (23:14) They were in the middle of goal setting when we were doing our training.

(23:17) And so she built a smart goals GPT and shared it with everybody. (23:23) Right. (23:23) And everyone was so stressed about the goals, but like, as soon as they had that, like it made the process easy.

(23:29) Right. (23:29) And so sometimes we just needed, need that like structured guided reflection. (23:34) Right.

(23:34) So yeah, I mean, it can break procrastination. (23:36) I had another woman who was really transparent about how she works through ADHD and used it for executive functioning. (23:44) So just like carrying on a chat to help her like, okay, what do I need to do next?

(23:48) What’s next in my day? (23:49) Right. (23:49) To like stay in a stream of flow.

(23:52) And when my dad got sick, I was like, oh my gosh, I have no executive function right now. (23:57) I’m going to, I’m going to pull that in. (23:59) That would be really helpful to me.

(24:02) Right. (24:02) So yeah, I just think that like sharing is caring. (24:07) Yeah.

(24:08) The more, the more that you can do this with other people, just the more robust your, your understanding of these cases is going to be.

Melissa

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(24:55) Yeah. (24:56) And for those people that are sharing like a GPT license, do you recommend that that’s okay to do? (25:03) Should they have like their own separate files set up?

Lori

(25:08) Like you absolutely want to have your own, like you want to have your own account, right? (25:12) I think that there’s some, you can have a team’s account as a corporation where like every individual has their own accounts. (25:20) They both get a, an office account, but also a personal account.

(25:24) So you could like toggle back and forth, right? (25:26) So if you like want to, you know, look up recipes for dinner that night, you don’t have to do that in your business account. (25:33) But also it gives people the ability to share chats within the organization, to share GPTs within the organization, right?

(25:40) So there are some collaborative features there that are really nice. (25:44) And it’s an easy rather than negotiating an enterprise application. (25:48) For anybody who doesn’t have like HIPAA level or FERPA level, or, you know, like personal identifiable information.

(25:56) It’s like a SOC 2 level privacy for most corporate needs. (26:01) That’s fine. (26:02) Perfect.

Melissa

(26:04) I’m thinking about like re-imagining education and how we’re educating and developing our workforce. (26:11) I know, you know, as it relates to when I was younger and studying for SATs or any test I was taking, I would use different manuals and study guides. (26:22) And, um, but now it’s really interesting how AI is reshaping, you know, studying and skills and education.

(26:30) So how do you, I want to get your perspective on how you think AI is reshaping the skills we need to teach and the way we teach them in any like job or industry.

Lori

(26:42) Yeah. (26:43) Um, so, I mean, it’s, it’s really interesting. (26:46) Um, you know, I have a 17 year old daughter who has absolutely no interest in using AI.

(26:51) Um, and I think that’s great. (26:55) So, you know, I think that, you know, young minds, the learning process, um, is really critical. (27:02) And like learning how to do things with your own brain is a really important part of development, right?

(27:08) And so I totally understand the backlash, um, that particularly schools have in terms of kids using AI. (27:17) Um, you know, we need them to be able to write. (27:18) We need them to be able to do critical things.

(27:19) We need them to be able to do problem solving independently. (27:23) Um, that being said, I think it’s like anything when, you know, we, we know that when we give a prohibition, that there is a large percentage of the population that’s going to be like, oh yeah, like whatever you tell me, no, I, I’m going to do that thing, right? (27:39) And so I think that, um, Um, and I think that, um, and I think particularly with teenagers who like, don’t have a full free frontal cortex formed, um, this is not helpful.

(27:48) It’s not helpful with cell phones. (27:49) It’s not helpful with AI. (27:51) So I think we have to recognize that it exists.

(27:54) And we need to teach our kids how to use it responsibly. (27:58) Right. (27:58) And I think, and, and frankly, all of us need to learn how to use it responsibly.

(28:03) Right. (28:03) Which means that, you know, you’re using it in a way where your brain is constantly engaged. (28:10) Right.

(28:10) You’re not trying to like outsource your thinking and your critical thinking, but you’re using it the same way you would if you were sitting down with a teammate who might have a different set of skills than you have. (28:22) And I really like think about it as a teammate. (28:24) Right.

(28:25) It’s like, when I’m having a conversation with someone, I’m just as engaged in that conversation as if I’m like sitting there doing solitary work. (28:33) And I’m in fact, sometimes more so. (28:35) Right.

(28:35) Because not only do I have to process like what’s going on in my mind, but I also have to understand what’s coming back to me. (28:41) Right. (28:42) And like actually sitting and reading what comes to you through an LLM and then being critical of it.

(28:48) Right. (28:49) Saying, Oh, like I’m going to correct that. (28:51) I’m going to clarify that I’m going to augment it with supplemental information.

(28:55) I have a different idea. (28:57) I’m going to ask it to challenge me. (28:59) So, you know, it’s very much a sycophant and it’s like native personality.

(29:04) That’s the way the system prompt is written, but you can actually ask it to be a critical thinker with you to like question you. (29:14) I do one lesson, which is about like understanding our cognitive biases. (29:18) And I’m like, you know, given everything you know about me, where do you think some of my shortcomings are?

(29:24) Right. (29:25) Where do I have biases that will get in the way of me teaching an effective lesson to this particular audience? (29:33) Right.

(29:33) That’s really helpful. (29:36) Yeah. (29:36) Really helpful.

(29:39) You know, or like say, you know, ask it to like just give you the opposite of whatever it’s just told you. (29:44) Right. (29:45) Play a tough love coach.

(29:47) I mean, that’s kind of the beauty of it is it can play these personas. (29:50) Right. (29:51) And so you can kind of like simulate a wider range of internal conversations that you might be just having in your own mind.

(29:59) Right. (29:59) Like on a page. (30:01) And I think the power of that reflection back to us, of our own ideas, right, because it is very much a mirror is very helpful.

(30:10) Right. (30:10) So, you know, I think with, with kids who are, you know, just starting to use chat to BT, using it to do deep research and then reading the research. (30:20) Right.

(30:20) Using it to think about parts in your writing process where maybe you like need a structure or, you know, you’re like looking for specific sources or you want some feedback. (30:34) Right. (30:35) And yeah.

(30:36) And then I think for, for teachers, it’s really like asking people to be transparent with how they use AI. (30:45) Right. (30:45) And I think that’s also like in a corporate setting.

(30:48) So I came up with a system that like every one of my students who takes a class that I teach at RIT has to do a reflection that says, okay, like we’re encouraging you use AI in this, in this exercise. (31:03) Like how did you use it? (31:04) What tools did you use?

(31:05) What did it do well? (31:07) What did it not do well? (31:08) Right.

(31:09) Like how is this going to change how you look at it in the future? (31:13) Right. (31:14) So just mindfulness.

Melissa

(31:15) Yeah, absolutely. (31:17) I love all that. (31:18) I’m curious.

(31:18) What’s the story with people selling prompts for like thousands, tens of thousands of dollars right now?

Lori

(31:25) That’s just mass silliness. (31:26) I mean, yeah, there’s like, if prompts aren’t like recipes, like it’s not like you can like go and buy like Martha Stewart’s cookbook and like cook, you know, or Julia Child and like cook the dish and it’s going to show up exactly the same way. (31:41) Like large language models are like variations on a theme.

(31:46) So like even the same person can put in the same prompt and get two totally different responses. (31:51) So, you know, look, I think this is a way everybody wants a shortcut and everyone wants to think that it’s easy. (31:57) And yes, like writing a really complex prompt for a particular job that you want to do is really valuable.

(32:06) Right. (32:07) And I’m not saying like it’s worthless, but you putting in the time to do that yourself is actually where more of the value comes, particularly if you are a subject matter expert, right? (32:19) Because like, you know, your industry best.

(32:22) You know what context you need to give it and what’s relevant. (32:27) And in fact, like they’re actually, there was a study that came out of MIT and, and you know, people are talking about it a lot about how like using chat to be, he makes you dumber. (32:38) And it actually doesn’t say that it, it says something actually quite more nuanced, which is that, you know, there are certain kinds of cognitive loads that we would like to offload.

(32:51) Right. (32:51) Like when you are doing a Google search, if you are not an expert in a field, like you are overwhelmed by the noise. (33:00) Right.

(33:00) Like you don’t know what to pay attention to because this is not familiar territory to you. (33:07) But if you are an expert in the field and you’re doing a Google search, like that’s not a very heavy lift because you can very easily sort through what’s relevant and what’s not relevant. (33:20) Right.

(33:21) And so using chat to be T as an expert versus using it in areas that you’re not an expert in, like those are two very different things. (33:29) So if you are an expert in something like write your own system, write your own prompts, write your own prompts. (33:37) But I think if you’re not an expert in something, that’s where possibly like taking a prompt that someone has developed for you and then really understanding what it means.

(33:47) Right. (33:47) Like starting there. (33:49) Right.

(33:49) What is this like script going to do for me? (33:52) Right. (33:53) Before you then plug it in.

(33:55) I love it.

Melissa

(33:56) It’s good advice. (33:57) Any final thoughts or anything you want to believe with our listeners that we haven’t touched on today?

Lori

(34:05) Yeah. (34:06) Yeah. (34:07) I mean, you know, I guess you like you see the wall behind me.

(34:10) I mean, like I have not stopped doing human things. (34:14) Right. (34:15) I like read real books and I like go out and spend a lot of time in nature.

(34:20) And, you know, I enjoy like being physically present with other human beings, right? (34:27) I think that just because AI is here doesn’t mean that we should stop doing all those things that are the making of a good life. (34:35) And I think that’s really important is like not to get so, so anxious that you feel like you need to just like bury your head in the sand with AI, like, or that it’s going to take your job or that it’s going to like take over your life.

(34:46) Like remember to like be human and do the important human things.

Melissa

(34:51) I love that you mentioned books because I still love to read and I don’t know if I want to give up my books just yet. (34:57) So I agree. (34:59) Thank you so much for being here today.

(35:02) Where can our listeners connect with you, reach out to you if they want to learn more about what you do.

Lori

(35:08) Yeah. (35:08) I can always find me on LinkedIn. (35:11) It’s Lori Mazer.

(35:12) I teach AI with a human touch. (35:14) And you can also find me on my website, which is synthe-tivity.net. (35:19) And you can read my book, which is called Temperature and the Age of AI and is available on Amazon.

(35:25) I love it.

Melissa

(35:26) Thank you for being here, Lori and sharing your time and knowledge with our listeners. (35:32) That’s the executive connect podcast. (35:34) Thank you.

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