Dashboard: Gene Marks Says CEOs Will Not Be Replaced By AI

[Music] welcome to another 21 hats dashboard brought to you by our sponsor the great game of business I'm Lauren Feldman and I'm here with genan marks welcome Jean hey Lauren how are you I'm doing great how are you doing doing good why were you saying before we started recording I'm what am I in a bad mood or something I'm not in a bad mood yeah no you seemed a little agitated a little a little prickly almost I don't know but but you said you're not and I accept that no not if this is because of are you are you trying to like like prod me because of last week's uh Trump verdict is that what's going on here wow I wasn't even going to bring it up I was there a trump verdict last week so that's what you were getting at oh I see okay no no you brought it up je I brought it up I brought it up okay I by the way let's go on record of this before we get into the business uh into the business discussion I just I don't know who's listening here that's on the right or the left this is me as a registered Republican I I just want to say that like this was like a court case that went through the New York legal system that was heard by attorneys and argued by attorneys on both sides with a judge and a jury and the jury voted unanimously to convict him on 34 counts I mean I don't know what it's it seems like we went through the process the legal process in this country so I don't really buy into the whole sham uh you know lawsuit and you know the whole case was ridiculous and all that I don't I don't know I I don't buy into that I mean I you know seems like it went through the proper channels and process but I'm sure everybody will yell and scream at me for saying that but that's what I think well not me I know you would agree as much as I enjoy disagreeing with you Jean I just can't find a way to do it on this one I do think the the Democrats are out of their minds if they think that this is going to help them in the election I think it's only going to make Trump more popular but that's another another discussion to have you know all right that I would disagree with but that's not what what we're here to discuss no we're talking business come on not yeah let's and by the way we can talk Trump and Biden in the future um Lauren when you know when it comes to business issues you know sure I'm speaking a lot about that and we should we should because this impacts our audience a lot you know um what are their positions on immigration what are their positions on tariffs taxes regulations these are you know these are big deal things for for people that run businesses so um we will do that yeah we'll put those Tops on the agenda for sure anyway all right for now uh Jean you wrote recently about what's known as jolts uh jts the job opening and labor turnover survey just to make sure th this is not the monthly jobs report that tells us how many have been created in the past month and we're on employment stands correct yeah it it is not it is um it's it's a report that's been running for about 40 years I mean it's it's it's not new um and it it it uses a complex formula it's a survey so it is uh you know you have to take things with a little bit of grain of salt but it's been done consistent there is a methodology to it uh it's done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics is published every month and basically it's in the end it measures the the number of job openings that there are in the in the economy and um these job openings again it's a survey Lauren you know I mean they call up a lot of employers literally and ask them to report on job openings and there's a lot of um uh there's a lot of slit between the cup and the here you know what I mean there you know I mean in the sense that you know you're ask a lot of employers there's a higher percentage of employers that are not responding anymore to the to these requests and um people you know Define job openings in different ways and the the BLS tries to keep it very strict in its definition you know what I mean but uh doesn't necessarily mean it gets reported that way but anyway um it's like a political poll it's it kind of is um but you know what I've found as an account m is that even if the methodology is wrong if it's consistently wrong over a period of time then you've got a benchmark to that still provides valuable information for example if you're if you have a calculation that that you're doing to say how much of your inventory is Obsolete and say you realize that your calculation is you know has been incorrect but it's been incorrect for the past 20 years well you know it's because you're comparing this obsolescence against the same calculation month in and month out over 20 years it's still you for from an accountant's point of view that's actually okay believe it or not I know that sounds crazy but it's it's it can still provide valuable information do you know what I mean no that makes sense sure but but tell us what what what is joltz and why should we care about it well it it tells us it gives us an indication about the demand for jobs right so in when the pandemic was happening there were 12.2 million job openings um so you know and that was like a historic high and you know that was telling us and this is also post pandemic as well like in 2021 and into 2022 um and that was like mirroring what everybody was saying like oh my God so many businesses are looking for jobs you know uh looking for employees um that number has fallen to 8 and A5 million just since March of 2022 so it's a pretty giant fall it's almost four million job openings have gone away so you know it kind of raises eyebrows when you think about it you know like oh man I mean are you convinced that that's a a meaningful number I mean there's always talk about how some companies keep lots of jobs open even though they're not really hiring um you know there there are issues involved with that no doubt um it gets back to benchmarking you know you know if the calculation is done incorrectly but it's done consistently then it's still an okay Benchmark do you know what I mean um and and so I think that I can rely on it that was the point of my column in the hill that you know a lot of it makes sense I mean there was a lot of jobs open during pandemic there was bans and lockdowns and limitation there's a lot of my own clients in the retail travel restaurant Industries I mean you know there a lot of people quitting jobs which creates a job opening right exactly right you know and there was the great you know migration and you know all of that but you know I kind of looked at the the numbers Lauren and I I kind of came down to like you know this sort of rule of thumb you know and and my my rule of thumb was that even during you know the last recession you know the the number of job openings versus when you compared it to the number of like total workers in the country it was around 2% you know and now it's about five 5% okay so that's like you know there's 161 million working age people out there and there's 8 a half million job openings so it's about 5% um based on working you know people that are actually say working right so and I looked at my client base and I'm like huh two to 5 percent you know every one of my clients if I take an average of a company with 100 employees I can safely say that my clients with 100 employees H are are are are looking for anywhere from three to five employees if not more at any given time right now right now do you know what I mean um and that doesn't necessarily mean they're they might not even have official jobs posted but like I have one client that's like not happy with their accounting manager and they haven't started looking officially but they're keeping their eyes open you know like they would replace that employee you know what I mean so sure and and it even goes down if you have a and you you have 10 employees I mean you know you know that that's a half an employee that you're looking for maybe if you have 20 employees 5% is one one employee those companies with 20 employees I think they would say like yeah if we could find a better person or we do have an open job for at least one new person even if it's to replace an existing person yeah we can see that happening so I I just feel like the job opening numbers have gotten down to like normal s do you know what I mean like they were high during the pandemic now because they're about like 5% of total workers out there um that makes sense to me when I compare that to my you know to my clients and that was the point of the column that I I think joltz is actually not a bad number I think it is something that we can we can look at and rely on and as long as it's between around that 5% level when the economy is strong and even if it drops a few points when the economy slows um I to me that's the range that I think is still is still reasonable does that make sense yeah it I guess you're you're suggesting it means that the labor market has returned to you know a more stable position yes uh obviously the leverage was with employees for a while now it's kind of back where it was before the pandemic yeah that is exactly right and when when people look at the job openings that existed during the pandemic it's dropped a lot people like oh my God it's dropped a lot I guess the economy is constricting I'm like no no no it's just it's now returned to a reasonable level that I've been expecting to see and I think what we've seen historically so that was the conclusion does this mean anything to your clients you talk about the position they're in this is just some obscure economic metric that has absolutely no impact on their lives whatsoever um then let's move to our next topic then I just feel like Wy about it because I I thought it was of interest to me but no there's not a single one of my clients who could care less well I think interesting um you also wrote uh a piece for Forbes in which you updated us on a couple of new capabilities for Microsoft co-pilot the AI um whatever you call it um are we getting to the point where business owners should be paying attention to this yeah you know um I did write about Microsoft copilot also the same week Google came out with um you know updates to their gemni AI product for Google workspace space I got to tell Lauren I know you're like hearing about actual real businesses and and sometimes it's fun to talk about my business for the first time in about 20 years um I'm I'm adding two new products to my business like my you know we sell CRM products you know right for them in particular but I watched and studied and read I've been so much about Ai and and Microsoft co-pilot Google Gemini which by the way very early days long way to go it's not you know it's still not saw some headlines about that yeah still hype over reality I get all that but everybody in the everybody with a brain can see where it's going you know what I mean so and I look at it and I'm like man I was showing this like what Google gemni does same as co-pilot um it's because I have a Google workspace client and you know it's creating emails and it will do automatic presentations for you and it will have uh you know an AI assistant that's monitoring projects and letting you know when things are falling behind and I'm just scratching the surface of its capabilities and this this this this woman that I was showing it to she's like this is unbelievable like we could really use this in our business but we don't have we I have no idea where to get started you know because AI is just a feature Lauren you know it's just this is all stuff that that Microsoft and Google are putting on their existing products these are not new products co-pilot it's co-pilot for office and gem for workspace these are more features and with most businesses that I see they get products they get software applications then as new features come out many of them tend not to use them because you get set in your ways and you're used to using it the way it is and you don't want to pay for training or anything more and you know just you wind up not using it and AI could be the same thing but it's so good and will provide such productivity gains for so many people if they just had somebody to help them set it up and implement it and then train people and then keep everybody you know answer their questions and keep them up to speed on on all these things that they're doing um they need somebody to do that and and right so we've added those two products to our product line I just thought you should know like I'm going to we're going to start selling co-pilot and gemni to our clients as a professional service and I'm hoping that our clients will either have somebody internally that we can train or we'll just take it over and make sure that people are using it the right way you're a perfect example um Lauren I mean you've you're using what you're using office or using like what are you use in your business office or Google Google Google so there's all these things that you could be doing and maybe you've seen that the these things in action but you're probably not doing it for a number of reasons but if I were to say to you hey Lauren you know you know we'll get you set up so that whatever you're doing right now at 21 hats will make sure that you're using gemni when you're doing this stuff so that you can write emails faster and you can set up your uh your your projects that much faster or whatever we decide to do um and as long as you have somebody holding your hand and showing you what to do and then you can run with it from there I think you would really benefit from that you know but to do it on your own it's tough you know what I'm saying all I completely know what you're saying um I haven't seen I haven't felt the need to do that yet I haven't seen the killer app that's going to make a that big a difference in my day-to-day life um you know I've played around with chat GPT a lot and I you know I haven't found a way to really I I'm just playing I haven't Incorporated that into anything that I actually do um but but you're absolutely right if I saw that I would be eager to have somebody to hold my hand and walk me through it yeah you would be and and it's it's not even just that it's um you're you know Above The Fray a little bit because you you're you're covering this you research this you're writing about this stuff you want to you know update your audience so you're you're looking into this stuff even harder than the typical business owner does you know what I mean who's busy doing other things do you know what I mean um and even you that's doing you're like well I really haven't found you know what you know how I would be using it or how I would apply and I would challenge you to say like well you know if you spent like an hour with with one of my guys I bet you we can go through and say like hey Lauren if you did these three things in Gemini it would make a big difference to your day um and then you'd be like okay and then your next question is okay how do I get started you know so anyway I I think we're going to be seeing a lot of that I think um I think Gem and I think um Co pilot are going to be providing a lot of opportunities for technology people to provide services to their clients uh to get businesses to use them the right way because with all of this hype around you know around this stuff there again there's still just features that are being added to the applications one of thing I want to mention is um you you you brought up what I wrote about in Forbes so Microsoft released some some changes to to co-pilot they're introducing co-pilot functions in Windows 11 one of them is you've seen this Windows recall have you seen this that in your piece and I was about to bring that up because I think that might be another reason that some people are slow to dive in yeah it's you know a lot of people are nervous about it Windows recall you know everyone is is where Microsoft is using its its co-pilot you know uh AI to basically watch and record everything you're doing I mean you know taking images of everything as it's happening real time everywhere you're at store it in the cloud as well as some of it locally so that um when you come you know you have a question where did I file you know you just ask your computer where where did I file this document or where can I find this information or what did I say in this email or uh how can I configure my my laptop to you know to to save power or just do it for me it that's the point of Windows recall is that it's supposed to be you know it's watching everything that you do and it's just remembering everything that you do so that you can always go back and ask your questions when you don't remember but some people are feeling a little concerned about that uh because who knows what it's what now you can turn it off but it's you you got to go pretty deep down in the configuration and the settings of Windows to turn it off um but I kind of think that this is like just the new normal you know Lauren I mean this what we can expect to see from all technology is just watching us very closely with the intention of helping us and God knows where that's going to lead Jean is your concerned primarily with it watching you or should we be thinking about owners who will be using it to watch their employees and is that a whole another issue all of it yeah yeah all of it you know what I mean employees are going to have a problem with it as well and you know and then employees doing people doing stuff that's not sufficient for work you know what I mean like that's you know an issue so they're going to have to be concerned about what's being watched what's being recorded and uh and again Microsoft is storing it somewhere and I'm sure it's all private and secure U so because they say it is so we're all fine so these are going to be issues that we're going to have to Grapple with and um yeah the question is if you're running a business do you know do you now have to spend extra time with your it people to configure everybody's devices to turn this off you know and then Microsoft's next update turns it back on again you know like it's going to create more headaches for us um and create more problems rather than solve them so that will be an interesting thing to see over the next couple of years as we get used to this AI stuff you know well you wrote about that and then the next thing you wrote about is cop its ability to actually run meetings for real yeah I mean it is again it's it's an AI assistant and again Gemini is doing the exact same thing so you know it sets you set up a separate employee that's like an AI employee and it you know it goes on your to meetings on your behalf Lauren and it listens in on the meeting um it based on what's going on if you've given it instructions in advance it will it will make suggestions or communicate things that you that you want covered in advance it's recording the meeting it will then provide a summary of the meeting to everybody and then as tasks are are are are created like people assign things to each other um it automatically uh will will update your outlook with new tasks which I'm sure your your colleagues won't abuse too much you know but it will do all of that automatically on Google side you set up and you if you have projects that you conf figure on the gemni side um you set up a gemni like an AI assistant to monitor your projects and alert everybody if something's falling behind or if some email wasn't sent or if some deadline is coming up um you know as well as doing actions on its own based on Project Milestones so all of that is is here and by the way is we're talking about this now it's June of 2024 you know it's just in the infancy do do you know what I mean Lauren I mean it's like we're talking about a a newborn baby saying like this kid is going to change the world you know it's like well the kids got to grow up a little bit and go to college and become an adult first before um it it you know it makes sense but you see where it's all going you know and that's let me ask you this I I wonder if I read too much into what you wrote uh I think we've all gotten used to the idea anybody who attends a zoom meeting has gotten to used to the idea that some people are sending a a bot there to attend the meeting for them um just to attend record uh keep track of what happens you know know if any tasks are assigned to you as you just said but I think you're suggesting the co-pilot can now run the meeting is that right yeah I mean what it's doing is that it is it's not just recording it again it is making suggestions it is responding based on instructions that you've given it you know in advance to things that come up during the meeting and again like any meeting manager it's scheduling tasks and activities it's doing follow-up will it will it tell people to stop looking at their phone or uh or or chewing loudly or that I don't know or scold people if they ha haven't completed a task they were supposed to deliver at this meeting that the task part of it could be something in the future but as far as looking at the phone or being distracted uh I'm not quite sure that's a function for it right now okay well along those lines um there was a story this one you did not write it ran in the New York Times last week and it suggested that AI can not just run meetings but perhaps entire businesses in fact it suggested that AI is now capable of serving as a CEO and that some companies are already trying this out um and the idea is kind of that I I guess the way it put it was you know we're used to the idea that AI has certain capabilities and it makes sense to replace certain types of employees with a machine that can do everything more efficiently and this story laid out these particular employees were talking about analyze new markets and discern Trends both tasks a computer could do more efficiently they spend much of their time communicating with colleagues that's a laborious activity that is being automated with voice and image generators um sometimes they make difficult decisions and who's better at being dispassionate than a machine and most importantly these jobs we're talking about CEO jobs are very well paid which means the cost of savings of eliminating them is considerable what did you uh make of this article G so I I I think it is just such a bunch of clickbait [ __ ] when I see stuff like this it's like it's the New York Times trying to to create stories out of thin air on a Hot Topic so people will will you know continue clicking onto their site the the headline to the story everybody is if AI can do your job maybe it can also replace your CEO right and then you replace the CEO with a robot what is this world coming to Lauren this is unbelievable I mean I understand you know certain decisions can be made um using you know AI in the future I mean again not not now that's for that's for darn Shore um but as AI gets trained and more intelligent sure it can make certain management decisions or make suggestions for decisions but it's not going to replace your CEO it's not going to organizations need people I mean you know and you can't have people taking orders from a bot it's just not it just it just doesn't make sense to me but people miss about AI I I it's just a it is a very powerful productivity tool so good CEOs will have ai assistance that will be able to advise them and guide them to make the right decisions but can you imagine like a [ __ ] shareholder meeting where you've got what a laptop up on the stage answering questions from you know from shareholders I mean it's just it just such clickbait uh when I see articles like that but listen it's just what can I tell you I don't think it was meant to literally suggest that Eugene marks need to be worried about losing your job anytime can also replace your CEO it says right Chief executives are I I think it was looking into the future a bit and suggesting that some of the things that CEOs do could be done better by a machine and certainly that is true right uh my if I was writing the article it would be the future CEO will be that much better because they will be assisted by machines right you know so but not not replacing the CEO I think that is so listen for for everybody that's you know running businesses listening to this AI is not replacing you or anybody else anytime soon but man I'm telling you it can it it is it continues to be and will be a powerful powerful asset in your business to help you and your existing employees to do stuff much much faster and more productively uh which is great but it's not going to replace Senior Management that's ridiculous well just to be sure I I I want to stress right now that if you do get replaced Jean you do still have to come and record this podcast with me you cannot a right it's just not gonna happen and I just want to be clear and this New York Times article is [ __ ] and you know what I am offended that you even brought this up on this podcast and wanted to talk about it more you're you're the AI guy you're the one who is in the trenches checking this stuff out and uh that's why I brought it to you yeah I'm gonna have I'm tell you like I'm changing it's funny when I when I speak a lot to to Industry groups um I AI is going to become a workplace topic is is how I look at it you know there are a lot of HR and workplace Specialists out there that uh advise companies on running better workplaces and I think that's what AI is going to be all about like how do we get our people to work better and more productively and faster how do we get more done with the same team you know um th I think those are what what business owners that's what business owners are really interested in AI about is how can they use it for their existing people not to replace themselves or managements just I don't you know I don't see that ever happening so we're on for next week are we on for next week yes we're on you'll still be good all right G marks is a CPA who writes weekly on small business for the guardian the hill the Philadelphia inquire the Washington Times the Chicago Daily Herald Forbes and entrepreneur you can also hear them on ABC radio's ey on the world with John Bachelor Jean hosts two small business podcasts with paychecks Corporation and the Hartford this episode was brought to you by the great game of business which helps businesses use an open book management system to help build healthier companies you can learn more at Great game.com thank you Jean thank you Lauren we'll see you next week take care have a great week everybody