Introduction

My name is Eric George. I work at Georgia Tech. I am the associate director of conference services, operate under housing and residence life.

So I just finished my busy season and we just moved a bunch of students into Georgia Tech over this past weekend. And and so What I do and operate over at Georgia Tech is I help with the day to day operations.

I have a phenomenal team that allows us to do some really great things with students, with kids, adults, and we also house almost about 400 interns that are working here in the Atlanta area. And so they do their internships at different businesses.

So if you need a place, if you have an intern and you have a summer internship for them and they need a place to stay, let's talk.

Exploring AI with Marcus

So Marcus and I, we had a couple conversations and we were talking about AI. And so I was sharing some things that I do.

I love it. I know there's some fear around it.

I know that there's some just Concerns, I think in the art world, artists and things like that, they're very concerned. But I would say artists, people that are really creative, have an advantage because you can speak and you can craft your words to help utilize AI as a tool and to enhance what you're already doing in your creative mind.

Eric's Background

My background is very much so in community.

I grew up on the property of a camp and conference center in Western North Carolina. And so I've always been around groups of people. I've seen them come and go, and it's been a part of my life.

And so working at Georgia Tech, doing camps, that's definitely something as well.

But I've always had a curiosity. I've always had this creative side to me. And so when I learned about AI, I dove full into it.

The Influence of Family

And so what I wanna do is, before I get started, I wanna tell you about, Marcus, actually, you took my line. I wanted to ask you, when you leave tonight, when I leave tonight, I hope I learned X.

So, think about that for a minute. I know some people shared already what they're hoping to get, but think about that. When I leave tonight, I hope I learned X. And so, wanted to tell you about my grandmother.

So my grandmother was a lady before her time. She was a, she's a Georgia native. I myself am not, but she's a Georgia native.

She actually was a dance instructor at the Arthur Murray Dance Studio way back in the day, late 40s, early 50s. She met her husband, my grandfather there. He became a dance instructor as well.

And so she was a lady before her time, and so she was all about ideas. And so my mom gave her a blank notepad, and said, you need to write down your idea. So when you wake up during the middle of the night, you can write it down. You won't forget it.

And so I just I just wonder if she had access to a tool like AI because when she found out about Photoshop and she learned about that, she found a young man to Photoshop all of her pictures of her so that she could look good, get the blemishes gone, and it was not a strange thing to see a picture of the family and her face was cut out because she didn't like her picture in it. So I can only imagine what she would have accomplished with AI.

AI Tools at Work

So I primarily work with these three products personally. Copilot, I use for work.

Georgia Tech's a Microsoft campus. Gemini is Google's tool, and ChatGPT is probably the most known and utilized among the masses, I would say, just on early adopters.

So Copilot... for work, I say I use it for work because it connects all of my information together. It connects my SharePoint, it connects all my documents so I can interact with documents to summarize, to review, to analyze, to get good results out, to almost simplify it.

So if I need to send a report that has multiple information, it can collaborate for me and do that. Jim and I have been doing a lot more recently,

don't know if it's still an option but if you had an edu email address you could get the full suite for free which was pretty amazing and i'd say when you can do a little bit more with a fuller version it really pays off in chat gbt i pay i think the base rate of 20 a month just to get that extra out of it just i guess show of hands who here is using any of these okay uh If you're just using Copilot, anybody use Copilot? That's a lesser, yeah, okay.

Some people are in one camp or the other. It's almost like Apple, Microsoft, you pick one. And I would say there's some truth to that.

And like I was saying with Copilot, it allows you to maximize its capacity because you're in that full suite.

Overcoming AI Imposter Syndrome

So fear, or we could call it IA imposter syndrome. I think the other thing as far as like the AI imposter, I think early on I was like, I didn't want to admit that I used it. I think there's that component of like, am I, Is this my work or is it AI? Did I come up with the idea or did AI come up with it?

So AI tools are not cheating. I see it as a valuable asset. If you embrace AI, it allows you to boost productivity and personal growth. AI amplifies your capabilities, not replaces them. And AI integration enhances work and maintaining your ownership.

if you could simplify AI, it's speed. You may have the ability to get there, but AI's gonna get you there faster, and that allows you to do more work through the process.

All right, so again, it's your creative partner. So, AI's gonna act like a collaborative brainstorming partner.

Embracing Creativity with AI

And so, Like my grandmother, I think I inherited her ideas. I took a CliftonStrength test and ideation was my number one. So I'm coming up with ideas all the time. Whether they're good or bad, I come up with them. And I've learned to share them more frequently and often and sometimes I get some elbows every now and then to keep my mouth shut. But I love sharing them.

Let's see. So I think the other thing is AI, if you had this like just a grain of an idea, you can flesh it out to step eight, step 10, and really see if there's something viable there and then move on. I think if you had just a small concept or a thought, then you can take it to its full completion or see where it needs to land.

You can also do iterations and I'll get into that in a moment. And I think where I ended up was, yeah, I'm giving it the original thought and then I'm able to build on that. And then, again, with the iterations to build in.

You may or may not know this, but Will.i.am, he has a podcast where his co-host is AI, is an AI bot. And so which is cutie pie. So cutie pie.

So he does a live show with an agent to talk about current events, different different things, music, culture. Adam Grant did a podcast with Will.i.am where they talked about AI and the use of it in the arts and music. Will.i.am was a huge advocate for it instead of saying it's not something of interest.

So I found that really interesting of an artist really leaning into how far he could go. So he talked about how he'll wake up during the middle of the night And instead of calling someone, he's jumping on and talking to the AI to get to where he needs to go with this idea, then go to bed. And so it's amazing to have that type of partnership who can stay right with you in the moment of an idea.

I love the question, what if? What if? Marvel has that series, What If? If you're familiar and they change kind of the plot line of, well, what if Captain America didn't get the serum And Agent Carter did. And so they take it down that rabbit hole.

So I love these ideas of what if. And it really opens up your imagination. I think as kids, we have this ability to do it much easier. And then as we grow up and as adults, we're telling kids, no, the grass can't be blue. Or no, the sky can't be purple.

Thinking Differently

It's like... What if it was? What would that look like? And so you can think about other things in life and work. What if? 1What if we combined these two processes together?

Recently I was at, I was telling Marcus this the other day, where I was picking up Chick-fil-A and I was just standing in line and I was noticing how they were moving. They're super efficient in how they operate. But I was like, man, what if napkins were already in the takeaway bags? Like, what would that look like? And so I threw that into AI, just really random.

And so I came to the conclusion that actually wouldn't be a good idea because they'd have to change machines, they have to do this. But it's like, I got to scratch that itch. So I think it allows you to filter out bad ideas. And I think that's an actual good exercise because you can stop thinking about it. You can decide that's not a good idea and move on. And I think a lot of times you can get hung up on a bad idea because you can't take it to completion.

All right.

Practical Applications and Tips

So let's get into more like practical because that's why I'm here. So it's Do you guys remember doing Mad Libs as kids?

All right. Think of that as like a formula and a structure. So if you take this structure, you're going to get the best results. And the reason you're going to get the best results is because you're giving the information.

You're not allowing AI to assume what it's going to do. So you want to assign it a role or a perspective. And then you want to say what you want that role to do. Give it a specific task.

You need to give it context. Give it details. Give it parameters. Say, give it... I need this in 10 sentences, or I need this in 100 words.

So many times I'm filling out forms in surveys, and it's like there's a character limit. I'll say, hey, I need this in under 3,000 characters, and it gives me that. And I say, what's the format? What's the style, tone, audience?

If you can learn to think like this and build it out, you're gonna get stronger results. There's a joke in the IT world where you call up for help, something's not working, and you're like, it's not working. And the IT guy's like, well, what's not working? And their first response is, well, did you plug it in?

So it's like, if you're providing more information, you're gonna get better answers instead of this back and forth interaction. So again, just to kind of talk about this again, so it's like, think about professions. If you're talking about a salesperson, Plug that in. Say you are an expert sales professional.

You have 30 years experience. I want you to look at this market for a certain timeframe. Let's say it's Q1, Q2, and we want to achieve these goals. And so then you outline it. You're like, I only want it in bullet points.

I don't want a lot of sentences. You may want a flow chart. You may want a graph. You can ask it for those specific data points. But again, be specific.

Also mention tone. One of my favorite things that I've done is, Within market research, you want to kind of understand the persona of the people you're working with. So what are their likes? What are their dislikes? Do they have a favorite book?

Do they have a favorite author? So think about that. Think about tone if you can embed some of those nuances of a favorite author to someone so that your note or your email is in that tone that already resonates with the person you're sending it to, to get that extra little touch of personality to it.

And again, don't just take the first response. The first answer isn't necessarily gonna be the right one. So work it, flesh it out, continue to do these new iterations. Try it shorter, try it longer.

I wanna talk to you like you're my friend. Respond to me as if we've known each other our whole lives. It will do that. You just have to give it the right instructions.

And I think the big thing is just ask the what if, like the possibilities are really endless.

Developing Effective Prompts

So we got three steps here.

So I talked about the structure of that formula, but before you even do that, I would say type out that, get that structure there, but then before you hit enter, start out with this. You gotta start out with discovery, and this is where you're gonna learn better prompting.

So say, hey, before we begin, I want you to ask me 20 discovery questions, one at a time. Or all at the same time, I'm going to answer them. It's going to answer these questions, you know, the goal, the audience tone.

And after I answer all those, you know, confirm understanding, but I want a concise summary before we move forward. And so even before you're starting, you're interacting with it to get a really sharp prompt. So then you do it and then you plug that in and then you start it.

And then another great practice is, let's say you go through all this, you get to the end result that you want, ask it, how could I have asked this from the very beginning in a single prompt? We got to where I wanted to go, but how could I have done that the first time? Because we would all love to do it the first time.

So a lot of the things with AI, it's speed. And so if you can get to the answer faster because you're prompting better, then you're a step ahead of the rest that are struggling to write, make it better.

I don't like this. You may also notice that AI is very friendly. It's going to think you're the best thing in the world. It's something that you need to be aware of.

And so it's an interesting thing, but I really like these two bookends of the discovery and the reverse engineering.

This is like a big one, but these are some just concepts, some ideas for these different buckets of how you could use AI for those different roles and perspectives. Again, All of these, I literally went into AI, I was like, hey, what are some underutilized prompts and some underutilized roles that people don't really lean into? And so it generated this for me.

So I'm going to continue to beat this drum because it's so simple, but yet it's so important. So be specific. I would say always use that formula.

Now, you're going to find what works best for you, for your industry, for you personally, for work, for personal. I use it to help me plan my wedding. And so I am an event planner by trade. But and I used to do wedding planning as well for a venue.

But it's amazing. I was like, what if I use the guy to help me do this? And it's like, It helped me do the program. It helped me do the timeline. It helped me do different pieces in that I knew I had the ability to do it, but it helped me do it faster. And then I could make minor tweaks that I liked or I didn't like.

And I think the other piece is verify. Double check your work. Same thing with like when we were in school, you know, don't just turn in without reviewing it or have something else put an eye on it. It can be a dangerous thing to send something to your boss that was done by AI and you didn't double check it and there was an issue with it. So,

Challenges and Exercises

We're going to jump into a demo, but I want to make sure I leave you with a challenge of actually trying it. Pick a repetitive task that you do on a weekly basis, writing emails, a summary of a report, planning a social media post. And so try this exercise out of using the prompt of that formula that we talked about. Whether it's, again, whether it's Copilot, whether it's ChatGPT, Gemini, whichever one you use, try this formula and see how much time it can save you.

And with most things that are new, it may take you longer. But the more you use it and then you get into your habit, it becomes second nature.

And so, again, let me jump from here. We're gonna look at a couple different things. Here we go. All right.

So this is Google's Gemini.

And so let's test this out. So we're going to do this live.

Before I jump into this, who here does fantasy football? Anybody? OK. All right.

so uh i was like huh i wonder what what help i can get this year so gemini has a thing for it's called deep uh research and so it takes longer to do so if you have this big idea big topic that you need longer periods for um give it time ai i think is earlier on i would compare it to like dial up and it took a while to get your answers now it's it's a little quicker Deep research is gonna do deep research and it's gonna take more time to get you a result.

So this afternoon I threw in, oh, there we go. I threw in, I said, hey, you know, I said, act as an expert fantasy football draft strategist and create a detailed round by round plan for a 12 team PPR snake draft where I have the eighth pick. Hate that I had the eighth pick this year. Right? Yeah. No one likes that.

And so I outlined this. Do you know how I got this prompt? I asked AI to give me a prompt based on some certain keywords. And I gave it the formula. I said, fill this out, do it for me. And I worked back and forth till I got the result I want. And then I plugged it in to do this research. And so I plugged it in. It took some time. It did all of this research for me behind the scenes. And then it gave me this draft. And so here it is right here.

So it outlined 12 players right there. for me, it talks about where I am in the draft. I know this probably doesn't apply to most here, so I won't take too much longer on this. So again, AI can do some really amazing thing and give me a strong cheat sheet for me when I go to draft in a couple weeks.

Demonstrations and Interactive Sessions

So just, it could be really interesting. Real estate, who's here in real estate? Okay. All right.

So my brother's in real estate, and I actually help him with training guides and different things and promotional material for his team. So earlier today, I was curious. I hadn't done this before. I was like, it just popped into my head. And so I went on Zillow, and I found a listing, and I was like, cool, let's look it up. So plugged it in. All I said was create an infographic for this listing and plugged into the link. Nothing grand, nothing major. And so it gave me this snapshot of of that property.

I was like, all right, that wasn't what I wanted. So what I what I got next was I said I wanted let's give the infographic. And so when I plugged it in, you'll see it. It builds hope. There we go. It built me all this code to create this really sharp, sharp infograph here on the right. And then Gemini has this cool thing that you can embed AI features into this sheet here. So then it dropped this in of a property investment. There we go. Come on. All right. It's not like, there it goes.

All right, so it gave me this investment analysis on this property. So I was like, OK, that's pretty interesting. So then I also had this breakdown of the education, the home ownership culture. I was like, and it gave me a vibe check. So it's going to generate a vibe check. So it's like an AI within the tool here.

So then I was like, all right, let's compare it with another property. And so it did a comparison for me of the two properties. And then I was like, let's look at that. And so it gave me a cute name of a tale of two Atlanta homes. And so it gave me the breakdown of the price. And, you know, you can do this, but I did this within just a couple clicks and through that.

So let's jump here. All right. So let's look at this as like improv. So let's interaction here, give me a role. Fitness trainer. So I'm gonna say, act like a fitness trainer. What kind of fitness trainer? And what? Okay. So nutritionist, weight loss coach, we'll say they have 20 years experience.

what are you hoping to get out of this? Like what do you want it to do? Make you money. Make you money. Okay. Okay. Like what? business model. Okay. So, act like a fitness nutritionist, fitness trainer, nutritionist, weight loss coach with 20 years experience, uh, uh, to build a biz, uh, a business model. Let's, alright, let's just see what comes up. So,

Again, that probably wasn't the best prompt, but it's a starting point, and so, because I didn't tell how I wanted it to produce it, so it's gonna use its best guess on producing it. So it's like, cool. It gave me the pillar, some accelerators, things like that. Okay, so this isn't my world, and so it did that, but this is over my head, so it's like, so explain, this to me as a ninth grader. And so it's going to break it down what it was to a ninth grade level.

And so if you're trying to, as a fitness business leader, how are you going to explain something to people that you're trying to teach them to do those things? So break it down to a simpler level. So it's like, okay, I like where we're going with this. So I'm going to jump a couple steps. So I would go back and forth and work through this. And so, but I think an end goal would be, you know, uh, You know, an honest question, how can I make money from this? I'm gonna leave the misspelling. We'll see what happens.

So there it goes. So it starts talking about your package of how you can sell it, what works. And you could even tie in things that you've seen that you've experienced. Again, AI isn't to replace you. It's to enhance what you already know. And it's to enhance your curiosity and theories that you may be unfamiliar with. It's going to give you some resources to continue to look at. So it's suggesting doing a tier-based modeling or tier-based model of a one, two, three. So as an option.

So again, you can take, yeah, go for it. Yeah, 100% tinker it to your liking because you have to own it. At the end of the day, you have to put your name on it and own it.

And I think that's the big thing about this. And I think that's where that AI imposter syndrome can come from is that you're not necessarily wanting to step out there and say, I did this with AI. But I think if you look at AI as a tool, like a calculator, or when they went from hand machines to engine run machines, it's like, What's going on here? So it's getting comfortable with the idea of something's helping you enhance.

I was listening, reading to a book it'll come to me, but talked about how the mind is one of the last things that's been enhanced. I mean, you look at, we went from horses to vehicles, machines, so it's like, but AI is that, it seems like it's that piece that's enhancing the mind next.

We wanna try another one with this? Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start a new conversation, just so we have a clean slate here.

So, all right, so I want you to act like an expert. You wanna come up here and do it? Oh, tell me what to do. We're going to pivot here to accomplish that. So I'm going to jump over to something else right now so we can do something different. But I think this is a perfect time for it.

All right. So this is ChatGPT. We're going to come here to a new chat. And again, I pay for the like $20 a month. Yeah. you can, there are higher levels and all that, but for me, I find that this works really well.

So, what I've done is I've turned on the audio conversation tool with ChatGPT. Are you there? It was picking me up, but it's not coming out of the speakers for some reason. So, we're gonna, we're gonna jump back here to Gemini. Just quickly, let me touch on that functionality of that conversation piece.

So I manage people and Sometimes there are some difficult conversations that you have when you're managing people. And so I'm able to converse with AI and say, hey, I have a really interesting situation right now. And I anonymize it. I say, hey, I'm thinking of approaching it this way. What do you think? And so I'll have some interaction back and forth, practice.

Most times you don't have times to practice unless you have a really good friend or a very understanding spouse to hear you out and talk through and role play on some hard conversations. So you can go back and forth. And so on my commute, I'm having like a difficult conversation with AI of how to deal with a situation. And so It'll give me feedback. Again, it's positive, like, hey, that was great, great job.

And I'll say, no, no, no, be critical to me. Let me understand where are the gaps. How could I have done this better? Could I have approached this differently? And so it allows me to try multiple times to get to a place where I'm like, yeah, all right, this is the best approach. This is the best way to do this.

So let's jump back and do the cosmetology test. Tell me the name again. Glamazon. Glamazon. Beauty. All right. Yeah, you were spot on.

Like you were following that prompt formula. Yeah. So I started just, we can just keep going. So I didn't fully capture it, but let's see what it came up with just with an uncomplete phrase.

So understanding your skin tone, undertone. So I'm not a cosmetologist, thank you. And yeah, so how did this do? Like, absolutely. So that's a great thing. And I think also with sales, you can do like a market analysis of understanding what the market is, who are my competitors?

and I believe we're gonna be talking about agents in a little bit. And so agents are like the next thing to create a unique knowledge base that only focuses on what you want it to focus on instead of the whole spectrum of everything. And so you're providing your notebook that you have that's your knowledge base. And so it helps fine tune what you want it to accomplish. kind of the stuff I'm talking is more on a practical kind of exploratory stuff and help you with some things. But when we get into the next section of the agents, uh, that's really where I think where your idea would shine. Yeah. Yes, sir.

I saw you.

Conclusion and Encouragement

Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's almost like if you can dream it, it's, you can make it reality, you know? And so it's like, You each are an expert in your own field and you all have life experiences that lead into how you can use this. So you may not feel that, but this tool helps you get there and just work through it.

And I think talking about the Einstein with Salesforce, is that what you were talking about with your sales team, sir? On the date? Yeah, no, absolutely.

And I think throw that all in. into it and I think then it's like you you take what it gives you and then you take bite sized chunks and then throw that in and then flesh that out.

The the amazing thing I think you may find with that deep research is those market analysis. I was doing some price adjustments on some of our units that we we use during the summer trying to get rates here in the Atlanta area because they hadn't been up just in a while. And so I did this huge market analysis and probably oh, an hour and said, hey, produce a executive proposal and threw it up and then we got it approved.

So I think within your sales team, if you have that small goal of what you're trying to accomplish, try to use that formula to get the end result that you want. I think another interesting thing is that you can say convert this answer, turn it into a workbook, turn it into a guidebook of now it's a training module or it's a training tool to help the next person.

So it's like one, talking about real estate again, my brother's in real estate and so he does a radio show and so I took... I took a conversation that he did. Yeah, right here. Come on. So he did his podcast, but he actually did it with ChatGBT.

He did a live radio show with the agent and talked about the market going on and things like that. And so I took the transcript, converted it, and I said, hey, how can this be repurposed? Same information, but how can it be repurposed for an email newsletter?

How can it be repurposed for social media? How can it be repurposed for a blog, for a tweet, for you name it? Same information, he did it once, and then he could replicate it in different formats. So that's another power move that you can use with information that you already have.

So you're not having to work harder, you're working smarter with the same data, just output it in different formats. So I think with like your book, it's like, how could you take that and plug it into other venues? It's like, how could you turn it into an online business

um you know learning platform that's a sellable uh tool i don't know anything about what you're thinking but it's like what if what else could you do with that same amount of data um but just in a different format this man so we're gonna we're gonna have a time for question and answer at the end i think we want to give our next presenter some time

What I love is how generative this was and how many questions and how much feedback this is generating. We're going to hold that because the whole point of us being in person is to do just this, but we'll get to that at the end.

Final Thoughts

So Eric, anything you wanna land the plane on here before we get one? Absolutely, thank you. Thank you for your attention.

I would just say, continue to be inquisitive, continue to ask questions and be curious and allow your creativity to stretch that muscle. I think it's a super untapped muscle and AI is a great tool to allow you to strengthen that muscle.

Thank you.