00:52:17 · Grace Gong
[00:52:17] S0: For sure. One of the audience, Christopher, is asking, so you guys are protecting learn to think first step in class, which I love. But out in the real world, there's a lot of entry level jobs, the ones where people used to learn the work by doing the ground stuff is getting automated. Are you seeing that hits your grads when they go looking for a first job? And is this about AIP starting to change how you think about teach to fill the gap?
00:52:48 · Kevin B. Boyd
[00:52:48] S1: I think that's a great question. It's one that we've talked a lot about with many different groups. I think that, you know, there's been a lot of fear in the last couple of years about AI taking jobs away. And, you know, I tend to think that like any, you know, major transition, there are jobs that will change and jobs that will evolve. And as that happens, there probably will be some jobs that are no longer needed in the future. What my own belief is, is that the entry level jobs are going to be the ones that are affected the first. You know, it's things that you used to have a, you know, a junior associate in the law firm or, you know, an entry level communicator drafting things. And in the future, think that's going be done by AI. The really difficult thing is that when you're in one of those entry level roles, that's how you learn how to progress to the mid level role. Know, you're you're off... You're doing that grunt work for the first few years. It might not be the most fun, but but you really learn that particular profession, whether that's a legal profession or being a communicator. I do think, you know, that there's going to be a challenge of, okay, how do you get from being a very successful student, you've gotten your degree and graduated, if there are fewer of those entry level jobs in the future, how do you get the experience you need to get to the mid level jobs? I don't know that I have an answer for that. I think, you know, the individual who asked the question is like, okay, does that change education? I think it's maybe too early to know that, but I think it may have to.
00:54:36 · Grace Gong, Kevin B. Boyd
[00:54:36] S0: When I guess like I want to be mindful of the time, maybe we do one real question and then one minute follow-up for you. One of the question was like, so yesterday I was actually at a VC van and like I was talking to a founder that's building in the AI education space. I feel like nowadays all the educational app are kind of like replaced by like the BigLabs product. Do you do you feel like there's still room for people who are building some sort of like personalized education product? Or do you feel like most people are just gonna use like Trejopy or cloud or equivalent? [00:55:15] S1: You know, it's an interesting question. I think there's always room for things like that that are very tailored. And, you know, part of where I'm actually excited about AI is the ability to do more tailored education. [00:55:35] S0: But,
00:55:35 · Grace Gong, Kevin B. Boyd
[00:55:35] S0: But, [00:55:38] S1: and that's where I think some of these of these startups have a real opportunity because if you are just using one of the frontier models, you know, there's always the possibility that it hallucinates, it gets something wrong. If you are a student, you probably don't know enough yet to judge, oh, that doesn't seem right. Whereas someone who's an expert in the field who's been doing it for twenty years might look at something that a model came back with and say, yeah, that's not right. Like, you know, I'm not gonna use that. So I think... I do think that's where there is an opportunity for more curated learning where we can have a potentially a higher degree of confidence that what the tool is coming back with is right. The other thing that I think is somewhat fascinating. So there are some universities, particularly universities in Europe like Oxford, where the end of quarter or end of semester evaluation is oral. Well, doesn't potentially scale very well for, let's say, a big 10 university that has 50,000 students. But you could imagine a future where there is more of the oral exam, but it's with an AI. So the AI is asking questions, the student is responding, and based on the the quality of the response, the AI might direct them to different directions to find out how much they actually know of the... Whatever the subject matter is for that quarter. I think there are people who find that both exciting and [00:57:15] S0: frightening. Okay, so what am I if I'm wrong? What's your favorite book?
00:57:15 · Grace Gong, Kevin B. Boyd
[00:57:15] S0: frightening. Okay, so what am I if I'm wrong? What's your favorite book? [00:57:23] S1: What is my favorite book? Oh gosh. I actually don't know the answer to that. I will say I read a lot. Like I am constantly reading so that one's a hard one. [00:57:38] S0: What's like the most like recent thing that you read? [00:57:43] S1: Oh, so bad with book titles. Sorry. There's a science fiction series that I've been reading and I would have to go pull up my Kindle to find the titles. [00:58:01] S0: Who would you invite to your dinner party? [00:58:05] S1: Who would I invite to my dinner party? Oh, interesting. I would say I think it would be fascinating right now to sit down with the leaders of each of the AI companies and just their brain about their view of where things are going. [00:58:25] S0: Who made the biggest impact in your career?
00:58:25 · Grace Gong, Kevin B. Boyd
[00:58:25] S0: Who made the biggest impact in your career? [00:58:34] S1: So I had a manager many years ago when I worked for Grainger. I'd been there for about seven years. I probably was, you know, my goal at that point was to become a CIO. And I thought that I would just, you know, be at Grainger forever and work my way up to the CIO role. And he was a really useful mentor to me. And he basically said, Look, you know, I think you can get to the CIO role, but you're going be more successful if you work for several different companies, several different industries, you know, get a broader perspective, get a more well rounded career path. And, you know, he was the... He was really the one that caused me to say, okay, you know, let me do that. And if you if you look at my career, worked in, you know, Grainger was industrial and commercial distribution. Bank One was obviously banking. I worked for a Tribune Company, which was media. CNA, which was financial and now higher ed. But I really do think that I am far more effective in my role as the CIO because I had a very diverse background in different industries. You get more of an idea of a lot of different ways to do things. [00:59:50] S0: Where can we find you outside of work? [00:59:56] S1: Sorry, say that again? [00:59:57] S0: Where can we find you outside of work? [00:59:59] S1: Oh, I'm probably on an airplane somewhere flying around the world and taking pictures. So my passions are travel and photography. [01:00:09] S0: You forgot to mention food. I feel like you're such a food god when it comes to racks for food.