Oct 16, 2023
331. Understanding AI as a Storytelling with Roy Vella
Is AI going to take over the world like in Terminator? Roy Vella knows the answer to that question and a few more advanced questions too. Roy is a digital strategy expert, AI expert, professional speaker, independent, non-exec director, advisor, and consultant to enterprises large and small. As a resourceful Stanford, JD, MBA, and US UK citizen, Roy has proven complex problem-solving skills and global execution, delivering high growth, digitally driven teams. He runs a management consultancy, providing strategic advice and commercial services to digital leaders worldwide, particularly as an expert in deep tech, FinTech, and smart home industries.
Roy tells us what AI is good at right now, and what it is not good at…. yet. He uses ChatGPT as an example. ChatGPT is good at figuring out what words tend to appear together, in what order, and in what context. That is because it has been trained on massive datasets called large language models (LLM). That makes iChatGPT good at storytelling. However, ChatGPT is not good at accuracy. So it may tell a great story, but it doesn’t know if that story has any accuracy or not. Therein lies the biggest danger, according to Roy.
Roy emphasizes that in a world with increasingly capable AI, our focus should be on critical thinking. We should be teaching students how to think through what are the best prompts or questions so they can pull the best output from AI. Because the amount of computation power that is coming our way will blow our collective human minds.
The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway
Storytelling came through in our conversation about the risks of AI storytelling, but the flip side is also true. We are story telling and digesting creatures. I tell folks all the time, no matter what your job is, no matter what you're doing, knowing how to tell a good story is crucial to success. For all my advanced education, it's improv training that was probably some of the most valuable stuff I learned.
And the problem is we don't practice it anymore. We used to, you know, the sun went down, the lights went out and we sat around a fire and told stories to each other.
And we don't do that anymore. But the most successful people tell the best stories.
I mean, it's as simple as that– whether they're a politician or a CEO or leader of a church or whatever, right? It is the ability to tell stories and the practice of doing that.
You can't just read about telling stories, you gotta practice it. When I'm talking to entrepreneurs, which I do a lot, I'm saying you got to practice the story. You got to tighten that up. You got to tell me why I should believe that and how it's going to work.
Storytelling is almost the crux of all success, in my opinion.
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Resources:
* Connect with Roy Vella on LinkedIn, Twitter, and at royvella@gmail.com.
* Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
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