#367 From Data Chaos to AI Success: Ben Bohman’s Guide for Businesses

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased joining me from the US from Arizona, Ben Bohman. Ben, the way I love to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves. Tell us a little bit more about your, [00:01:00] you know, background, your journey and what you're currently up to.

Mehmet: So the floor is yours.

Ben: Sure. Yeah, it's a lot to cover, so I'll try not to be too deep into it, but my name is Ben Bohman or Benjamin Bohman. I am the CTO and founder of Stratishield AI. I have a really a pretty lengthy tech background. I've been in tech for about 25 years. I actually started running a I. T.

Ben: department when I was 22 years old. For an international printing company. And funny before that, I never thought I'd be in tech. And I think I'm a testament to that. If you, that you don't have to be like a techie type of person to end up in technology. In fact, when I had, when I got my first job in computers and in technology, I hadn't even owned a computer at that time.

Ben: Of course, this was back in the day of windows NT or windows. Nice try as we like to call it, but in windows 95, right? A little bit more dip. Difficult operating systems to work on. But yeah, I was able to just hands on, figure it out and, and kind of create a [00:02:00] really nice career in technology. Now, uh, fast forward, you know, 25 years later, I've just stayed in tech.

Ben: I've been anything from a sales engineer to director of advanced solutions for a pretty big company here in the U S and then decided that I wanted to start my own company and create something special with AI and particularly. What I wanted is I didn't want him a single threaded solution, uh, for technology and particularly with AI.

Ben: So what I've created is what I feel like is one of the largest AI ecosystems that's out there, where if a company is wondering, is AI right for me, is it even something that I can do? Is it something that works for my business? I'm able to. Really determine is it, and also know who to go to, to get stuff accomplished.

Ben: So I can help companies from generative AI to data. Of course, data is where everything starts at data analytics, conversational AI, and even custom AI programming. So I really took a multifaceted approach to. [00:03:00] AI, which I think we should do in technology in general and created a good ecosystem. And that's where I'm landing at right now.

Mehmet: Cool. I love it, Ben. And, you know, just from my side, I like to hear these stories, you know, from someone who, who learned the tech and, you know, you just need to love what you do and then, you know, the, the knowledge can come later on. So, so that's fantastic. So Since last year, I mean, now it's like the second year where, you know, this wave of AI is taking the world by, by, by storm.

Mehmet: So, and you mentioned something about like businesses and you know, the businesses who want to implement the AI. Now do you still see, and again, back in days, we say like, yeah, in five years, in 10 years, but after like almost now, Two years of this, you know, what chat GPT have done with the open AI, of course, raising it to the public.

Mehmet: Do you still see people falling too much behind? Do you still see businesses still thinking, Oh, should we like consider AI [00:04:00] for ourselves or, you know, like this wave have passed and people now are full, fully like engaged and they want to implement AI solutions.

Ben: Sure. Absolutely. It's interesting right now that as companies are looking at AI, I don't think they're quite ready to adopt.

Ben: And you mentioned two years. Right. And this, this idea of two years ago, well, AI, really, if you look at from a business standpoint, which interesting enough was consumer driven, which at GPT, uh, not business driven, uh, it really was this November where businesses and the marketing really took off. Right. So in November, suddenly everyone was an AI company, even though they're not really an AI company, but suddenly everyone's an AI company.

Ben: Right. But what what's happening, happening is that businesses, they're just still not quite ready. And I think the reason why is honestly, I don't think they have budgets right now. I think the, the big reason that we're seeing a little bit of a delay is if you think about the [00:05:00] marketing and really the idea of AI in business and now initiative starting, starting to be pushed down to executives.

Ben: There wasn't the budget for it. So I think you're going to see companies starting to adapt and adopt. But also I would caution against that going too fast, even though I have a company that's based around AI consulting and helping businesses adopt and adapt AI into them. I would say, don't rush into it.

Ben: I mean, we, you have to do some AI readiness, get some of your business ready and your data ready and prep for AI. And also understand that AI is going to be evolving and changing so quickly right now that you don't want to jump into something where the technology is going to be so much better, uh, six months from now or a year from now.

Ben: Does that make sense?

Mehmet: A lot of sense, but you know, the, the thing, Ben, I think, which, you know, it's, it will be top of mind, let's say of, You know, the business owners. It's on top of mine on the board also as well. I know this for a fact. [00:06:00] They have seen companies, you know, when this wave of digital transformation started and, you know, people are adopting cloud technology, adopting, you know, all these new technologies.

Mehmet: So they felt that they saw or noticed that at that time, you know, The people who missed the train actually lost business and, you know, some of them, they went out of business now with AI, you know, and you mentioned something about budgets and you mentioned something about like every company would be an AI company, which is very interesting point now.

Mehmet: Okay, we get it. So maybe we should not as business owners, you know, be very fast. But what should be doing at least to prepare, you know, for for for this adoption of the technology? Okay. Yeah,

Ben: that's, that's a great question. And that gets us into the AI readiness conversation. And I would say that's the biggest conversation I'm having with businesses.

Ben: And the AI readiness conversation is really based around your [00:07:00] data. So if you think about. Artificial intelligence. And you think about what it runs off of. It's off of data. So data is really the lifeblood of artificial intelligence or the lifeblood of AI. And right now, companies are and most companies, I would say most a large percentage of companies are running disparate data systems.

Ben: They're messy. They're not organized. Their data lakes are just a complete mess. They're not Categorized and, and sequence properly. There's all these issues with the data and the issue is going to, what's going to happen is that you're going to be able to implement AI when it gets to that time, but maybe only fractional portions of AI within the company.

Ben: So you might be able to implement disparate AI systems into your accounting or into marketing or into cells, but the real power of AI for a business is being able to implement artificial intelligence that can make conscious. I don't like, Decisions, but conscious recommendations based off the entire data that a company holds, which is the most valuable information a company [00:08:00] has.

Ben: And so what I would say right now is whether you're ready for AI or you understand what application specifically you want to implement, I would say right now is the time to really get into it. Get your data ready. Get your data legs clean. Collaborate your data. Make sure that you don't have all these disparate against separated, messy databases with old information or just bad info or bad data in there and clean up that because that's gonna help you prep most for an artificial intelligence and implementation when the technology catches up to fit into your vertical or industry.

Mehmet: Again, that's another interesting point you mentioned, Ben. So and you, you, you advised about, of course, there's the readiness from the data perspective and you advise like, you know, to implement it in something that can, for example, do recommendations, right? Sure. Uh, rather than decisions now, in your opinion, And because I can't, I can't blame, you know, uh, someone [00:09:00] even who is technical, by the way, because the fast pace off of the advancement is all of us.

Mehmet: We are trying to catch up all the time. But from your conversation with your group. customers and prospects. What do you see their biggest misconception about, you know, adopting AI in enterprise space? So, so do you think that they over exaggerate the outcome? Sometimes you think that they they think that AI is just the chat bot thing like what you are seeing in that space?

Ben: Well, I think it's interesting that right now there is a big misconception that AI is either the Terminator Or a chat bot, right? And this in between area of what AI can do is just really not well understood right now, but that's really not, I think the biggest problem, and I think this goes across technology, whether it's AI or cybersecurity, cloud voice, whatever it is, and that's really understanding a business use case.[00:10:00]

Ben: And how it impacts the business. And I think a lot of, especially CTOs, CIOs, they understand that. And that's the way they look at their business, but a lot of companies and businesses, and I might be flipping this a little bit on a different perspective, but a lot of companies and businesses who want to talk about AI right now, what they're doing is they're just, they're going in and they're just talking about the technology.

Ben: But what if the technology isn't a good fit right now? And I always tell my customers, if you don't have a clear cut ROI, if you don't have a return on your investment, don't implement AI for the sake of implementing it, then you're doing that just for the whiz bang factor of, and chasing this trend. But that doesn't benefit the business.

Ben: The business at all. I remember when I was an I. T. director, uh, back in the day and the CTO or the CEO brought me in and he's like, look, I don't really care how easy your job is. I care how easy you make everyone else's job. Right. And he was very in tune to business outcomes and the business use case for [00:11:00] it.

Ben: So yeah, there is a lot of misconceptions of what AI can do, and maybe they, they, they have too high expectations. But right now, what I'm seeing is that companies are really trying to struggle or they're struggling with the, where does it even fit into the business? So typically with technology, you can go in and say, Hey, what is your use case?

Ben: What are you looking to do with AI right now? They're like, I have an initiative, but I don't even know what the use case is. So again, we need to drive it back to the business. Business outcomes, the technology in my mind always comes last, right? People, processes, technology. So the technology is always the last conversation, but let's understand the business first.

Ben: Was that a fair answer?

Mehmet: Very much fair. And you know, again, I've seen this, uh, because I was sitting on the other side of the table at that time, you know, maybe more than 10 years ago and the problem, and even I start to see it later on also as well. And the problem you mentioned or the challenge you mentioned is very common because I can give you an example and maybe you can agree or disagree with [00:12:00] me, Ben.

Mehmet: So a new technology comes out, forget about AI, even like something like, uh, let's less fancy, let's call it. And You know, let's say the cloud or let's say, for example, uh, micro services or let's say, uh, containers. Right. And then you start to see people trying to fit. You know, this technology into something that maybe they don't have the use case for it, to your point.

Mehmet: Now, for AI, I think, you know, there's kind of a FOMO effect here that, okay, if we don't do this AI thing now, people are gonna leave us, we're gonna lose customers, or, or, or so on. So you mentioned education, and you mentioned awareness. Are we doing good job? You think? I mean, as as technologists or people who work in technology, do you think like we are informing and teaching and even mentoring the business owners and even the board, even maybe small medium [00:13:00] businesses?

Mehmet: Do you think we are giving them enough materials enough? Uh, you know, let's say best practices. So they can understand where they can utilize this, how they can start looking at their own business. Or do you think that, you know, this is the, this is the reality. Vendors are pushing, you know, salespeople are pushing the technology.

Mehmet: So even they don't have, they, they feel lost. Like, so what's your opinion on this? I'm very curious to know.

Ben: My I have a and I hate power points, but I do have a 10 point power point presentation that I put together that kind of shows the idea of the flow of AI and how to start with the data, get into the analytics, reactive, proactive and then get into custom AI, generative AI and conversationally.

Ben: My favorite slide in that is a slide that shows probably about 30 to 50 vendors of AI vendors. And it's just a, and it just shows how messy it is. So I think right now, and this, this is [00:14:00] really relevant, even if you talk about cybersecurity and how many cybersecurity vendors are out there, but with the AI, there's so much misinformation.

Ben: And again, like I said, everyone in November suddenly became an AI company. Well, machine learning and behavioral analytics, and a lot of what we've been doing for decades. Over a decade now was already being done by these companies, but now suddenly they're an AI company, but they're not really doing anything different than what they were five, six, seven years ago.

Ben: And so, no, I think right now it's just. Completely muddy. I think the waters are completely muddy. I think the way it's being pushed into every business is really muddy. And that's why, again, I think from the conversations I'm having, they're looking at it several different ways. One is, well, how do I first secure the environment, but how do I give my people and my, our employees access to AI tools safely and securely?

Ben: And I think that's really a good starting point when you when you talk about it, [00:15:00] because you're 100 percent right. It's a great point. It's just so convoluted right now. And it's such a messy conversation. But if we start with what we can control and what we should control, which is the data and usage of AI, let's say generative AI in our business, then that is a relevant use case.

Ben: And so then we give our employees something that's going to make their job easier. Uh, maybe it might make writing emails, writing other stuff easier, or maybe other simple applications easier. And then the next thing is secure it. That's the other concern is I think businesses are really worried about.

Ben: If I have an employee in accounting using chat, GPT, open AI, and just throwing accounting information in there, well, it's going to cause problem. Then we're going to be having some major issues. Uh, from a data security standpoint. So again, I think it's muddy. Let's start somewhere simple. Let's start something somewhere relevant, but also really focus on securing, securing the data and securing the implementation.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now I want to [00:16:00] come to A segment of the market that is close to my heart, which is, which is the small, medium businesses and startups, right? Uh, so now how much important do you think for, for this segment of the market, you know, to, to also make sure that, uh, they are leveraging the technology that the large corporations are doing.

Mehmet: Like, do you think they would follow the similar steps that the big guys. you know, they usually do or they need to have different perspective on how they might be using a, I maybe to grow the business, maybe to take advantage even on, on like a large organization that is not taking now a leap and, you know, advancing itself with, with the new technology.

Mehmet: So, so how do we deal with the, with the small medium businesses and startups when it comes to [00:17:00] AI?

Ben: Yeah, that, that's a, another really, really good question. And I think they have different opportunities and in some ways, some easier opportunities to go downstream and find some newer and less expensive AI players out there that are offering some good solutions down again, downstream.

Ben: I feel like there's a risk right now with small and mid sized businesses. And I don't want to compare this to the. com type of. When we had, when we had in the early two thousands, all the. com companies go out of business and the stock market issues because of it. But there are a lot of AI businesses that aren't going to be around in two years.

Ben: There's a lot of AI businesses that aren't going to be around in three years because of how just rapidly everything's evolving. And I think as a small business owner, unfortunately, a lot of those. Businesses that aren't gonna be around are gonna be the more affordable ones, that are the startups that are fitting into a market of trying to test an idea that could go [00:18:00] upstream.

Ben: Where the larger businesses are, might be working with the Google's, uh, maybe open ais, uh, IBM's, uh, the bigger type of AI implementations that are out there and probably have a little bit more security in the implementation they have. I'm not saying that from a small business you should step, take a step back and not use.

Ben: AI or implement AI into your system, because I think there are affordable and safe and secure implementations. You have to make sure that you own the data, that you're not storing the data into someone else's ecosystem that might go out of business and then they hold. What is most precious to you, right?

Ben: So just make sure, again, as a small business owner, you're kind of doing the research you can do, and you're being smart with the implementations, but I, you still have to, to stay ahead, you're still going to have to find the implementations that you can securely use.

Mehmet: Yeah. This is something we repeat even when it comes for, from startup perspective, like, don't tie yourself to a, to someone that might close the shop tomorrow.

Mehmet: Yeah. And, and figure out [00:19:00] yourself. You are, you are out of it. Now. You mentioned something, you know, and I kept the question till later. I wanted to follow a sequence. Sure. You mentioned that people seize ai. As either a terminator or a chatbot. I like, I like this. Now let's talk reality a little bit, Ben, and try to see, you know, from job perspective and from transformation of You know, looking at the bright side, of course, here, like working in in a company, you know, uh, and you know, the way I do the things, maybe I keep doing the same tasks for the last 10 years and never changes.

Mehmet: Um, so, so do you think like there are some people who might be also like very much. Pushing back just because they are afraid they're going to lose their jobs. Or, you know, do you think, no, like, you [00:20:00] know, they, they just use the. You know, some of the arguments about, yeah, the security that you just mentioned and the privacy.

Mehmet: No, no, no, I don't want to use the AI because, you know, I don't want to do that. You know, we know, and I think you would agree with me, Ben, like, sooner or later, right? So, so what will gonna happen? So the AI will be adopted and, you know, people who are, you know, pushing back today, they need to, to, to, to change the way they, they do their job.

Mehmet: So what do you think, you know, AI will give us as new opportunities for creating maybe new jobs, maybe doing things differently. So what is like your, I would say vision when it comes to that topic?

Ben: Yeah, that, and that's another conversation. We could go so many different ways with, but because I think there is a lot of fear around artificial intelligence and there's a lot of fear with employees thinking that, Hey, this could take my job.

Ben: Uh, but what I have seen [00:21:00] I think what we're gonna continue to see is, uh, and you could call it AI and humanity, better together , that AI is better with the human touch, and AI also makes human humans better. And I, I think what we need to do right now, and especially every employee across, across a businesses ecosystem, is they need to start looking at how AI can be adopted and how, how it can be used.

Ben: But look at how they can use it to enhance their job, because what I'm seeing is AI is removing all the tedious tasks that I don't like to do in a day and freeing up time to do something more complex and something more useful with my time. And I think if employees look at it that way, instead of, Hey, I'm not going to get to know AI, I'm not going to touch it, I'm not going to use it, but start understanding again, how, how can I use it and how can I enhance my job?

Ben: And if you look at this idea of the. AI better [00:22:00] with humanity, it's definitely true if you look at AI writing, which is a perfect example. If you just have AI write something, it can write something pretty good and maybe better than a lot of people. But if you really look at it from a language standpoint, it's really not that great.

Ben: But if someone understands language and you have a linguist or someone with an English degree who can go in and knows how to manipulate and maybe prompt it better or to talk to it better about writing and give it a better voice and then go through and edit it, well now you can use AI to write faster and get very good output from it.

Ben: And so my point of that is, is that there's still going to have to be specialties within what you do and your humanity makes you good at what you do. Just learn how to leverage. AI to be better. I guess that's the, I guess that's the point.

Mehmet: Yeah. So do you think we're going to see more, what is known as the co pilot, uh, mode, you know, like Microsoft came up with this naming, you know, so [00:23:00] everything is called co pilot now.

Mehmet: So, and co pilot in a sense that, you know, me as the human, I'm still the pilot, but I have an AI who's co piloting with me, whether it's like, as you mentioned, like maybe text, uh, email, uh, you know, a lot of other stuff. So do you think this is, is, is the norm to have this co pilot approach or because some of my guests previously on the show, they said what our role would become is kind of a more supervisory role.

Mehmet: So it become like kind of managing maybe a, an army of, You know, AI bots that each bot you give, you give it a task or set of tasks. And then us as the humans will take the results of all what these bots have done and then maybe sharpen it, make sure that the quality is,

Ben: you

Mehmet: know, like kind of a little bit, maybe, uh, science fiction, but actually it's happening.

Mehmet: So, [00:24:00] so what do you think about that?

Ben: Yeah, I like this thought because this is really, I mean, myself is what I want, want from AI and you mentioned co pilot and there's other systems out there. Uh, and the big thing was co pilot is it's securely, you're able to securely use it without it leaking information.

Ben: And, but I, I think there's something missing right now. And the next step in evolution, and I talked about AI readiness and getting your data ready. Is I've worked with a couple of companies that we can actually. Talk to AI right now through a chat interface or a typing interface. And we can pull any type of information that you have access down to the, the row and column layer, uh, with that kind of security and ask for reports, ask for different information and tie into, again, all the data within a company.

Ben: Now that to me is where AI is going to get powerful is when we can actually again, have a more, uh, maybe a little bit more of a co pilot, I think a Jarvis from [00:25:00] Ironman. Where I'm having this, like this interaction during the day telling my AI that, Hey, I need you to send these emails and have it be able to use my voice and have it to train it in my voice, have it reply to emails.

Ben: And I know there's other stuff out there about booking online and or booking flights, booking hotels and running your, your day to day stuff again, that tedious stuff, but the power of what you're talking about is being able to tie in the complete business. Into your day to day and meaning from where you have access to.

Ben: So there is a security element to it. But that is that is where I think we should go. And it might be managing a lot of bots, but it's not. And in essence, it's really just enhancing and managing your day and your capabilities. I think pretty soon we're going to be able to have an AI Voice system where you're going to be able to have people call you and he's going, your AI voice is going to be able to pre screen and have logical [00:26:00] conversations as you, even though they'll know it's your AI, you to pre screen a call, and that might be to pre screen a sales call coming in, or it might pre, Be to prescreen a meeting call and take notes, but give you more, more time back to yourself.

Ben: And I know, like you said, a lot of this is sci fi, but this is the direction we're going. And yeah, pretty soon I do. And I do see that we're going to have a, if you want to call it a co pilot or something better that can respond better, but on our cell phone and every single device and our cars and everything where AI is attached at our hip.

Ben: There's just a lot of security concerns around that. Right.

Mehmet: Yeah, absolutely. And we started to see signs that this is going, you know, to become, I mean, from the voice perspective, um, you know, like this has been now for, for more than one month, I think two months is now since by the time this episode is out, maybe it's three months.

Mehmet: Um, So when, when open AI released their, you know, multimodal, uh, you know, version of, of a chat GPT, where even you can have the [00:27:00] conversation and they make it very close. And I think from business perspective, you know, that, that's something that might happen. Of course, we will see how, after how long we don't know, keep mentioning something, which is in my opinion, Ben is very important security.

Mehmet: Because, you know, like, and you know, there is this famous thing. We it's known people familiar with cybersecurity, they know this concept. So if you want something extremely easy, extremely, you know, that people can, can access it, uh, fast and easy. So sometime you might be breaking the, the cybersecurity measures.

Mehmet: So. Now, I know maybe you have mentioned a couple of times about the data and the security of the data, but let's, you know, I want to highlight it again, if you don't mind, what is the biggest risk when it comes to You know the data that a business owns being sent to the ai and of course overall like the cyber security measures for [00:28:00] for for all these Ai deployments.

Ben: Yeah, I think whenever you're talking about What is a company's most valuable and prized possession, which is the data nowadays? You have to take that into mind as far as what is the what is the risk of? People or leaking data, and especially from a lawsuit standpoint, right? If you look in highly regulated fields like health care and finance, leaking customer information or patient information can be be horrible, horrible for a company and detrimental for a company financially, just from a lawsuit standpoint.

Ben: So, yeah, I think that as we continue to look at how do we secure the data, it's important, but also realize I mean, if you put something in GPT that's a super personal, it's there and it's in a database. It's being held, which means it can be hacked into. It means it can be accessed that it could accidentally leak out.

Ben: Are the chances really high that that could happen? [00:29:00] No, but we don't work in cyber security. We don't work in a realm of like we only take care. We only be. Protect from the high risk problems. We have to protect again that defense in depth strategy that they always talk about, and we always talk about in cybersecurity.

Ben: So there is a concern that if you're not securing your data, if you're not securing your AI and especially generative AI within your business, then yeah, it can be a big problem. Big issue, but there are, there's constraints and there's ways to protect. I work with companies that offer generative AI monitoring and even redaction within the business.

Ben: So if generative AI and they're calling it, uh, not ghost AI, but shadow AI, like shadow it, which was a cybersecurity problem, but shadow AI, but they'll monitor shadow AI in the business and make sure what employees are using or using what you're supposed to. And then also provide security parameters around the generative AI that is being used.

Ben: That is allowed to make sure that employees aren't putting in the wrong stuff or, or misusing it. So, yeah, I know [00:30:00] that's a, it's a loaded question and absolutely, but yes, I mean, I, we could go back to the data and I think the data and the security to me, those are the two, that's the foundation. of AI right now is making sure your data is clean and your information is secure.

Mehmet: Absolutely. And a hundred percent. One thing you mentioned, Ben, is like in cybersecurity, we don't like protect against the thing that might happen. We protect against the thing that, you know, it has even a 0. 001 percentage of happening. And, you know, you never know, like, yeah, of course, open AI, I'm sure that they have, Plenty of measures.

Mehmet: I mean, Microsoft, uh, you just name it. Any, uh, Google, all these guys who have their language models and, you know, I'm sure they have the best. Protection in the world, but I always say this to to anyone who's interested in cyber security The bad actors really needs, you know milliseconds To to act and you know, like and they need just one flow in the system They just need [00:31:00] one line of code that you know can cause that whole damage And, you know, we're, we're not perfect, you know, still do mistakes, which is normal, by the way.

Mehmet: So to your point, now this brings me, you know, we talk about in AI. Yes. So securing the data privacy, we should not like put, you know, uh, other people's data, especially like you just mentioned. So maybe I'm an accountant in a company and honestly, like it's hard to control because if I have, you know, a laptop.

Mehmet: With the access to my company's, let's say, finance systems, and I have my personal phone, even my iPhone or whatever, or even maybe a tablet. I can just take a picture now and I can upload it to chat GPT or whatever, and then, you know, the data is there. Now, this is where, and I know, you know, the ethics is much larger than this, but if you want to talk ethics in AI, Ben, [00:32:00] Um, what are really the things that we, as individuals, as well as businesses, we need to make sure we are following, you know, an ethical way of utilizing AI, uh, in our business.

Ben: Yeah. And I mean, you, you talk about something interesting, I think, in, in, uh, technology or cybersecurity, we call that layer eight of the OSI model, which is the human layer, right? And that's where the, like you said, where an ethics from an employee standpoint, that's going to be something we're going to battle, whether it's AI or not.

Ben: That's something we battle with right now. Like you said, we can get a cell phone and uploaded it in GPT, or we can also take pictures with the cell phone and download it. So there, there are a, A bunch of risks, right? That right, right along with that. But I think what we're going to look at as far as unethical uses, when you talk about bad actors and, and cyber cyber criminals is going to be again, with social engineering and utilizing AI for deep fakes, it's, [00:33:00] it's something we're starting to hear in the news already is deep fakes, and it's not what this person said, and maybe in some cases it is, and maybe in some cases it isn't, but as that technology starts to advance and you're able to do more advanced.

Ben: Uh, replication of you or me and then voice replication and instant video replication and make these again these fake videos. I think that's something that's going to be very hard to control and it's going to be something that could cause some big issues. I like to use this example in Las Vegas and so I'm actually from like live in Las Vegas and Las Vegas had a someone call into the casino.

Ben: Call into the cage and convince one of the managers in the cage to take 200, 000 out and drive it to a gas station in Las Vegas. And I use that as a great example of social engineering and well, it's not technology. Okay, well guess what? They still convince someone to take 200, 000 out of a cage, put it in a box and drive it to a [00:34:00] gas station.

Ben: So if you think your employees aren't going to be able to be social engineer to click on an email link, Or to click on a link they shouldn't have, you're, you're out of your mind. So yes, this idea of, I know ethics is even a bigger conversation, but this idea of ethics and really, and again, securing your environment is an important conversation, but again, this is why I'm telling and encouraging businesses to implement a secure generative AI in your business.

Ben: Because if you don't, your employees want to make their job easier. They want to be more efficient. They want to do things that are again, are going to make their job faster to do. And they're just going to go out and use these tools. But if you can provide a secure system for them to use, it has again, restrictions and like anything should in your business.

Ben: It's going to protect against a lot of that

Mehmet: hundred percent. And you reminded me of this story that was also in the in the news couple of months back where a bank in Asia, I remember, I can't remember exactly which country, I think it was [00:35:00] Singapore, you know, and they come and actually it was a deep fake where they convinced the manager again, similar story to what you mentioned about, but they use video at that time, you know, and, uh, it was a kind of a video call.

Mehmet: And they were convinced, yeah, he's, he's the manager, he's the director of the board, giving the instructions to, to take an amount or to do a transfer, I believe. It's, it's a scary, but to your point, yes, like, like, uh, awareness. And this is why I asked you before about the awareness band, because I believe with, with awareness, You know, we can, uh, implement the AI in a proper way, in a secure way, and in an ethical way also as well.

Mehmet: Yeah. Like from the ethics perspective. So a hundred percent on that. Now I want to ask a question, which is, you know, I know it's not relevant much anymore, but really, you know, I think both of us, we, we, we've been similar time in, in, in, in the industry and you know, like one of the famous thing that we always been asked, okay, what is the latest trend?

Mehmet: Or what is your. Or what [00:36:00] could we expect from this technology in the coming five, 10 years? I got to ask you this question about AI, but I will not make it that long because I think 10 years now, it's something really, we need really a crystal ball, but at least like, let's say in the coming two, three years down the road, you know, what are you expecting to see from the AI in terms of disrupting the business for the good, or maybe Adopting it for, for like maybe useful use cases.

Mehmet: What are your like, uh, you know, predictions I would say on, on this.

Ben: Yeah, I love this conversation. And it's one of the things I love about artificial intelligence is right now we get to have a lot of what if conversations about it and I'll start with it. This kind of reminds me of the BlackBerry. And if we were to have a conversation about BlackBerry and what cell phones would be back when BlackBerry was CrackBerry and everyone had to have their BlackBerry in business and it was the, it was the biggest thing.

Ben: And if we were to write what a cell phone would be used and used for at that time. Would [00:37:00] be just so off. I remember sitting with the COO of our printing company and of the printing company I worked for. And we were talking about, well, we're not going to use iPhones. He wouldn't want to use iPhones cause he didn't want to push the button or the screen.

Ben: He's like, I'll never push the screen. I want a button that I can push. Right. But it's funny to see that now. Cell phones have advanced so much. And then we're going to see that same. I want to say the same advancement. We're going to see even a bigger advancement in technology, uh, around artificial intelligence in the next 3 to 5 to 10 years.

Ben: And I I'm interested to see how businesses. Adopt AI practices while keeping the humanity and again, keeping that human touch. And what I hope, what I, what I hope to see is that businesses are able to implement again, secure ethical and safe AI practices while giving time back to their employees. I don't want to see another technology out where it's just more direct, like driving [00:38:00] more just.

Ben: Emphasis on getting, squeezing every drop out of an employee. We now know that there's a huge benefit to providing psychological psychology benefits and, and psych psychological help for your employees and providing them with a good, strong work environment and a good, positive work environment. And I hope that's what we use AI for is to give time back to the employees.

Ben: That's from the top. Down and to not have to squeeze so much out of everyone that they feel stressed out, that they feel stressed with their jobs. And that's what I would, I mean, honestly, that's what I'd love to see.

Mehmet: Absolutely. I share with you the same thing, Ben. And I remember when the voices were out.

Mehmet: It was close to, you know, I think it was Feb or March, 2023. So there were voices, okay, let's ban this. Let's close that. Let's not do this. And I said, okay, why, why you want to bring someone, you know, a human being he or she, they have, I'm sure [00:39:00] a lot of hidden talent skills and you want to give them repetitive tasks that AI can do.

Mehmet: Utilize this as business owner, utilize the technology. So Your people actually will become more creative. They will come to you with more, you know, Good ideas that you can implement. So so to your point. Yeah, this is what my also expectation from business owners Honestly, I mean and anyone who's a decision maker, you know, like of course and I like the way you started So ai for an roi, right?

Mehmet: So a you implement the technology for a clear roi and maybe this is one of the roi we can think about Because We free the people's time. It's not like, just as a cliche, because I know a lot of other technologies, they say, yeah, you can free your, your, your stuff for doing something. No. But really with AI you can do this because they will be utilizing AI to become maybe more creative.

Mehmet: So thank you for sharing this, Ben. Yeah. Now can I, can I do one

Ben: more? I want to add one more thought to this. 'cause this [00:40:00] is interesting and where it really, this idea really plays into, into effect is call center environments. So if you think about a call center environment and people are scared, well, I don't know if I want AI to take the call.

Ben: Well, why aren't we positioning? And I work with a lot of companies that are putting AI reps into their call center. Why aren't we using AI to answer all those mundane calls? And letting our reps answer the difficult calls that AI can't answer and letting them do things that are more profitable And and use that experience from a human aspect to do it And I think I just want to throw out there that I think call centers are the perfect use case for what we're talking about Between an AI agent and a human agent and then that human and AI better together idea,

Mehmet: right?

Mehmet: Absolutely. Absolutely man now Final thing where people can get in touch and find more about you and about your company

Ben: Sure. So you, the best way I think to get in touch, and I love this platform right now is LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn is a good [00:41:00] platform to get in touch. It's Benjamin dot Bohman. Uh, you can, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Ben: Uh, you can find me, uh, uh, information, more information on the website, which is going through a remodel. So in July, I'll kind of have a rebranding, a better flow to it, but that's www. stratashield. ai and Stratashield is S T R A T I. S H I E L D dot a I. And and then also I do a another and it's not a podcast or anything, especially as high tech is what you're doing.

Ben: But I have a what I call a video series on YouTube, which is a I insights the executive brief where I talked to different executives. I'm only 12 episodes in, but it is some interesting conversation. Uh, very similar to you. without the experience that you have. Obviously you've been doing this for a while.

Ben: It's very impressive.

Mehmet: Thank you very much, Ben. And thank you. By the way, the links you mentioned, they will be in the show notes for, so the audience, they can find them easily. So again, thank you very much [00:42:00] Ben on, on, you know, sharing all this information and, you know, also your journey and what you are seeing, I really appreciate it.

Mehmet: And this is for the audience. This is how usually I end my episodes. If you just discovered this podcast by luck, thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed if you did So please subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues And if you are one of the people who keep coming listening or watching us on youtube Thank you for doing so and I really appreciate all your feedbacks comments and suggestions.

Mehmet: I read them all so keep them coming Thank you very much for tuning in today, and we will be again in a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye. Bye. Thank you