Nerds On Tap

AI Is Not Your New Employee It Is Your Intern

• Nerds On Tap

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 46:05

AI is everywhere right now, but most small business owners are stuck between two extremes: fear that AI will replace their team or ignoring it completely as overhyped tech. In this episode, we take a smarter, practical approach and treat AI as a fast intern that can accelerate your work while you stay in control of the final decisions.

Joined by Brian Wilkey, VP and COO of Digital Boardwalk, we break down what business owners are getting wrong about AI and how to start using it today without a massive “AI transformation” plan.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode
Real-world AI use cases for small businesses
 How to use AI for research, planning, and first drafts
 Turning AI output into polished, human-ready content
 When AI actually saves time and when it does not
 How AI can help review documents before legal costs add up

Where AI Can Go Wrong
Not all AI use is smart use. We cover the risks most businesses overlook, including using AI for HR or sensitive decision-making, trusting AI output without verification, automating actions that can corrupt or delete data, and over-relying on AI without human accountability.

AI and Cybersecurity: The Non-Negotiables
AI without guardrails is a security risk. We cover the importance of strong data governance and access controls, multi-factor authentication, a zero trust security mindset, clear policies for AI tool usage, and training employees to avoid shadow AI risks.

Your team is already using AI tools whether you know it or not. The goal is not to ban it, but to control it safely.

Who This Episode Is For?
Small business owners exploring AI
 Entrepreneurs looking to save time with automation
 IT leaders and MSP clients thinking about AI adoption
 Anyone curious about AI in business without the hype

Listen If You Want To:
Use AI without putting your business at risk
 Improve productivity without replacing your team
 Understand AI in plain English without buzzwords
 Build smarter workflows using tools you already have

If you found this helpful, subscribe for more real-world tech insights, share this with a business owner who is unsure about AI, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Https://digitalboardwalk.com
Https://thenerdsontap.com

Sponsor of this episode:  Digital Boardwalk
Digital Boardwalk is one of the top 10 Managed IT Service Providers in the United States.  If you are seeking to outsource your IT Management, or if your IT Team could use some help with projects or asset management, give Digital Boardwalk a call today!  They offer a FREE IT Maturity Assessment on their website.  If you want to see how your business's IT scores against industry standards, go to GoModernOffice.com now.

Thanks for listening!
Visit us online at www.thenerdsontap.com
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel
Follow us on Instagram
Like us on Facebook

Welcome And Sponsor Spotlight

SPEAKER_00

Hey, welcome back to another episode of Nerds on Tap, the podcast where we talk tech, business, and all the nerdy stuff in between. This is episode number 27. Today's episode is sponsored by TKS Luxury Vacation Rentals, located in Blue Ridge, Georgia, and Pensacola Beach, Florida. You can find them at bestblueridge cabin rental.com and coming soon in a couple weeks, not live yet, bestpensacola beachrental.com. Today's episode is all about AI and not the sci-fi version. Come on, folks. We're talking real-world boots on the ground AI for small businesses. So today's episode will be titled AI for Small Business, What's Real, What's Risky, and What's Straight Up Hype. And joining me in person today, a very rare find in Pensacola, all the way up from beautiful Lakeland, Florida, known for its roaming swans. We have Brian Wilkie, the VP and Chief Operating Officer of Digital Boardwalk. Welcome to the show, Brian. Thank you. Thanks for having me. So, Brian, are you prepared to talk about AI? We will see. So we're going to start off with AI for small business, helpful versus hype versus hard no. Okay. So my question to you, let's start broad. We'll make it easy. I'm going to take it. We don't share the show notes, folks. So, you know, don't be nervous. Sure. Uh AI is everywhere right now. Right. So, what are business owners getting completely wrong?

SPEAKER_01

Um not taking action. I think uh there's a lot of businesses who are seeing this as hype or a bubble and they're choosing to stay on the sidelines and see where it lands. Um I don't think there's a question at this point that AI is going to play an important role in business moving forward. And we don't know what that's going to look like yet. It's still evolving, but the businesses who are sitting on the sidelines and aren't at least playing around with it to learn what's happening in the world.

SPEAKER_00

Kind of the fundamentals, right? Right. How to use it, what kind of answers you're going to get out of it, what what it can do, what it can't do.

SPEAKER_01

Right. Yeah, because their competition is. And when this technology begins to mature, the ones who are playing around with it and had that head start are going to be able to implement it quickly. Whereas everyone else is going to be playing catch up. And as everyone sees the pace of AI move so quickly that if you're playing catch up, you're going to lose.

SPEAKER_00

So what's the biggest misconception do you think small businesses have about AI, you know, right now, this very moment? What as a small business owner, um, you know, when you think about AI, when someone's actually fooling around with it, fiddling around with it, like you say, learning about it. Yeah. What is their misconception? Is it is it going to completely replace all their staff? Highly doubtful for small businesses.

SPEAKER_01

Um it's not a magic employee. No, it's um as far as job replacement goes, I see that happening in the enterprise space because historically, if uh an enterprise had a problem to solve, they would throw people at the problem. And they're not gonna have to do that anymore. So I think we're gonna continue to see mass layoffs in the enterprise space. Small businesses are gonna use it as a an optim optimization and and scalability.

SPEAKER_00

So it's not a magic employee, it's more like a a fast intern.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, yeah, and that might be the other, you know, misconception for businesses that discourages them from AI is they see the news promoting that AI can do all of the work, it can do 100% of the coding or what whatever they advertise, and then they get into it and they see it doesn't do that, and their gut reaction is okay, it's just hype, they're trying to sell me products.

AI As A Fast Intern

SPEAKER_00

Right. And we're at the beginning, you know, this is just a start. Yeah. It it's it's going to rapidly, rapidly evolve. Yeah, and we're gonna see that over the next two or three years, probably sooner than later. Um, so where are you actually seeing AI save real time for the small business owner today, not just in theory, but real implemented practices built around AI. What is it? How is it helping the the typical small business owner? How can they utilize it outside of reaching out to Digital Boardwalk and having Boardwalk help them? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um this is the one thing that's changing and has changed within the last few weeks. So my answer is not going to age very well. But right now, as far as what small businesses are using, um, I'm seeing it really help them in the research and planning space. Right. Yeah. So as they're making business decisions, if they're trying to understand their market, um, trying to make some high-level business decisions, you could have previously gone to search engines to get some of that data. It would just take you forever to do it. But it's fragmented.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. When you go out on Google, right? Right. But AI is searching so much more and it's bringing all that data in, and then it's learning from it if you m stay in the same chat, right? Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, or or the same platform, right? So whatever you use, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, yeah, Claude.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. So that's interesting. I mean, I've seen it help me with high-level uh concepts around business that I research and development. Yeah. I mean, if if somebody sends me an NDA prior to punting it off to my attorney, I might do a preliminary on it using AI, and it'll give me some suggestions. And then, you know, if if everything looks good to go, I don't have to involve my you know,$400 an hour,$500 an hour attorney. So that leads me to the next thing, and that's just one thing. I mean, calendaring and and being able to collaborate between emails and and and the whole Microsoft ecosystem, which I've seen, it's been a game changer for me. But, and this isn't one of my questions, but talking about NDAs, I mean, law firms, you know, are they worried? Should they be worried? I mean, you're you're seeing, I mean, not just law firms, but any any sort of outside. So, how is that gonna impact it, you think?

Real Time Savings In Research

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so uh you you'll see this across other conversations with experts in the space, but AI is really gonna hurt uh cognitive repetitive work. Um, eventually it's also gonna impact manual repetitive um with robotics. But yeah, uh contract review analysis, a lot of the junior level legal work. So if we're talking law firms, junior level legal work um is going to be displaced with AI. So the concern there is all the kids going to school for legal right now, coming out of college, they're not gonna have many job opportunities. Got it.

SPEAKER_00

So we still need our attorneys. We're still gonna need senior levels. I like my attorney. Yeah. So, you know, that leads me into my next question because I mean, let's stay on this topic. Um talking about low-level work, talking about some other things. What's something business owners are trying to use AI for that makes you immediately go, that's a bad idea? Hmm.

SPEAKER_01

Uh well, um, so a great example of this, um, I was actually at a a Microsoft event recently, and there was a question in the audience, and they said, We know Microsoft Copilot runs the GPT models from OpenAI and now the anthropic Claude models. Uh, but when they prompt Chat GPT or Claude outside of the Microsoft platform, they get different responses than Copilot gives. And the reason for that is Microsoft is very focused on the risk side of things. They're very risk averse with how they're putting up their guardrails. And so if you go to ChatGPT and feed it six months worth of performance appraisals for an employee and ask it, should we terminate this employee based on the performance appraisals? ChatGPT is going to be like, yeah, you probably should. Wow. Whereas Copilot is going to say, eh, here's some insights based on these performance appraisals, but I can't make that decision for you. Microsoft has specifically coded the platform to behave that way because of the legal implications of leaning on something like AI to make those types of decisions. Um people doing those types of things, um, or just feeding sensitive data into platforms. You know, we're gonna hear Claud's the greatest thing, and then feeding your whole customer list into it.

SPEAKER_00

You're gonna shorten this episode if you don't let me get to that topic. Security is a big one. Yeah, and we're gonna end, I think we're gonna we're gonna get to that in a little bit because that is a big hot topic. Obviously, we both work at digital boardwalks, so uh we know all about security and and I want to get into that. But you know, so if you had to draw a line, for instance, we're talking about you know, drafting something versus actually using it. So if we're talking about legal, and you're you know, I talked about NDA. If it's just something small and I just need a little touch point, yeah, yeah, I might run with it because I know enough about how that works, and it's an NDA. Yeah. I mean, you want to cover you know confidentiality and and and and various things in there, yeah um, but certain things might not matter depending on who you're engaging with on the NDA. But if it's super deep, you want to punt that. You know, you want to punt that to legal. So, where do you draw the line between drafting help and risky shortcut? I mean, a risky shortcut would be like, eh, I'm just gonna do it myself, punt it over. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um, I I think you kind of set this up perfectly the way you explained it before. Look at it as an assistant. So maybe not a subject matter expert per se, but someone who can help get you started, lay the groundwork, get get it 80% of the way. Yeah. Um, and don't just explicitly trust it.

Risky Shortcuts And Sensitive Data

SPEAKER_00

Um, so so let me end this segment by asking one final question. I mean, we get approached about AI at digital boardwalk all the time, and we're helping uh companies now, and obviously we're still in the early phases of all this, but it it's going to evolve. If a 10-person company asked you, and you already answered alluded to this earlier, but if they asked you, should we be using AI, what's your honest answer and where would you point them to begin?

SPEAKER_01

Yes, definitely start. Um, and start with the whole team. Uh, we we see a lot of companies try to baby step this and say, all right, we're just gonna have our executive team play with the tools. No, let give the tools to the whole team so everyone can start getting that experience. Um, but start simple with chat. That that is the easiest way to get started. You there's very little learning curve to it. Um the way we did it internally, back when this stuff first started launching, we just made the chat everyone's default homepage in the browser. So instead of them going to Google, they would just prompt AI for the the question they had. Um start there when people start to see how that can help save time and gather information quicker. They start to explore naturally and then they ask questions like, okay, what else can this do? And it's that curiosity that's gonna really help businesses as this evolves. Good answer.

Automate The Boring Repetitive Work

SPEAKER_00

All right, let's let's use that as a segue in the segment two. We're gonna talk about AI at work, automating the boring stuff. Yeah. Um, you know, and that's that's part of what you do here at Digital Boardwalks. So this is a good segue. So we'll kick it off with the first question. Where do you look when you look at a typical work day? What are the boring tasks AI is actually really good at taking off someone's plate?

SPEAKER_01

Anything repetitive. If you do something the same way every time with any sort of frequency, and you can clearly communicate that or or write that process, AI is gonna be fantastic for that because you can define very clear actions and boundaries and it can it can run with it.

SPEAKER_00

So a first draft of maybe an email, but not necessarily the final draft. Sure. Yep. Because you gotta put you gotta humanize it.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And and I can always tell when I get an email that's written by AI.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So, and this starts getting into some of the nuance of it that people who aren't into tech really don't uh discover without guidance, but you can steer AI to respond in ways that you want it to. Um, so the telltale sign that something's AI generated or those long dashes, um, that's just the dead giveaway because they all use it. Um, you can customize your settings so it explicitly ignores that behavior or it doesn't output that way. And instead, you can say, hey, give me bullet points or use more complex sentence structure, those types of things. So you can make it feel more natural, but you have to know how to give it that guidance.

SPEAKER_00

So, in the world of cybersecurity, and this isn't about cybersecurity, folks, but since I've got you in here, is that what the bad actors are doing with their their uh their phishing emails? Absolutely. Trying to humanize them by by using those tricks.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. Uh, you know, what 10 years ago, phishing emails, people were always coached, like, look for the spelling errors, look for the weird language and the sentence structure and that kind of stuff. That's gone now. AI can perfectly draft those emails to be very legitimate looking.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and it it does that very well. So, what what's what's a workflow that you can think of that you would never automate end to end? Oh I know, right? I um I threw this one in there last minute because I wanted to see if I could get you.

SPEAKER_01

The most risky one I can think of, and and this is a little ambiguous, but I would say mass actions. Those are dangerous. Okay. Um if you well, I mean, if you don't put enough thought into it, you could destroy a system, you could destroy the data that you've built, you know, spent years building. You know, if you've got a customer database and you can say right it's gonna write over everything. Right, yeah. Or the I forget what organization it was. There was a a fairly large enterprise recently that uh their their coders leaned on AI to make a change in the code base, and it wiped out the entire code base. So it did more harm than good, and then they had to all go back and try to to fix what it had done. Wow. Um, so yeah, that's a that's a buzzkill. Yeah. So yeah, I think the danger is in any sort of mass actions, um, at least without some sort of checks and balances or verification before it performs the actions.

SPEAKER_00

Right. So it's not a hundred percent replacing humans.

SPEAKER_01

This is where I think the language gets misconstrued because you'll see big platforms, anthropic included, saying it's doing 90% of our code or it's doing 100% of our code. That doesn't mean it's uh doing 100% of the work for the employee, it's just doing uh that legwork first. So is the code messy? It can be, it can also be clean. It it depends on your coders. Um, some coders are really messy coders, so it could be better than some of them. But what I think what they mean specifically with code isn't there a movie where they uh uh it's it's uh spaces versus Silicon Valley.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, tabs versus spaces, yeah.

Agentic AI That Does Tasks

SPEAKER_01

I'm a tab guy that's funny, but uh I I mean, even for myself, you know, three, four years ago when I'm coding, I'd be writing it all manually. Yeah. Now it's rare that I write any code directly. I'll use AI to help generate it. I'll go in and modify it, but it's it's rare that I'm just sitting there at the command line.

SPEAKER_00

I've increased my productivity by at least at least 25% by using AI, maybe maybe even more than that. Yeah, because I'm not spending as much time spinning wheels, trying to either find the resources, look for what I need, or make it do what I need it to do. So it's really so that brings me to my next question. What's a real example? Small business owners pay attention to this question. What's a real example you've seen where AI made an employee noticeably, noticeably more productive?

SPEAKER_01

This is I'll speak from first hand experience. Are we going to talk about edge? Did we make it more productive with AI? No, I'll I'll share first hand experience because this was an aha moment for me from an AI perspective. Um up until two or three weeks ago, AI has been really good at giving me answers. It was not very good at doing work. It's the one thing that always disappointed me with it. There was so much hype around AI, and I'd sit in front of something like Excel and say, Hey, do this for me. And it couldn't do it. It could it could help me. It could give me guidance on how to build a formula or how to set up the pivot table, but it it wouldn't do the work. That's changed. Um, AI is is going agenc, as you'll hear, uh agent-based. And all that really means for the layman is it can do the work now, it can do the tasks. And so when Excel became agentic a few weeks ago, let's step back for our audience.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Agent-based. It can do the task, right? What does that mean, agent-based for our audience?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so it is it's a means of connecting apps and services to uh uh permissions that give it the ability to to perform tasks in those apps. Okay. So pre prior to this, it was surface level. It could see information, but it couldn't do anything with it. It could maybe analyze it, it could give you guidance, but it couldn't perform any actions within the app. Um now it can. And so yeah, when when the agent landed in Excel, I was working on uh a financial model, and there was a column in my in my worksheet that was functional, but I could tell based on the results that there was a variable that wasn't taking into account in the formula. I needed it to also include this other condition. And of course, I could have figured that out. I could have looked at the formula and made that modification. But at the same time, as this financial model and this data set was starting to grow, I wanted to move everything from this worksheet to a different worksheet. Um and for any Excel nerds out there, you know you need to like anchor your references with the dollar sign if you want to do moves like that, which I hadn't. I hadn't planned ahead for this one. And then after all of that, I also wanted to format it a certain way just to make the data a little more readable. So I saw agent mode, turned it on, and I was like, let me just give this a shot. So I gave it the prompt. I said, I need this column to also take into account. This data variable. I want you to move it to a different worksheet, name it this, and then I want you to reformat the data and then create a pie chart based on that data. And I hit go and sat back and watched it. And what's really cool, when you when you chat with AI, you you wait for a moment and then it just kind of spits everything out. It does most of the work behind the scenes. In agent mode, you watch it step by step. So I saw it break my formula first, then I saw it add in the new component. It brought in the results. I saw it create the new tab, name it, move my columns over, build out the formatting, add the chart. It even caught itself and said, okay, the chart has some data label issues. So let me fix that. Interesting. And so something that I probably could have knocked out in about an hour, it took maybe like two minutes.

SPEAKER_00

So the first time I used Claude, I had it design a simple website for me. I watched the code. I watched it code right in front of. Yep. Is that what you're referring to?

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And in my experience with Excel and Microsoft Copilot, it's powered by Anthropics Claude.

SPEAKER_00

Anthropics Claude. Yep. Got it. So we're talking about being more productive with AI. Let's flip that upside down. Let's put it, let's put them on its head. What are people trying to automate with AI? That it just completely fumbles.

SPEAKER_01

Okay. So this gets into the world of process automation. And you can't automate a process that you don't have well defined already. You need to understand how that process should work so that when you are automating it, you can make sure that you're getting the output you expect. Um, because otherwise you're just trusting what it's doing, and you have no idea what that output means.

SPEAKER_00

Most of the audience probably isn't going to be automating with it yet. No. They're going to be using things like writing emails and things like that. So context and consequences matter. So let's say, let's use a uh real world scenario where maybe you have a frustrated customer and you're trying to respond to that frustrated customer using AI, uh, you know, requires accountability. Yep. How is AI going to address that frustrated customer? And and can you tell it, hey, be direct? Hey, we had had to do that one day, or be a little bit more uh passionate about their plight, or you know, or whatever they're frustrated about. Can we do that now? Could we do that? Could we do that a year ago? What how has it evolved? And in and you know, let's let's just talk about that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Um, I think the biggest thing that's happened over the last year. So, in short, yes, you can do that. Um, what's happened over the last year is the the information that AI has access to to generate its responses is expanding. We're able to tie more things in together. And so that has always been the crux of it in the early days is it didn't have enough context to give you a valuable response. It it was just a generalist. It would be based on whatever information is out there on the web. Um now that it's able to tie into your emails, the way you treat other customers, the way you talk to people internally, um, it can use that tone and and way that you approach conflict. So if you're mean to customers, AI is gonna address us.

Security Basics And Zero Trust

SPEAKER_00

Are you kidding me? Yeah, it will follow lead. Wow. Yeah. Don't be mean to customers, folks. Be nice. Yeah. Uh so we're not replacing roles, we're helping people be more productive. Uh, if someone on your team uses AI every day, right? Uh, what's the difference between them doing it the right way and the wrong way? Oh, and we'll wrap up this segment with that question.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that that easily just comes down to trusting the output. Right. Like just putting what we just talked about. Right. Putting in a prompt, you take what it gives back and you run with it. That is not a good idea. Um even just having a a couple quick follow-up prompts to tune it, to clarify it, can make a world of difference.

SPEAKER_00

Well, you you alluded to security earlier. I told you to hang on, don't get ahead of us. We're gonna jump into that segment now. So the next segment is the AI security checklist. And I know I have a weird feeling this could take an hour because we are very passionate about security and and understanding the concepts of security and helping our customers address those security concerns. Yeah. So my first question to you is before we even talk about AI, before we even get into that, what are the basic security things every small business needs to still need to have locked in? AI aside, the stuff we already talked to our customers about, what security checklist? What do they need to have locked in? Always.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Before you can even really go down the AI journey, you have got to These are the non-negotiables. Yeah. You you've got to focus on your data governance. You need to have control over who has access to what. Right. Um permissions. Yep.

SPEAKER_00

Permissions. MFA. Is that should we be selective? Non-negotiable. Is digital boardwalk selective on who gets MFA?

SPEAKER_01

No, that is mandatory.

SPEAKER_00

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Um, yeah, and that one, you know, sadly, it's you know, there's ways around that too. Yeah. Um, so for us, um, we're also going full zero trust. Um, I would really consider that a non-negotiable moving forward. What is zero trust, Brian? Um, so try not to go too long-winded to you.

SPEAKER_00

So that's if if if if I don't trust my kids to do anything, I'm not going to allow them to do anything. Is that what that means? Sort of.

SPEAKER_01

So historically in cybersecurity, we would define what bad looks like. Let the systems try to identify when bad happens and then try to stop it. Uh, zero trust is the reverse of that. So we define what good looks like, and then anything else is blocked.

SPEAKER_00

So I plug a flash drive into my laptop right now that is an untrusted device. Yep. My laptop's a trusted device, but the flash drive isn't. Yep. Flash drive's blocked. Is oh wow. Yep. So I can I can't access uh my picture to the beach. Nope. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

And take it a step further. Let's say we did previously trust that device and you go home and unintentionally get a piece of malware on that uh USB device and you plug it back into your work computer and try to open it. We don't trust that piece of malware that's on the drive.

SPEAKER_00

So that gets blocked too. Yeah, that's amazing. Yep. So those are the those are the that's the way you want to take it. What's the biggest security mistake customers are making, or not customers, but our customers don't make them because they hire us. But what's the biggest security mistake companies are making right now when it comes to using AI tools? Uh we talked about this earlier. You talked about not plugging in sensitive information to public chat. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I yeah, I I think it's not having a an AI security conversation in the business. They're just jumping in, letting everyone play with whatever tools they want, and your your non-technical people aren't thinking about what it means for them to put sensitive information.

SPEAKER_00

So I can't take our entire company's payroll, plug it in the chat GPT, and ask it if if if that's you know, if anything should be changed.

SPEAKER_01

No.

SPEAKER_00

Don't what happens to that when it goes out into ChatGPT land?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, that data is used to train the model and can also be used in responses to other companies.

SPEAKER_00

So a competitor could use that data against you. Yep. Okay. Um okay. So wow. So no financials, definitely don't plug passwords in. No. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And be careful of what AI apps you're downloading.

SPEAKER_00

We're seeing this a lot too, where um personal identifiable uh fiable information, none of that, right? PII. Yep. Um go ahead. Sorry.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so bad actors are are riding this wave of AI hype. So they're putting out a bunch of fake AI agents that people are using to feed in sensitive information like that, and they're just using using it to collect it and then sell it on the dark web. Sell it on the dark web.

SPEAKER_00

Oh my gosh. Yep. So let's say let's say a business wants to incorporate AI safely. Okay. What's your simple non-negotiable checklist? If if they want to put it in safely, what what shouldn't they do?

SPEAKER_01

Well, don't let your employees have the freedom to use whatever AI platform they want. Right. You need to clearly define that. Um, and just have an honest conversation with the team about the risks of AI, it being in early development. We need to think about how we're using these these tools and how we're protecting our company information. Got it.

SPEAKER_00

So how how big of a problem, and and you can define this term shadow AI, but how how big of a problem is shadow AI? Uh, employees using tools without approval, and how do you even control that? Like how do you manage it?

SPEAKER_01

Yep. So it's a massive problem right now. Um, and zero trust is the approach for it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

Um, so but that's only on the machines you control, right? Correct. Yeah. So they could still go on a personal machine and yeah. How do you can is there a way to control that yet?

Shadow AI And Simple Policy Rules

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So you you extend zero trust to the point where you you you put up a barrier around the information itself. Okay. So if let's say all of your data lives in Microsoft 365, you prevent an employee from accessing their Microsoft account, their 365 account, from any personal devices that aren't trusted by the organization. So there's no way for them to extract the business data out to put it into whatever random AI chatbot they downloaded.

SPEAKER_00

Incredible. So let's finish on one last question in that segment. We'll jump to the final segment. Um, what's one thing you would absolutely tell a business? Do not put this into AI under any circumstance. I think we already alluded to that. Passwords.

SPEAKER_01

Anything you don't want the rest of the world to see. Yeah. That's the easiest way to think about it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, all right. So we're gonna use that as a segue to segment for. Um, we'll call this your employees are already using AI, right? Um, so I mean, let's be honest, they're using AI whether you like it or not. Yeah. So if you haven't adopted it yet, I guarantee you at least one of your employees has already adopted AI and is using it. So, how many employees are already using AI tools, would you say if you had to put a number on it, um without the company even realizing it? All of them.

SPEAKER_01

Um so some of the larger companies, Google, uh, Microsoft, they like to boast this because they kind of shoehorned in AI into their search engines. So now every time you search something, that top result is AI generated. Yeah. So then they can make the claim that we've got how how many millions of AI users. But the world knows about it at this point. You know, all your employees know about it. And if you ask them, I guarantee most of them have probably downloaded and used Chad GPT. Whenever that you know hit the landscape, everyone was curious about it. So um, they're all using it. Um how they're using it is the concern. Think kids are using it for homework? For sure. Yeah. Would you have? Probably. Okay. Probably. At least uh, you know, help me in the process. There you go.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, all right. So what are the biggest risks? We we just talked about this, but you know, using chat GPT or Copilot on their own, what are the biggest risks when employees start using those tools with m without maybe uh mandated company policies built around that? So what where are the risks? I mean, if if if if if John Doe in in Department A, you know, is using Chat GPT while he's at work, not not managed, and he's plugging stuff in, you know, maybe maybe there's no ill intent, maybe he's doing everything, you know, but but what are the what's the downside to that? I mean, the true downside to him doing that, even though he hasn't done anything wrong, yeah, he hasn't plugged his passwords or financials or payroll in, like we talked about. And and he has no ill intent. He's just trying to do a good job during the day, and but he's using it on the side to assist him. There's no mandated company policies in place for that. Yeah. But how do we how do we get control of that?

SPEAKER_01

Uh it again, it comes back to conversations as a company and then implementing technical controls to to limit it. You know, the the way you frame that, there probably isn't an issue with it in the beginning. Um, but there's nothing stopping them from taking it that one extra step, which crosses the line. Um and so putting controls in place before that line is crossed is really important. What about banning it? Don't want to ban it. Why not? It it just forces people to use it anyway.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. Um, it's just like kind of like telling your kids no.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

It makes them want to do it more, right? Right? Yeah. So uh so it's not realistic to me. No, no, and I would never encourage, I mean, we're we're IT, right? We're going, we're early adopters of it, right? So banning it's just gonna turn into shadow IT or or shadow AI, I'm sorry. Uh safer, safer ways, approved tools, plus simple rules, training, accountability. Um what's the simplest policy language you've seen that actually gets followed? And it doesn't have to be for AI, it can be across anything, but how would you apply that to AI?

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, um operationally for most small businesses, it really just comes down to an approval process. So they'll they'll define a like a chain of command to authorize where they can use something like that, and at least that forces the conversation.

SPEAKER_00

So look into your camera over here and tell that small business owner what he can do right now. If they're not, if he if he, you know, he knows some people might be using AI, but what he could do right now, like in in terms of guidelines, to start to get it moving inside of his organization and have those conversations with his employee. What is he gonna do?

SPEAKER_01

Yep. So meet with your whole team, encourage them to use AI and explore, but before they begin using a new tool that they want to explore, have them approach you first, if assuming you're the decision maker in this, and just have that one extra step, that one conversation about is this secure? How do we protect our information? How could this be exploited? Um, you don't have to necessarily involve IT yet, just having that extra step will prevent people from just running free and using the tools.

Rapid Fire Takes And Quick Wins

SPEAKER_00

So they need an AI policy. Yep. Um, and it's not overkill to have that. No. Okay. Because people are already using it anyway. Yeah. All right. So what's what's the what's the risk of not having that policy in place? Well, then it's it's a free-for-all.

SPEAKER_01

It's free for all. Yeah. And there and you don't have any way of knowing when it's happening either.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, so let's boil that boil down that policy. What's one thing that that policy actually absolutely has to have in it? Probably framework, right? What what during Again?

SPEAKER_01

I would just base it on an approval process. Like if you want to use a new tool that isn't authorized, you need approval to do that first.

SPEAKER_00

But how do you build a policy that they're gonna follow? I mean, it's other than just making a policy and putting it in a folder outside of actual IT controls, it's training. Right. Training, yeah. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Right? And then remind, remind, remind. Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Um has to be in the conversation.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we're gonna go into the rapid fire round with Mr. Brian Wilkie here. Uh Brian, you've listened to the show before, you know how this works. Uh, we're gonna ask you one one, you know, simple questions, a bunch of them. Okay. And you're gonna answer with the first word that comes to your head. Okay. So if I say, who do you dislike? Don't say Tim Shoot. Yeah. Um, so we're gonna go. Ready? Let's do it. All right, here we go. Uh AI you actually use every day. Yes. Most overhyped AI tool right now. Uh open clock. Okay, what's more dangerous? Bad passwords or bad AI usage? Bad AI usage. One task every business should automate today. Scheduling. If a business owner only fixes one cybersecurity thing this year, what should it be?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

There's so many things they need to do. There you go.

SPEAKER_00

Uh maybe awareness training. That's a good one. Yeah. One AI tool you'd ban in a company. Ooh.

SPEAKER_01

Um anything that gives system level access. So, like claude co-work, for example.

SPEAKER_00

Claude co-work. Best advice for someone scared of AI. Just play with it. Um try it in a browser. That's more than one word, Brian. Uh AI assistant or human assistant, which wins today? AI assistant. Wow. Okay. One word to describe AI right now. One word. Oh man. We stumped him, ladies and gentlemen. Evolving. That's a good one. And we'll wrap it up with one last one. If AI were an employee, what would its job title be?

Closing Thanks And Share Request

SPEAKER_01

Um intern.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Do you have any AI jokes? No.

SPEAKER_01

I could ask AI for an AI joke.

SPEAKER_00

All right. Hey, look, man, you flew up here from Lakeland. I appreciate it. We're obviously we've got a lot of meetings this week, so appreciate you coming up. It's been too long. Uh we see each other on Teams all the time, but uh we don't get to hang out much in person. So appreciate you coming up. Thanks for being on Nerds on Tap again. I honestly think this might be the best show we've ever done. So I thank you. Well, and you weren't tell the audience you were not prepped for this show. Not at all. All right. So are you sure? You're not using AI right now to answer all these questions that I just threw at you. Nope. What's that in your ear there? My voice. I'm just kidding. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening or watching another episode of Nerds on Tap, where we like to get nerdy for an hour. Come back again and check out our next episode. Thank you and make it a nerdy day. Cheers, my fellow nerds and beer lovers. Stay tuned for more Nerds on Tap. Oh, and one more thing. Help us spread the nerdy love and the love for grape brews by sharing this podcast with your friends, colleagues, and fellow beer enthusiasts. Let's build a community that embraces curiosity, innovation, and the enjoyment of a cold one.

Head Shot

Tim Shoop

Host
Head Shot

Brian Wilkey

Guest