132: Michael Kollo – New Book, Building an AI Equity Analyst and AI as a Review Agent

In this episode, I speak with Michael Kollo, a return guest to the [i3] Podcast. Michael has recently published a book on artificial intelligence, called: Future-ready with Generative AI Skills, Mindsets, and Stories in the Age of AI We speak with Michael about how he build an equity analyst AI agent in a weekend, how AI helps review your work and how you can get it to find solutions that are tailored to your style of working. We also delve into deeper philosophical questions around the nature of language, how AI changes people's interaction with language and whether AI changes our perception of what is artificial and what is not. Enjoy the show! __________ Follow the Investment Innovation Institute [i3] on Linkedin Subscribe to our Newsletter Explore our library of insights from leading institutional investors at [i3] Insights __________ Overview of Podcast with Michael Kollo 03:00 We, collectively, still struggle to have the right framing for what this kind of AI is 04:00 I wanted to write a book on AI from a white-collar perspective that was neither hype nor alarmist 10:30 You build an equity analyst in a weekend, using AI agents, which produces broker reports? 14:00 What good looks like is still very much an individual judgment 14:30 AI is a mirror to yourself 18:00 Students are very strong users of AI across many different disciplines. And they are symbiotically learning with the AI and are becoming natural users of it 18:30 One of the more powerful usages of AI is not to do a job, but to review a job 21:00 AI helps you to think on a meta level: what is it that you find interesting, useful and powerful? 23:30 Can you get an AI system to explain to you in plain English why a non-linear system works, test it in 10 different ways and write a research report about it? Yes, you can. 31:00 "I'm expressing myself in my adult language (English), but (AI) is taking it and swirling it into patterns of Hungarian (my childhood language) that are hitting me back at a whole different angle that I'm not sure if I could have done myself". 32:30 "Language was supposed to be this thing that was supremely human. It encapsulates all this weirdness and contradictions that is to be a human being. 34:00 An AI system is not an individual or a single entity that has a will or a desire. It is a field that you can land on and move from one place to another, as you will. 37:30 There is a danger that power users of AI might experience burnout, because they are constantly given things to review. 43:00 AI experts should not be asked about workforce impact, because they don't know enough about it Full Podcast Transcript Wouter Klijn 01:17 Welcome to the [i3] Podcast. I'm here today with a return guest, Michael Kollo. Mike, welcome to the show. Michael Kollo Hi. How's it going? Wouter Klijn Pretty good. Pretty good. So we're here to talk about a book that you wrote on generative AI. It's called Future Ready with Generative AI: Skills, Mindsets and Stories in the Age of AI. Michael Kollo 01:39 Well, thanks very much for that. That's a bit of a mouthful. We kind of continue to expand the title. It feels it's coming out in the middle of March, so I think the 14th, 15th. It's being published by a publisher called Rutledge, which is a UK based publisher. So it'll be available here in the US, in the UK, all around the place. Wouter Klijn 01:58 So what prompted you to write this book? Michael Kollo 02:01 So look over the last three years and for years before that, but certainly the last three years, the topic of AI has obviously become very, very popular. Everybody's been thinking about it and talking about it. But one of the things I found through lots of presentations about 40 keynotes per year from all kinds of different audiences, from boards of directors all the way down to, you know, the average person kind of presentations is that we, we collectively, still struggle to have the right framing for what AI, this kind of AI is, and what it might mean for us. I don't think anybody has answers as to where it's all going, what will happen to the workforce or jobs or personal relationships and so on, but I think we have a pretty good inkling as to its capabilities and how fast it's moving. We have a pretty good inkling as to the different areas it might impact, but we don't have the right framing or the right thinking about it. So I was very keen to write a book that I could capture the imagination of a white collar worker in across any industry, just about to help them just understand what this thing could be and what it means, and get them to form their own view, but to form it in the middle ground, not to be hype and not to be alarmist. I wasn't keen on creating a book about how it could all go wrong and how it could be all terrible. And I wasn't also keen to create a book about, you know, the utopia that it could foreshadow in the future, but I was just interested in informing the average person how the middle ground ...