Hey everyone, welcome to Collaboration Simplified.
I'm Shervin Shafi and this is actually the first
episode where it's a legit podcast that I have
a guest on because the other episodes were recordings
of my videos from my YouTube channel. So consider
this the official first episode and who better
to have on the show than my son. Ryan. Hey, Ryan.
Welcome, man. Hi, it's great to be here in your
office. I love it here. Yeah, exactly. The same
office I record all my videos. So today I wanted
to talk to Ryan about AI because this whole podcast
series is all about AI. And I wanted to, Ryan,
get your perspective on AI from the lens of a
16, 17 year old. and being in high school, how
you end up using it and what you use from an
AI perspective? Well, compared to most students
or kids that I know around me that are my age,
I don't use it as much as they do. And I use
it in kind of a very kind of abnormal way compared
to them. Like everyone uses it for homework.
They always use it to say like, Some kids, if
they just want to abuse AI's power, they're like,
okay, tell me what the answer for this equation
is. They just do it to do all of its homework.
And they don't really care about any explanation.
But someone like me, I use it to get explanations
about problems that I have really no idea how
to solve them. And it does a pretty good job
of it if you give it the right prompt. So that's
basically what I use it for. 90, 95 % of the
time. Yeah, because up until a certain grade,
I was your tutor basically helping you. And now
that your courses are more advanced, it's been
a long time for me being in high school. And
so it's almost like AI has become your tutor,
which is an awesome use case, right? Because
when I was growing up, there was no ability other
than an actual person tutor. Now you can just
type your questions in. And this goes well beyond
just search like Google because it's understanding.
And I think maybe you even upload pictures of
your problems, right? Yeah, you can. You can
do like three of them and you're good. And so
is it ChatGPT or what do you use? Yeah, I mean,
honestly, like it depends. Like a software that
I open up, yeah, I use ChatGPT. because you know
ease of access and how popular it is everyone
uses it but google's ai overview is like that
thing is so seamless like it's so seamlessly
fit into google that you don't even like think
it's any different than a google search like
it's just right there so i use that maybe like
sometimes if i want a different perspective even
though it's still ai i use Google's just search
overview, too, a lot, and it helps. So you just
go to, what, google .com, you type in your question,
and then it goes to this AI mode, essentially,
right? Yeah, it's, like, you know, at the top
of the search bar, it'll say, so, like, if I
say, like, what is a mole, for example, and it
would say AI overview, and then it would say
a mole is whatever, and then it would have in
the top, like, the sources that it pulls information
from. And I mean, that's why it's not so accurate
because it can pull sources from anywhere. So
like sometimes it pulls sources from Reddit,
which isn't very like reliable because it's feedback
from people. Like for some instances, it's not
always the most accurate thing that you could
use. Yeah. And on that, the accuracy of it, how
would you know if it's telling you the accurate
solution to a problem or because, you know. From
the beginning, the inception of AI, everyone
talked about hallucinations and accuracy and
you mentioned references. So how do you get yourself
comfortable that this is actually it? So that
if you're going to study and you have a test
the next day, you didn't learn something incorrectly.
Well, the thing is that I don't really rely on
it from that. I don't treat it with the accuracy
of like a professor or a doctor. my teacher who's
my my teacher for chemistry she's a pretty well
like decorated teacher so if i have a question
over the weekend for homework she signs on friday
i ask if it's something i'm clueless about i
ask ai and i kind of because the reasoning a
teacher gives and the reasoning ai gives are
kind of different but they get the same answer
so even though the ai's reasoning is different
i try to find commonalities between it and the
technique that my teacher uses and I try to come
up with my own understanding of what it's giving
me not just giving me exactly what it says I'm
not just gonna copy and paste it I'm gonna try
to figure it out how it's related to exactly
to what my teacher wants me to think and then
I ask her when I get back to school I ask her
that same question to see if the logic kind of
lines up okay that's good that's good you also
ask your teacher double check Now, other than
asking your questions about problems to help
your understanding of courses, do you use AI
in any other ways? It could be school or not
school. The only thing that I kind of sometimes
I use it for is if I'm kind of new to a certain
topic, like if I have to research something for
like. the other day like i was telling you about
like there's like arcade machines like i was
looking up something for that for school like
i've never seen an like an arcade machine machine
outside of dave and busters you know like who
uses them so then i like i asked chp t like if
i was to rent an arcade machine like where would
i go what's what's a trustworthy place to buy
one. So I use it for topics to kind of gain some
background knowledge on things that I don't really
understand. Okay, so researching basically. Yeah,
I use it for the same as well. Okay, now this
is you, but if you think about other students
that are also in high school, give me kind of
like the spectrum of what you have seen, the
way people use AI from... like the ones that
use it a lot and maybe the other end that like
don't use it at all like what have you seen well
the most um teenager way that people use it and
the first thing that popped in my head was like
i know this is not really relevant but like kids
sometimes like if they don't know how to text
a girl some kids do this and it's it's not common
but i've heard of people do before it's like
uh like this girl i like this girl chat gpt what
do i say to her for her to like me back or something
like that and then they would use it and then
it would give them a response so i've seen people
use it for that um what else i wonder what their
success rate is you know like if it does give
good feedback hey i'm what do i say to her i
mean like i just don't understand like if you're
the girl and you're literally like responding
to an ai like if you think about it from that
way like that's crazy like You're not even talking
to the kid. You're talking to a robot. That whole
thing of be yourself goes out the window now.
It's BAI. Exactly. So that's what kids use it
for. What about in a school setting? What have
you seen or heard? Well, the main one is for
homework. That's the biggest one. Other than
homework. One of the concerns that people have
in general, and this has been around a long time,
even like calculators, you know, and the idea
was with the introduction of tools, are people
not going to learn their multiplication table
and the basic math? If they keep relying on the
calculator, if you keep relying on a computer,
how much? Is it okay to kind of hand off? And
how much of it you should learn so you understand
the principles yourself, right? So the kind of
concern a lot of people have with AI is, in a
way, it's kind of like dumbing down. It could
dumb down society as a whole, right? Like people
just use it as a crutch. And if you take that
away, how smart are people going to be in the
future? Yeah. I mean, when you see the calculator
example, that kind of, I remembered when I was
in elementary school, middle school, they start
you off with things like multiplication table.
Like at our age, you can use a calculator and
multiply nine times six and you wouldn't need
to think about it. But what they would do when
you're younger is they wouldn't let you use a
calculator. So they'd not force you, but they
teach you to. to learn your times tables so that
you'd remember them and then as time goes on
when that doesn't become the focal point of school
they would allow you to use a calculator because
they know that you've mastered that skill so
it's kind of like with ai like there i don't
know how but like maybe there needs to be a way
that we like gradually start using it like in
for the example of me like asking you questions
about how to solve for the steps to solve an
equation instead of just asking it to solve the
equation with no reasoning you know like kind
of using it piece by piece to kind of i don't
know not over exploit it you know what you're
saying exactly no this is good thanks man it
was uh it's good getting your perspective and
we'll talk more in the future as well so This
is the first episode. Thanks again for tuning
in. And if you have any comments, maybe you can
email me at info at cozy, C -O -S -I dot pro,
info at cozy dot pro. And let me know what topics
you'd like to discover more. Typically on the
Collaboration Simplified channel, you've seen
my videos on AI agents, a lot of Microsoft stuff,
but here we can open it up to. anything related
to AI. So Ryan, thanks again, man. I really appreciate
it. Thank you for having me in this beautiful
office again. I really do appreciate it. All
right. Catch you later. All right. Bye -bye.
Bye.