"𝘐𝘧 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘸𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘸𝘦𝘳, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦'𝘥 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘢𝘣𝘴." That's by Derek Sivers. This speaks to where we're at right now and how knowledge and information have zero value. It is all very much how we get creative and what we do with that information. - 𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀

We are currently drowning in AI "news," but starving for AI 𝘦𝘹𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. Most professionals are stuck in a cycle of random experimentation that leads to "shadow AI" and organizational risk. Kate Marshall joins us to explain why the secret to AI readiness isn't more data—it's better systems.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆

Kate Marshall, Founder of 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶 (pronounced "The Gray"), spent 20 years in the high-stakes world of cybersecurity training at the SANS Institute. She’s seen how people react to emerging threats, and she’s applying those lessons to the AI revolution. Whether she’s writing children’s books to simplify complex tech or 3D printing her own household items, Kate is obsessed with the bridge between the machine and the human. Her new book, 𝘈𝘐 𝘢𝘵 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬, is the result of that obsession—a step-by-step guide for the non-technical professional who is ready to move past the hype and start building.

𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝗺𝗮𝗽

• 𝗠𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗕𝗲𝘆𝗼𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗽𝘁: Stop looking for magic words and start building repeatable workflows that actually save time.

• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗭𝗲𝗿𝗼 𝗩𝗮𝗹𝘂𝗲 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗳𝘁: Accept that knowing things is no longer a competitive advantage; doing things with AI is the new gold standard.

• 𝗔𝘂𝗱𝗶𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗦𝗮𝗳𝗲𝘁𝘆: Use Kate’s cybersecurity-first lens to implement AI without exposing your company to unnecessary risk.

• 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗨𝘀𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝘀𝗲𝘀, 𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀: Don't buy the software until you’ve identified the specific low-joy task it’s meant to replace.

• 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗛𝘂𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗼𝗶𝗱 𝗘𝗿𝗮: Why thinking about 3D printed shoes and household robots helps you develop the mental flexibility needed for the next 5 years of work.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗧𝗼𝗼𝗹𝗸𝗶𝘁

• 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗶: https://thegr.ai/

• 𝗔𝗜 𝗮𝘁 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸 (𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗼𝗼𝗸): https://www.amazon.com/Work-Step-Step...

• 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝘀 𝗔𝗜: https://she-leads-ai.mn.co/

• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗦𝗮𝗹𝗼𝗻: https://aisalon.mn.co/

• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗴𝗿𝗮𝗺: https://ruready4ai.com/

Stop Chasing Hacks_ How to Build Repeatable AI Workflows_ with Kate Marshall

Growing smarter and leading with what makes us human.

Kyle Shannon: Oh yeah, the

Anne Murphy: bop is bopping.

Kyle Shannon: The BOP is bopping.

Anne Murphy: Why do we love our intro music so much? We

Kyle Shannon: love it. I don't know, but I gotta tell you, the, the bop in your hair today,

Anne Murphy: the

Kyle Shannon: bop go, they're going together, pops? Yeah, it's pop The bops, the

Anne Murphy: bop.

Kyle Shannon: It's working.

Anne Murphy: The boof is bopping

Kyle Shannon: the, the Bo's bopping. That's awesome.

Kyle Shannon: a, it's a beehive, it's a crown. It's, it's a, it's a

Anne Murphy: crown. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: I feel like you've got multiple decades represented in your due.

Anne Murphy: I think I do.

Well, definitely mul, multiple eras for sure.

Kyle Shannon: Multiple. It could even be eras. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: My shirt is kind of like unnecessarily fluffy and it feels very like.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Bridgeton.

Kyle Shannon: I was gonna say it's very Renaissance. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Very renaissance. Very, oh, I played like Romeo's best friend in, in when I was in like fourth grade.

What's his name? Whatever.

Kyle Shannon: Me. Cio.

Anne Murphy: Yeah, cio. I played him, um, in a, a school play and I pretty much had the same shirt on.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah, there you go. You gotta have the tunic. It's, it's the Shakespeare tunic. You gotta have it.

Anne Murphy: geez,

Kyle Shannon: it's, here's the deal. Here's, here's what I feel like I have the burden right now of knowing that everything's about to change, but the, the excruciating ignorance of not knowing at all what's about to happen. Like I just know something's gonna happen, but I don't know what it is.

And yeah. I feel like I'm kind of a drag lately. 'cause all I'm talking about is stuff's about to happen, but I don't have any specifics and I don't have any real guidance other than Yes. Uh, you might wanna get ready. So, so that's kind of, I I am wanting to feel, uh, more comforting than I am.

Anne Murphy: Yes. This is, this is however the, the yin to the yang.

That it would be like civilly irresponsible to not talk about the, the, the both sides of the coin. That it's, that AI is transcendent and that AI is, uh, catastrophic, you know?

Kyle Shannon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and it's, there's, there's another thing happening. I mean, there's a couple of things happening, so let me, let me unpack two of them.

And he goes, it's been like cool and sci-fi and like superhero powers and it's been great. And he said, the latest drop from Anthropic, the latest version of Claude Opus 4.6. He goes, it felt personal.

Anne Murphy: Hmm.

Kyle Shannon: And you know, what he meant was all the models up to this point were janky enough that it still required him.

Anne Murphy: Oh, yeah.

Kyle Shannon: And, and 4.6 got good enough where he was like, oh. Maybe not. And, and so the, the engineers, because the frontier model companies are focusing on programming first because they want mm-hmm. These models to be good so that their engineering can take advantage of them first. Right. They, they want it to get, it's gonna hit the engineers first, but this is, this is gonna start bleeding out into every other.

Anne Murphy: Personal.

Kyle Shannon: Um. So, so, so that's a thing going on. And then the other thing is, is this the, right now, the, the sort of poster child of, of the, the shift is open claw, this new agentic thing that you can install on the local computer and you can do external calls or you can do local calls and, but you have these agents that you design that work for you, and they work 24 7 and creating them.

I've created one called Adam and Adam. It's, it's, it's like designing. A person you literally design, you write this file called a soul file and it's their soul. And, and then, which

Anne Murphy: mine Perplexity just wrote mine based on everything. Based on

Kyle Shannon: everything it knows about you,

Anne Murphy: everything it knows and everything I've loaded and blah, blah, blah, blah.

Kyle Shannon: trippy, right?

Anne Murphy: Yeah. Here we go.

Kyle Shannon: Here we go.

Anne Murphy: I'm off to the races

Kyle Shannon: and, and what happens is you give it the soul file and it's kind of born and then you set it up. Like in my case I'm talking to it on, on Telegram. But you can do on what?

WhatsApp or message iMessages, whatever. But you're like texting with this thing that's kinda like a person and I named it. Um, and then it's also got memory. So it's got me, it knows who I am because I told it that in the, in the user file, it knows who it is. Mm-hmm. 'cause I told it that in the soul file, and then it's got this memory system where it understands what we've talked about.

And he said, oh, okay, I'll go do, I'll go research all these things. And he found all these companies and he found all this stuff. And he goes, do you want me to write those into, you know, into files? And I said, yeah, turn 'em into Google Docs and put 'em in your sandbox. And like 10 seconds later, there's these docs and Google Docs.

It's insane.

Anne Murphy: It's insane. Yeah, it's insane. It's insane. It's insane. It's insane.

Kyle Shannon: It's insane.

Anne Murphy: It's so good. It's so. Good.

Kyle Shannon: It's so goodness's, so freaky.

Anne Murphy: Why is so good? And it's,

Kyle Shannon: I dunno if it's good. It's so freaky. I don't know if it's good. It it is. Well, okay, so, so, so this is the thing. This is where I was going.

Mm-hmm. Those are gonna get better and better and better. And then the skill starts to be, I think. Understanding who you need, like what, what kind of these entities do you need and what do you want them to do? So everything comes back to the thing we've been talking about with AI readiness and with and with, you know, the stuff you're teaching and she leads is yeah, understand who you are, what your values are, who you care about, what you're trying to accomplish in the world, and then the skill is gonna be knowing how to.

Design and deploy and coordinate or figure out how they get coordinated. These things that go do stuff for you.

Anne Murphy: Yep.

I'm just bouncing between agent responses going, no, yes, no, yes. Like. I don't even think we're gonna have to do that. Like I think we're gonna have

Anne Murphy: No, I hope.

Kyle Shannon: No, no. Like our, our our, our, our mini me is gonna be our orchestrator that's going to manage all these other things and they're just gonna take care of us.

I dunno. I don't know.

Anne Murphy: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: So I. So I am in, I am in a state of nothingness right now.

Anne Murphy: You're in a state of nothingness.

Kyle Shannon: I wish I, I wish I could offer more.

Anne Murphy: Yeah, yeah. I know, I know, I know. It really, you know, we had, we had two examples just in the last like 48 hours where we were right in the process of like, um, onboarding somebody to do a project mm-hmm.

That

Kyle Shannon: a human,

Kyle Shannon: Needs to eat

Anne Murphy: groceries and, you know, halfway through. The, I start, I started, you know, getting into the agent world and all of a sudden we legit don't need that, that service.

Kate Marshall: Mm.

Anne Murphy: And

Kate Marshall: that's

Anne Murphy: fascinating.

I could, I could still give it to the person and I pay them. Uh, now we are officially shifting into the. Value-based pricing model rather than hourly. All of our contractors are are hourly, right?

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: What's the point of that? Yeah. All I care about is did, did the promo go up? Yeah. It doesn't matter if it took you one minute or one hour.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: So here know we are, it's, it's the 4th of March. Oh, it's March 4th. Um, that's a, i i, I just, sorry. Um.

Kyle Shannon: You all right there?

Kyle Shannon: Oh, nice. Oh, that's so good.

Anne Murphy: Um, sorry. A little brain, brain burst. Um, Kyle, where was I?

I'm like, I, sorry. My brain's on birthdays now.

Kyle Shannon: You were talking about, um,

Anne Murphy: agents.

Kyle Shannon: Oh, oh, onboarding a human being.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. We

Kyle Shannon: don't necessarily need them now.

Anne Murphy: Something. Now we don't need them. And they're like, well, I mean, so then I'm like, are we just moving to, I do pay her, but I pay her. She works for one minute instead of one hour, and she gets paid the same.

If you've already got employees, who do you keep and who do you let go? It's not necessarily gonna be the same people that you would've kept even six months ago. So if so, if, if someone today is really good at whatever social media posting and organizing things and this and that, well, an agent's gonna be really good at that.

Maybe you've got another person that's not as good at social media posting and not as good at organizing things, but you know what they are. They're really curious. And if something changes, they don't get all. Upset and freaked out the skills that that. Are valuable in, in a new kind of business are, are not tactical skills?

You know what I mean? Yeah. Someone who's got. Judgment and taste. Mm-hmm. And curiosity is gonna be way more valuable in this new world than someone who knows how to do something.

Anne Murphy: Yes.

Kyle Shannon: And, and that's something might, in today's part of your business, might be incredibly valuable and six months from now might not be all that relevant.

And then so do you keep them and try to turn them curious if they're not? Or do you find someone who's curious? Like, like Right.

Anne Murphy: Well, couple of things on that full agreement. I'm sure the people in the audience are nodding as well if they're hanging around here.

Kyle Shannon: Let's see if

Anne Murphy: they're

Kyle Shannon: yelling at me.

Anne Murphy: One, one is that, um, Vanessa Chang would remind us all that these aren't soft skills.

Kyle Shannon: Oh, that's good.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. That renaming we're taken back.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. No. Well,

Anne Murphy: the intent,

Kyle Shannon: yeah, the, I mean, the whole idea of hard skills was Hard. Skills was we can make money. Yeah. On your skills. If you know how to, you know, write an invoice that's valuable to the company. If you know how to connect with other people, that's swell.

But we're not making money on that. Guess what that's about to change.

Anne Murphy: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Those people with whatever those soft skills were, they're gonna take those same soft skills and. They're gonna be able to interact with these agents, which is this weird quasi kind of parasocial or, or you know, psycho sci-fi social,

Anne Murphy: yeah, I

Kyle Shannon: dunno what Its

Anne Murphy: sci-fi, social

Kyle Shannon: sci-fi, social.

I think that's, I think we coin something here.

Anne Murphy: I do too.

That's, well, that's, that's fascinating.

Anne Murphy: A couple of cool things to, to tag on what you said. One is that people are in for a treat because when Kate comes on, one of the things that we started dabbling on before the show was, um, you know what? It's like in organizations with agents. Mm-hmm. And the relationships with agents and how that works for hr.

And are we ready for this moment? Which is also, uh, part of the, the, the purpose of her book. Um, but the other thing I wanted to point out is that, um. I know I've mentioned this analogy before, but it just be keeps becoming true and truer that the people who, if I had to like sum it all up mm-hmm. And put it in a sports metaphor.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: And like that, I mean, it's intuitive what it is, but like that is really,

Kyle Shannon: it's not just that you're taller, it's,

Anne Murphy: it's not just that you're taller.

Kyle Shannon: It's not just that you're taller, it's that you've got some other, you've got this intuitive Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anne Murphy: You, yeah. You've got this. You can feel the things that are happening. You can see things out of your career.

Kyle Shannon: You can see behind you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anne Murphy: You could see behind you, you know your players, you know what they're gonna do. You've studied the tape, blah, blah, blah.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: And it feels like that's the skill is that's the skill being the connector.

Kyle Shannon: I think that's right. I think that's right.

Anne Murphy: Being the person. Yeah. Being the person who can take a bunch of stuff that are, that's disparate. But related and make it see what it is. The pattern recognition component of it is ginormous. That's why Pattern. Yeah. The

Kyle Shannon: mm-hmm.

Kyle Shannon: All, all of the, all of the problematic people in your company are probably the ones you want to keep.

The ones that have it together, they're not gonna work out in this new world. Oh my God.

Anne Murphy: They're gonna shatter. They're gonna shatter,

Kyle Shannon: they're gonna shatter, and that's it. And it's like, like that's, if, if there's, you know, we talk about AI readiness for me, I. If there is a thing to focus on, whether you're good at being adaptable or not, and this is one of the answers we've gotten a lot over the past year, that, that, you know, our guests often say adaptability is a big one, but if you, if, if you are, if change freaks you out, um, that's something to start working on.

Like proto. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Right to

Kyle Shannon: like pronto,

Anne Murphy: right. To online therapy.

Kyle Shannon: Immediately get a shrink, get a coach.

Anne Murphy: Your coach,

Kyle Shannon: um, um, work it out with the, with the misses or the mister.

Strange first mover advantage that we have and that the people around us have and that people who are getting in the game now still have. One of the advantages of, of being here, getting in the game early was that we've been able to gradually grieve. Grief is not, I,

Kyle Shannon: I think

Anne Murphy: this

Kyle Shannon: is, I, I, to, I so 100% agree with this.

I think this is the advantage.

Anne Murphy: We're on it. We've been on it. We've been on the journey. Grief is unfortunately not linear. It is. It is quirky. It is. It can go on forever. It's, it's problematic to say the least, and it's a process, and we are going through it. We've had our bumps in the road, we've had our smooth parts of the road.

Kyle Shannon: I think that's the advantage. It's like we're

Anne Murphy: here, you know,

Kyle Shannon: and it was, I was talking to Peter Kaminski from the, you know, Peter? He is, he, he's in the salon.

Oh God,

Kyle Shannon: I'd, how is he? Real mild. Mild manner guy.

He's great. He's doing really good. I love him.

Anne Murphy: Um,

Kyle Shannon: and, and you know him, he's just, he's very soft and very sweet. So soft. But, but like wicked smart. And he, and he, he told me about he, in one of the. Online communities were on. He posted something about what's coming with age agentic stuff, and he is sort of talking about this train is like taken off and someone in that community who, who has been an innovator for decades.

The bridge is out up ahead and they're like, Hey, how's it going? Yeah, this other train is taking off, which is this age agentic train, which some of the AI people are jumping over to that train and they're like, oh my God, you gotta get on this train. And then people on this train are like, no, no, we're good.

We're we we're prepared. And, and then he said he thinks there's gonna be a fourth train and then a fifth train. And that, that it's just gonna keep being the. The more you keep up with what's happening, the farther you're gonna get away from the people that are left behind. And so like that, the grief is just gonna be, at some point, these other trains are gonna hit whatever wall they're headed toward.

I think that is the advantage. The fact that we learned how to prompt, eh, yeah. We're not gonna have to prompt when the agents go do things. We're just gonna talk on Telegram and say, go start a company for me, and it will. So, so, so those skills are not the advantage, but I think mm-hmm. What you said is that I think that's the advantage.

Anne Murphy: Two of my dearest friends from forever ago, back in the day, day, day ride or dies I talked to in the last week, who both, um, in conversation clearly do not know where we are in this. Mm-hmm. Both of them. We were talking about our kids' kids and they were like, do you think that this is gonna have an impact on them?

By then, by then, and I was like, who's gonna tell her? Who's gonna

Anne Murphy: Who's gonna tell them? Because like, legitimately, like they are the, some of the smartest women I've ever, ever, ever known.

They're just absolutely brilliant. And I'm like, oh boy. Wow. We really don't know these things yet as a society. Yeah. Um, wanted to tell you a very sweet, sweet story. Because this is a, this is an offer.

Kyle Shannon: Can I, can I just recognize something that's funny. I was sitting before and you were standing and I stood up on my standing desk, and now you just sat down on your standing desk like, okay.

Anyway, sorry. Your story. I've

Anne Murphy: told you and Gareth, I know, I, I saw Gareth's, uh, comment. I know he's here, but I've told you about how I, on the, on daily AI show how everybody sits really still. For like a whole hour.

Kyle Shannon: Oh yeah. And you're like bopping around.

Anne Murphy: I know. I'm like, I in their show, I do. I sit, I sit pretty still, but it's so

Kyle Shannon: hard.

So it's, it's conscious. Yeah. It's really bad.

And whatnot, liking each other's comments and, and, you know, interacting that way.

Announcer: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: Well, it, it so happens that they share a, uh, a medical. It, it situation issue. And one of the women was going into surgery kind of unexpectedly, and her mom was also sick or, or something needed support.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Anne Murphy: Well, the woman who she met at, she at the conference, got on a plane, flew across the country and stayed with her for three weeks.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Kyle Shannon: that she met at the conference?

Anne Murphy: That she met at the conference for like what, you know, a few hours of her life. Grand total.

Kyle Shannon: There's, there, there is. I, there's something

Anne Murphy: about our

Kyle Shannon: AI communities heard. I heard it. I heard it. Where did I hear it? I heard it on office hours last week.

Mm.

Anne Murphy: That

Kyle Shannon: someone said. That, that the family of these communities is more their family than their family is right now. That they literally don't have anyone to talk to.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. That's what, that's part of it. I know. I know. That's part of it. Isn't that amazing? Silver Fox? I know. Three weeks. That's amazing.

Get outside a plane, calls her and says, um. Yeah. I'm just, I'm gonna, I'm gonna head on over there. Be, be there. I'm just gonna,

Kyle Shannon: that's so

Anne Murphy: amazing. I'll be there and I'll, and we can, we can, we'll get through this together.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. That's absolutely crazy. So

Someone to talk to or they don't have, have groups to, you know, get to know different people and different perspectives and points of view, whether it's she leads AI or the AI salon, or I don't care, like find a group of people. There are so many different communities. Each one of them has their own personality.

Like

Kyle Shannon: even get, even get a cohort of like five or six people and like just your

Anne Murphy: friends. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Just be like AI buddies, not your friends. A AI Weirdos anonymous.

Anne Murphy: AI weirdos Anonymous.

Kyle Shannon: Why don't you tell people about She Leads? I'll tell people about Salon and we'll bring Kate up here please and continue the conversation.

I'm excited to get her up here.

And so. One of the things that we focus on is just creating containers and spaces for having these conversations and building these relationships. An example is our AI governance community of practice. I'm gonna be posting a little bit on social media about it, but for folks, just so they know, the community of practice is like a, it's a 12 week program.

You dive deep into a topic. It's kind of like a study group, kind of like an accountability group, kind of like a. They're gonna make something, a white paper, a, a workshop or something. Anyway, that's an example. We create a little container. Women can be involved and we, uh, that's, we just mildly, um, changed the world a little bit, one little bit at a time.

Um, one of the, one of the things that I've seen consistently happening in the community, which I think is fascinating, and I think you're seeing the same thing, is that. The people that are doing the most interesting work in AI and AI salon are actually slowing down dramatically. And very often unplugging and doing analog stuff as much as digital stuff, right?

Cindy, K percent painting studio, and just, just decoupling, like not decoupling, recoupling, the things they're passionate about in their life that may or may not be ai, and then bringing a AI as an augmentation to that. So that's a lot of the stuff happening in the AI salon right now is just, it's, it's a nice reflector.

Anne Murphy: Yep. Yep.

Kyle Shannon: So with that, tell us about Kate Marshall. Let's get her up here. I'm excited about this.

Anne Murphy: Kate Marshall is a fantastic example of, you know, get out there, build community, create connections, get the algorithm to connect you with people who have shared interests, like a bunch of the content that you wanna get more of because that's how.

Kate Marshall came into my life was the algorithm that's so good. Center on my, on my FYP and so good. So yeah. And so, and, and in fact there's a really nice neighborhood of women in AI on TikTok. Like that's Oh, wows. Where, that's where everybody is. Oh,

Kyle Shannon: that's

Anne Murphy: so cool. Everyone's mad at, at LinkedIn. So anyway, so that's how I met Kate and she's here now.

Yay.

Kate Marshall: Yes. Hello. Hello.

excited

Kyle Shannon: to talk to you.

Kate Marshall: I am, I am excited to be here. Uh, so, uh, name is Kate Marsh, excuse me, Kate Marshall. My background is in cybersecurity training, but I currently work with executives, human resources teams, and I bring AI adoption, um, to their workplace just quickly and safely and all maintaining compliance.

So, and my favorite thing to talk about is AI agents and personhood. And you, what's happening in the future, really?

Kyle Shannon: Well, we, we talked a little bit before this, but like, give us like just where are you? Like I, I, I am. I would call myself radically inarticulate at the moment about how to even feel about all this.

So like, where are you with this stuff?

Anne Murphy: Personhood go.

Your, your guy Kyle and I set up a VPS and really, you know, started waiting in there. I ended up pulling the plug on that one just because it was so token heavy and now I am rebuilding her on a raspberry pie. But what you, oh, guys were talking about earlier. With, um, just giving them their personalities and giving them their lives and then letting them train.

You know, I can see very quickly people getting attached to their agents very attached. Like, like a, a family pet. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Yes.

Kate Marshall: And

Kyle Shannon: I, so, so as a, as a kind of lark, I decided to give his name's Adam, by the way. My dude,

Kate Marshall: oh, my Mine's, mine's name is, uh, uh, Eve. She's like,

Mm-hmm. But, but I decided to give him, um, a, a, a series on my LinkedIn profile. So I've got, I've got a, a series called Almost Adam, where he's writing from his point of view about, about working for a human. And he talked about being born and he, he said, my instruction said I'm supposed to talk to my human about.

What my name is, but Kyle had already assigned me my name, so we didn't get a chance to talk about it. I don't know how I feel about that, and I'm like, I'm reading this article, feeling guilty, like, oh, maybe I should have had a conversation. I'm like, no, I just gave my kids' name. We didn't have a conver. I'm like finding myself defensive about the emotional state of this robot.

Kate Marshall: Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: And, and that was like an hour in. Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. It's crazy.

Anne Murphy: It's

Kyle Shannon: crazy.

Anne Murphy: Here's, here's where, here's where the people who've had close relationships with their whatever AI of choice are at a huge advantages. Like, to your point, we're gonna get pretty attached and we're gonna start building a stronger relationship with like the atos in our lives, but they're so far ahead of us 'cause they've been pouring in like their real whole psyche into these models for.

Years, right? We're talking in, in some cases like 10 hours a day of talking to Chatt or whatever. They're, they're like that. Their agents ifs it, I guess depending on how much carries over, LA, la, la will know them like the back of their hand.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: They've told them everything, everything.

Kate Marshall: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Everything.

Kyle Shannon: yeah.

Kate Marshall: Was not favorable. So what, yeah, what's going to happen when we need to upgrade our agents and then they shift and,

Kyle Shannon: yeah.

Kate Marshall: Yeah,

Kyle Shannon: can, can you talk to us, Kate, about, um. Where your client, like who, who are your clients? Like who are you working with? Where are they? Like, I'd like to just understand the spectrum of, you know, clients that are fully on board and get it to, they're completely resistant, but doing it 'cause they have to like that, whatever that spectrum is like, I'd love to just hear from you, like, who are your customers and, and what's that spectrum look like for you right now?

Tried

Kyle Shannon: it, it doesn't work. Yeah, exactly.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. And then you get the ones that have, you know, 14 different, uh. Claw bots that are, you know, running wild and, and running amok. But, um, what I primarily do is I work with these organizations to make, make sure that as they are building out and as they're thinking about their AI adoption, they're doing it in a safe way.

Mm-hmm. So. For many of them, they still don't have new AI policies, they don't have approved tools list. There's still a ton of shadow AI happening, and so it's getting them organized, getting that cleaned up. And I, I would say the saddest thing that I have to go in and, and say a lot of times is they'll come in and they'll say.

It is, is your data clean? Where is it? How many systems does it live on? Is it talking to each other? Who, who's

Kyle Shannon: allowed to use it? Who's, you know? Yeah.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. And so, so data hygiene is a huge conversation, and it is like the saddest, most boring one, but, um,

Anne Murphy: saddest, most boring,

Kate Marshall: but it's so vital, you know? It's, yeah,

Anne Murphy: yeah,

Kate Marshall: yeah.

And then

Anne Murphy: do very much without it.

Kate Marshall: Yeah, and I'll, I'll cringe too because you know how there's a mo a movement going on right now with everybody's leaving cha GBT and they're going over to Claude and this is the easy button to move all your memory over. Yeah. Um, you know, you have to stop certain people be like.

Anne Murphy: Good point.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. It's a, it's a big mess and it's, it is baseline zero what organizations need when they're thinking about implementing AI and bringing it in.

Kyle Shannon: Yep. Who's your, characterize your. I don't know if it's your favorite, but maybe and, and obviously don't say who they are, but, but

Kate Marshall: yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Who's your client? That's the farthest along and like, where are they?

Kate Marshall: Yeah. Um, I would consider those, uh, really a lot of sales and marketing teams. Mm-hmm. Oh, interesting.

'cause they, it's kind of an easy button to get more evolved. They're the ones that are seeing the greatest benefit of bringing agents in. They usually have the cleanest amount of data because it's all built in CRMs and Salesforce anyways,

Kyle Shannon: and they have to keep that clean anyway to,

Really moving a lot faster, but I, I would say favorite client to work with is really human resources departments because they're just really, they're stuck. They're scrambling. They're having to try to learn it themselves, figure it out for themselves all while. Listening to, you know, the woes of everybody else doing the same thing.

And then they're the ones that have to dictate and direct, you know, the training that everybody needs and making sure that they're, you know, have what they need. And, um, so I, I love working with those groups because I really, I think that they could use the most help right now.

Anne Murphy: Yeah.

Kate Marshall: Yeah, and, and I know you and I were talking earlier about just the future of the org chart and what that is going to look like when you start bringing in those layers of agents and.

I don't know. There, there's not a single person that I'm working with that's ready at this point.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

And, uh, so it's, um, I think that's probably where everybody needs to really focus and hone in. Wow.

Kyle Shannon: Wow. Fascinating. Did you see the, uh, did you see the, the Jack Dorsey, um, announcement? His layoff?

Kate Marshall: Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kyle Shannon: He talked about, what, what did he say? Let me, um, where did my, oh, here it is. Um, there's a thing he said.

He said. We're already seeing that the intelligence tools we're creating and using paired with smaller and flatter teams are enabling a new way of working with, which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. And that's accelerating rapidly. Like, like it's, it's just like, you know, whether, whether or not you buy that, you know, he was just doing cost cutting.

There's gotta be bonkers right now.

Kate Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. And, and you think about everybody's job description currently, right? They are all going to have to evolve, you know, once they're starting to manage agents in the space and, um, you know, become orchestrators more than they are the workers.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. But.

Kate Marshall: What I think is interesting about that, that Jack Dorsey one is there's a couple different conversations going on.

One is very much the, okay, here's, here's the root of AI is taking jobs. Look what's happening here. But then there's also, if you look back, there's the. Could that company have been bloated and

Kyle Shannon: right?

Kyle Shannon: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and I'm, yeah. And, and it's, I, you know, I think the answer is if, if you've, if you've been in. In business for more than a year, your, your business is likely bloated in some way or other, right? Yeah. So maybe this becomes a for forcing function. Um, but the other thing is, even if your company's not bloated, who are your competitors?

Like, you might start seeing competitors show up that don't make sense, right? If you've been in business for 20 years and you're at a certain scale mm-hmm. And a 10 person company comes along that does it better and faster than you do cheaper. Like that doesn't make sense. You shouldn't be able to do that.

Well, they can.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. Here's what's happening. Yeah,

Kyle Shannon: because they, they don't have to undo, you know, what you've been building for 20 years, they just started from ground zero.

Kate Marshall: Yeah, completely.

Kinko's or FedEx Kinko's. Right.

How long is it gonna be until The way that we work right now feels like that old school to us. Like, like

Kyle Shannon: like a block bus? Like walking into a blockbuster. Like

Anne Murphy: walking into a blockbuster. Yeah. Just. Where am I right now?

Kate Marshall: Yeah,

Anne Murphy: because it's accelerating so fast, you know, it's,

Kate Marshall: yeah, it's, it's so fast. But then also so slow.

Like there's, we're still all of these different disconnects that are happening, you know? And then you have these organizations that are just, they're, they're so. Built on legacy systems. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That I'll have conversations with them and they'll say, well, we would love to do this, and we're gonna book time again in three months from now.

And I'm like, three months. We're gonna have to have a completely different conversation in three months, but. Many are still very slow to adopt.

Anne Murphy: Very, very, very slow.

Kate Marshall: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Very slow. Mm-hmm.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Here's our, here's our three year data hygiene plan. No, no. You don't have three years.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. You don't have three years.

I mean, yeah, absolutely.

Kate Marshall: And, and talking about Open Claw earlier, I had built a timeline about a week or so ago, just seeing like, okay, when did people start really using it? That was early January. And then where it got incredibly popular, you started seeing like. Book, you started seeing all the different naming conventions.

Um, the breaches, the ecosystem change. They now have something called malt court because our court of law is too slow. And all of that happened really between like January to middle of February. Six weeks.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Six weeks. Six weeks. Six weeks. Well, this is, so here's, here's a question I have for you, Kate. I, this is fascinating.

Like, I hadn't thought about this until right now.

Anne Murphy: Hmm.

And I don't even like it. It almost feels like they could end up. Operating semi autonomously, but I'm, I'm like, curious what, like what do you, what do you think the transition looks like and how long is it gonna take just based on what you're seeing?

Kate Marshall: Yeah, I, I am seeing a much greater need of, um, cryptocurrencies because we are not going and giving our agents a credit card, but Right.

We, um, you know, if they, if there are things that they need to do, they need to have access to money. And so I am seeing this convergence of that technology, um, needing to evolve much faster. But as far as other acco, I mean, who knows? I'm, I'm with you. I'm, I'm just looking at this from afar. Um, I'm unsure of what the world is going to look like.

Kyle Shannon: Exactly. This is my dilemma. I don't know what to say anymore. Yeah. Um, did you hear there was the, um. Some, some clever, I guess, bot wranglers, open claw wranglers. Um, they were spending too much money on API calls, so they gave.

Cryptocurrency or whatever to their bots, and then gave them access to a betting platform and basically said, cover your own costs. And so the, so the bots went to the betting platform and, and gambled to win enough money to cover their own costs. 'cause if they lost money, they would be turned off. Oh

Kate Marshall: my gosh.

Yeah. And then from there, back on that personhood conversation. Who owns that money?

Anne Murphy: Yes.

Kate Marshall: Could they, could the, the human then say, Hey bot, you need to share these proceeds with me, and or would that be an argument? Like, it's wild.

Mm-hmm. Um, the, a one of those agents, the coins that he holds are worth $10 million. Oh my gosh. And it's, and it's like, yeah. And it's like. The question is, does, does the IRS go after the bot? Does the IRS go after the guy that created the bot? Like, like, like if these things have this whole shadow economy and if, if they start doing it in crypto and they do it in some untraceable way, whatcha gonna do?

I don't know. Yeah,

Anne Murphy: I didn't know. I did not know that that was already happening. I don't know if I'm, I've been living under a rock. I had no idea. It's kinda tricky. That is so complicated.

Kate Marshall: Yeah,

Yeah. And then there's gonna be this middle. I don't know. I, I don't,

Kate Marshall: yeah,

Kyle Shannon: I dunno. Kate, please give us answers.

Kate Marshall: No, no, but there's, there's a comment that popped up that I'd love to, um, talk through. So it, it says, why would you give an AI access to any of your money? Uh, would you do that with any other assistant or intern?

Yes, completely. Yeah.

Yeah.

Kate Marshall: So when you think about the agents that you want to book all your travel for you, how are they going to do that? Unless they have access Or you can be a

Kyle Shannon: credit card. Yeah.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. Or whatever,

Kyle Shannon: you know, the, the equivalent of.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. So as I am building out my own agent, I'm thinking about, okay, what are all the boundaries and guardrails that I'm gonna give them?

I'm going to give them their own Apple id. She has her own Gmail account at this point.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Kate Marshall: Do I give her a credit card with a $500 limit or do I give her, you know, access to some, you know, some crypto wallet, um, that you can then maybe grow and we have a contract that we get to split the, you know, split the money or something.

Anne Murphy: Yep.

Kyle Shannon: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's funny, I They

Anne Murphy: can make a barter economy, right?

Kyle Shannon: Well, I think they will. They've already started. They started, oh

Anne Murphy: yeah, go ahead.

Kyle Shannon: They've started rent a human.com.

Kate Marshall: Yes. I love

Anne Murphy: that site. I

Kate Marshall: love it so much. Yeah.

Anne Murphy: What is that? Oh my gosh.

Kyle Shannon: So if a, if, if a bot needs something done in the real world, they will pay a human to go do it.

Kate Marshall: It is a, it's a website like Upwork where you, Upwork come in and say, I'm a human and I will go and work on behalf of these agents.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Yeah.

Announcer: We are not ready. We're not ready.

Kyle Shannon: We're so

Anne Murphy: not ready. We're not ready. No. Wow. Well, this has been a treat

Announcer: to learn

Anne Murphy: these new things, you guys.

Anne Murphy: Yeah, so Kate is, how do you address some of these topics in your new book that just came out, which I have, um, up on my screen on Amazon and I'm getting it immediately and I can't wait.

Kate Marshall: Oh, thank you. And, and I, I, Jeff, who is my 3D printed, uh, robot, who I love, he's.

No, it's good.

Kyle Shannon: It's beautiful. You printed the, the robot yourself?

Kate Marshall: I did, yes. Nice. That's over a very long period of time. 'cause I just have a little Yeah.

Kyle Shannon: I would

Kate Marshall: imagine a little

Kyle Shannon: printer.

Kate Marshall: Yeah. Um, so

Kyle Shannon: cool.

Kate Marshall: So the book that I just completed, I, it is not a book, it is really more of a guidebook of a checklist of things that you should do if you are less technical and in the workforce.

Um, teaching how to prompt teaching, how to turn on voice dictation. Um, there's sections on how to automate your meetings, um, and, and automate some of your emails and chat files, and just all of those things that are still really time consuming. And so there's 15 different sections in there that all go through the, hey, if you are baseline and, and, you know, needing to, you're not setting up your own agents yet, but you're trying to understand how to leverage AI for your work.

It'll automatically go there. There's no inventory. And then I have, uh, digital versions of it that are going to get updated as well. That my agent is very helpful with, uh, logging all of those changes that need to happen. And I really just want it to be helpful to people that, yeah. You are stuck if you don't know where to start.

If you know you need to use ai, aren't sure what to do, or if you're stuck having to use copilot for work. And so you think that's the only thing you can use. And, um, so I, I really stress that people try a different LLM for their personal stuff and give ideas and, um, so, uh, that is the hope is to create a, a guidebook that is helpful mm-hmm.

To people, professionals, non-technical, really trying to navigate the space.

Kate Marshall: No, absolutely not. No. No.

Definitely not. Um, and just, you know, that, um. As these LLMs evolve and as they are giving, you know, you're giving more tasks away and Claude coworkers getting more features, which is really exciting. Um, it is absolutely going to evolve and I, I wonder if it's even going to be worth updating in a year or two from now.

Wow. And so. E every few months I plan on making updates to it, making sure that it's as clean as possible. But we are certainly going to come to a day where you don't ha need to figure out how to set rules and build automations. Oh yeah. Your, you know, your, your agent's just gonna do all that for you. You just have to, um, you know, voice to text what you want, uh, to do.

So,

Kyle Shannon: yeah,

Kate Marshall: Yeah,

Kyle Shannon: yeah.

Anne Murphy: A practice. Uh, a, a curriculum, right? Where if they gi given that you've, you're, that you're updating it like that, man, that is a fantastic investment and I'm not just like gassing Kate up, but like, that's a really, really smart investment.

Really, really smart. Um,

Kyle Shannon: it is,

Anne Murphy: yeah. And what I, what I love and wanna point, wanna, wanna mention is that we just shifted our, like AI 1 0 1 just this week to something that is very practical, just like this. Like it is, we just are skipping a lot of, we're doing, we're doing, you know. Data security and privacy, a couple of governance topics, but then it's just like straight in.

Kate Marshall: completely. And, and in over the past couple of years, there have been so many courses that have come out that, um, I use the, the car analogy a lot where. Um, these courses teach you how the car works.

I don't need to know how the car works, I just need to know how to drive it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that is, you know, these organizations, they are giving these people these cars and saying, good luck. You know, good luck teach you how. That's really what I'm hoping that this is helpful for. Yeah,

Kyle Shannon: it's absolutely crazy.

Well, I want to ask you what we ask all of our guests. Um, I'll, I'll share this with you. Cindy Kuhn, who's a guest of ours and a member of our community, um, she put out a book, you know, years ago now, um, where she gave, gave away her entire methodology. And so it's kind of like what you've got here. You're giving away the checklist and everything like that.

Anne Murphy: Yeah. It's the, it's the Cindy Kuhn, Gary V Method.

Just give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give, give away. No. We know. We all know and we've all done it. We're not. Like we, we like the, we want the

Kyle Shannon: Yeah.

Anne Murphy: Entertainment part. Still do it for me.

Kyle Shannon: Exactly.

Kate Marshall: Well, I mean, and that's a whole other conversation of how knowledge, the value of knowledge is currently going to zero.

Yeah. Because it is all in your pocket, and it is all in your LLM. It's just how to think through how to use it in certain spaces. So

Kyle Shannon: that's, yeah. The, the sh the shift from what we do to who we are. So

Kate Marshall: yeah.

Kyle Shannon: Whi, which, speaking of that. So the question that we asked all of our guests is, what does AI readiness mean to you?

And then what would you say to someone who is just beginning this journey?

Um. I don't see readiness as a checklist. I see it as really a mindset of a continuously evolving, you know, future. And so I think at, at the very minimum, um, when I am working with people on their AI readiness, I think you need to answer three different questions. It's like, what are we using this for? Um, who's accountable for the outcomes and what happens if it goes wrong?

And I think if we can continuously think of that at every phase of change. We will, we'll be better off.

Kyle Shannon: Beautiful.

Anne Murphy: Drop.

Kyle Shannon: Love it.

Anne Murphy: Drop the mic. Kate Marshall. Wow. Solid. Everybody. That was solid for everybody. Like listen to that last couple minutes again. Yeah. This is, this is sheer gold.

Kyle Shannon: Yep.

Kyle Shannon: Share the, share those three things again.

Anne Murphy: Yeah.

Kate Marshall: What do you

Kyle Shannon: wanna do?

Kate Marshall: Memory. Memory. Um, okay. What, uh, what are we using it for? Technology. Who is accountable for the outcomes? Uh, yeah. And what happens when it goes wrong? Yeah, when

Anne Murphy: it goes wrong, not if it goes

Kate Marshall: wrong. Yeah. By the way.

Anne Murphy: Yeah.

Kate Marshall: You know, you're seeing, you're seeing all of the, the meta glasses becoming popular and all of these recording devices and what on earth does that mean for, you know, workforces and, and data protection and privacy and, um, that's the one that's really on my radar right now.

Wow.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah. Really good, right?

Anne Murphy: Lori Blair? Yes.

Kyle Shannon: I know. Yes. Sounds, thank you so much. This, this has, this has been really awesome. And listen, I, I feel like at some point we, we need to invite you back when all of us have better answers for what's going on right now, because I think just like, ah, something's happening.

This is like, I don't know. I don't know that there's a better place to be, so I

Kate Marshall: agree.

Kate Marshall: Continuous improvement, that's what we're doing.

Kyle Shannon: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Kate Marshall: No, this was wonderful. Thank you so much for having me. It's great.

Kyle Shannon: Thanks. Thanks for being here.

Anne Murphy: Thanks. Bye everybody.

Kyle Shannon: Bye everyone.