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Tim Fulton 00:08
welcome to the confluence cast presented by Columbus underground. We are a weekly Columbus centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment and people of our city. I’m your host. Tim Fulton, this week, when we talk about artificial intelligence, the focus is often on big tech or headline grabbing breakthroughs, but for Kaz Maxwell, co founder and CEO of AI owl, the story is much closer to home. His company is helping Ohio’s workforce schools and businesses go from Ai curiosity to practical integration backed by state funding and partnerships with Intel and Khan Academy. In this conversation, Cass and I talk about how AI can be a tool for empowerment, rather than replacement. What it looks like to train employees and students in hands on ways and why the future of AI readiness in Ohio may hinge on meeting people where they are. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluencecast.com enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Cass Maxwell, the co founder and CEO of AI owl. Cass, how are you good? How are you today? I’m good. Tell us about ai ai owl. Ai owl,
Cas Maxwell 01:31
well, we are a little bit of a complex organization, but at the end of the day, we do workforce upskilling with AI. So that’s that’s our foundational thing that we do is we go into organizations teach their team how to basically go from demystification to integration with AI,
Tim Fulton 01:48
okay, talk to me so. And when you say organizations that could be businesses, that could be schools, could that even be like nonprofits?
Cas Maxwell 01:55
Yeah, it can be any basically, if you have w2 employees, okay, you qualify for what we’re doing,
Tim Fulton 02:02
okay? And it’s, it’s funded by the state, so these folks can sort of basically apply for it. You do you do the approval process? Or do you, is it basically an automatic approval? How does that work? To
Cas Maxwell 02:15
to the, yeah, the state does the actual approval of it. So we’ll help guide the organization through that application. Very simple, takes, like 15 minutes, guide them for the application. They submit it. You know, the state will award that grant agreement. And then from there, we can get to training and get to upskilling, and then the state will take care of it, okay, which is amazing. Talk to
Tim Fulton 02:37
me about what the program looks like, how long it is, and then what the outcome is.
Cas Maxwell 02:42
So the you’re talking to tech credit, like our training program, your training program? Yeah, yeah. So what it looks like is, we sit down with the organization to start with, figure out kind of, you know, what are they trying to achieve with AI number one, where are they on their AI journey? And then we have kind of modular based classes. So whether you want to do data analytics, whether communication marketing, grant writing, you know, whatever that is, you want to accomplish. We then bring in trainers for about eight to 10 hours over four weeks. Okay? They’re actually in person, so you’re opening up computers, getting on the desktop, whatever you have, and we’re actually in person with you, doing a workshop based training. Okay? And then what is tech cred? So tech cred is the state of Ohio grant, okay?
Tim Fulton 03:26
It was credential, like an actual thing, okay, it
Cas Maxwell 03:30
is. And then, specifically, we’re teamed up with Intel as well. So everybody that goes through ours receives an additional Intel digital readiness certificate that they can put on their resume, you know, put on their wall, whatever they want, and that just shows that they’ve went through that course and that, you know, they’re AI literate, pretty much,
Tim Fulton 03:48
okay, it looks like, and what, just nitty gritty, like, Do you have a preferred platform that you guys use? Are you trying like, let’s say it’s a medium sized business and they have some security concerns about putting their data into it. Are you, basically, I’m asking, Are you platform agnostic? Are you making recommendations for which platforms to use, whether that be anthropic or open? Ai, what do
Cas Maxwell 04:13
you use? We use about 40 different tools. Okay, so it’s going to depend on your goal. So if you’re, if you’re looking at it can be as chatgpt that everybody knows, and how do we dive deep into that? Or it can be way more advanced features, building a computer vision system or working with specific data analytics tools, anything like that. So there’s not one right answer in AI. It’s very user base and very subject based as well, yeah,
Tim Fulton 04:43
and I assume that you sort of have a philosophy that AI is a complement to because this is a workforce grant, right, yeah, okay, so AI, philosophically for you, is a job enhancer, not a job replacer. You. Talk to me about your philosophy there.
Cas Maxwell 05:02
Yeah, we it’s a tool, okay? It’s a tool. That’s what we always say. It’s a tool, you know. It’s another tool in your tool belt to help you be better at your job, to excel, to push the limit, you know, go to the next horizon. You know, it’s your thought partner, you know. Now, instead of going to you know the guy that’s been with the company for 35 years, instead of going to his office and asking him these questions, now you have that same thought partner at your fingertips that you can diagnose, that you can work through, like you said, to accomplish those problems and to be a master Problem Solver within your organization.
Tim Fulton 05:36
Who do you find are the most skeptical of that philosophy. Is it the, basically, the leaders that are looking at it as a security risk, or the employees that may feel I am basically just empowering AI to take over my job by telling it how I do my job?
Cas Maxwell 05:56
Right? That? Yeah, that’s the those are definitely the two arguments, I think, the most skeptical. I mean, I definitely feel like it’s, it’s at the top, bringing it into the organization, okay, which may be counterintuitive to think about, but, you know, it’s a, it’s a scary thing to bring into your organization. Yeah, and yes, there’s all these, you know, promises. Oh, it’s gonna, you know, do this or do that. But a lot of people aren’t buying in as fast as you would think, yeah. And I think that just comes down to truly understanding, you know, what can it do? How? What does it mean to be aI ready? You know, that’s we’re in that chicken or the egg moment where an employer doesn’t really realize what it means to hire a employee that is already AI ready. You know, what that person is gonna bring in the organization, the value and what value your company is going to bring, being AI ready. So you know it’s going to come in a wave. You know, if you look what was it 15 years ago, 20 years ago, if you had Excel on your resume, you’re like, what does that mean? What does that what does that mean to know Excel, and now, you know we’re past that frontier. People go, oh, you know excels everything when you know how to use that. So I think we’re in that same weird moment with AI right now where people don’t fully recognize the power of having that on your resume. Okay, yeah,
Tim Fulton 07:11
talk about the the work that you’re doing in schools. I think Caldwell high is the one that you guys have highlighted as like, look at what we did for these kids. So
Cas Maxwell 07:20
you’re probably referring to tip city over maybe. Okay, we have worked with Coldwell, though we’ve worked with over 70 different districts throughout Ohio. Tip city in particularly, that was where we rolled out the country’s first AI course. So okay, a nine through 12 course, a full semester, and we started with credit recovery students. Okay? So these were students that brilliant, students like brilliant, but they just weren’t engaged with the traditional learning environment, okay? And, you know, no fault of their own. That’s just, you know, and I don’t know what credit recovery is, sorry, you know. So basically, not graduate, okay, yeah, for whatever reasons. But the main thing was just the traditional school wasn’t, you know, they weren’t vibing with that. And so we created this course. Decided to pilot it there, because we knew, hey, if we could work with these students and we could make this successful, then we can work with any student. Okay? And in it, we spent all semester doing it. These students are now very good friends of the organization. They’ve they’re actually speaking in front of hundreds of people. You know, we’re just a semester ago, they were not even want to come to school. So, okay, they’ve had an amazing transformation, been assigned credits with this course. And so that’s one thing, and then, you know, other things are, we’re doing PD training for teachers. We’re doing facilitator training. Khan Academy is one of our partners, so we’re bringing, you know, con migo, their one on one tutor to schools at no cost. Okay, so we have so many different things, and it’s all you know through state funded programs as well. So we know budgets are tight with schools. Yeah, it’s no it’s no secret. And so trying to find a way to alleviate the budget headache as well. That’s that’s a big part of our mission.
Tim Fulton 09:02
And you are a for profit organization. You are, you are a business, Yes, correct. Talk to me about sort of the founding story and how you guys got started.
Cas Maxwell 09:10
Yeah. So I was originally restaurant tour. Still am. Okay, stay. Shout out, Paul and Steve. You know, business partners there. We have a good time. We’re almost 10 years in now and then, about two and a half years ago, two years ago, when chat GPT dropped, yep, November 22 myself and my business partner, trace, we had a late and great friend. He passed away in the fall, but he came to us and was like, Hey guys, I’ve seen calculators, I’ve seen desktop computers. I’ve seen internet I’ve seen all of this stuff. This is bigger than all that, right? And how do you guys grapple with this? How can you build a company around it? And so that was really our spark to Okay, let’s get together, let’s figure this stuff out, and let’s build a company around it. And so that was really the founding spark to where we are today. Okay, okay.
Tim Fulton 10:02
So you, you’ve talked about your sort of, it’s not a direct partnership with the state, but it is the state funded programs. You have your partnership with Khan Academy. These are big entities. Can you talk about sort of, first of all, navigating that? Is that your first time navigating that sort of thing, you’re a kind of young guy. And then also, how do you choose what is a good partner to work with?
Cas Maxwell 10:26
That was my first time, okay, navigating that, anything on the scale of becoming partners with, you know, an Intel or Khan Academy. I mean, these are, as you know, they’re huge organization, yeah, so that really, you know, I got to give kudos to trace. I mean, he really navigated that landscape well with Intel, which, you know, Intel was also partnered up with Khan Academy, so that’s so that’s kind of what opened the door there, okay. And then just working with those organizations, I think as we got to know each other more and more, we saw that value of, okay, we’re really boots on the ground training these people, you know. How can we use this intel content that has been created for two decades now that they’re refining How can we synthesize this and bring it down to the everyday person?
Tim Fulton 11:13
Okay? So that the value add, would you say, sorry, I’m skipping. Okay. Is that what your company basically does is it’s synthesizing this, the set of modules, probably, into something that’s digestible. And you’re essentially an education company, absolutely,
Cas Maxwell 11:30
okay, yeah, it’s trying to I’m sure you’ve sat through some AI conferences. I’m sure everybody that’s listening to this has sat through some sort of AI thing, and it’s always so 30,000 foot view, yeah, and people walk out going,
Tim Fulton 11:45
you know, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with
Cas Maxwell 11:48
that. How you build an algorithm isn’t going to help me, you know? I mean, and so we understand that. And so we’re trying to come into the person that’s working whatever they own a roofing company, or they’re the Big Brothers, Big sister organization or or whatever they are. You know, we’re gonna meet them where they are and show them how to integrate these tools on a very person to person level.
Tim Fulton 12:10
Talk to me about what makes you and trace basically qualified. Like, why are you the best people to I don’t know what traces background is, but sort of like, it seems like an interesting entrepreneurial leap to go from restaurant tour to, oh, I own and run an educational AI company that services organizations with state grant money.
Cas Maxwell 12:32
Yep. What’s the pizza guy doing in Yeah, right to kind of answer the first question. So trace, he comes from manufacturing, also inventing. So he’s an inventor by nature, an engineer. Yes, okay, yep, got it. So that’s his background. And I think what qualifies us, I think the beautiful thing about this space, you know, when we’re looking not, not AI as a whole, because it’s been around for, you know, since, like, the 1950s but the actual LLM side of things, the natural language, where you and I are, we’re talking it, you know, like you’re talking right here is that it’s new, yeah, it’s, it’s just a couple years old. So, so what does qualify an expert in that, other than people working at open? AI that crack that code, you know? So we were at that starting wave. So I think just getting ahead of the general population, working with experts, surrounding ourselves with amazing people.
Tim Fulton 13:24
You don’t mean, does it kind of feel like I’m asking, like, what qualifies the guy who invested in Apple in 1980 to have invested in apple? It’s like, it doesn’t matter. I got there first.
Cas Maxwell 13:36
Yeah, and I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious, but it’s just like it didn’t exist before a couple years ago. So, so, right, you know, and that’s like anything, you dump yourself into your work, you you know, you find that passion and find how it solves a problem. You know, that’s always the root of everything. You know, what problem is it solving? So, so, yeah, I mean, it’s, it’s, how do you become an expert?
Tim Fulton 14:00
Well, and as I have thought about it these past couple of years, the question is always like, Okay, well, what’s it going to be able to do next? And how do you get because there’s going to be a couple of big winners, right? There’s going to end up being an IBM, a Microsoft and an apple. But how are, how can you specialize and become the, you know, the Hewlett Packard, the company that sort of is, like, supplanting and adding additional benefit, or, like, how are you going to, and I don’t know, I don’t have a philosophy about whether this is ethical. How are you going to create the AI therapist? How are you going to create, God forbid, but it’s gonna fucking happen, the AI dating
Cas Maxwell 14:46
app. And I’ve thought about that already. Yeah,
Tim Fulton 14:50
it’s so I guess my question is, is, why for you? Was it education and empowerment? Was it simply like, well, there’s grant dollars here for work? Of workforce readiness and, like, Why? Why education specifically,
Cas Maxwell 15:06
a couple things. Yes, grant dollars, great. You know, no one hates that. Yeah, providing value at a no, no cost type thing is, and I want
Tim Fulton 15:16
to give you a little bit of credit here and say that is good, right? You are doing a quote, unquote, you are doing good, like Superman does good. Yes, sure, but what? Yeah. Back to the question, why are you doing that? I
Cas Maxwell 15:28
think the cool thing about the way this is structured is that we can be very flexible on what happens in the market. So when you look at an open AI, when you’re talking about those big dogs that are going to eat up the, you know, the small guys, and all of a sudden you’re going to have these conglomerates, that is going to happen for us. It doesn’t necessarily matter who does that, right? Because at the end of the day, you know, what we’re doing is we’re taking these tools, whoever is the leader in the market, whoever has been vetted, whoever is proving themselves, and we’re bringing that in a training platform. So to us, it doesn’t matter who’s juggled at the top, because at the end of the day, we’re going to work with that person who’s leading the charge, who’s giving the not just the biggest, but who’s giving the best value, and who’s who’s solving the most problems. And we’re going to use that for our training. So is that, does that kind of question?
Tim Fulton 16:17
It leads me to, what, how often are you guys having to update your materials? Basically, and be like, because there’s always going to be some guy in the back of the room that’s like, actually, that’s not the best model to be using for that. Like, how often are you updating? Like, hey, we’re going to be talking about chat GPT 4.0 versus Oh, three today. How often do you have to, like, update those models, or, sorry, those like modules,
Cas Maxwell 16:45
right? I mean, we’re updating it on a weekly basis, okay? But there’s a caveat there. You know, we don’t want to just throw the next best thing on the thing, okay, on the module, because what will happen is, you know, some of these companies have paid versions, as we all know, there’s, I’m going to keep going back to chat GPT, because that’s everybody knows that. Yeah, you know, you have the free version of the paid version, right? Okay, we know the paid version is worth it. You know, we’ve used it for several years now. It’s, it’s amazing. It’s totally worth it. But, you know, you get these smaller AI companies that are startups, you know, they’re coming in the market. Maybe they have a great product, but maybe they’re not gonna be around in six months. And so the worst thing we can do is show is show a especially a school. Let’s take that as an example. Show them a brand new, shiny tool that just came out. Yeah, and they sign a contract and spend $10,000 onboarding this AI, and it goes away in six months, or they go bankrupt. That’s an excellent I mean, you know. So they’re vetted as well, and their companies that we’ve identified are going to be around well,
Tim Fulton 17:45
and so you, I mean, is it fair to say, in a small way, you are sort of feeding into that conglomeration, right? That you are empowering, you know, the Microsofts, the apples, the IBMs, by basically recommending that platform or that model. That’s more of an observation than a question, yeah, what? In order to educate folks a little bit, what would you recommend for just a very generalist business, maybe like a consultancy, or, let’s be more specific, like a PR firm. What would you recommend for them to do in order to choose which model or company to sort of like, okay, I’m gonna start subscribing to this service. How would you invite them to investigate it?
Cas Maxwell 18:41
Well, make a choice outside of bringing us in, all right, okay, right, no. I mean, I think a great website, Product Hunt, okay, it’s a really great website. They’re, you know, keeping up on what’s coming out every day, along with, with the steady tools that have been around for, you know, not just AI tools, with any tools, right? They have a ranking system. They have reviews. They have, you know, individual people, like, almost like a Reddit thread, that are going in and talking about it as well. That’s a great website. I feel like to pull some knowledge from, obviously, YouTube, university, you know, going to YouTube, watching the videos, and pushing that free version. They have to the max before paying. I mean, it’s, we’ve already been seeing companies like I said that they came out were great, but now they’re folding up, and people were left, you know, holding the bag. And that’s the last thing we’d ever want when suggesting things so
Tim Fulton 19:32
well. And I think the interesting thing that is sort of happening is that it, when you say holding the bag, somebody may be listening. They’ll be like, well, you just subscribe to a new service, and it’s the issue is, is like, when you tell it something, it remembers it about you. And so if you’re feeding it a data, feeding it data, or feeding it your sort of decision making ethos. You are. You’re investing some time in sort of like getting it up to speed with what you need it to do. So, yeah, it’s
Cas Maxwell 20:11
an excellent point. I mean, that’s the, what you just said there, that’s the, that’s the worst of it. It’s not necessarily the money. Yeah. I mean, don’t wrong, if you sign a huge contract, it’s something, but if you’re spending 20 bucks a month, yeah, it’s not about the money. What it’s about is, you just showed your entire organization. You did training on it. You’re, you’ve built systems around it. I mean, I mean, you know, what do they say when you when someone gets let go and you gotta hire somebody else? I forget, how many onboarding, yeah, how much money it takes to bring on a new employee. That’s pretty much what you just did. You just, you know, spent all that time and resources. Now you gotta redo it. And so nobody wants to have to do that.
Tim Fulton 20:42
Talk to me about what you think is next for you guys.
Cas Maxwell 20:48
What is next for us? Well, I think definitely on the school side of things. I mean, we want to continue down that path. We enjoy helping not only the teachers and administration, but the students of tomorrow. Mean, you know, a school is built around making sure that students prepared for the world outside of school. And so we are diving deeper into that. You know, we’re working with some, you know, four year institutes, two year institutes as well after school to help, help guide them. So I think, you know, education is a huge part of ours, and then also hopefully expanding our reach a little bit as well, and outside of Ohio, or I think so, yeah, okay, I think we would like to, I mean, Ohio is our home and where we want to put all of our focus. But, you know, I think as the company grows, being able to have a wider impact is something that we would love as well.
Tim Fulton 21:40
Can I give you an idea do it? Heck, I love that. If you pursue it, I have it documented here that I sorry, yeah, May I share an idea with you? Yes? So I want, if you do it, I want to get royalties. Well, yeah, it doesn’t have to be. I just want to help. Okay, you know, so when I was in middle school, there was this program, and it’s kind of a nascent it does still exist. I just looked it up a couple of weeks ago, and it was called future problem solvers, and it was a competition similar to a spelling bee, or there’s other various programs like it, but essentially a region of middle schoolers. You have a team and a couple of alternates that like, go from your school and everybody goes to a big gymnasium or conference center or something, and at the beginning of the morning they give them basically a two page brief on, hey, how would you solve this problem and that maybe, how Do you get more trees sufficiently built in a community that has very limited green space. And here are the constraints of this problem, and here’s the parameters that you need to stick in between. Like, this can only be a five year solution or a 10 year solution, and then they you basically gave give the kids four hours to figure it out. So it’s a team of like, five kids. They’re like, Well, what about this? What do we do with this? And then those alternates are also competing individually on similar problems. And then the judges, everybody goes to lunch, the judges read all the responses, and they award what they think is the best solution, and that’s, that’s the winner. Basically. What if we could do that with middle schoolers and AI and sort of present a here’s the problem. How would you solve it with AI and what like and and here are the constraints under which you’re going to do it and just sick the kid on a computer to sort of figure it out and make recommendations for, like, maybe business plan around it, or because I do believe that you’re right, that like, this is, I think Obama famously said it like he went into a room of pretty smart people and he said, Okay, how should I think about this? What is this? Is this the internet? Is this manufacturing? And they said, This is electricity. This is how much of a change this is going to be to our society, and kind of quickly. Wouldn’t it be great to one come up with some cool ideas with these kids and also empower them, and you know, then you’re looking at a kid who’s gonna be able to put that on his college resume and not just a credential. You know what? I mean, yeah, so that’s the idea. So,
Cas Maxwell 24:31
well, I’m ahead of you already. So, yeah, I don’t want to let the cat too much other bag, okay, but we’re working on some festivals next year, okay, around the state that are going to do pretty much exactly that. Okay? What we’re going it’s not gonna be middle school. It’s gonna be nine through 12. We’re working our way back through grades, though. We’re finding some solutions for that middle school, that grade school, to get them in earlier, but the how? Uh, kind of what the vision for next year is to be putting these students through that semester long course. Okay, talking about and during that, it’s all project based learning, right? So what engages the student on their day to day level, you know? Whether it’s, you know, building a, I don’t know, let’s just say a chat bot for the website, whether it’s building a vision system, maybe it’s a, you know, we had one student build a Red Dead Redemption guide, you know, really in depth guide, you know, that went through the game, you know, whatever they want to do. And then basically creating these festivals for these students to prop these up, basically an AI science fair, exactly. And then having those demos there, having that judging there, having the collaboration, the problem solving at these festivals, and then really what we’re doing as well is we’re hiring a bunch of high school tech interns throughout Ohio, okay, and we’re giving them a job within our company. We’re doing the same thing with college tech interns, bringing them into the company. They’re actually then working with these businesses that we’re talking about, okay, finding these problems that businesses are having, then helping, and they’re creating these solutions, almost like a little incubator, yeah, and then, you know, if the solutions are great, it gets spun out into a company. Those interns get to own part of that company, and they get to help drive that forward, keeping it in Ohio, growing the Ohio economy. So we’re really looking at that because, you know, it all ends with the student. I mean, yeah, it’s so many people want to talk about, when you do this for the districts and the superintendent, what it’s the end dates, about the student, you know what? Right? What is their outcomes? How are they being prepared? And how do we show that off, instead of keeping them behind that, that closed door, that desk? So that’s a huge Yeah, thank you for bringing that up, because that, yeah, that is a big thing that we want to, we want to do. And so I’m glad you’re no, they’re aligned on that, yeah, definitely, that’s great. Real quick. Were you in that middle school? Were you, what was your What was your project?
Tim Fulton 26:47
I do not remember. I know that I got first place as an alternate, okay, all right, which means, yeah, I was not chosen to be on the team, okay, but I was the best, well, but I was the my team didn’t place at all, okay, but I was the best, oh, I got you all the, all of the, I was the best of the last kid that got chosen for kickball. Gotcha among everybody in the state, yeah. So I have that to put my, you know, I can hang my hat on that.
Cas Maxwell 27:11
I think my only I’m trying to think, like, science stuff. I think I won. I had the fastest mouse trap car. Okay, I don’t know why that came to my that’s good. I was like that, yeah, well, I
Tim Fulton 27:22
mean, they’re, they’re, they’re the guys who talk about what it was like quarterbacking for the big game, and there’s the guys that talk about their Eagle Scout project,
Cas Maxwell 27:32
yes, and we have these. That’s absolutely, absolutely,
Tim Fulton 27:36
I end every interview with the same two questions, what do you think Columbus is doing well. And what do you think Columbus is not doing so well?
Cas Maxwell 27:45
That’s a tough one. I wish I had time to prepare that one. Well, if you would listen to the podcast before True, true. I did. I did listen to the one you put on a month ago. What is Columbus doing? Well,
Tim Fulton 28:00
this could even be a here’s what I like about Columbus. Yeah.
Cas Maxwell 28:06
I mean, I love Columbus’s energy. I do not just energy in people. But, you know, I I’m not from here. You know, I grew up coming to Columbus once every year, maybe once every year and a half, okay, occasional Eastern trip or whatever. Yeah. And, you know, pulling in, seeing this guy here, you know, as a kid, is like, Oh, my God, we’re in the city, yeah. And so now that I live here, I don’t take for granted every day that I do live here, and I and I see the cranes, and I see the people and the people moving and, you know, we were talking about venture and stuff like that, and learning about all these new businesses and and I just think there’s just so much energy. And I don’t know that’s what I love about it. I just love the energy. Yeah, and we’re in the Midwest, so people are nice and welcoming. And, yeah,
Tim Fulton 28:54
and what do you not like so much about it? What am I not like about it?
Cas Maxwell 29:02
I don’t like the traffic going out of Columbus at 5pm going there, going back east, all right, that’s what I don’t like. That’s fair. Yes, Cass, thanks for your time. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.
29:22
You thank
Tim Fulton 29:25 you for listening to Confluence cast presented by Columbus underground again. You get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at the confluencecast.com Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of The confluence cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite prompt engineer. If you’re interested in sponsoring the confluence cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info at the confluencecast.com our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I’m your host. Tim Fulton. Have a great week.
