AI in Ohio

Tim Fulton 00:08Welcome 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 Cas 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, Cas 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 theconfluencecast.com. Enjoy the interview. Sitting down here with Cas Maxwell, the co-founder and CEO of AI Owl. Cas, how are you?

Cas Maxwell 01:31Good. How are you today?

Tim Fulton 01:31I'm good. Tell us about AI Owl.

Cas Maxwell 01:31AI Owl, 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 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 01:48Okay, talk to me. So when you say organizations, that could be businesses, that could be schools, could that even be like nonprofits?

Cas Maxwell 01:55Yeah, it can be any, basically. If you have W-2 employees, you qualify for what we're doing.

Tim Fulton 02:02Okay. And it's funded by the state, so these folks can sort of basically apply for it. Do you do the approval process? Or is it basically an automatic approval? How does that work?

Cas Maxwell 02:15Yeah, 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, which is amazing.

Tim Fulton 02:37Talk to me about what the program looks like, how long it is, and then what the outcome is.

Cas Maxwell 02:42So you're talking to TechCred, like our training program?

Tim Fulton 02:37Your training program, yeah.

Cas Maxwell 02:42Yeah. 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. 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.

Tim Fulton 03:26And what is TechCred? So TechCred is the state of Ohio grant. It was — a credential, like an actual thing?

Cas Maxwell 03:30It 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 03:48Okay. And just nitty-gritty, like, do you have a preferred platform that you guys use? 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 OpenAI? What do you use?

Cas Maxwell 04:13We use about 40 different tools. So it's going to depend on your goal. So 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-based and very subject-based as well.

Tim Fulton 04:43Yeah. And I assume that you sort of have a philosophy that AI is a complement to — because this is a workforce grant, right? Okay, so AI, philosophically for you, is a job enhancer, not a job replacer. Talk to me about your philosophy there.

Cas Maxwell 05:02Yeah, it's a tool. 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. It's your thought partner. Now, instead of going to 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 05:36Who do you find are the most skeptical of that philosophy? Is it 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 05:56Right? Yeah, those are definitely the two arguments, I think, the most skeptical. I mean, I definitely feel like it's at the top, bringing it into the organization, which may be counterintuitive to think about, but, you know, it's a scary thing to bring into your organization. And yes, there's all these, you know, promises. Oh, it's gonna do this or do that. But a lot of people aren't buying in as fast as you would think. And I think that just comes down to truly understanding, you know, what can it do? 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 an 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 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 mean, to know Excel? And now, you know, we're past that frontier. People go, oh, you know, Excel's 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.

Tim Fulton 07:11Okay. Talk about 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.

Cas Maxwell 07:20You're probably referring to Tipp City, maybe. We have worked with Caldwell, though. We've worked with over 70 different districts throughout Ohio. Tipp City in particular, that was where we rolled out the country's first AI course. So a nine-through-12 course, a full semester, and we started with credit recovery students. So these were students that — brilliant students, like brilliant, but they just weren't engaged with the traditional learning environment, and, you know, no fault of their own.

Tim Fulton 07:20And I don't know what credit recovery is, sorry.

Cas Maxwell 07:20You know, so basically, not graduating, 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. 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 didn't even want to come to school. So 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, Khanmigo, their one-on-one tutor, to schools at no cost. 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 secret. And so trying to find a way to alleviate the budget headache as well, that's a big part of our mission.

Tim Fulton 09:02And you are a for-profit organization. You are a business, yes?

Cas Maxwell 09:10Correct.

Tim Fulton 09:02Talk to me about sort of the founding story and how you guys got started.

Cas Maxwell 09:10Yeah. So I was originally a restaurateur. Still am. 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 ChatGPT dropped — yep, November '22 — myself and my business partner, Trace, we had a late, 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.

Tim Fulton 10:02Okay. So you've talked about your sort of — it's not a direct partnership with the state, but it is state-funded programs. You have your partnership with Khan Academy. These are big entities. Can you talk about, 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 10:26That was my first time 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 organizations. 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 kind of what opened the door there. 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. 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 11:13Okay. So the value-add, would you say — sorry, I'm skipping — is that what your company basically does, is it's synthesizing this set of modules, probably, into something that's digestible? And you're essentially an education company?

Cas Maxwell 11:30Absolutely. 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, and people walk out going —

Tim Fulton 11:45You 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? 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 Sisters organization, 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 12:10Talk to me about what makes you and Trace basically qualified. Like, why are you the best people to — I don't know what Trace's background is, but it seems like an interesting entrepreneurial leap to go from restaurateur to, oh, I own and run an educational AI company that services organizations with state grant money.

Cas Maxwell 12:32Yep. What's the pizza guy doing, 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 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. It's just a couple years old. So what does qualify an expert in that, other than people working at OpenAI 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 13:24You 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 13:36Yeah, and I hope that doesn't sound pretentious, but it's just like, it didn't exist before a couple years ago. So, right, you know, and that's like anything, you dump yourself into your work, 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, yeah, I mean, it's — how do you become an expert?

Tim Fulton 14:00Well, 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 can you specialize and become, 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 app?

Cas Maxwell 14:46And I've thought about that already, yeah.

Tim Fulton 14:50It's — so I guess my question is, why for you was it education and empowerment? Was it simply like, well, there's grant dollars here for workforce readiness, and like, why? Why education specifically?

Cas Maxwell 15:06A couple things. Yes, grant dollars, great. You know, no one hates that. Providing value at a no-cost type thing is —

Tim Fulton 15:16And I want 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, yeah, back to the question, why are you doing that?

Cas Maxwell 15:28I 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 OpenAI, when you're talking about those big dogs that are going to eat up, 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 solving the most problems. And we're going to use that for our training. So does that kind of answer the question?

Tim Fulton 16:17It leads me to, 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 ChatGPT-4.0 versus o3 today? How often do you have to update those models, or, sorry, those modules?

Cas Maxwell 16:45Right? I mean, we're updating it on a weekly basis. But there's a caveat there. You know, we don't want to just throw the next best thing 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 ChatGPT, because everybody knows that. You have the free version and the paid version, right? We know the paid version is worth it. You know, we've used it for several years now. It's amazing. It's totally worth it. But 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 a — especially a school, let's take that as an example — show them a brand-new, shiny tool that just came out, 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 they're companies that we've identified are going to be around.

Tim Fulton 17:45Well, and so, 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. 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 18:41Well, make a choice outside of bringing us in, all right? No, I mean, I think a great website, Product Hunt — it's a really great website. They're, you know, keeping up on what's coming out every day, along 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, 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.

Tim Fulton 19:32Well, and I think the interesting thing that is sort of happening is that, when you say holding the bag, somebody may be listening, they'll be like, well, you just subscribe to a new service. And the issue is, like, when you tell it something, it remembers it about you. And so if you're feeding it data, or feeding it your sort of decision-making ethos, you're investing some time in sort of like getting it up to speed with what you need it to do. So, yeah.

Cas Maxwell 20:11It's an excellent point. I mean, what you just said there, that's the worst of it. It's not necessarily the money. I mean, don't get me wrong, if you sign a huge contract, it's something, but if you're spending 20 bucks a month, it's not about the money. What it's about is, you just showed your entire organization, you did training on it, you've built systems around it. I mean, you know, what do they say, when someone gets let go and you gotta hire somebody else — I forget how much money it takes to bring on a new employee. That's pretty much what you just did. You just spent all that time and resources, now you gotta redo it. And so nobody wants to have to do that.

Tim Fulton 20:42Talk to me about what you think is next for you guys.

Cas Maxwell 20:48What 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. I mean, you know, a school is built around making sure that students are prepared for the world outside of school. And so we are diving deeper into that. You know, we're working with some four-year institutes, two-year institutes as well, after school, to 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, I think so. Yeah, 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 21:40Can I give you an idea?

Cas Maxwell 20:48Do it. Heck, I love that.

Tim Fulton 21:40If you pursue it, I have it documented here that I — sorry, yeah, may I share an idea with you?

Cas Maxwell 20:48Yes.

Tim Fulton 21:40So 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 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 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 you basically 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 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 here are the constraints under which you're going to do it, and just sic the kid on a computer to sort of figure it out and make recommendations for, like, maybe a business plan around it? Because I do believe that you're right, that 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? So that's the idea.

Cas Maxwell 24:31Well, I'm ahead of you already. So, yeah, I don't want to let the cat too much out of the bag, but we're working on some festivals next year around the state that are going to do pretty much exactly that. 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 kind of what the vision for next year is, is to be putting these students through that semester-long course, 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 building a — I don't know, let's just say a chatbot 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 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, 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, finding these problems that businesses are having, then helping, and they're creating these solutions, almost like a little incubator. 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, it's so many people want to talk about, when you do this for the districts and the superintendent, what it's — the end is about the student. You know, what is their outcomes? How are they being prepared? And how do we show that off, instead of keeping them behind that closed door, that desk? So that's a huge — yeah, thank you for bringing that up, because that is a big thing that we want to do. And so I'm glad you're — no, we're aligned on that. Yeah, definitely, that's great. Real quick, were you in that middle school? What was your project?

Tim Fulton 26:47I 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. But I was the best — well, but I was the — my team didn't place at all, but I was the best. Oh, I got you. I was the best of the last kid that got chosen for kickball, gotcha, among everybody in the state. So I have that to put my — you know, I can hang my hat on that.

Cas Maxwell 27:11I think my only — I'm trying to think, like, science stuff. I think I won, I had the fastest mousetrap car. I don't know why that came to my — that's good. I was like that, yeah.

Tim Fulton 27:22Well, I mean, 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 27:32Yes, and we have these. That's absolutely — absolutely.

Tim Fulton 27:36I 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 27:45That'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.

Tim Fulton 28:00What is Columbus doing well? This could even be a "here's what I like about."

Cas Maxwell 28:06I mean, I love Columbus's energy. I do. Not just energy in people, but, you know, I'm not from here. You know, I grew up coming to Columbus once every year, maybe once every year and a half, occasional Eastern trip or whatever. And, you know, pulling in, seeing this city here, you know, as a kid, is like, oh my God, we're in the city. And so now that I live here, I don't take for granted every day that I do live here, and I see the cranes, and I see the people moving, and, you know, we were talking about venture and stuff like that, and learning about all these new businesses. 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. And we're in the Midwest, so people are nice and welcoming.

Tim Fulton 28:54And what do you not like so much about it?

Cas Maxwell 29:02What am I not like about it? I don't like the traffic going out of Columbus at 5pm, going back east. All right, that's what I don't like. Thank you so much. We appreciate it.

Tim Fulton 29:25That's fair. Yes, Cass, thanks for your time. Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theconfluencecast.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@theconfluencecast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.