Masterclass Launches AI Course with Conor Grennan

Welcome to the AI Applied Podcast. This is a very exciting show. So I was scrolling through LinkedIn a couple days ago, and all of a sudden, I see this post from, you know, the official Masterclass LinkedIn account. And I'm like, you know, you see all these amazing people on there. And who do I see? Connor Grennan front and center with a brand new AI course on Masterclass. I was blown away, not surprised. Obviously, I know that like 100,000 people or something crazy You've already taken your personal course that you sell. So this is a no-brainer. Great job on Masterclass for getting you. I don't know how they did that. They must have paid you like $20 million or something insane. But tell us about the class. What are you teaching? And how did you come up with kind of the curriculum and the framework that you put out there? Give us the whole process. Yeah. No, thanks. Yeah, it was really cool. I mean, like I love Masterclass. You know, I've like learned a ton from it over the years. This is not me boosting Masterclass. I'm just like a huge, huge fan. And so when they reached out, obviously, like unbelievably honored to do this. I would have, don't tell them, I probably would have paid them to just be on Masterclass. But that's my negotiating skills there. It was actually pretty awesome. So I kind of partnered with two other really cool AI folks. And this was kind of their part two. They did one AI, I think, for the first time last year. And then this year, I was helping lead the charge on this. And it was kind of like, what's next? What is it for AI adoption strategies and how to make yourself indispensable at work, strategic. How do you like really implement this at work, but also how do you stand out at work? How do you sort of like think about the future of your work? So that's sort of the theme that was running through it. So just so everybody knows, I mean, I didn't know this before. So I go into this like studio in Brooklyn. They essentially like took over like this big empty space in Brooklyn. I show up there like early morning. I think we filmed, I think we filmed over two days or one day. I can't remember now actually, but, but the idea is, I mean, it is a crazy studio. I don't if anybody out there, Jaden, I know you have some background with this, but I was like cameras all over the place and lighting is super professional. Everybody's like, it's like you're on a mark and you're kind of talking, no teleprompter or anything like that. They just kind of give you a sense of, hey, this is what we're going to be talking about, which is why hopefully it kind of sounds a little natural, I hope. But the idea is you just want to sort of help people understand what the difference is between, first of all, AI last year and AI now, but also there's a lot of people just coming and being like, what is this? How are we going to do this? So the kind of the themes that I tackled, Jaden, were, first of all, around, as people probably already know, I have AI mindset and we do all this behavioral shifting. So we work with just a lot of the biggest companies in the world, you know, the Walmarts, JP Morgan's, NASA's, like everybody, right? So working with, you know, Google and Microsoft and everybody. And the really cool thing about that part, Jaden, is that I'm training organizations, some of the organizations that are actually building the AI because it's sort of like you can work for Peloton, but it doesn't mean you're necessarily in good shape. So, and as you've said in the past, very kindly, like, you know, we have this AI mindset course and we, it's, we have an enterprise version and it goes out to 10, 20,000 people in organizations So the point around masterclass was like so what does this mean for the individual What does this mean for like you and your career So the really cool thing that we were sort of like focusing on was a few they not well a few demos for sure but really like how do you think about what your role is and how do you evaluate what parts of your role are going to be sort of, you know, probably taken over by AI? What do you lean into instead? Which parts of your role do you lean into. So that was one element. And then another element that we talked about a lot, obviously, but that was really excited about was how do you work with a tool like, I think I used Claude in this particular example, but how do you use Claude to get over trust issues? Right. Because I think one of the big issues these days is like hallucinations, trust, things like that. So those are two of the big things that we were dealing with, but it was a super fun experience. So you hop in there, you said you have no teleprompter, which blows me away because I feel like for a lot of these things, I would assume like this is where you bring in your information. What did the process look like for preparing? Like, what were you doing? What was your kind of content without a teleprompter? Yeah. So the cool thing was that, you know, I, you know, Jaden and I were just sort of joking about this offline, like that. I'm just, I'm just traveling way too much these days. I'm sort of on the road almost every day. And I was telling Jaden, Jaden's like, what's your next mission? I'm like, you know, making sure Liz doesn't like leave me, you know, because like, this is, it's, I'm trying to sort of like just manage all that. But it's the good thing is that masterclass that sort of seen a lot of, you know, how I talked about it. And they're like, oh, that's, you know, maybe not totally idiotic. Like, let's let's give that guy a whirl. Right. So so the idea is instead of sort of like a teleprompter, they're like, how do you think like what do most people sort of like run into? What are what are the things that stop most people? And so and the answer to those questions to me is it's just a ton of what happens in our brains that sort of stops us from using it. So just to give you an example on that, Jaden, like, you know, you and I hear all the time from people like, you know, I just don't know what to use it for. I don't know. You know, we run into people, grocery stores, friends at cocktail parties, et cetera, et cetera. And one of the big things is, yeah, I don't really use it that much. I don't really know what to use it that much for. So one of the things I talk about in that class, but we really focus on it in my own sort of class at length at the AI Mindset class, but a masterclass, I love that we dove into what's happening in our brains. And essentially in our brains, our brains are having trouble understanding how to ask a question of something when there's no guardrails, there's no template, anything like that. It just like it's a blank box. It says, ask me anything. And that's hard. I do this with audiences all the time where I'm like, imagine this two ninth grade classes, first ninth grade class, the teacher is like, hey, write a three page paper on anything you want. We'll make it super easy. Anything you want. And then the second ninth grade class is like, hey, write a three page paper on, you know, four people you met this weekend and how they ended up changing your mood and how you met them. So the first class should be easier because you can do anything. The second class is easier because the way that your brain functions on like, you know, pattern and prediction and things like that, it's helpful to know where it should be. It's sort of like, if I said, give me an idea right now versus name an animal that lives in Africa. It's the, the problem is, this is why chat UBT and everybody else started having those conversation starters Like are you planning a trip to Barcelona And you like what Yeah What are you talking about Remember that moment That was like late 2023 I think right So with this you know in Masterclass we want to help people understand first of all why they're getting stuck. But then you want to kind of take them to the next level around things like hallucinations, trust, things like that. And one of the cool things is, you know, a lot of people, Jaden, you and I have talked to a lot of people who are like, oh, I used it in the past, but it just hallucinated, right? So we're thinking, okay, that's a trust issue. So what are the issues around that and how do you get by it? Because people are always saying, well, how do I get over the hallucination problem? I needed to tell me the truth all the time. I'm like, well, you don't really, you don't get over it. You have to just take it as you would any other source of information. Like if you're talking to somebody or your brother or something like that, and your brother is telling you something about something, you know, if that's important information for you to know, you go check that information. That's it. And it's not like a calculator where it gives you the same thing back every time. So that was number one. It's hallucinations. The second problem that we have is the syncophency problem, right? Which is like, you're so great. You're so smart. Jaden, another gem of an idea. And then you say the opposite. You're like, oh, Jaden, no, that was the greatest. How did you even figure that out right away? It's just crazy, right? And then the third one is one that I kind of went deep into on Masterclass, which is the context problem. And what I mean by that is, hey, I'm starting a new, Jaden is like the mad scientist when it comes to sort of starting new companies and everything like that. And so, Jane, I'm guessing you probably do a lot of research on, okay, what's out there now? What's the market like, et cetera, et cetera. And the challenge is, you know, if you ask in this case, I think on masterclass, I was using Claude for this particular example, but it was like, Hey, help me start a new HR tech company, something like that. Right. And it's like, sure, here's the market, blah, blah, blah. And it has all the sources. So it's not hallucinating, right? It's giving you all the stuff. It's not being sycophantic. It's not telling you that's a great idea or not. Maybe it is, maybe it's encouraging, but it doesn't matter. But the third problem that I think we run into is where is that information coming from and is it updated? Right. So like so Claude is and all these other tools make quote unquote mistakes on that, which are kind of nefarious and a little more buried, which is, yeah, here's the data from 2022. It's like, what does that do me? So anyway, so in masterclass, it was a lot of that, too. How do you get over the trust problem, if that makes sense? 100%. And I mean, I think all of these are really valuable things. When you say you had like a couple other people in that particular masterclass with you, were they recording at the same time? Or did you guys all have it scheduled so you didn't see them? Yeah, we were all filmed on different days. I think like they came after me. So Amy Webb was a colleague. Did you guys coordinate topics at all? Yeah, what they did, they coordinated behind the scenes. So what you'd see is like a master script. So I saw everything Amy Webb, who's a colleague over at NYU Stern, this incredible futurist, was going to be talking about, and she was sort of speaking, you know, about sort of high level thoughts and how you kind of like start getting ready for this. And then Nicole Bradford, who's another amazing woman, she's over at some, I'm part of an organization called SHRM, which some people will know, some people won't, it's SHRM, which is the biggest human resources association in the world I think And so she an executive in residence there So really understands the human aspect of it But yeah you look at sort of like this big sheet ahead of time and then you kind of all coordinate that And then behind the scenes, I was working with my guy, Robert Haslam, who's our creative strategist over at AI Mindset. And he kind of came in on this, too, to help me with the demos because he's this AI master at all this stuff. And so what we would do is they would say, hey, we really want to kind of like demonstrate something around, you know, how do you kind of like figure out what jobs are going to be more at risk, what roles are going to be more at risk, et cetera. And then Robert would go and like just test the heck out of this. Do you know what I mean? Like and see which tool worked best on this. And I think we, in this case, I think we found that Gemini, I might have that, Robert might have to correct me, but Gemini was doing a great job with like. Really? Interesting. Yeah. Just because it had such great resources. But then also what it would do is it would spit out for another, for another kind of part of the project, we were trying to spit out like a, like a database. and maybe Claude is better at this now, but certainly Gemini is always just fantastic at this because we work in Gemini or we work in Google. So just to sort of like create content into spreadsheets, Gemini was doing a great job. So we would sort of like, they would give us ideas for subjects that would fit in and then we would tweak it and then we would sort of like do the demos ourselves. But it was pretty, it was a really fun experience though. That's amazing, yeah. And I think at the end of the day, what I've been really impressed with, not just with this masterclass, but with your own course that you've done and a lot of stuff that you talk about, is beyond the nitty gritty of just like how to use a specific tool, like the literal UI to click on to do something. What I love that you talk about and that you break down, and I think this is what people like a lot about a lot of the stuff you show, is literally the frameworks that you use and how you actually approach the problem, how you actually approach the tools. I think so often we think about AI in a completely backwards way, and we're not thinking about the best way to actually get it to accomplish something for us. You know, we're just like, great, like, I'm a marketer, like, how can it make my company grow? And it's like, it's not how does it make your company grow? Look at the what I've learned from you. And what I love that you're preaching to the choir is look at the tasks you do. And how do you accelerate those? How do you incorporate it into your own into your processes? I think you have a much better approach to that. So anyways, I'm excited about your masterclass. Highly recommend everyone go and check that out. Can we I mean, you didn't tell me about this ahead of time. But can we like leave a link in the description to the to the Yeah, thanks. Guys, if you like Masterclass already, you know, definitely check it out. If you don't, I just think Masterclass has so much on there that it's absolutely worth the subscription. Masterclass is not sponsoring this podcast. I'm just a huge, huge fan. I've learned tons over the years from them on writing, on negotiation, on I've watched like Steph Curry basketball. I didn't play basketball. It's just it's amazing stuff. So anyway, just check it out. You can probably preview it, all that kind of stuff. We'll leave a link in there. But yeah, Jaden, thanks for asking about it. It's super fun to talk about. It was a super fun process and just thrilled to have it out there. All right. Thanks so much, everyone. Make sure to go check it out in the description. And also, as always, make sure to show some love in the comments on Spotify. Leave us a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps the show out a ton. And we hope you all have a fantastic rest of your day.