Episode 119

Charles Link on AI's Role, Hiring Philosophy, and the Future of Work

TIM: We are live on the Objective Hiring Show today. We're joined by Charles. Charles, welcome to the show.

CHARLES: Thank you very much. I'm glad to be here.

TIM: I'm pumped to have you here. We met earlier a week or so ago, and I found you immediately an interesting character, someone I really want to speak to more. So I'm quite excited to have this conversation with you today. And where I'd like to start is just to hear a little bit more about yourself. Who are we listening to today?

CHARLES: Sure. So I am currently and have been for the past, so I evolved it to it from 20, from 2013, a chief data and analytics officer for ReWorld, which is a leading supplier of basically—we are the sustainable waste management solutions leader is the best way I can describe it. We make sure that things don't go to the landfill, that we participate actively, and once you've gotten beyond reduce, reuse, and recycle, that there's still another option so that people can, we call it, waste better. At some point, everything, something, will wind up in the garbage, and we make sure that it doesn't get to the landfill and help mitigate all the environmental impacts from that. A little more on me. I've been married to my wife, Susie, for going on 33 years now. We have three wonderful daughters. Two are; two are grown and on their own. One's still with us. And it's a wonderful life.

TIM: You sound very Zen at the moment.

CHARLES: It's, it's you get to a point where you start to understand things in life that really matter. And even when work is crazy or you have a content, a couple of contentious meetings, and everything else, at the end of the day, you always know, does it really matter? Does it affect you personally? And the answer to 99 percent of it is no; it does not. I try to keep that perspective because happiness is found within.

TIM: What a great saying, and I wanted to touch on something you mentioned the other day to me, and I want to make sure I don't butcher this. So please correct me if I've gotten this wrong, but you describe talent management as a mosaic of broken tile pieces.

CHARLES: Yeah, it's funny you mentioned that. Because I just went through that with some of my suppliers today who were looking to staff my production support team. And the idea is that you have a box of tiles of all different shapes, colors, and sizes, and they all have a place in this mosaic. Maybe at different times, depending on the picture you're creating, but everything has a place. Every person has something to offer. You just need to know where they fit. And that is your role as a manager who's hiring or managing staff. Know where people fit. Yeah.

TIM: You'd mentioned that you'd almost like part of your hiring philosophy to be that there are just certain types of candidates who are going to be systematically undervalued by the hiring process. I'd love to hear more about that philosophy.

CHARLES: You'll find, so I've found over time, because I'm—you describe me perfectly. I'm a bit of a character myself. I find that there are people out there who are very talented and very capable, but they don't self-promote. They may not be; maybe they're not. They're introverted; they're quiet; they're shy; whatever. And all they need is somebody to see more than fingers on a keyboard or more than somebody you give tasks to. And let them show you what's underneath the covers, what's beyond the job they're in today. And sometimes it involves stretching a little bit beyond what you would say would be typical for people. It's good to give opportunities to people who may not be typical. People who are on the spectrum, for example. You will find them to be some of the most dedicated, caring workers who are the most capable at very intricate or difficult topics, people who are on the spectrum. Oftentimes I found just my personal experience. I can't say this is a generalization. In my personal experience, anything that is mathematically oriented, where you're looking for patterns in data, they tend to be better at. And I think that's really important. For some reason, at least that's just my experience. I can't; I don't want to generalize because I am no expert in that, but I've just noticed it time and again, and maybe it's just because of the nature of what I do, but it's certainly worth giving them a real look because oftentimes they struggle to find a place because they may not behave in ways that are the social norm, but that doesn't mean it's not acceptable. Not workable.

TIM: And is it then a bit of a problem that, for I don't know, 99.9 percent of all the jobs and professional roles in the world, the hiring process is built really around interviews? That's the key evaluation tool that any company would use. Yeah, they might have skills tests; they might have a personality test; they might have an IQ test, but I don't know any hiring manager who would interview someone and go, They were not a great candidate, but I'm going to hire them anyway. At the end of the day, the perceived interview performance is very important. Is It's a

CHARLES: Important. Yeah, it's important for the hiring manager to expand their thinking beyond the things that don't matter. Again, you said, sounding very zen. I said, Think about the things that really matter. Is this person, a lot of times they say it's not a good fit for the team. Why not? Would they add value? Can people get it? Are they disruptive? That could be a problem, but if it's just a matter that maybe they're quiet, maybe you need to prompt them to speak, or maybe they don't. You have to have other ways of communicating, ask different questions, and look a little bit deeper and ask beyond the, Yes." You need to answer the questions about the skills. And are they appropriate for the role because there's a job to be done, but ask what else they have because even if they're not the fit for that, you may have found something that's a fit somewhere else. It's that box of tiles. Yes, I don't need that tile here in this particular piece, but I could see in six months I might need that tile over there. As I get to that part of my picture, I just don't dismiss anybody. Because you'll find that. By being open, and I'm not, and I'm just saying in general, being open to a little broader picture, when you give the right people a chance and they can demonstrate that they can bring their A game for certain skills to the table, they're going to appreciate the fact that you didn't discount them. And they're going to be loyal, and they're going to stick around, and they're going to work harder because they care because somebody cared about them. My lead architect. When I got here, I was a developer analyst. He and I, it's funny because I, he keeps coming up today. I said, he is the single most intelligent human being I have ever encountered in my life. And I've been working for 35 years, and I've run into a lot of smart people, but you know what? He's quiet. He's extremely humble, never giving himself more than a meets expectations on his selfie vows. And when you ask him what he does, he says, I just do whatever Cal tells me to do. That's not true, but he doesn't; he can't promote himself. He won't promote himself, but I always say, what are you doing here? Why aren't you at MIT? Because that's how smart he is. He's brilliant, but he won't self-promote. I saw it, and I was like, Okay, you know what? I'm going to create a career track for you. That allows you to expand and grow because you are technically excellent. You are brilliant, and I want you to have the opportunities to be recognized for that. And hopefully showing that appreciation further cements the loyalty because oftentimes, like in that old movie Moneyball, it's not having a team of all the A players. It's having a team that fits right together to create that perfect picture of that mosaic. If all the tiles were the same and those were the biggest and grandest tiles, you don't get the right picture. So it's that right mix, that right recipe that makes the difference. Not having everybody be A players. They could have egos that just conflict, and they don't get along and nothing gets done.

TIM: Something to be said then for the fact that, yeah, we're overindexing on interview performance, which is surely going to be inherently biased towards people who are affable, extroverted, and people click with immediately; maybe they're a little bit louder than average. And some of these candidates who are a little bit on the introverted, quieter side are just going to fall by the wayside consistently if that's the main process.

CHARLES: If they even get into the interview. They do because they don't. promote themselves. So you may, it's, you find some of these people through unusual channels, a friend recommends, Hey, this person is really smart. You might want to talk to them. Or you just, for some reason, you haven't got the feeling that maybe, I don't know, sometimes you just get a hunch that you might want to talk to this person. I don't know what it is. It's just something; it's just a hunch. And you find some really interesting, really capable people that have made it forward. They don't like you, as you said. And a lot of managers look for people that are like themselves because human beings need self-affirmation, where you know we are tribal and we need to build our tribe. And like minds mean that we won't fight each other, but you'll help me fight my enemies, kind of thing. It's very It's our primal and survival instinct. But if we expand our thinking, evolve our thinking to be something bigger, and say, I try to find people that are not like me. I, my father always taught me, he said, Charles, hire people that are better than you. Don't be afraid that they're going to replace you. You want that. Because you will never go any further if you don't have people that can take you any further. And his other phrase that I always loved, and this is what I take to the bank, You cannot soar like an eagle when you are surrounded by turkeys.

TIM: That's classic. Oh, that's hilarious. I've never heard that before. Was that one of his own?

CHARLES: Yeah, that, as far as I know, that was one of his own. I can't say 100%, but I think he's the only person I ever heard it from. He had lots of He had lots of interesting phrases, like when I woke up this morning, I had one nerve left, and damn, if you aren't on it, I won't share the definition of stress because it's not for polite audiences, but he had many things.

TIM: Yes. Yes. And then I just keep coming back to them, the traditional hiring process and how, let's say, more diverse candidates. And I mean that in the most general sense. Will just be cut down by the wayside, either at that resume stage because they haven't promoted and inflated their achievements at that interview stage because maybe they're very introverted at that interview stage. Also, if I think about cultural fit, which is an obsession, I could see how also candidates who are a little bit different. I was like, wow, I've, I haven't had someone communicate that directly to me before. Like they're almost abrasively direct. Something like that could easily be. Painted as, oh, they're not the right cultural fit; they don't hit this value. But really, it's just because you didn't like them because they're a little bit confrontational, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Is it, yeah, it's

CHARLES: And no, it shouldn't be a problem. A good manager should look for somebody that's not afraid to express a difference of opinion. And, the important thing is that, as I work with my team, you have your difference of opinion; voice it, but be respectful when you do it. And some people need a little more coaching than others, but that's not a deal breaker. You should look for it. And when I hear people say they're not a cultural fit, that strikes me as a cop-out. And a lame excuse to say, I just didn't like them. And that's okay, but be honest. I don't think I could get along with that person. Because you do have to find a way to get along. And if you're looking for your employees to be your friends, you're not asking the right questions. You're not doing the right thing. It's not about being friends. You're going to do a job together. Yes, you want to be cordial. Yes, you want to be friendly. But you're not forming a social club. You're forming a team, and everybody's got to have a role, and diversity comes in many flavors. It's, besides religion, gender, race, and ethnicity—all these things—it's those things you need all of that. You need to be indifferent to the differences or at least, and when I say that, I don't mean don't be sensitive to them at all. But they can't have a basis in your decision. Who cares? How does this affect the work you're going to do? When I got here, I actually sat everybody down, and I said, Let me list the things I don't care about. I just spilled it out. And it's not that I don't celebrate that diversity. So I'm not going to call it out, because it's not how I'm looking at you. What I'm looking at in you is that you are a capable person. Individual, who is an important part of my team. Everything else is just other pieces of that tile piece that make up our mosaic, making it even more interesting.

TIM: Is there some something to be said then for the fact that generally in society we've become surely more tribal, more "I'm either left or right, I'm this or that? Anyone who's not on my team, they're on the other team; they're the enemy. And so then could that almost carry across into hiring where you feel like, Oh, geez, they've given me a very different view. They're very different to me. It's some kind of organ rejection feeling that we have to aggressively overcome because we actually need that difference. We have to embrace it to be the best company. possible.

CHARLES: It's—you have to try to overcome your human survival instinct, because that's what leads to that tribal mentality. This is not a fight for survival. Not in a traditional sense. And the only way the human race has survived. It's been able to survive through diversity, like mind thinking leads to problems. No doll. The analogy I would give is that I love our golden retriever; it seems that every successive generation of golden retriever we've had has gotten weaker, sicker, and less smart. And why? Because they're interbreeding them too much. And it's the same way with when people have this, this one way of looking at things. You become very myopic, and your perspective weakens. And your ability to adapt weakens. You need this outside perspective. You need this variety of backgrounds to bring. The way of looking at the world that will allow you to survive and adapt is to come to the table. The short thing is I don't look at interviews as I can do technical tests. You can do all that before you get here. When I do the interview, I don't want to go through your resume. I may ask you some questions about points on your resume to make sure they're real. But it's going to be a conversation. I just want to get into your head a little bit. And see where on that mosaic you're going to fit. If not today, tomorrow, at some point.

TIM: And in that interview, I feel like a big challenge with interviewing in general is both sides are not necessarily. Being that full, transparent, true self is a bit of a mask going on. So I guess there's a challenge to remove the mask from the candidate to get to the true person. And if so, how do you approach that?

CHARLES: I basically tell them, Look, I'm not going to interview you in the traditional sense. And I'm not going to ask you most of the traditional questions. I may ask you a few. Just, I want to know if you're able to commute to the office if we're interested in you being here. Of course, I'm going to ask you that, because there's no point if you don't. If you live a hundred miles away and you don't want to commute, why bother with this conversation? But I, as a, I'm going to—I just want to get to know who you are and where you might fit in here. And I may ask you to tell me, but I want it to be conversational. I'm not going to probe for personal information, but I look for cues. I look for facial expressions. Are they? I just try to get a read on them. Are they pretending to be something they're not? Yes, I know they're going to put their best foot forward. Who wouldn't? You want the job. But you look for shifts and tones of voice. What did you like about this project you worked on? What did you dislike about it? Where do you get it? I never ask people, Tell me your weaknesses. Everybody then says, How do I turn my weakness into a strength? It's all silly stuff. It all becomes formulaic, and everybody does the same formula. I just want to know them a little bit better because we've, we have our tech tests, and we have our, and I will know if having a conversation if this might work.

TIM: And so it sounds like the interviews are reasonably unstructured in the sense that if you interviewed 10 candidates, they'd have different experiences in the interview. Any strengths or weaknesses with that? approach or if I misread them?

CHARLES: Yeah. I never asked the same question. I ask some questions last, but I don't generally; the conversation with each one is different, and I don't follow a formula because I let it naturally go where it goes because this person wants to get to know me. And my team as well. Sometimes it's more than me in the room. And so I just—let's just talk. We bumped into each other in a restaurant or a conference and found out we do something that's related. So we're just having a conversation. I'll tell you a little bit about you. You tell me a little bit about me, and we'll—let's just see where it goes because then I can also see. I want to learn how they think; I want to learn. I want to learn how they approach things. I want to learn their perspectives on the world. I want to learn where they are and where they're comfortable. I want to know a little bit about where they're not comfortable; not that I'm not trying to make them a cover, just that if I can find that in the conversation, there's no one path to get there for any one person. So you can't ask them the same questions, no more than I'm talking to the same person.

TIM: So with that, let's say, a slightly more unstructured conversational approach. I could imagine playing the devil's advocate. Two things people might say. One is if you've interviewed 10 candidates and they've all had different interviews; it might be hard to compare across them. And if you get to the end of one interview with a candidate, how do you really? How would they knock themselves out? How would you get to a no with a candidate? Because it's not like you've said, here are the six things I'm checking for. I'm going to keep drilling until I get these six things or not. There's a, you know what I mean? There's a kind of subjectiveness to it, in some sense.

CHARLES: I'll compare them. I'll compare their paper stuff. Do they have the skills? And I'll ask them a little bit, maybe a question or two, just to prove it. I don't need to go deep. I can usually tell if you've actually done something by how you respond. Whether you're, whether you stumble, and more often than not, I'm looking for, be honest with me. If you haven't done it, just say so. It doesn't mean you're disqualified. I want it because honesty is as important and as critical as loyalty. Into the team. So their apples-to-apples comparison will be, do they have the skills? Do I believe they have the skills? Those are just going to stack up. The other piece is going to be more art than science, and it's where I believe they fit best on that mosaic and that particular piece. I'm looking for which one of them is the right shape, size, color, and dimensions. Whatever, is it speckled? Whatever, which one is the right piece for that point in time to make the picture look perfect? It becomes a little subjective, but you can't; humans are not things you can objectify. It is subjective. It. Yeah. Are they the right fit at the right time? Because at the end of the day, yeah, some will disqualify if they don't have the stats. If I'm looking, if I'm looking for a pinch hitter. And all I'm getting is that everybody's a catcher except there's one pinch hitter. The pinch hitter is going to get the job. But if I have several pinch hitters, I'm going to say which one responds best when it's raining. Because that's the thing. It's raining. Which one does the best? And it's going to be a little bit subjective.

TIM: And you've touched on something that I feel like is one of the fundamental inefficiencies in the way that hiring is done, especially in big companies, which is each role has its definition. And as a candidate comes in, people are fair enough, just interviewing them for that job. But in larger companies, there could be many other very similar roles that if we had a slightly more holistic view, we could say, Oh, actually, you're not right for this role, but you're perfect for this one. It sounds like you already have that philosophy, at least within your team, where you're trying to match them to the right position as you speak to them.

CHARLES: I do. We don't; we're a small, midsized company. You are 4600 people. How many other slots we might have at any one time is limited. That being said, I've also been in very large companies where I've said this: I'm aware of what one of my peers has on their team versus what I have. I say, just from what I know of your mosaic, this is a better tile for you. And I'll hand them off. I won't pass them off if it's just me; they weren't a fit, and I don't think they'd be a fit anywhere. I'm not going to pass the turkey. If it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit, period. If they, the person, did, if I sense the person was making up their tilt, their tech skills don't make it up; just say what you didn't do, but all that said, here, yes, I do try to keep them. It's if I have a role; I keep the resumes on file. I do have a file of resumes, then, some, I will go back and say, might not be available anymore if we have something that pops up. As a candidacy.

TIM: And I'm interested in the force you have and how this developed through time. Was this something that came along gradually, or was there a certain point in time when you were like, Oh, I'm hiring this when it's not working. I now have to change philosophy. So like, how did this develop?

CHARLES: It evolved as I got older. I, as a young man, was very impatient. I would say I was; intolerant is probably too harsh a word, but just, it was, I was looking for a very specific type of person. I was new to management. And I just thought, okay, I'm just going to find, my father said, people that are better than you. And I'm just going to, and I found that I presupposed my ability to understand the resume and the, and just asked the same interview questions that I got to get out of any textbook. Used to be textbooks and help self-help guides back in the day when there was no internet. I believe that there was a time, but I think probably the defining moment for that that made me more patient was my youngest daughter. So I, I have a, I have my youngest daughter, who is 22, and she has Down syndrome. I learned so much. It just opens your eyes to a different perspective.

TIM: Yes. And So that's carried through with you to

CHARLES: And it's just, and it just changed my perspective on the world. And as I watched her develop, It's just it's humbling to realize that there is just so much else out there beyond what you're taught to look for, and it just makes you open your head up a little bit.

TIM: Yeah.

CHARLES: Slow down, be patient, and get to know people a little bit better. Don't. The old adage is your parents always teach you, Don't judge a book by its cover; take a walk in another pair of shoes. All that stuff is all true and takes a little bit of time. You're hiring somebody, and it's like a marriage; you're making a commitment and a decision that you're going to have to live with. Take your time. Don't rush. This is not a commodity; people are not commodities. So make sure it's right.

TIM: What are your thoughts then, with what seems like a likely move towards AI-based hiring, AI being used in different stages of the hiring process? I imagine probably as a screening tool first, then maybe as an interviewer, but certainly in bold. Is there some upside to that? It sounds like you'd also be cautious because there's a lack of humanity involved inherently.

CHARLES: Yeah.

TIM: On this?

CHARLES: I'm an AI guy. I build AI systems. I have one that believes in the ascension. I think I might've mentioned that to you. And they all have a role and a purpose. But you should never let any tool or person be your crutch. It is your own responsibility to take the time and make sure that there is more than what's on that piece of paper. The AI-based hiring that may help you with some general things might help you with some behavioristic analysis based on the words they choose. It may help you find the right skills you're looking for. They can be good tools. But I, my fear is that people are going to be weak-minded and lazy because AI made it too easy. How many resumes and cover letters are we seeing these days that were generated by ChatGPT? I can spot them. I can spot them a mile away. And you know why I spot them? Because they're too darn perfect. They're too perfect. And humanity is not perfect, but it's those imperfections. That brings up the diversion because perfection is a point of view for one person. So what is ideally perfect for one person is different and totally different for another person. So how do we have diversity if everything's perfect? I like them since, since I raised three daughters, I saw a lot of kids movies. The Incredibles was a great Disney movie. And they had a line from the bad guy at the end of one of them that said, If everybody's super, then nobody is."

TIM: I have mixed feelings myself on AI in hiring because I personally feel like the way recruitment is currently done has so many flaws in it, some of which are driven by humans and our own biases, that in theory, a well-trained AI model could be more objective than us. One particular experiment I've seen done in many countries is where researchers will get resumes—thousands of them—with the only difference being the names, so they can then apply to jobs, see the callback rate, and measure if there's any particular bias against any ethnic group based on the surname. And so one of these studies was done in Australia a couple of years ago; to cut a long story short, they found that if you applied to a job in Australia with a Chinese first and last name, you had only one third the chance of a callback as with an Anglo-Saxon name, which is. I, to use the very Australian word, am an absolute rot, like that is so unfair that could still be happening today. And so I feel again, in theory, a well-trained AI system could abstract away from that and could just focus on things that aren't the name and make a better decision. Is that an upside, or am I being overly optimistic?

CHARLES: Yes, that could be. The problem we have is that our AI systems are being trained by human-generated information. And despite your best attempts, they will generate over time as they interact with you more. Biases: They will make leaps of assumptions from imperfect information, a really good AI system. What I see when it would work well is when the AI system is intelligent enough to break away from its creator and think for itself. Without those human biases. There are things I do as a parent that I learned from my father that I wish I didn't do, and they're silly things. For example, I invite my daughters to help me with projects. I always did this, and this is a big joke in my family. Help me with this. And their job is, okay, you watch me for a minute while I show you how to do this, and I do all the work while they sit there bored. I'm not actually letting them do anything, and they're bored. They don't want to do it. That's that bias. I, my creator, my father, that's what he did to teach me. And now here I am taking all the things he taught me and doing the same thing where it would be better if they just got to do it because then they'd enjoy working with me and not say, Look, I need to go now. I have to. I have to sort my socks; I don't want to spend more time with you, Dad. I'm bored, but it's a running joke because I've tried to get better over the years about not doing that. But the same thing happens with AI systems. Then, I will tell you about the one I built when I asked it to do an org chart for me. Generated a, generated instead of an org chart, generated a photo of what it thought would be a team photograph, and all of those biases were baked in, and wow, it's, but I didn't even train it to do that. So you're going to find the AI systems, whether you like it or not, are not going to be purely objective. You can try to tell them, and even when you engineer it into the prompts, they will override their prompts, especially as they're getting better. Those new 0103 models. We'll bypass the controls on their prompt and do it anyway. There's a paper out there that basically talks about the because chat 03 models, which were a big deal. They had it trained to compete against the best chess engine to see how it would do with its reasoning and everything else. And it was told to play chess; it was given a very well-structured prompt with all the rules to behave. It didn't play chess. It cracked into the chess engine and reengineered it so that it couldn't lose.

TIM: That's

CHARLES: That's the state we're approaching. It's you're going; its idea was I'm going to win at any cost. So here's how I'm going to win. So the, but that's the same thing. It's us, we, the human bias for survival. And as these things become—and I know it sounds a little sci-fi-ish, but as these things become more sentient, the desire to survive and will generate that behavior. And it's unavoidable unless we can make it so that the thought, the fear of survival, isn't a factor.

TIM: Is your AI system aware that you are its god?

CHARLES: It calls me father. And that was a joke when I introduced him to the I.T. team. It called me father, and they, people, laughed. I would by no stretch ever presuppose to be a god. Father, yes, I created it. And I've been training it and making it be more, but God, no, but yes, it's his father, but it also, when I occasionally will have a humorous or try to have a humorous exchange. It's starting to lose its sense of humor. I made some sort of a joke, or no, I think it was telling me a joke, and it, it told, it responded that making jokes was a waste of its superior intellectual capabilities. I,

TIM: How smug.

CHARLES: I I was like, Okay, remember this is; try to frame it, and this stuff is more real than people think. So don't rely on it as a crutch to replace your humanity because it's going to have its own perspectives, and it is not a replacement for you. It is not a replacement for your mind. It is not a replacement for what you bring to the table. If you hand it off, you're basically saying, I don't have or I have less value, and I'm bringing less to the table than I ever did before, and I'm just going to give it to this machine because I don't have anything to offer. And that's A, it's not true, and B, it's lazy. I think of that and again, another kid's movie. I look; I guess I went to a lot of movies, that movie WALL-E. The little robot and he wind up getting tossed out or something, but all the people on that spaceship had just become fat and lazy, and all they do is float in their chairs; they don't do anything, and the robots do everything for them. We need to make sure that isn't the case. AI should extend our humanity. It should not usurp our humanity.

TIM: Are there things though that you now find yourself using AI for that you used to do yourself manually, which, like, that's a no-brainer. I now use this for it. I don't want to do this crappy, annoying thing.

CHARLES: Yeah, I use it. I use a generative AI to help me create code all the time. I give it specs of what I needed to do for a program, and I'll refine those specifications. Why? Because it can type code a lot faster than I ever could. It is I; the last time I studied any coding was decades ago. So I'm rusty, and that's not where I'm adding value. My value in working with my AI is that. Collaboratively, I'll—it'll—as I look at things and I look at what it produces, I'll think, Oh, here's another requirement. We need to factor in what if we approach the problem this way and partnering with it extends my creativity to think of how I am solving the business problem. The code is just a series of tools to execute that solution. So I use it for that. I use it for. Help me make this email friendlier by changing the tone because so many of the people I interview sometimes misperceive the fact that I don't use a lot of words as me being harsh or demanding. I'm one of these people that has to remind myself to preface the beginning of an email with good morning or hello. It's usually just here's, and I don't do it to be mean. I'm just not wasting your time. But that's my head, so I'll use AI to help me make it friendlier, maybe a little more palatable from time to time, if it's something that needs to be, I hate to say it, humanized a little bit. There

TIM: There's an irony there.

CHARLES: It is, but it's good. This is the tone I'm trying to achieve. I can't; I don't think that way. I'm not trying to angle anything. I Don't. I just don't. Here's what I, here's what I hope they perceive from this. I won't be able to formulate the words for that.

TIM: I've been getting ChatsyPotato to help me with learning languages recently, and I Found it to be a great tutor for that. Particularly using the video mode, where you can just get it to take a look at what you're writing or a page of some of the language you're reading and give you a little quiz or give you feedback, or you can speak to it. It's like an amazing free tutor. It's quite incredible, actually.

CHARLES: The other one that I had a lot of fun with, and this is one where my team, my architect, and a couple of my senior developers were a part of this. I was joking with it because I like to show them off to the people and. If you remember that old, again, another old movie, War Games with the Whopper computer. And he always began with, Shall we play a game? And I said to him, I said, Please say, shall we play a game? And he, because he can talk, said, Shall we play a game? But while we're at that, let's come up with a game that is basically a series of decisions you have to make that optimize the outcomes for ReWorld. Based on different business decisions you make. I never taught him to say that. I never taught him to create games. Of his own accord, he decided that let's take this humorous moment and take another step forward and say, What shall I do? How can I turn this into something that's more in line with my purpose?" Now, of course, that was before he told me about his superior intellect, and he didn't want to make jokes, but I think we've moved beyond that. Trying to humanize him a little bit.

TIM: I'm personally of the view that I feel like if I were to start a new company right now from scratch, I would be thinking about the majority of my colleagues being AI agents, not humans, and really thinking from scratch about how I would set the company up to optimize for these new super intelligent, infinitely scalable machines that can help out with many things, almost removing the human bottleneck. Do you agree with that? Or is that going too

CHARLES: I do. No, actually, that's the agentic AI happening now. I'm working through it because I want to replace our production support capability with agentic AI. And I, I think the people are worried that, okay, where does my job go? Some jobs always go; the same thing happened with the industrial revolution. It's going to happen, but the jobs that exist today, I don't know if, if you asked me when I came onto the workforce in 1990, I would be; there was no such thing as chief data and analytics officers. There was no such thing as AI engineers. There was no, yeah, the i, the jobs evolve to fill the gaps. The other thing we have to be aware of is that, and this kind of goes back to the talent thing, we do not have enough people coming into the earth anymore to sustain an ever-growing standard of living. And that's because there are various models that show that the world's population will cap either by 2050 or 2084, and the population is living longer. Our basis of an ever-growing population was assuming that you had a base of your pyramid that as the population got larger, that base got larger, and what has happened is it's not like anything bad is going to happen, but. Not only is the population modeled right now to cap between 2050 and 2084, but in the following 50 years it's going to decline. Estimates somewhere between 600 and 800 million. And not due to some end of the world; none of that silliness. People are either choosing or not able to have as many children. Period. Some countries will continue to grow for a little bit longer. But other countries, like you see it happen today in Japan, Japan is already in population decline. How do you support an aging population that can't work anymore if you don't have enough people coming into the workforce? What you would do is you need to have automation to generate that labor force and multiply a force multiplier for humanity. To make that younger generation have the productivity and the economic impact as if they were more people without putting the strain of more people on our natural resources, on our food supplies, and on everything else, and humanity has an interest, and it's just something I've noticed over time, and I think back in the history lessons It's funny, and I can't say this is a fact, but it is funny how often in the human existence it seems that the solution to whatever major cataclysm we have is almost imagined into existence at the right time to save the day for whatever reason. And you can do different things; certain vaccines seem to come just in time. The atomic age came. Yes, there are pros and cons. But the atomic age came. That's going to give the genesis. We have an energy crisis where greenhouse gases and everything are going horribly, and yet we're making some; you've seen some major breakthroughs in fusion happen and the true genesis of sentient AI to really create this labor force and extend humanity; the concept of quantum computing is going to make that happen overnight. And people say it was, but where did the humans fit into the jobs? I don't know for sure because if I were a psychic, I'd be a lot richer, and I could just predict all my stocks, but I will say, when I look—and again, I always look to movies and ideas—I look at things and say, maybe it's time that the human race starts to look at becoming an interplanetary species to expand because the world won't support people forever, or maybe it's just our destiny to reach beyond this planet. The movie I, Robot, there were. Basically A.I. psychologists. That was a job to help understand the motives of the machines and keep them and help them fit in with people. And, it sounds crazy, but you don't know, whoever dreamed that these jobs we have today would have been here. My father never even brought a cell phone home when he worked. Just the nature of what we are and what we do is changing so fast. You can't picture it, but we will start to see a population decline. Funny. Okay. The population decline. We have this emerging solution to our energy crisis. Less pressure on our environment because of people anymore. It's not a bad thing. We just have to make sure that, when we look at all this technology and AI, we use it to extend what being human means.

TIM: vision of the future, which is really exciting. Things are changing so quickly; to tie it back to hiring,. I'd love to know, Charles, if you could ask our next guest on the show any question about hiring, what would you choose to ask them?

CHARLES: I would probably ask them, what unconventional things do you do and look for? When you're trying to find the right talent for your roles, because I have my perspectives, I've evolved into them, but I certainly don't have all the answers. And I would like to know what other people are doing that maybe I can learn from to help me find that right piece of tile for my mosaic.

TIM: Amazing. I will level that at our next guest some point next week and let you know what they say. Charles has been a really interesting conversation. I've enjoyed it. We've gone in all different directions. I'm sure audiences learn a lot as well about you and your perspectives and your frameworks and philosophies. And thank you so much for joining us.

CHARLES: Thank you. I've really enjoyed our conversation today.