Todd Merrill on AI: Why the Future Belongs to Those Who Experiment
The AI revolution isn’t coming — it’s already reshaping how we create, lead, and solve problems. But beyond the headlines and buzzwords, what does it actually look like to build with AI in the real world?
For Todd Merrill, the answer is simple: roll up your sleeves, experiment, and help others do the same.
Todd has been working with AI since the late 1980s, long before tools like ChatGPT or Claude captured public imagination. Today, as a partner at Tech CXO, he’s guiding organizations through the fast-moving AI landscape — and showing leaders how to turn uncertainty into opportunity.
On the first episode of AI with Bry, Todd pulled back the curtain on what’s happening in AI today, why it feels different, and how leaders can help their teams embrace this moment.
Key Takeaways from Todd Merrill’s Conversation
AI Isn’t New — But It’s More Accessible Than Ever: Thanks to natural language tools, non-technical teams can now leverage AI without writing code.
MCP and Claude Are Changing the Game: AI models can reason, plan, and interact with familiar tools, automating tasks from research to proposal writing.
AI Creates Leverage, Not Replacement: AI accelerates the first 80% of work — but human expertise remains essential for refinement and oversight.
Leaders Must Help Teams Experiment: Most employees know what they want AI to do — they just need guidance to explore, test, and unlock its potential.
The AI Hype Cycle is Real: Expect a period of disillusionment, followed by practical, responsible AI applications becoming mainstream.
The Human Advantage Remains: Emotional intelligence, meaningful relationships, and understanding the “why” behind work — these will always be human strengths.
AI Isn’t New — But the Game Has Changed
Most people think AI just exploded onto the scene. But for Todd, this is a familiar evolution.
“We’ve had all these great tools forever,” he explains, reflecting on his roots as a software engineer. But now, the shift is happening beyond the technical crowd.
“The big unlock for me was… now they have access to these tools because it's natural language. You can just talk to the computer and tell it what you want. These people know what they want — they just didn’t know how to get it.”
That accessibility is reshaping industries. From sales and marketing to operations, AI is no longer locked in the server room — it’s in the boardroom, the design studio, and even your inbox.
MCP, Claude, and the Rise of AI That Plans
Todd’s current focus? MCP (Model Context Protocol) — a framework that allows AI to interact with everyday tools like Stripe, Google Docs, Notion, and more.
“It’s a way for you to say, ‘Hey, I know about the following things. Ask me in natural language about the following types of problems. I provide the following kinds of services.’”
With models like Claude that combine language understanding, reasoning, and planning, AI isn’t just reactive — it’s becoming proactive.
“Claude can pull in meeting notes, reviews, emails from a particular client, create a plan, think about it, maybe do a little research… then refine the plan, ask the user clarifying questions.”
It’s a glimpse of what Todd calls “beautiful proposals” and automated workflows happening with minimal human effort.
Leverage, Not Replacement: The Real AI Opportunity
For Todd, AI isn’t about replacement — it’s about creating leverage.
He shared a real-world example: spinning up Superbase, an open-source Firebase alternative with AI integration.
“A software developer took it, banged it out in like an hour on the weekend, and was able to quickly evaluate it. That’s amazing leverage.”
The same principle applies to product design, proposal writing, and app development. AI delivers the 80% solution instantly — leaving human teams to apply their expertise to the final 20%.
“I’ve seen tools where you can cut and paste your favorite app and say, ‘Replace this red with blue.’ AI gets you pretty far, but you still need good people to refine the final product.”
From Lunch to a Five-Page Proposal — Powered by AI
One of Todd’s most impressive experiments? Turning a casual lunch meeting into a fully formed business proposal.
“I went home and thought, ‘I really don’t want to write another term paper.’ So I set a tool off… do deep research on the web, figure out alternatives, prices, timelines, estimates for the job, and make a proposal that’s five pages, in the format of my company’s template.”
The result? A proposal that was structured, thought-out, and surprisingly accurate — all generated while Todd focused on higher-level thinking.
Leading with AI: Help Others Experiment
Beyond tools and platforms, Todd believes AI’s real impact starts with leadership.
“These tiny automated workflows… they need a little bit of software expertise, but more than zero. You talk to marketing, sales, finance — they know what they want to do. They just need help figuring out the tools, getting them set up, seeing the art of possible.”
It’s not about teaching AI — it’s about teaching people how to use it.
“Everybody’s got this concept. They just need a little help.”
What’s Next? Hype, Disillusionment, and the Real Work
Todd sees AI following a familiar path.
“We’re definitely over the top [of the hype cycle], about to head into the trough of disillusionment. Then we’ll come rapidly back up the other side and figure out what this stuff’s good for.”
The key? Staying realistic, but curious.
“Take some of these things, futz with them. They are bleeding edge. You will get cut when you're playing with them. That’s OK. Figure out the art of possible.”
The Human Advantage Remains
For all AI’s potential, Todd is clear: some things are — and always will be — uniquely human.
“Deep meaningful relationships… understanding emotional intelligence… the ‘why’ behind things — AI can never do that.”
As AI reshapes how we work, the opportunity isn’t to replace people — it’s to free them up for more meaningful work, deeper relationships, and time for what truly matters.
Want to stay ahead of the curve? Follow AI with Bry for more conversations with the leaders shaping what’s next. You can find more from Todd at talesfromtheskylounge.com.
Because when it comes to AI — the future doesn’t wait.
Episode's Transcript
Please understand that a transcription service provided the transcript below. It undoubtedly contains errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions.
Bryan (00:01.822)
Hey everyone, welcome to the very first episode of AI with Bry, the show where we are gonna dive deep in how to learn, leverage and lead with AI. I'm your host, Bryan Dennstedt. I'm a technologist, strategist and someone deeply curious about how AI is reshaping our lives and our work. Each week we're gonna be joined by a guest who makes waves in the AI space and together we're gonna explore what they've learned.
how they're applying it and how they're bringing others along for the ride. Today, I am thrilled to welcome Todd Merrill to the show. Todd's a partner with me at Tech CXO and he's been doing some amazing, fascinating work. We were just talking briefly before he joined us live here and all about how he's been doing AI since the late 80s. So welcome to the show, Todd. I'm so excited to speak with you and see what we can do to help others level up around AI.
Todd Merrill (00:51.604)
yeah.
Bryan (00:59.422)
Welcome to the show.
Todd Merrill (01:00.194)
Yeah, yeah 80s. Wow. I feel like I should have some more gray hair than I do but it's underneath the cans here Yeah
Bryan (01:03.434)
I've got plenty here. Yeah. Well, I want to I want to jump into the first part of our conversation, the learning section, right? I mean, like I feel like I can't even sleep because there's something new coming out with AI every five minutes. So talk to us like just the past seven days. What have some of the stuff that you've been learning, playing with and geeking out with and just like your mind's been blown that really stood out to you?
Todd Merrill (01:29.474)
Yeah. Yeah. Great question. The MCP is the short answer to all that. And everybody there's such a gold rush, which is maybe not a great phrase, but I mean, there's it's an explosion of little things where everybody's piling on contributing in small and maybe not so small ways to the body of work that is AI. I think you talked to lot of VCs, private equity.
you know, operators, investors, and they're pushing it hard as, you know, some of them get it, some of them don't get it, but they all know that there's some form of AI somewhere that's gonna make a lot of things way more efficient. And, you know, I'm not sure I'm ready to go name an AI and put them in the org chart yet, but that's the mentality, right? And then so there's this tremendous pressure from on high for executives and then therefore directors and therefore managers, you know,
figure it out, right? And then so people who are on the front lines are having to figure this stuff out. for me, know, we've as software engineer background, right? We've had all these great tools forever and we're kind of looking at each other going, what's the big deal here? Like we've had all this stuff for a while. Big unlock for me was, you know, talking to some non-technical partners of ours in the sales and revenue marketing department. And the big unlock for me was
Now they have access to these tools potentially because it's natural language and you can just talk to the computer and tell it what you want because these people know what they want. They just know how to get it and how you know going from LLM to now reasoning and planning and we've been talking about you know planning expert systems or planning has been a part of this. know Timothy Leary in the 60s of LSD fame was also a renowned PhD computer science.
who actually started a lot of this AI stuff back in the day. So, you know, we're still talking about expert systems, we're still talking about planning. You you look at it like a model like, I don't know, Claude, right? So that's one of my favorite geeky things to mess with now. You know, there's LLM, it understands your language, figures out what you're talking about. Can now go and plan things. And then now we're adding the concept of tools to Claude, right? And then so this MCP model, context per call.
Bryan (03:51.868)
Mm-hmm.
Todd Merrill (03:56.118)
is a way for different tools. The things that you know and love, like Stripe or Google Docs or Calendar or Notion, you can now add these endpoints, much like us as software people. We had REST APIs. Every little SaaS startup had an shareable API. And then Swagger kind of came along. And that was a great way to describe these APIs.
in a way that other software people could then partner with you quickly. Give them a token, you meter it, right? And you make a little money. People could then compose these large SaaS systems. OK, you still got to have a hundred thousand dollars and a couple of geeks in the garage, you know, to to get that done now with MCP. It's just, you know, it's the same road, right? We're going a little bit further down. What gets me excited about it is you can now read it now self describes that endpoint.
Bryan (04:39.508)
That's right.
Todd Merrill (04:53.486)
There's probably a rest in point somewhere down the hole. But now it's a way for you to say, hey, I know about the following things. Ask me in natural language about the following types of problems. I provide the following kinds of services. And then so a model like Claude can come in and go, OK, I have the following tools at my disposal. I might have a couple of deep research web crawler things. I still have to compose a plan. I might go.
Bryan (05:08.543)
Yeah.
Todd Merrill (05:23.65)
You know, look at some some meeting notes. I might go look at some reviews, some emails from a particular client. I could pull all that stuff in, create a plan, think about it, maybe go do a little bit of web research myself. Come back in, refine the plan, ask the user clarifying questions. You know what's important about this or what's your background? It then goes out to LinkedIn and starts pulling stuff in from LinkedIn, even though you didn't tell it to right. He figures it out and then and then can compose these beautiful
Proposals or can automate, you know a workflow It's just really Amazing and I think that you know, I had a fellow on I have I have a podcast as well tales from the sky lounge So big plug for that, but I get to talk to really cool people. So one of the guys I talked to recently was Jeff Haney He's he's starting yet another company agent to a tee Typical Silicon Valley guy. He left Atlanta into it 2008 because he
Had trouble getting funding and he just couldn't go fast enough. So he went out to Valley one of those guys, right? Silicon Valley his actual startup was on the introduction to Silicon Valley, you know that show the cartoon animated So he did good and then so now he's in the good graces of you know Sequoia and in reason and all the big you know VC guys went out raised four million bucks like I don't know 12 12 weeks ago 10 10 weeks ago started coding and then so now he's
He's into what infrastructure support for agent-based frameworks. And I think for me, that was like, okay, what does that really mean? And I think, you know, the phrase that he said was, you he was at, he found a titanium at a time when the app store was first getting started and his concept was, it's like React Native, but he invented like the underlying technology where you write in JavaScript, decompile, know, compile it down and they put it.
you know, in the Play Store and the Apple Store. So he thinks there's going to be way orders, magnitude more agents like small little automations than there ever were apps in the app store. And if you think about it, now we have composability, now we have planning, now we have natural language intent. You know, we can talk to you in English, maybe not so much other languages, but you know, we're getting there. Wow, you know, what is
Todd Merrill (07:50.422)
What is that gonna do fundamentally to most businesses? Your marketing department is gonna be highly automated now. HubSpot is not gonna be a UI. HubSpot's gonna be mostly hit through an MCP interface probably or something like that. MCP seems to have won, that's why I'm geeking out on it.
Bryan (07:59.53)
Yeah.
Bryan (08:14.1)
But it's so fascinating because I feel like the SAS model is going to be replete. We're going to go back to the database. And we can just as humans say, hey, talk to the database. Get me this information. mean, it's just so fascinating because there are a couple of points I want to pull out what you said. Planning.
is the key to success on anything, right? I mean, like we know we have to turn the bolt on the spaceship rocket 17 and a half times. Every single one has to be triple checked to land it on Mars appropriately, right? So like that planning and detail is there and you said it so succinct. I saw a demo of Rohirrim's platform and they are taking planning and proposal responding to a whole new level. If you haven't checked that one out, it seems like it's an amazing upcoming platform.
think it was cat GPT who said something like, we now have given the masses the ability to build their dream because you don't need the developer. You don't need to go raise a hundred grand to build your MVP. like Figma make just launched recently. And it's just like, you go in, you build the Figma screen and you say, let's make that app now. So I think that's even going to be pushing cursor and some of these other tools out of the way. So, I mean, it's just so, so fascinating.
Todd Merrill (09:20.142)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Bryan (09:31.692)
on so many levels. I think you're spot-on with some of the things you've been geeking out and learning about in the past little bit for sure.
Todd Merrill (09:41.388)
And then, you know, just to address the complexity in the just tidal wave, you can't possibly keep up with all these innovations. It's so much and so broad. So I think the way to approach all this stuff is just to kind of get above it all, develop these basic skills for acquiring new technologies or new platforms or new, you know, whatever the new do-sure thing is.
Go experiment with it quickly. I don't think you go you have time to go super deep But hey AI can do that for you and then realize that hey a lot of stuff's gonna be 80 solution Right. So like that figma, right? We've all seen these code builder tools and they get better and better and better and better. They're never gonna Just replace your software team. You're gonna need a really good one or two software people to review that for your designer You 80 % you know, you're gonna have a mock-up
Bryan (10:20.351)
Mm-hmm.
Bryan (10:30.025)
Right.
Todd Merrill (10:39.662)
at the end of the day and that you can cut like I've seen things where you can cut and paste your favorite app and say replace this red with blue you know and then you know this is a system for blah blah blah and then you know you can go and do a pretty good job in Figma and then you can go tweak it out and then you can say okay get me a bare bones but then that 20 percent you still have to do right.
Bryan (10:47.754)
That's right.
Bryan (10:59.388)
It's, it's gonna. Yeah. And it's just going to usher in, in my mind, I'm not worried about AI. It's going to change the job landscape for sure, but it's going to totally open a new Renaissance era. have the utmost confidence in that happening. And like you said.
You know, you and me as leaders, we have to be a little bit of a jack of all trades. We have to know a little bit about business and this and that and marketing and all those things to help. But like, I feel like we were already at this level of specialization and now AI is taking us even further down this specialization path. So instead of needing a team of five devs, maybe we need a team of 10 because they're specialized in so many different places that are experts in AI. I don't know. It's just some working theories. We got to see how it all gets solved on that front, but I'm curious.
I'm like, if you move into the leveraging section of this, because I think that's what we're tipping into here, is like, you and me as leaders, we've learned these cool things. We just saw the announcement on Figma Make and some other things with MCP that's changing day to day rapidly. How do you and I take that and leverage what we've learned and put that knowledge to work with the teams that we are leading?
Todd Merrill (12:11.896)
Yeah, two examples. OK, so one encoding and then we'll talk about like a proposal generating for consulting. OK, so one for OK. So I don't know if you're familiar with Superbase. So Superbase is the open source clone of Firebase, the GCP Google Compute Cloud as a mobile developer. Right. So I go in and every couple of years I like, you know, do a project just to see, you know, soup to nuts. I'm going to bang it out this weekend. I get pretty far.
Bryan (12:23.742)
Mm-hmm.
Todd Merrill (12:41.366)
and then I hit a wall and then it's another year before I'm done. So this is one of those like, okay, it's time again. So SuperBase has an MCP endpoint. So you can literally go have a SuperBase running on Amazon one click install. I did this with one of my dev teams that I'm working with. said, hey, I know y'all looking at auth.
Bryan (12:43.134)
Yup, been there.
Todd Merrill (13:07.854)
In the cost of that with cognito versus, you know, Okta, you know off kinds of things for SSO once you look at super base tell me how easy it is and You know, that's essentially free because you're in on your own infrastructure and then so the the the software Developer took it and she like just banged it out in like an hour on the weekend And then it was able to quickly evaluate. Okay, so if it's that easy to spin up super base
You get you know database services you get off you get Secrets management you get I mean all the things that you'd want quickly to spin up You know the first iteration certainly of a basic business app right and there's there's a bunch of those That's not what I like doing I don't like going in sequel and like banging out like design table blah blah You know I could do that and have done it in the past. I really really don't want to do I don't enjoy that I just
Bryan (13:43.284)
Yeah.
Todd Merrill (14:04.334)
I know what it's supposed to look like at the end. I know what the business objects are. I know how they relate. Right. If I could just talk to, you know, do a little prompt, which is what I would do as a senior leader. I would go off and say, hey, guys, you know, this is my vision for the product. It's what we need. I thought about these details. I'm not sure about these other ones. Can you go figure it out and then just, you know, go do come back, show it to me when you're done. OK, now it's an AI assistant where I can just do it and just
done and then what kind of leverage is that? That's amazing leverage. And then you can do the same thing on the front end, right? So now we've got the super base infrastructure, Firebase infrastructure, essentially. Now I can do the same thing on the design side. I kind of know, like you should not hire me to pick out your drapes. I am not that kind of designer, right? Like these are ugly old, you know, I got to do something. But.
Bryan (14:54.9)
That's right, same here.
Todd Merrill (15:02.318)
But I know I can go, what do you do when you go to a marketing firm or design firm? They go, hey, you have any other apps or websites that you like? You say, well, I like LinkedIn, the way they do this, and I like Reddit, the way they do that. And if you can mash that up, and I hate red, and I like purple. OK, so that is now going to get leveraged into this new Figma make and things like it.
where he just kind of goes, brrroop, and you know.
Bryan (15:35.497)
And it's that extra thing too. I worked with one client and we agreed on this is what we kind of want to build. I went and did the planning in a deep research and part of the next level of planning I did was I said, give me the RAID prompts. R-A-A-I-D-E I think is that new automatic coding engine.
Todd Merrill (15:56.48)
It'll change next month, right? Yeah.
Bryan (15:57.907)
Yeah, exactly. It'll change next month. But I propped a couple of prompts in there and it went off and built the first thing. I double checked it. I've sent the second prompt in and it built the second piece. I mean, it's just just so, so powerful and fascinating for sure. Yeah, absolutely. Was there a second one you wanted to talk through?
Todd Merrill (16:11.886)
To get off the ground. Yeah. Yeah. And then so another thing that I did, you know, so everybody's you know, we're in the consulting business. So, you know, big part of it is good talks and people email back and forth a little bit. And then, you we all have voice recorder note taker, you know, like a whole constellation of these things. But they they end up with the transcript and maybe some summary points. So can you can you know, so I I went down the rabbit hole of, you know, how quickly could I generate
Bryan (16:19.656)
Yeah.
Bryan (16:30.847)
Great.
Todd Merrill (16:42.23)
A proposal like a five-page five-page well thought out proposal. So I had a lunch meeting with with a fellow that somebody brought me into small, smallish business, you know, five, five million a year kind of kind of business services. Well, it's think manufacturing kind of kind of thing. And they need to do a technology refresh from an access database, run their shop floor on an access database with a guy who checked out a while ago and, know.
Bryan (16:43.497)
Mm-hmm.
Todd Merrill (17:11.15)
They're kind of going, ah, you we need to fix this. so I went home and I said, OK, you know, I know what the solution is because I've been doing this forever. I really, God, I really don't want to write another term paper. You you know, that's why I got in software in the first place. So let's see what let's see what I can do with some of these tools. OK, so I set a tool off. I said, go research this company. It's this much money. They have these existing requirements.
The CEO is really concerned with this and they want to integrate with Salesforce. They think they want like NetSuite for financials, but they're not sure. Can you go off and do a deep research like perplexity, right? Can you go off and do a deep research on the web, go figure it out and give me alternatives, prices, timelines, estimates for the job and make a proposal that's five pages in the format of my company's
You know standard template output on it's on G Drive Google Drive and then I thought hell Mary. Let's see what happens. Holy hell it it did a really good job right now. I'm sure I'm going to have in it. You know, so what's the power of that as leverage if I can go have a lunch meeting? And then have that level of meaningful deep research that's probably pretty accurate, but you gotta be careful right?
Bryan (18:17.898)
Right?
Bryan (18:28.404)
Yeah.
Todd Merrill (18:40.014)
You know, there's still some things you gotta check.
Bryan (18:41.29)
But even if you record, if you ask and record the lunch conversation and you take the transcript and you feed that in, even if it gets at 80 or 90 % and you only have to spend a half an hour, it saved you countless hours and I think builds an amazing rapport with the client, right? So yeah, that's such an amazing use case.
Todd Merrill (18:58.762)
Exactly,
And then it writes the paper and structures it and has a thought process. And that's the part that is mentally taxing for me. Like, you know, that would take me an hour or two and I'd be drained and I really wouldn't have time to go do something else. I could kick off the AI assistant. know, I know what it needs to look like at the end. I know what the right answer is. You know, as an experienced executive, I just don't want to like cut and paste a bunch of stuff and go check some numbers, right? So kick it off, let it go, and then let it come back with the final, you know, proposed draft.
Bryan (19:25.673)
Yeah.
Todd Merrill (19:33.164)
not the final product but you know.
Bryan (19:35.935)
Yeah, I mean, as a huge as a huge science fiction guy, I'm just seeing all these books that I've read throughout the years coming to life now. And I'm just like, I I don't even want to go to sleep because I just want to play with these things all day long, 24 hours a day. I mean, you and I are leaders as we've talked about here. Like, let's round things out for the sort of last segment in my mind. The leadership piece. Like, how are you sharing this knowledge? I really appreciate coming on the show. I hope lots of people have learned some tips and tricks from Todd here. But how are you leveraging?
this in the teams that you're leading and helping others grow into this space because it's nobody has the AI in their resume and everybody needs to have it as soon as possible.
Todd Merrill (20:15.534)
Right. Well, and then so us, you know, I've got patents, you know, from A.I. in 2012, you know, for natural language processing. OK, so not nobody, but very I I hired a team of PhDs to get that done. Right. You know, at that point in time.
Bryan (20:27.634)
Right. But I guess it's these new tools like nobody's played with them all. Nobody knows exactly the right way to do it. Are you a prompt engineer yet? You know, those kinds of newer cutting edge things to leverage it. We know the working theories, right? So but yeah.
Todd Merrill (20:34.4)
Right. Well, yeah.
Yeah, then sure. Well, and then so we so very, very great question. How how how do we as technology leaders help our counterparts at this in the C suite to figure this out? Right. So we know CFOs that go in and they want to go analyze.
You a board you gotta create those board slides every month and it's always the same and then it's a column of numbers and then God you just put my eyes out. I don't want to create another bar chart or you know dashboard or like in marketing. It's like hey man, you know I I do coaching. And I have a call and then I want to have my note taker upload to the Google Drive and I want my thingy to pick it up and then I want to summarize some notes. I want to create a draft email for me so.
Bryan (21:26.026)
Yeah.
Todd Merrill (21:31.512)
Those are these tiny automated workflows. It's not the software engineering department in a major SaaS company. It's the IT department in these big companies that we're really able to affect. It's like all these little automations, all this business automation, power automate type tasks, they need a little bit of software expertise.
Bryan (21:47.838)
Mm-hmm.
Todd Merrill (21:56.632)
but more than zero, right? And then so you talk to these marketing people, you talk to these sales people, you talk to these finance people, they know what they want to do. They kind of think AI could do it because they saw a YouTube video of demo, which are kind of, know, some of them are contrived and some of are real, you know, so, but everybody's got this concept, but they need a little help and they don't understand, like they just need help figuring out the tools, getting the tools set up, seeing the art of possible. And I think we're less than six months away from this huge explosion.
Bryan (22:06.91)
great. Yep. Everywhere. Yep.
Todd Merrill (22:26.998)
where all of us that were in AI were information theory, graduate degree, like hardcore, like I don't wanna talk to marketing people. So we have to get that knowledge out. And that's where these guys like us, we're seasoned executives that are entrepreneurs as well. So you need people like us to go, okay, I understand this deep tech. It doesn't have to be that. And I also understand your marketing needs.
Bryan (22:34.122)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Todd Merrill (22:55.608)
and there's a little bit of help we can give you, help you set up your tools. And then how do you productize that, right? How do you institutionalize? How do you set up an MCP server? What the hell is that? so a little bit help and a little bit of understanding, a little bit of, it's almost like a pitch of we need to go evangelize what this stuff can do. So you need a tech buddy, you need a couple people who've been there, done that.
And I think it's a huge unlock for any organization to get a little bit of strategic technology help.
Bryan (23:31.371)
Yeah.
I love it. mean, it's so inspiring to see how you're creating this rippling effect in what leadership is doing and what it looks like as we're driving this forward in the community. This has been absolutely awesome, Todd, to hang out with you. Any other quick anecdotes? I wanted to throw like a couple of rapid fire questions at you, but you know, any other things you want to make sure you get out there, it's going to be changed by time in between now when this podcast actually launches, but I'm excited to
Todd Merrill (24:01.902)
Yeah.
Bryan (24:02.291)
to get some stuff out there.
Todd Merrill (24:04.536)
I think everybody, know, so Bill Gates was famous for, back in the day he would, he would take magazines and books and pile them up for a year. And then one weekend a year or week, I can't remember. He would go on a sailboat somewhere and then geek out. Like nobody come bother me. I'm going to go catch up on technology. Right. So obviously you can't wait a year and you can't spend a week. so everything's compressed now, but I think everybody's going to take snack breaks to go learn sharpen the saw.
Right, so go go take some of these things. They are bleeding edge. You will get cut when you're playing with them. That's OK, right? Figure out what the art of possible is and then just get conceptually up to speed with these things. I don't think you spend a week. I don't think you spend more than a couple days every month, but I do think you need to spend half a half a weekend day just futzing with it just to see where it is right and then go go make some friends like us.
You know, we'll help you. We'll help you figure it out and get some help. Get a coach to help you up that technology learning curve.
Bryan (25:04.938)
That's right. That's right.
Bryan (25:11.05)
And that's exactly why we're putting this podcast together. AI with Bry is going to have an amazing community and some ways to pour in. If you want some one-on-one stuff, I know both Todd and I would love to speak with you and help you unlock AI. Some rapid fire questions for you real quick as we close this out. What is your number one favorite AI tool right now?
Todd Merrill (25:33.134)
I've spent a unreasonable amount of time with Claude desktop in the last week
Bryan (25:37.692)
Okay. And five years in the future, AI, optimistic or cautious?
Todd Merrill (25:46.478)
It's going to be everywhere. Somewhere short of we need to harness the power of the sun with a Dyson Sphere to power all the AI, which is what some of these people are talking about. I think I love the power curve, the S curve of Gartner, the hype cycle. So AI is here to stay. It's been here a long time. We're going to do a little better. We're definitely over the top.
And we're about head in the trough of disillusionment. And then we're to come rapidly back up the other side and figure out what this stuff's good for. So I think that's the point where I'm going to lead it. You know, as a technology leader, I've already gone through that trough of disillusionment, and now I'm excited again. You know, you expect the world to kind of follow. So it's not going to be AIs magic going to solve everything. It's going to be a nice tool with limitations.
Bryan (26:16.425)
Yeah.
Bryan (26:31.071)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Todd Merrill (26:41.878)
and practical applications. figure it out.
Bryan (26:44.212)
love it. All right, last one. What is one thing that humans will always do better than AI?
Todd Merrill (26:52.268)
Hmm well, so I've been thinking about this a lot lately. So this this new generation I call him the iPhone generation might my sons are 20 and 22 right so they were born when I was before Born just before the iPhone came out and when I was born just after that whole generation of kids grew up with a tablet in their hand at the Mexican restaurant because mom and dad are too busy for you know to deal so
They are going to have a huge backlash. Like right now you've seen video game addiction, online addiction. don't get out. Psychologists are scared that they don't form deep meaningful relationships. They go thin and broad, but they are so connected to each other all day every day. It's ridiculous. So I think what people do is form deep meaningful relationships. They take the time to understand things. They understand emotional.
intelligence and it's the why are we doing this right so AI can never do the why or the philosophy behind things and I think our that the next generation alpha behind the iPad generation is going to rebel hard hardcore against like so you talked to my my 20 year old he said man dad I'm my kids are not going to have a phone like until like like that was that was bad
Bryan (27:53.258)
Yeah
Bryan (28:12.648)
Right.
Todd Merrill (28:16.44)
So I think there's gonna be, you know, it's a pendulum. Everything's a pendulum. know, so we went too far to the online addiction side. Now we're gonna go way back over to the, let's go hiking and start a fire with no signal. But you know, there's a happy middle. So I think Pete.
Bryan (28:26.548)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bryan (28:30.602)
I'm looking forward to taking the kids camping this weekend and I have a one year old so I'm way behind you on the kid front and it's I don't know if she'll actually learn to use a keyboard. You know what mean? Like she may be of the generation where you know maybe the iPad a little bit but like she may just talk to it forever or visually symbol to it. I don't know. So it's so fascinating.
Todd Merrill (28:51.182)
Well, I talked to my 22 year old and I said, you're the last generation that's going to have to learn how to drive, you because your kids probably won't. I think it's the same thing, right? But she'll still have friends. I don't know what computing is going to look like or augmentation or any of stuff. She'll still have to have friends. She'll still have to meet a guy, right? At some point form a family. know, none of that stuff's online. Right. And then hopefully we use AI to free us to have more time to go camping and light a marshmallow on fire.
Bryan (28:56.382)
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Bryan (29:10.014)
Yep. Yep. That's right.
Bryan (29:19.614)
That's right. I certainly hope so as well.
Todd Merrill (29:19.936)
and impress the kids,
Bryan (29:23.028)
Todd, thank you so much for joining me today. I loved hearing your take on learning, leveraging, and leading with AI. If you're listening and enjoyed this episode, do me a favor, follow the podcast, please leave us a review, or share it with somebody who wants to grow with AI. You can find more about Todd at talesfromtheskylounge.com, and I'll link everything we mentioned in today's show in the notes. And thanks again, Todd, for being here.
Todd Merrill (29:49.912)
Yeah, always fun Bryan. You know, we'll we'll come back in like six months and everything will be completely different, but it'll be all the same. Yeah, yeah.
Bryan (29:54.472)
Yeah, I would love to. Yeah. So, yeah. Again, I'm Bryan Dennstedt and this is AI with Bry. We'll see you next week. And remember for the future, the future doesn't wait. Learn, leverage and lead with AI.
