Nancy Unravels AI

Nancy Giordano is an exponential strategist, business futurist, and bestselling author who has consulted on a portfolio of $60+ billion well-known brands and given more than 100+ global keynotes.

Nancy is also the author of Amazon bestselling book, Leadering: The Ways Visionary Leaders Play Bigger. Nancy is a frequent panelist at South by Southwest, global keynote speaker, Singularity University guest lecturer, and the world’s first TEDx licensee. She is recognized as one of the world’s top female futurists, and is co-founder of the Femme Futurists Society.

Her expertise and experiences range from AI, to frozen foods, to reinventing the internet, and all of her projects have a key common denominator: transitioning away from the extractive operating systems and outdated business thinking that no longer holds up... to create the more sustainable, inclusive and dynamic solutions the future demands.

I met Nancy through a post focused on diversifying the predominantly male voices in AI (shortly after the infamous all male NYT Who's Who in AI list). And, I am so excited to share her perspectives and experiences with you!?

About Nancy

Name: Nancy Giordano

Pronouns: She/her/hers

Occupation: Exponential Strategist/Futurist + Keynote Speaker

Industry: Luckily, my work connects to every industry!

Location: Austin, TX

AI Tools:?

• ChatGPT Pro, Otter.ai, Notion, Canva, Podcastle.ai, Davinci Resolve, Adobe Firefly and YouTube Closed-Captioning

How would you rate your AI knowledge??

7

What sparked your interest in AI??

For most of my career, I have focused on helping business leaders see the opportunities in changing conditions and better prepare for the shifts or disruptions ahead. As a TED attendee and early TEDx organizer, I heard a lot about the potential of AI and have followed its progress closely. When about eight years ago I became really frustrated with how slowly big, iconic organizations were moving into the future, I decided it was important for me to leap there myself, and I eagerly joined an experienced team hoping to bring AI pioneer Doug Lenant's approach of contextual AI to the commercial world.?

Though I had no technical experience and was a liberal arts major with a professional background in advertising, brand strategy and conference production, I was very lucky to receive my earliest AI education directly from Doug and his team as I worked with some of the best in the field to build a dynamic, fluid, inclusive, highly ethical and supportive organization.?

We were ahead of our time, and new breakthroughs in deep learning and neural networks changed the game. That said, I learned so much from Doug and our deeply experienced colleagues on when and how to apply AI to business challenges, the ethical and safety considerations, how to train others and accelerate organizational adoption, and most importantly, what it takes to build a new kind of AI-led company to support quickly advancing probabilistic technology that works very differently than typical SasS solutions.?

For the past several years, I've been an advisor to a fast growing, thoughtful AI-services company based in Austin called Kungfu.ai. There, I contributed to framing the company's culture, and remain engaged on the ethical framing necessary for safe and successful development, as well as how to build our client's internal transformative capacity so that the introduction of AI is met with curiosity and enthusiasm vs skepticism, fear and rejection. It is worth noting that both of these issues – ethics and adoption -- are highly people (vs simply tech) issues, which is something we often overlook. It is so critical that we have folks with all kinds of backgrounds and experiences building our AI pathways.?

What are you most excited about when it comes to AI?

It is important to appreciate just how vast a technology AI is and how it will continue to take many forms and shapes as it is applied across everything from language translations and analyzing conversations with our doctors to self driving cars and drones, to optimizing food production and water usage to personalizing education (and clothing) to developing new medicines and materials. It can offer faster diagnoses and new forms of renewable energy generation and distribution and so much more. Generative AI is a hugely exciting breakthrough and the tip of the iceberg of what is to come as we learn to work with our own AI agents and spatial computing devices to make sense of the world around us.?

While I am looking forward to all the above -- especially instantaneous translations as we travel around the world (how awesome will that be?!) -- I get most optimistic when I think of how this will allow us to untangle really complex, highly systemic challenges like better understanding and healing our bodies, how we can rebuild a more human, distributed internet, and how to find more sustainable energy and carbon drawdown solutions.?

I am becoming increasingly excited about how AI will be able to make sense of growing zettabytes of data to show how connected we actually are to one another, enabling us to?zoom out to see the magnificent global super-organism that humanity actually is.?

Nancy’s 24 hours with AI?

Quick aside -- AI is embedded in most applications these days, so we all use AI all day long; including my Tesla, my Nest, Waze, Spotify + Netflix recommendations, email filtering, social media news feeds (and ads), banking security, etc.?

MORNING

Every day is different as my team and I try to help others wrap their heads and hearts around a changing world… but no matter what time or city I wake up in, I first pick up my phone to see if my kids or partner have sent notes, and smile at the Google photo memories that pop up spontaneously. <3

AI is increasingly embedded in every aspect of our lives, but it is also interesting to think about all the specific apps trying to help us get through our days. For example, I try to get out the door as often as possible for a walk and appreciate all the stats my watch tracks. When traveling I use things like WalkMyMap to find safe and interesting paths near my hotel and Yelp for reliable vegetarian recommendations; I try niche apps but end up going back to Google to help me find the most interesting neighborhoods. Spotify keeps me up-to- date with new podcast recommendations.??

AFTERNOON

As a picky traveler, I do all my own planning and booking and spend at least an hour obsessively using Kayak, Rome2Rio, Airbnb and ChatGPT to optimize each trip. I am grateful for Uber and translation apps like iTranslate to help me get around.

When home in Austin, I excitedly tested my neighbor’s shiny new home decorating app HomeKynd, an AI home decorating/space planning tool used by realtors for virtual staging. I am currently re-envisioning my home office (which a designer once quoted me $13k to do!).

Last week, I introduced her to another friend building a city-relocation guide that will help digital nomads and retirees pinpoint which places in the world they most belong in. Sitting together on my deck, we discussed the pains and joys of being women tech founders. As an advisor and champion for various AI start-ups, I love making connections like this; today I introduced my local independent bookstore to a friend who I think can help find a completely new low-code AI solution for an inventory control problem.

For my own work, my small team and I dedicate a little time each day to trying a new tool like brilliant.ai to help design our slides, or one that turns my handwriting into a font we can now use in every presentation. We also love recording new Femme Futurist Society interviews, using Otter.ai for immediate transcripts. Davinci Resolve helps us edit these more quickly and it’s been the coolest surprise to see how many young women are finding inspiration when we share this kind of content or my views of the future on TikTok. We are training our dedicated “Leadering” GPT and working on a new open-source AI guide that will make women’s foresight more easily accessible -- as we could all use more of this wisdom in building a better next.

EVENING?

An admitted info/experience junkie, I’m grounded every night by sitting quietly at sunset wherever I am. As it goes down I count my blessings, send love to all I am lucky to have in my life and peace to all around the world suffering. As the sun ducks over the horizon, I then ask it to take whatever negative feeling I’ve had that day with it over the edge to release me, so I am free and ready to dive in again as clear a channel as possible. I am so grateful be a part of all that is shifting at this moment in time as we all work to build a safe and thriving future. And then I sit quietly at night either connecting with my family + friends around the world via zoom or writing about how all this can work much better ahead. Xo?

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I'm Amanda Halle , author of Unraveling AI. You can call me Amanda, Mands, or AJ (my middle name is Jane). I've been in and around the HR/people space my entire career and started my solopreneur journey 2.5 years ago. I focus on fractional people support, advisory in HR and AI, and project-based work primarily in the L&D niche from my years in leadership consulting and change management.