How AI Can Build The Life You Want: Achille Ettorre (Transcript)

Here is the full transcript of Achille Ettorre’s talk titled “How AI Can Build The Life You Want” at TEDxWesternU conference.

SUMMARY: AI expert Achille Ettorre’s inspiring talk, “How AI Can Build The Life You Want,” delves into the transformative power of artificial intelligence in both personal and professional spheres. He begins by reflecting on his own journey, emphasizing that his achievements were not solo efforts but were made possible through collaborations with bright minds worldwide.

Ettorre highlights the critical role of AI in making informed decisions, drawing from his extensive experience in leveraging AI for corporate strategy and personal growth. He shares insights into merging passions for career and family through a passion project, illustrating how AI aids in balancing these aspects seamlessly. Furthermore, Ettorre outlines a foundational approach to success involving people, process, and technology, stressing the importance of prioritizing these elements in that order.

He also discusses the benefits of AI in personal life, such as enhancing vacation planning through advanced AI tools. The talk concludes with Ettorre advocating for trust, authenticity, and networking, underscoring the importance of building character and community in the age of AI.

Listen to the audio version here:

TRANSCRIPT:

The Value of Life and AI’s Impact

I’m going to ask you a question. What do you value? Do you value time? Do you value money? Do you value flexibility? What is it in your life that you value and what is it that you want to create within your life?

This morning, I’d like to talk to you about my journey and how AI has helped me create a better life. And I’ll be honest with you, when I started, it wasn’t called AI. I think it was called big data.

Actually, if I go back to my first experience, circa 1985, a few years back, about a minute, I was involved in an enrichment program in my elementary school.

I got shipped out on a bus, brought to a class, and we got to program a big turtle.

Now, for those of you that weren’t around during that time, that was fundamentally a big thing to get that experience because programming language and programming in Cobalt or Java was such an advanced program that’s not available today. But let me show you something on how I explain the definition of artificial intelligence.

The artificial intelligence in that instance was literally programming that robot to do this. Now hear me out. Not that impressive. It took me a while to get that triangular, that circular, that rectangular motion, but I did it. It took a couple days. Now, think about how artificial intelligence has changed. Simply put, my definition to you is that artificial intelligence is taking routine, mundane tasks and automating them, replicating them to scale so that you can be more productive, do more things, add value, and what I like to call create a better life.

A Journey of Balance and Transformation

Now, creating a better life, as it resonates with me in the journey that I want to put you through, resonates in two folds. And it’s managing that balancing act, the career, life, career, life. Now truth be told, Achille’s struggled with this over his life. He’s focused all in on his career. He’s focused all in on his family, but he’s really made some significant ground roads in change so that he can run a passion project, something that I do today that I’ll get on a little later.

As you’ve heard, I am an alumni from the University of Western Ontario, purple and proud. When I was here my first year, I resonated with all of you that are making certain decisions today, and some of those decisions are picking the right program, applying for that job, finishing that 48-hour business report. I remember doing those things, and it was not like it was today.

Back then, I’d have to run to campus and put the paper in, where today you digitally submit it. Profound differences that I’m sure if you can’t appreciate it, I certainly can. And I find that in all these things that you can make a powerful decision or structure your life in such a way that you can capitalize on that productivity, I’ve chosen to try and veer back into a life where I can put forth back into my family. Let me give you an example.

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My first job was with a robotics company. I learned a tremendous amount about automation. That was my first formal touchpoint with artificial intelligence. It wasn’t called that. But we literally automated factories across the country. I did not know what that role prepped me for, but it put me in a Kaizen-type framework that when I moved forth, and as you heard, I grew up in supply chain working for a company, working for a blue company. And this blue company brought groceries to Canada, and I worked on Project Tampa. And what Project Tampa did was teach me that integral networks and all the different touchpoints a supply chain has to maintain in order to become effective.

Personal Growth Amidst Professional Achievements

Now, this supply chain was one of the best in the world, so I had the opportunity to work with many different tools, many different smart people, and work on a lot of strenuous processes. I do remember that one day, it was February 21st, I sat in a room, and the most proudest moment of my life happened. I became a dad, first time. And I recall being in that room, and the phone was ringing, and the kids were there, and I’m trying to help my wife, and I’m trying to do all these things.

And I’m thinking to myself, I wasn’t thinking this about the turtle, but I’m thinking to myself that, you know, when I programmed the turtle, it was very exciting. Having children is one of the most rewarding things that you’ll ever, ever experience. But I had one of these things that, oh, where is it, hasn’t gone off, where is it? I had one of these things. Any of you recall what this is? That’s the most sophisticated tool that every single one of you probably have, own, or using, maybe even looking at right now. And I was on my phone.

The myth of the phoenix tells me this isn’t right. I’m soaring too far in one direction, and I’m actually, I’m soaring high on the career side, and I’m soaring high on the life side. This is not something I can maintain. I had to make a change. Do any of you ever need to make a change? Do you need to change career paths? Do you need to take a step back to methodically think about what it is that you want to do? Don’t all answer at once.

I’m going to suggest that you have, and if you haven’t, you probably will, because no path and no one’s journey is like this. It’s just not feasible in this day and age. But what AI does to help you, and what AI provides, is an opportunity for you to collaborate a whole bunch of information so that you can make an informed decision. And I made one of the most tremendous juxtapoint decisions in my life. I quit my job and went to the competitor.

Embracing Change and Innovation

Now this will happen to you. It may not, but it will. And in that juxtapoint, in that position where I had to recreate myself in a new company where we live life well, I spent the better part of 10 years working on another supply chain network redesigned. I worked on something else called Red Robin. And Red Robin was one of the biggest mergers acquisitions that Canada has ever seen.

Now this Red Store integrating into our network was something of phenomenal magnitude. I can tell you quite frankly that thank goodness we had teams of very smart people that did a lot of heavy lifting. Thank God we had a lot of other colleagues that helped us get to where we needed to get to.

Reflecting on a Collaborative Journey

But when I step back and look at my journey, that journey wasn’t one that was done alone. And if it was done alone, I wouldn’t have gotten far. And I think you know the cliché. I was able to learn and network with some of the brightest people across the globe. And providing that network of 2,500 locations the information that they needed in order to make good sound decisions. This will resonate with you on every decision you make in your life, whether it’s a good one or a bad one.

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You will balance between career and life in such a way that the more information you have, it’s like counting cards. You don’t know what the outcome is going to be, but you’re managing the probability in your favor so that you can make an informed decision.

Now I’m going to circle back because I’ve talked a little bit about my career path and what I’ve done corporately. The other thing that resonates with me in terms of my journey and how I had to rebirth and recreate myself is I just didn’t become an expert in AI. Quite frankly, I’m not so sure there’s too many experts out there, right? There’s a very select few. But I am an enthusiast. I do learn. I do take the time to work at it every day. Building that craft and at 1% every day provides not only myself but yourself to do great things, which ultimately led or leads me into the path that I’m heading in the later part of my career.

Merging Passions and Facing Challenges

I’ve literally taken my career passion and my family life passion and bridged them together. And that’s my passion project. My passion project allows me to work with my family business that started about 15 years ago with my family, with my brother, alongside our colleagues that have been with us for a number of years.

And I’m able to give things a different look, a different lens. And I’ve shifted again. And that shift has been a tough one because sometimes you feel that you’re stepping back like you are when you don’t get into that program or you don’t get that first job. But as you work through things and as you build programs, loyalty programs, CRM programs, go-to-market programs, email campaigns, sales forecast, this forecast, optimize, I feel like my brother’s in the audience and he’s staring me down. I can just see the eyes at me.

But what resonates with me in all this is that I wouldn’t be able to provide the level of sophistication or, quite frankly, “commonsensication” that allows me to do things at a level where everyone understands. So there’s journey, and it’s been a good one. And I think there’s other chapters to be written. But so what? Everyone’s got a journey. I’ve literally just told you that no one’s got a clearer path. I’ve suggested to you what the definition of artificial intelligence was. I’ve asked you a couple questions. So what? How do you do it?

The Pillars of Success: People, Process, Technology

Here’s something that I’ve thought about and I’ve kind of refined over the number of years that I’ve been in my position. And there’s three characteristics or three themes that literally provide the foundation for any type of work that you do or anything that you want. And it does involve AI. But it’s not the first thing. The first is people. The second is process. And yes, the third is technology, which involves AI.

But the problem is a lot of people want to start here. You kind of want to run before you crawl. I would tell you and I would suggest to you that I would literally, not in this order by the way, but what I found that works best for me was you invest in people. Surround yourself with the right people.

At your stage, I would look for mentors. I would look for people that have done things. I would look for them to inspire you and do what it is that you want to do. And whatever you choose is always a learning experience, whether it’s a good experience or a bad experience, because you never know when you’ll run into those people down the road or you’ll never know what you’ll learn from them, not at that given time, but in another moment in time.

The next is process. Once you’ve figured people out, and people are tough, right? But you’re always learning. You’re always learning. You’re working with them. You’re playing different roles within different groups, getting things done. You want to take processes in whatever it is that you’re doing.

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I would argue that no successful artificial intelligence program has made significant in-grounds without seriously investing in solid processes. I’m not going to talk to you about data architecture. I’m not going to talk to you about CRMs. I’m not going to talk to you about data lakes, but I’ll tell you this. If you don’t understand how this data point moves through your system to get to here, you have to sit down and figure it out, because the magic, the magic happens here, but that’s only 5% of the work. 95% of the work happens here. 95% happens in here, and it’s hard work.

But man, how powerful it is when you buy two large organizations and you know every single item that’s put into a large system that literally resonates to 200 colleagues across Canada which have a million visitors every year. It literally gives us the foundation or gave me the foundation to build that loyalty program. So I came into my own business with a lot of confidence in terms of what I can do. I came with the confidence because you know what? I did it here, so I should be able to do it here.

We are doing it, by the way, but the journey is a little different than the one over here. But as we progress and we make 1% gains every day, that’s a 37% increase of productivity over one year. That’s interesting. That’s 37%. What are you going to do with all your free time? I would suggest get more customers, maybe take a vacation. Vacation.

Let me tell you about AI and vacation. The younger Achille did take his vacation and was able to travel the world and do a lot of different things with his family and it was great. I’m fortunate that my wife did a lot of the planning for those vacations and we had a tremendous time. I have one leg up on her now. I’m able to utilize AI to create itineraries to something called Gen N, private GPTs that allow you to basically visit any part of the world and suggest anything that you want. I’m actually pretty good at it.

Now there’s always a difference on what you get and what you want to do, but at least now I’m part of the conversation. Thanks, T. That vacation piece, the other part is anyone ever see, I’m sure a lot of you have this bike. It’s a bike you can go on. It’s got a big screen. The AI in that, when you pick your vacation, you can literally go through all the towns and you can go through all the villages that you’re at. Profound. Profound.

As a close out, in terms of what it is that AI has done for me, I’m going to talk to you about the things that have built the character that I think should reside in you. In whatever you do, look at building trust, trust within your organization, trust within your family. It’s the number one thing. It resonates with integrity. Authenticity, be authentic, be real. Your real self is there. There’s no one else other than you.

And then the last thing is look beside each other. In the next few years you guys are going to go out into the real world and do something and do something special. Get to know each other. Network. You never know when someone will need a helping hand. Thank you.