MidDays with Gerard Gibert 2026-09-16

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Get ready to go beyond the headlines and join a meaningful conversation with people from around the state. You're listening to MidDays with Gerard Gibert here on SuperTalk Mississippi.

Gerard Gibert (1:02)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to MidDays. SuperTalk Mississippi, I'm your host, Gerard Gibert, along with Rhino in the Element Wealth Studio, guiding you through the middle of your day with facts, fodder, and fine music on this hump day. Well, what about it there, Rhino?

Rhino (1:21)

It's still hot.

Gerard Gibert (1:22)

Yes, it is. I'm sick of it. Had a little day off yesterday, very enjoyable. Was privileged to speak to a large group of high school students down in Foxworth, Mississippi. Wasn't really familiar with the town of Foxworth until I was invited to speak there. It's about 10 miles outside of Columbia, Mississippi in Marion County. This is the Columbia Leadership Academy. Really pretty cool deal. It's like a number of high school students from around the area that are invited to participate in this program. I'm not sure how often they go to this particular venue. It's called Camp Sojourn. Really nice, brand new place. And we were in the main building there on the little campus. And so I had an opportunity to talk to about 55, 60 high school students about leadership and life in general. And as I've said before, I will always clear the schedule and accommodate an opportunity to speak to young folks. Impressive young folks. I just want to point that out. These were really impressive young people. And it kind of renews the optimism and one's spirit about the future of our country when you are in our state, when you're able to be with these young people and interact with them.

And a couple of them had a journalism interest. I had to explain.

I'm sort of a neophyte journalist, if you would even call it that. I'm a business person, obviously, that just happens to be privileged to sit behind this mic and be with you every day and engage in a little bit of opinion journalism. But that was cool that you got high school students thinking about a couple asked me about careers in IT. One asked me about an opportunity they had to do to be an intern at a non-profit. Didn't tell me who that was, and asked, you know, how should I approach people? They're going to have me out raising money, which is what non-profits do. And I kind of shared my thoughts on that. But anytime young people are willing to ask, maybe somebody like me who's made all the mistakes, not that I got everything figured out, what I got figured out is what not to do. That's the one thing you can say after you bank a few birthdays is what you attain, and I talk about this in my remarks. You attain some wisdom. And you know how you do that? You make a bunch of mistakes. It's how you get wise. The key, of course, is don't do that again. That's stupid.

It's nice to say to err as human to make the same mistake twice is stupid. But nonetheless, I just want to give a shout out to those folks down there. And just so impressed with them. And Logan White is the individual who is in charge of that organization. I think this is a good thing. Get out of the traditional high school classroom setting and join up with other folks your age, your peers, and enjoy some activities, some instructional, educational activities, but maybe hear some remarks from some people that got a few gray hair, and maybe something you'll hear that inspires you. And I will say this, they were taking notes. I was so impressed. They were taking notes. They'd see something they liked on the screen or something. I was saying like, wow, this is great that you're actually recording this for future reference. And again, I didn't invent all this. I just made all the mistakes and recovered, I shall say, from them. So shout out to them. And then had an AI Task Force meeting yesterday, State of Mississippi AI Task Force, that was commissioned by the legislature in 2025 And we got together at Camp Shelby and focused mainly on cybersecurity. How timely is that to be talking about cybersecurity? And great, great team we have there. The leaders from our House and Senate, that would be Representative Jill Ford, who co-chairs along with Senator Bart Williams, this AI Task Force, and we got lots of brain power in there. And that was fun. We had a presentation, how timely is this, from someone representing open AI and talking about the tools they have, is cyber security, AI-powered cyber security tools for government, specifically. And, you know, that's just a cat and mouse game. One thing you can't do in cyber security is check the box and say, okay, I'm covered. No, you're never fully covered. You should always be nervous because the bad guys are smart, and they have access to lots of powerful tools. And just as soon as you think you got it licked, they come along with something that overtakes and penetrates what you've put in place such that it's no longer useful, and you better up your game. And that's exactly kind of what's going on with this whole debate around artificial intelligence.