The Future of AI in the Workplace | Special Episode (Mike Sullivan and Vinay Gidwaney)

**Benjamin Felix** (0:00)
If you can pivot within a company to take advantage of the new technology, you don't have to get left behind.

**Vinay Gidwaney** (0:05)
Now, the crazy thing is, is that you have the best possible tool known to human beings to expand your intelligence.

**Mike Sullivan** (0:12)
Because unlike in times past, this I think ends badly for all of us if everyone doesn't put in the work to help.

**Benjamin Felix** (0:25)
This is The Rational Reminder Podcast, a weekly reality check on sensible investing and financial decision making from two Canadians. We are hosted by me, Benjamin Felix, Chief Investment Officer and Cameron Passmore, Chief Executive Officer at PWL Capital.

**Cameron Passmore** (0:37)
Welcome into a special episode of The Pod. This week, we welcome two members of the executive leadership team of OneDigital. We welcome Mike Sullivan, who is co-founder and the Chief Growth Officer here at OneDigital, and also a very dear friend of you, Ben and myself, and also Vinay Gidwaney, who is the Chief Product Officer at OneDigital and a fellow Canadian.
They joined us to talk about a book that was just released that they wrote, called Workforce Intelligence, the People First Playbook for Leading Your Company Through AI Transformation. Now, while I know this isn't a normal topic for this podcast.

**Benjamin Felix** (1:23)
I don't know, man. I was worried about this. I was worried about this is not a fit for sensible investing in financial decision making. But then we have this conversation with Mike and Vinay. It's like this stuff affects everyone. It affects employers. It affects employees. It affects financial markets. Absolutely. The book is about what is the best way for businesses to use AI, to adopt AI. It's like the world is changing because AI is a new technology that has become ubiquitous very quickly. Everyone is using it. We are using it every day.
Stuff is moving way faster. I mean, from a technology perspective and a technology product perspective within PWL, stuff is moving faster now. We couldn't have even conceived of this five years ago.

**Cameron Passmore** (2:09)
Two years ago. It's incredible. Right.

**Benjamin Felix** (2:11)
Two years ago.

**Cameron Passmore** (2:12)
But it's such an expansive view of what's possible. That's what's so amazing about it. We are better because of this. Our service is better. The clients are better served.
Our advisors are better trained. There's a better feedback loop.

**Benjamin Felix** (2:27)
This is the question. This is what they're talking about in the book is, AI is a big deal. That's a premise. I don't think anyone will disagree with that. No. Without premise. What should companies do? There are a couple of things that you can do. You can cut headcount and let AI replace people, which I think is a lot of the narrative out there in tech land. Or you can figure out how to make your people better with AI as a resource, and how to create a positive feedback loop between AI and your employees and your people.
They give a playbook. Keeping in mind that these are two executives managing a 6,000 employee company that is largely in the employee benefits business. Their clients are also employers.
So the idea of how do employers best use humans is very important to them, both for their own company, but also for how all of their clients are going to fare going forward from an employment perspective.

**Cameron Passmore** (3:25)
It's such a nice pro-human view of the world, which I find frankly refreshing. As Vinay said, do you really think we're going to run out of problems that need to be solved? There will be dislocation.
But every technological revolution has some dislocation. But if this can help us do a better job of solving problems, and I agree, I don't necessarily think there'll be an end to all problems, we need people to help solve this.

**Benjamin Felix** (3:52)
I get excited throughout the conversation a few times, I mean, quite a few times because the stuff that they're talking about with respect to how companies should be using AI is stuff that we are doing right now. We are finding ways to make our human financial planners and portfolio managers be able to work better, more strategically, work on better things, better use of their time, while giving better service to our clients. And some of that's been retraining, some of that has been retraining, figuring out how to use these tools, some of it has been creating tools that our team can use.
I have historically been, and relative to maybe the idea that AI is gonna replace everybody, I'm still a little bit of a skeptic, but I'm less and less skeptical, the more that I use AI and the more that I see the way that our team has been able to use it to create tools and systems and processes that are just gonna make us and are making us so much better.