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#179 What is agentic AI and what do communicators need to know about it? (ft. Bosco Anthony)

33m 55s

#179 What is agentic AI and what do communicators need to know about it? (ft. Bosco Anthony)

In this podcast episode, host Mel interviews Bosco Anthony, a transformational digital strategist and CEO of multiple global agencies including GRG. Bosco shares his extensive expertise in AI adoption, marketing, and communications, emphasizing that we are in the midst of a rapid technological shift that requires professional communicators to adapt quickly. He explains that AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are utility tools designed for human dependency, but the key differentiator is how well communicators can orchestrate them through sophisticated prompt engineering. Bosco introduces the concept of agentic AI, describing how GRG has implemented robotic agents to handle international student inquiries outside Australian time zones, booking appointments and providing support when humans are unavailable. He stresses that AI is not coming for jobs but for inefficiencies and excuses, and that the real threat is stagnation, not technology itself. Bosco addresses ethical concerns around deepfakes and voice cloning, noting that while the technology exists, businesses must make responsible choices and create guide rails. He recommends three priorities: AI literacy through innovation workshops, sophisticated prompt engineering skills, and developing premium human skills like empathy, judgment, and quality control. Bosco encourages listeners to embrace experimentation and ask what they could achieve with AI if they knew they couldn't fail, shifting from fear-based thinking to possibility-driven action.

Transcription

6129 Words, 33689 Characters

English
Speaker 1We are in an AI world and things are moving so quickly, it can be really hard to keep up. As professional communicators and change managers, we are in the thick of it, whether it's exploring the tools ourselves or helping others to adapt and change. But are we really using AI to its full potential? What else could we be doing? And what could the future hold for our professions in this AI era? It's because of those questions that for today's episode, I interviewed the one and only Bosco Anthony. Bosco is a transformational digital strategist, international TEDx speaker, disruptive storyteller, and marketing futurist with extensive experience in corporate leadership and communications. As the CEO and managing partner of multiple global agencies and consultancies, including GRG, Access China, Boss & Co, and Fensum Advisory, he brings a dynamic mix of expertise in technology adoption, public relations, communications, marketing, and advertising, and he's also the CEO and managing partner of multiple global agencies and consultancies, including GRG, Access China, Boss & Co, and Fensum Advisory. With a remarkable ability to inspire, Bosco equips audiences with the insights and strategies needed to thrive in an evolving marketplace. He assists his clients in navigating critical thinking from what is to what if to embrace the superhuman era. In this conversation, Bosco shares some of what he and his team are working on at the forefront of AI in marketing, PR, and comms, what's worrying him, and what excites him about AI. Honestly, Bosco and I could have nerded out about this stuff for hours, and I could have gone down so many rabbit holes, but luckily for you, dear listener, I did not. But you will still find this episode packed with golden nuggets. So without further ado, here's Bosco. Welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter.
Speaker 2Thanks for having me, Mel.
Speaker 1It is a pleasure to finally have you on the show. We've known each other a little while, but for the people who are listening who may not know who you are, tell us a bit about you. Who are you? What do you do? How do you come to develop your expertise in that space?
Speaker 2I am Bosco Anthony. I am a CEO of a progressive performance media agency called GRJ. I also have a few other agencies as well. I'm a marketer by trade, a storyteller by instinct, and a futurist by curiosity. Oh, I like that.
Speaker 1Very good. And when you say you've had a few other, you've got a few other agencies. You've worked around the world, haven't you? Tell us a bit about that.
Speaker 2So I've been fortunate enough to, I'm an immigrant as well, but I was born in Tanzania, moved to Vancouver in 2002, spent about 18 years there at an agency and then exited out and moved here around 2020, I want to say 2019. And this was just before the apocalypse. And I decided to call Australia home. And yeah, so I started off my consultancy again here. I'm consulting a few different groups, the PR and communication firm. I have my own supply chain. We have an agency in China as well now that we set up shop in, and then we have the performance media agency and a few other businesses as well. So I don't sleep much, but I do rely on robots every day.
Speaker 1Well, let's get into that because that's why I wanted to talk to you today. When we think about AI right now, most people are probably thinking about tools like ChatGPT or Chord or Google Gemini. What role do you see those tools in particular playing in our lives as professional communicators or change managers?
Speaker 2Yeah. So I think, I think the tools are designed for us to, they're utility tools. So they're, they're designed for human dependency as well. But you know, the challenge is, is that we have to do more and more of that. And I think that's one of the reasons why we have to do more and more of that. So I think that's one of the reasons why we have to do more and more of that. And I think that's one of the reasons why we have to do more than how we're currently feeding it. So when we think about prompt engineering there's a difference between regular prompt engineering and sophisticated prompt engineering. And it's how you communicate. So believe it or not, you actually need to be a strong communicator when you're dealing with these tools, because the input you give is the output you get. So if your input is lazy, then the output won't be actually that, that response you're looking for. So now more than ever, we actually have to be really strong communicators with these tools as well. Now the, these tools are utility tools, but the world has seen so much more in the last few years. We're seeing progression in agentic AI. We're seeing progression in, in workflows, in the creative industry specifically, we've started to see enhancements now as well. Allianz was the first company that just produced a commercial completely made by AI and it's now, it's now, you can see it on TV, the commercials online, everywhere you can see it. And the creative industry has taken a massive beating, not because we're seeing, you know, people get replaced. Yes, Facebook, you know, Meta laid off 8,000 people, Amazon and all these big companies have started to lay people off, but it's because those skills are starting to become irrelevant or they're starting to get completely enhanced. So, you know, there's a place for, for the human workforce. There's even going to be a shift to humans in the loop where we have to start to monitor and be quality control, or we need to start to enhance and check the work of the robots, which we're already seeing right now. But more importantly, these tools are, are basically are tools for utility. The next step now is the integration of how does it work with the rest of our business life or our life in general. And I think we're not really ready for that. I think the workforces right now are still stuck in that, you know, should AI be used? You know, I always laugh when people say, yes, we use AI. And then when you start to dig a little deeper, Coldpilot is mentioned as the tool that they use. And, and Coldpilot is just a safe software that comes with an MS Office package. But really, if that's your version of, of AI, there's still so much out there. And we're going to see, you know, progression in ethics. We're going to see progression in how we look at things. We're going to see production and quality control. It's being infused in every part of our life. And I think, you know, we're going to see a lot of progress, but we're going to see a lot of progress. So the scary part is we're not ready for it.
Speaker 1Actually, I want to go back to something you mentioned just before. So for people who may not be aware because they think AI is co-pilot, what's the difference between a tool like AI and what is agentic AI?
Speaker 2Right. Great question. So, and this might freak you out as well, but in the last few years, VRG has been exploring agentic AI, and that is the sophistication of agent robots. And we've been talking about this a lot. And we've been talking about this a lot, but in the utility of workflow, and I'll give you a specific great example. So GRG specializes in marketing for international leads to universities and education institutions. You generate for some of these universities, you know, 40 to 50,000 leads. Some of these leads come in outside of Australian time zones. Now, back in the day, the student might wait or they'll try again, or they'll try to reach out two, three, four days. That has changed. Students are now shopping around. They want accessibility right away. They want to speak to someone. What do you do as a business owner if you don't have that capability of working outside of time zones? So in this particular case, we were like, we're not trying to replace humans. We're going to create robotic agents that work inbound lines post-Australian time zones. So these robots come to life after hours. They work through the morning. They're there to train the robots to do that. The robots, sorry, are trained to read scripts, but more importantly, they're there to either do human triaging or human scheduling or human support. So they're there to book and take appointments, take consultations, and they're there to answer basic questions. We've already started to see that in the travel phone lines. Companies like Bookings.com give consumers a choice. You can wait for an hour to speak to a human or you can speak to a robot within 30 seconds. We've already started to see it in the banking side of things. And so, you know, people were like, oh, well, does this work? And is it actually strong enough? Well, I can tell you right now in the last two years, we have seen progression of the robotic voices. I think months ago, we were basically starting to play with robotics. Now we're starting to do accents. I just heard a robot that sounds like me. So it's basically using my voice. At GRG right now, we are trialing human voices on actual robots that sound exactly like myself or someone else. So we can do voice mirroring now as well. So it's come a long way. It can do languages, it can do linguistics, it can do translations, it can do transcripts, monitoring, quality control. So when a human comes back the next day, there's meeting schedule. We also have, you know, long-talk specialists that use robots for receptionist work. And it's funny because a lot of people book their appointments after Australian working hours. So I have clients today that might, you'd be surprised how many people pick up the phone and speak to our robots at 6:00 PM or 7:00 PM at night, right? So AI is not coming for your jobs. AI is coming for the inefficiencies and the excuses, right? AI doesn't care what time you work or you don't work. It's there to basically orchestrate itself when you need it the most. So if Australians don't want to work past 5:00 PM, that's the perfect time to integrate AI.
Speaker 1And it's interesting you say that, and you mentioned just before about the ethics around this continuing to grow. We've seen a lot of deep fakes in the political arena, particularly TikTok is rife with them and And as you're talking about, you know, this ability to mimic voices and those sorts of things is coming along. How do you guys at GRG sort of balance that, going with the efficiencies, but making sure there's still an ethical transparency around what's happening?
Speaker 2Yeah, look, it's the technology for cloning and defaces there, unfortunately, it's become a utility. There's tools for it. There's also tools to watermark it and tag it so you know what's real and what's not real. So there's tools that exist that tells you what's different from each other. But as a company, we're, you know, we're not using it for a political agenda. We're not there to use it for, you know, a religious or propaganda side of things. We are working with businesses. So one of the quickest businesses to adapt to the Gen TKI in Australia is trainees. So trainees, as we all know, if you try to get your air condition fixed or try to get something in your house fixed, it's so hard to get. It's a lot of labor sometimes because try getting a trainee to come fix your air condition in the summertime. It just doesn't work because, you know, they're booked out. So that's an industry that, you know, they're so focused on being on the ground and doing their craft that they're not necessarily there to pick up phone calls. So, you know, we brought this technology to industries that needed it the most. Students, international students are wanting information centers. We just don't have enough humans. You know? We found through our intelligence and data that an international lead was coming in at 2 a.m. Australian time or 12 p.m. You know, like we were doing data sets by the hour and the majority of international leads come outside of Australian time zones. So, you know, there's a lot of universities and institutions that have arcade systems that don't speak to each other. They go through 30 layers of tech stacks, seven stages of enrollment. And so the reason why. I'm generating 50,000 leads because we have an 85% lead drop off. So, you know, we as a company, we became really intelligent and we're not just a full service marketing agency. We're not just a communication agency. We are transforming our business and transforming our clients' business as a result of this as well. And and some of these things I show on stage, you and I happen to be affiliated with Fusion Conference and, you know, one of the things I'm going to be showing is a lot of how we actually communicate. There's a lot of people that say that they use AI. We're actually going to show case studies and examples. And I'm going to show the evolution of human voice through robotics, which is an interesting thing when you start to hear where the robots were and where they are today. Right. So so it's evolving very quickly. And there are guide rails and there are ways to sort of safeguard situations. But I think that to go back to your question, businesses and humans have to make the right choices. And there's going to be a lot of forks who want to make the right choices. There's going to be a lot of problems along the road where we have to make the right choices, you know, and that looks at all the different scenarios. It looks at the preservation of the human workforce. It looks at peace. It looks at, OK, if you are displacing 8000 people or 20,000 people or entire sector or entire country, how are we going to look after those people or how are we going to preserve them? And that's the conversation that we need to be having more of, because those are the questions that are currently just fading away. And we're talking about the advancement of and evolved species and the superhuman era and the technology. But what about the people who
Speaker 1are left behind? And that's that's a real concern for a lot of people. And, you know, definitely in the comms profession, I'm sure you've heard it. There are a lot of people out there who are worried that AI is going to replace them. One of the things you said before was not coming for the jobs, but coming for the inefficiencies. If we think about, you know, the day to day of a comms person, whether it's in a project team, it's in a corporate affairs team and a corporate whatever that looks like, what do you think are some of the things they should be pivoting on to make sure that their value is still recognized and not being replaced with an AI tool?
Speaker 2Yeah, so I think the first place is understanding the acceptance of where you are. If you are asking, should I be using these tools, should they exist? It's a little too late because, you know, I think, Mel, you've seen me speak now for a few years. We're showing, you know, audiences the advancement of technology and people thought I was a crazy person two years ago and I was showing them different things and people are like, oh, you know, we're still going to need humans and everything else. Yes, humans are still going to be in the loop. The ones you have to be worried about are the ones who are understanding it and learning how to orchestrate AI. So the key part here as communicators is we have to learn how to orchestrate it. We have to learn what a human in the loop is and we have to learn when to apply it, when to use it, when to step away from it. When to monitor it, when to leverage it. AI was machine learning in the 60s. It's embedded in our lives. For someone who goes, oh, I don't use AI, well, if you're watching Netflix, technically you are using it. If you're watching a playlist, you are using it. It's in our lives, right? So as communicators, I think understanding sophisticated prompt engineering, understand the layer between the product of AI versus what you put out there, these are all common practices. But let's use the field of communication today. PR companies now have the option in some parts of the world to automate AI, to send outreach to journalists, and it's called permission-based outreach, where journalists can get text, agentic AI, emails, and they have the choice of what story they want to pursue. AI has the ability to take an update and, you know, I'll use your LinkedIn post, beware of the snake. And AI can literally turn that into different sign signals. It can be used with the disability side of things as well. At the moment, GRG is exploring agentic AI for voice recognition for people who are deaf in the accessibility space. There's so much we can use with AI and leverage it. The thing is we have to eliminate fear and we have to accept, okay, this is where we are. This is the era. And the question, the question that everyone should ask ourselves is, what do we do? What could we do with AI if we knew we couldn't fail? And that's the hard question because that's, that's the question we could ask ourselves in life. What could we do every day if we couldn't fail? Right? Like Mel, if I said to you today, you know, what would you do as a person today if you couldn't fail? What would be the first answer that comes to mind? I'd fly a plane. Ted? That changes your trajectory completely from what you're doing in communication. Right? But my point is that, you know, that, that's tough. That's the scenario here that we need to do. So rather than going, oh, AI is here to take our jobs, AI is, you know, yes, there's fears and there's legitimate fears and things are going on in that space. But imagine if communicators came together and said, we have a problem. Let's put our heads together and fix this. You know, we're already seeing that. Like a reporter gets pitched four to 500 times a day on different media angles. Imagine if a reporter had a way to select the best stories, leveraging AI. And imagine if we had to become stronger communicators using AI to get that story out to the reporter. You know what I mean? And that's just one example of communication, but I'm sure if we changed the question and you looked at everything we do today with AI and communication, and we said to ourselves, how could we use AI to fix things? We're now moving from prompt engineering to AI orchestration. And that's the next layer because AI has done studying with patents, it's now moving to behavior, and it's starting to study human behavior. And that requires us to start feeding it even different, more, like even more outputs, inputs as well to get better outputs.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting you say that too, because I've just done some, a little bit of research around comfort levels on AI, what people are comfortable using it for, what they're not. Predominantly communications type of use cases. But what comes to mind with me with those results is we don't know what we don't know. So until you've tried AI for some of these things, how do you know if it's good or bad or indifferent? Yeah. And we've been like that in many places before, right? Before the advent of social media, before the internet, you know, all of these things have come and gone. We've gotten used to them, they've become a part of our daily lives and we've moved on. So for me, this is, it's one of those things where we need to experiment. We need to be actively trying things and just seeing what sticks and what doesn't.
Speaker 2100%. And what might not stick today will change tomorrow. So back in the day, I tried playing with my facial recognition and tried to do things with cast GPT and it made me look like an alien and I was like, that's not me. And then it upgraded its cards and it upgraded its memory and it's upgraded its, you know, GPTs and all of a sudden now I can't tell the difference between my face and one that has a cyborg next to my face combined together. Right? Yes. AI will stumble. There are moments where it hallucinates or there are moments where I actually break the system and it says, I'm sorry, I cannot do this task that you've asked me to because I just don't have enough resources. And that's great because now I know where I'm pushing it to the limit and now I know how to work around it. So I've been working with an AI recently, you know, I used a GPT pro plan. I put in 10,000 words and it said it could only do up to 3000 words before it starts break and fall apart. So it said the old, so I said, how would you fix this? And it said, said, well, I can give you your response back in three parts as opposed to one part. And that was how we worked around it. So that's the layer of where we need to go moving forward is that experimentation because, you know, at the end of the day, every major technological shift has rewarded the people who are curious.
Speaker 1Totally agree. And just on that too, so we've talked about, you know, large language models. That's what a lot of us are using. And I think a lot more people are comfortable with using those. Again, my research shows actually the boomer age group is very comfortable with using those sorts of technologies. But as communicators or change people, what are some of the other tools do you think we should be looking at?
Speaker 2Look, I mean, if you start to get to agentic status, you're starting to use, you're moving into orchestration, but there's tools for every facet. There's tools for data analysis. There's tools for coding. Cloud has just upgraded a lot of its cloud coding tools. I've been working on legal documents within cloud and pound for pound, it is just, it is scary what cloud can do. You and I both have our own businesses. I've been using it for accounting, scary what it can do into zero. So they're all sort of, you know, I'm still really heavily focused on the large language models, but I'm now starting to integrate it with my business utilities. So cloud and zero work really well together. Cloud from a legal perspective, some of the agreements and drafts are really strong. My business partner who run the communication agency, he works in the mining sector. He's constantly sending me these NDA agreements and other types of agreements. And we're picking it apart because AI can pick things up so much quicker and we'll compare what a lawyer has given us versus what AI has given us. And it's just scary, the contrast of relations. So I think as people, I think the question that we need to ask ourselves is, it's not necessarily what layer that you're using it, but how are you orchestrating and integrating it into the other facets of your life or business? And we're seeing great returns. I think, you know, when I say bookkeepers and, you know, people should be worried, it's not that they should be worried about losing the jobs, they should be worried about involving their skill sets because, you know, some of the base skill sets are going to start to get replaced, you know, and we're seeing it throughout. Now, having said that, I've also found errors and that's where humans in the loop and quality control will come into a big play. Great example, just two weeks ago, I needed to polish something. I needed to be 300 words for an award nomination. And it kept saying, yeah, I've given you something that's under 300 words. But when you actually put it into word, it was 305 words. And we were like, ah, this is an error. And it's done it like, so it kept making the same error over and over again. So. There are ways to trip AI. And so I think what I've learned is to understand the flaws, work around it, but also create guide rails to fix the solutions as well. So that's the next era of where we're moving into is even sophisticated how we use AI.
Speaker 1Two questions for you. One is, what excites you about AI at the moment and what's worrying you?
Speaker 2Um, well, I'll let that's, that's a loaded question because of the look that it's, it's me and. What's the biggest thing that's exciting you then?
Speaker 1What's the main?
Speaker 2Yeah. Yeah. Look, I think, I think, you know, as a futurist and as a, uh, storyteller, I'm really excited because we are seeing every single day, um, validation of our work leveraging AI. So we came up with the world's first tool where we can see what ads, what creative elements should go into a digital ad. So we could walk into a pitch, we could do digital advertising and actually tell the consumer, what are some of the creative elements that are working without, uh, stifling originality of creativity. Once we know what the guide rails are, we can actually enhance the capabilities of what to put in an ad. So this was a few years ago. We brought it to market in Australia, 60% of the Australian universities use that technology. Uh, we've rebranded call it Atlas ad intelligence. And that technology has probably been the most rewarding and the thing that really excites me because we discovered new platforms. We discovered cultural nuances. We discovered behavioral insights. The day of that technology is across 17 different verticals, but we just finished an amazing campaigns. We have one of our biggest campaigns with study Melbourne three years in 2.4 billion impressions, 400,000 call to actions on their website was there. It was their biggest performance in campaign history. Um, and consistently we, we take top videos to promotions with, uh, videos, YouTube. We're constantly seeing other clients seeing, you know, exceeding benchmarks. We even had platforms in China recognize our ad campaigns as being the industry benchmark for the sector. So for me, having those visual cues to say, Hey, we are an organization that isn't fearful of AI. And we're actually putting our best foot forward to empower our clients. That's rewarding. Um, what keeps me out that night is, um, the reluctance and the fear and ensure some of the fear is valid, but if technology really destroys careers overnight, it's usually stagnation that does right. If you think about the keyboard error and the typewriter, you know, this thing error as that time, when we were replacing the keyboards, if the same error as when we moved from, uh, DVDs to streaming, it's that same error. It's we moved from the VHS tapes to the DVD player. Like I think there's a point in time, right now where humans are evolving. And I am just worried, uh, the conversations around what happens to the human race side of it. I've, I've learned very quickly that I needed to adapt to survive. And I know that there's a lot of people that aren't adapting and there are others that need that, that skillset, which has created, you know, work for myself and my companies and people like yourself and I, but there's a bigger conversation around um, you know, what choices are we making for the human race that still keep me up at night.
Speaker 1That's it. And that's a big existential question. Um, so I think on that note, we have covered a lot of ground. There's one more question. If there were three things you think we should be exploring right now, what are they?
Speaker 2Ooh. Uh, all right. So the first one would be, Paul, I think AI literacy is something that everyone should have. Um, and I think you having communicators like yourself or myself, practitioners like us to come into workforces and help workforces understand it, demystify, simplify, create guide rails is really important. One thing every company needs to have right now is an innovation month once a month or once every few weeks and invite guest speakers to come in and, and train them. That's something I highly recommend. Um, I've got clients, a great client recently that, that brings me, and I think I've done two for them. Um, I've got clients, a great client recently that, that brings me, and I innovation workshops is FKG. They're a family based business out of Toowoomba. They've, they've had guest speakers come in. I've come in myself and done some stuff and I've had other speakers come in to do stuff for them as well. But that's a progressive company that understands things are changing, that understands that the world is changing and they want to prepare their people. I can't tell you how many other companies out there wanting to transform their workplace. So having an innovation month to create AI literacy, but not just AI literacy, just technology changes and advancements in general is great. You learn so many different things. But even for me, uh, working with people, I get to learn new tools. Um, I have a team, I have a gentleman by the name of Latour that discovered Manus and Manus is a tool that allows you to enhance your, your, your PowerPoint presentations. And, and, you know, for anyone who works in agency land, we're constantly driven by deadlines. Manus is our, our key to answering those deadlines as well. So. So yeah, that's really cool. The next thing is sophisticated prompt engineering, which means that you need communication skills to learn how to communicate with an LLM and give it a proper brief. So not just basic human lazy inputs, but really understanding, um, prompt stacking, uh, prompt comparisons, parallel prompts. So taking one prompt from one stack and moving into another stack and comparing the two learning about humans, quality control, all of those things around sophisticated prompt engineering. It's going to be really important to get a stronger AI output. Um, and then for me, that human skill set is, is right now probably at its premium. So things like empathy, judgment, trust, monitoring, quality control. These are some of the biggest premium skills we're going to need because not only do people struggle with soft skills, but more importantly, these are the skills that are going to allow us to experiment daily, learn publicly, stay relentlessly human while we are understanding and monitoring. Training the output. So I'm not, you know, I'm not here to say, Hey, your job is completely going to replace. I think your job is going to be completely changed and involved. And as communicators, one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that silence has taught me more about communication than speaking ever did. So actually analyzing the outputs and actually using your brain to, to understand what's right and what's incorrect. Those are some crucial skill sets in the future. Perfect.
Speaker 1Well, on that note, we have We have three questions we ask every guest on the podcast. Are you ready for those?
Speaker 2All right. First one.
Speaker 1What is an unexpected or left of field way you learned a valuable lesson about communication? Yeah.
Speaker 2So look, for me, it would probably be about saying less than more. And some of the best communicators have always focused on the context and the clarity. So it was a very unexpected lesson for me because when I worked with my mentor, I had all this information and his message to me was, how do you say it in a very short, contextual way to create clarity? So it was not something I was expecting going into my career, but I've always used that lesson when it comes to advertising and storytelling, is how can you create impact with very little words?
Speaker 1Love it. What is a book or podcast you love and would recommend to our listeners?
Speaker 2Well, I've been following your podcast, so I will give you a podcast this shameless plug. But yeah, book-wise, I read a lot. I read about six books at the same time. I have a couple of guilty pleasures, like for the airport, I am reading the Dan Brown book right now, The Secret of Secrets, which, look, it's a chumpsy book, but that's my guilty pleasure. You're stuck on a plane for a while. It's a good story. But at the moment, I am reading The Psychology of Money, which is a great book, not only about finance, but about human behavior, and The Almanac of Naval Reficants, which is a masterclass in leverage, judgment, and long-term thinking. So there's a couple of books that I am reading as well. But yes, I wouldn't say I have one favorite one. My favorite book is the next one.
Speaker 1Love it. And final question, if you could wave your magic wand and change one thing about communication in the workplace, what would it be?
Speaker 2Yeah, look, I don't think we have a communication problem. We have a prioritization, and I think that's the reality of it, is humans don't need more updates. They need more certainty. But I think also, you know, I think we need to, it's interesting because I can tell a level of fear based on the type of questions I get when I'm on stage. And a lot of those questions are, are, you know, in the in effect, and this and that, and I go, it's here. We need to embrace that. We need to just embrace the fear and move on with it. So for me, if I could wave my magic wand, I would try to inspire people to start acting out of love as opposed to fear. But I would probably get people to ask the different sets of questions, which is what would we do differently if we knew we couldn't fail?
Speaker 1Love it. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Bosco. If people wanted to find out more about you and the work that you do, what's the best way for them to do that?
Speaker 2Look, I'm on all the socials, as they say, under Bosco Anthony. You can pretty much reach me out there. But I also have an email called boscoanthony.com. You can reach us on TRG if you want to talk about the identic robots as well. So yeah, there's different brands. If you just Google my name, there's different ways to find me. And actually, I think I can also be found now on the GPTs because they've now started to scan a lot of my press releases and content sources there. But yeah, thanks for having me, Mel. And always a pleasure to nerd out with you on your podcast.
Speaker 1Awesome. Thanks so much. And we'll see you at the IBC Fusion Conference in Brisbane. So if people are around Australia, want to come and see Bosco in the flesh and see all the exciting things he mentioned earlier around how the AI tools have evolved, come along in October. We'll see you there.
Speaker 2Thank you so much.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Bosco Anthony is a transformational digital strategist, TEDx speaker, and marketing futurist who leads multiple global agencies including GRG, Access China, Boss & Co, and Fensum Advisory.
  2. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini are utility tools that require strong communication skills because the quality of input directly determines the quality of output.
  3. Agentic AI represents the next evolution beyond basic tools, with sophisticated robot agents handling tasks like after-hours customer service, appointment booking, and voice recognition.
  4. AI is not replacing jobs but rather eliminating inefficiencies and excuses, as demonstrated by GRG's use of robotic agents to handle international student inquiries outside Australian time zones.
  5. Professional communicators must learn to orchestrate AI rather than fear it, understanding when to apply it, when to monitor it, and when to step away from it.
  6. Ethical concerns around deepfakes, voice cloning, and workforce displacement require ongoing conversation and responsible decision-making from businesses and individuals.
  7. Key skills for the future include sophisticated prompt engineering, AI literacy, empathy, judgment, quality control, and the ability to stay relentlessly human.
  8. The most important question to ask is "What could we do with AI if we knew we couldn't fail?" to move from fear-based thinking to possibility-driven action.

Summary:

In this podcast episode, host Mel interviews Bosco Anthony, a transformational digital strategist and CEO of multiple global agencies including GRG. Bosco shares his extensive expertise in AI adoption, marketing, and communications, emphasizing that we are in the midst of a rapid technological shift that requires professional communicators to adapt quickly. He explains that AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude are utility tools designed for human dependency, but the key differentiator is how well communicators can orchestrate them through sophisticated prompt engineering.

Bosco introduces the concept of agentic AI, describing how GRG has implemented robotic agents to handle international student inquiries outside Australian time zones, booking appointments and providing support when humans are unavailable. He stresses that AI is not coming for jobs but for inefficiencies and excuses, and that the real threat is stagnation, not technology itself. Bosco addresses ethical concerns around deepfakes and voice cloning, noting that while the technology exists, businesses must make responsible choices and create guide rails.

He recommends three priorities: AI literacy through innovation workshops, sophisticated prompt engineering skills, and developing premium human skills like empathy, judgment, and quality control. Bosco encourages listeners to embrace experimentation and ask what they could achieve with AI if they knew they couldn't fail, shifting from fear-based thinking to possibility-driven action.

FAQs

Bosco Anthony is a transformational digital strategist, international TEDx speaker, and marketing futurist. He is CEO of multiple global agencies, including GRG and Access China, and helps clients navigate AI in marketing, PR, and communications.

Regular AI tools like ChatGPT are utility tools for tasks such as writing or analysis. Agentic AI goes further by creating autonomous robotic agents that can handle workflows, such as answering calls or booking appointments, outside normal working hours.

AI is used for tasks like permission-based outreach to journalists, generating ad creative insights, and automating customer service. It helps communicators become more efficient and focus on higher-value work.

Communicators should learn to orchestrate AI, understand sophisticated prompt engineering, and focus on human skills like empathy, judgment, and quality control. Embrace experimentation and continuous learning.

Ethical concerns include deep fakes, voice cloning, and job displacement. Addressing them requires transparency, watermarking tools, and conscious choices to preserve the human workforce and use AI responsibly.

He recommends AI literacy, sophisticated prompt engineering, and tools like Claude for legal documents and Manus for presentations. Focus on human-in-the-loop monitoring and quality control.

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