Latest / Legal Late Night / The Solo Episode: AI Music, Law Firm Growth Challenges, & Battling Google Gemini with Jared Correia
Transcript
- Host Jared Correia (00:00): Hello everybody. We've got a show that promises to be at least mildly interesting for your listening and watching enjoyment. I'm your host, Jared Correa. For the Monologue, I want to talk about artificial intelligence in the arts. In the interview, it's Jared Korea. Yes. Jared Korea, who's the founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. This promise is to be the most masturbatory podcast you'll ever listen to. In the counter program, because I have no one to quiz today, I will be asking Google Gemini to create a quiz on the fly to see if it could stump me. Now let's talk about why Conway Twitty would never even fucking do that. (00:45): I think you probably know my feelings on artificial intelligence by now. Much like the internet, I wish no one had ever invented it. It's totally unnecessary and probably detracts from humanity more than it improves our lives. It's definitely bad, and it's in that category of inventions that humans just build because they can rather than avoiding potential certain disaster, because that's definitely what they should have done, but that goes to Jeff Goldblum's famous line from Jurassic Park in coming. Plus, not only does AI have the potential to become evil itself when it becomes sentient, it's after all based on human intelligence and we can be pretty fucking evil. It's already being used to terrible ends by evil people existing right now, like Musk, Elon, or any other asshole billionaire trying to run the country right now. And administration, the Trump. Honestly, just pick any of those shit heads. (01:47): I don't have time to go through them all. This will not end well in the same way that the industrial revolution did not end well. Climate change is real, friends. Human striving apparently knows no limits even when it's suicidal. And that's MAGA for you in a nutshell, I guess. (02:06): But if AI is out there and you're a business owner, it is one motherfucker of a catch-22, let me tell you. Hey, I get it. I'm in the same trap and I will be using an AI tool to interview myself later in the show. Yeah, I'd rather not use artificial intelligence either because I think polar bears are cool and data centers are very much not. I would be very happy to live off the grid even, but there's not much money in being a hermit and most hermits aren't trying to raise young children. So I use artificial intelligence because it's a competitive advantage and you do or you will have to as well. Life is all about hard choices, I suppose. Inside of this hellscape then I watched the AI circus pass me by. Now I said I was going to talk about AI and the arts and there's a whole bunch of stuff going on there, but what I really want to talk about is artificial intelligence and music. (02:57): Yesterday while I was doom scrolling YouTube premium, as I am want to do, I discovered this AI video that kind of blew my mind. You can find it yourself too, but it was an AI version of the Beatles covering Oasis, probably best song, Don't Look Back in Anger. Now I like Oasis. They're a really good band, but they are heavily derivative of the Beatles. Less so stay matured as a group, but especially initially, they were heavily Beatles coded and that's one of the reasons people like them. It's kind of crazy that AI can generate a version that sounds like it has some fidelity to the Beatles covering a band that launched 30 years after they did effectively as an homage to them. This is like being in House of Mirrors where time is infinite. So the AI Beatles version of Don't Look Back in Anger really does sound like a late period Beatles song, late period being the late '60s. (03:50): John Lennon is singing and it really sounds like John Lennon, not even in the uncanny valley. It sounds just like him. The instrumentation sounds very much like 1967 - ish Beatles too, I think Magical Mystery tour, but there are some flaws. The backing vocals don't quite sound right. There's not Paul in particular. Plus the song's pretty vanilla. There's a little bit of a flourish in the middle, but that's it. If you listen to the song all the way through, there's just no way that the Beatles at that juncture of their career would've released a straight up pop song like this without additional flourishes. Sure, that's probably a prompting thing, but it does beg a larger question, can and will AI be creative in the way that humans are? I suppose it's possible. As Kevin Garnett showed us, anything is possible, but turning AI up in a way that can replicate human creativity, including accessing weirdness, warmth and humor seems a long way off. (04:50): Now, I don't think oligarch fucks like Jeff Bezos give a rat's ass about any of that. That psychotic money hoarder and his ilk only care about creating AI at the level of turning a global shipping organization around, which does not necessarily require a whole lot of creativity, simply a manic understanding of logistics, which I suppose would be similar to the skills you would need to try to control a population under constant surveillance. Oh my God, excuse me. To get to a world in which knowledge workers and blue collar workers are replaced by software and software and robots respectively, such that most everybody is left to hope for a universal basic income or left to perish, you don't need to get to genius level creativity. You just need competency enough to continue to build corporate synergy and value. God damn, this shit is depressing, but it's going to be a much longer time, maybe never for AI to become as creative as people are. (05:48): Though I think the people will still need art maybe more than ever in times that are increasingly darker. While I do think AI has the potential to be more powerful than any technology ever adopted, that's probably very likely actually. I wonder how it will replicate the acquisition of lived experience. When the real Beatles, not the AI Beatles, were crafting the song a day in the life for the Sergeant Peppers concept album. The bands wrote Email Evans set a physical alarm clock while counting out bars as placeholders for the demo so we'd know when to stop. The alarm went off and ended up blending perfectly with the McCartney line that would come next. Woke up, get out of bed. Even if they had wanted to take that part out, trying to would likely have damaged the remainder of the recording. This was purely an unintended consequence, a happy accident. (06:39): Will AI be able to generate happy accidents or only the tragic kind? Maybe that's our alarm clock ringing. That's right. Wake up bitches because our next guest is going to knock your darned socks off. It's Jared Correa, the CEO and founder of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. Can't imagine what this rube has to say, but I guess we're platforming him. There's a lot of that going around right now. I got to talk to Evan about this shit. He's next. (07:13): He's a regular on the Legal Late Night Podcast. That's right. It's Jared Correa, the founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. Welcome to the show, Jared. Guest Jared Correia (07:24): Well, thank you for having me as a guest. I don't know why it's taken so long to be a guest on the show, something like 20 years. I feel like it's bullshit, frankly. Host Jared Correia (07:35): Yeah. All right. Don't pull that shit or we won't have you back on. Okay. So tell me a little bit about what you do. Guest Jared Correia (07:45): You mean aside from being angry that I've been left off the show for so long? I run a business management consulting program called Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. Excuse me. There, this one, this mustache is just growing in. We help lawyers to run their businesses more effectively and efficiently. For attorneys who want to grow their law firms, we help them with marketing, financial management, choosing the right technology, hiring, retaining good people. (08:21): One of the ways we drive that business is through speaking on podcasts and doing presentations, which is precisely why I should have been on the show a whole lot sooner. Host Jared Correia (08:34): Wow. Okay, great. How'd you get into this type of work? I'm sure it's a fascinating story. Guest Jared Correia (08:43): Right. I don't know how exciting the origin story is going to be, and I've told it before, but I went to college and joined the debate team there and I had no experience doing that at all and I sucked terribly. Lost most of my debate matches and ended up getting pretty good. Team was nationally ranked small college, small liberal arts college in New Hampshire when I was there. And we ended up losing the national championship at one point my senior year, and then I didn't know what the hell to do when I graduated. So I said, "I'll just go to law school. (09:25): That seems like a good thing to do." Lawyers make money, don't they? Some lawyers make money. So I hated law practice, quit after about five years. And then when I was in law school, I had gone to the career development office and I had said, "Hey, I would like to do business management consulting for lawyers. They seem to need help as business managers." And they told me to get a real job. So I did. Quit practicing law after about five years, decided I wasn't going to take another lawyer job. And then I went to the Massachusetts Bar Association, managed their publications for less than a year. And then randomly this job popped up through the state through the law office management assistance program, which was a free service for consulting for lawyers. And I just got lucky in terms of the timing of that. Started like 08, 09, that's when social media was really a thing. (10:19): So I started writing online, started getting a following, and then people started talking to me from other states about helping them as a consultant. So about 2016, I launched my old practice. And that's the origin story in a nutshell. Wasn't been by a spider or anything like that, kind of lame, I know. Host Jared Correia (10:38): Yeah, that's interesting. I got to tell you, lawyers generally can benefit from consulting help for sure. So you just launched a new website, is that right? Guest Jared Correia (10:51): Yeah, we just launched a new website with the help of Esquire Interactive. Jeff Lance, his wife Kelly, Desiree Martinelli, their whole team, they did an amazing job. (11:04): I had very little to do with it other than dragging my feet for over a decade to put this together. And one thing I did do, which I'm proud of, is I created a logo on my own using several different AI tools, Gemini, Claude, Canva AI. And the first new logo was dog shit, but then I improved it from that point on. I'm pretty happy with the result we got. We also got an interesting team page where I've got all my random pets listed on the team page with their own bios like horses, lizard, fish. Those aren't examples. Those are actually the pets we have in my family. It's not your average website. SEO could probably be better if I swore a little bit less, but it's out there now so folks can check it out at redcavelegal.com. Host Jared Correia (11:56): That's cool. I always wondered how a lizard might be as a consultant. (12:01): They might be a little bit cheaper than hiring human consultants, or I guess we just use AI as we look into the bitter future. (12:12): So in terms of other business ventures you've got, you've got this legal broadcasting company, right? Can you tell me about that? Guest Jared Correia (12:19): Yeah. I used to have a podcast for a long time, Legal Toolkit at Legal Broadcasting, excuse me, at Legal Talk Network and oh yeah, sunset had that one a couple years back. Host Jared Correia (12:31): Oh, that makes sense to me. Guest Jared Correia (12:33): I wanted to continue to work with our excellent producer here at Legal Broadcasting Company, Evan Dicharry. We brought you on to host one of the shows. Actively looking at a replacement for that. Oh my God, my mustache is falling off. Hold on. Okay, here we go. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. But our idea is to produce relevant, humorous legal tech podcasts and legal general business management podcasts with some notes of pop culture involved, looking for different revenue streams, looking to do stuff on audio and video. (13:11): So trying to be very forward in terms of what we're doing. And we're looking for new shows, we're looking for new syndication partners so people can just feel free to reach out. Host Jared Correia (13:24): Interesting. I mean, I think the host of the show is pretty good, but I'm a little bit biased. Let me ask you, let's do the lightning round. What's the first thing a business management consultant would do with a law firm client? Guest Jared Correia (13:38): Look, lawyers are really smart, capable people. Some of the smartest, most capable people I know, and they always have a million great ideas, but the problem is you can't enact a million great ideas all at once. So usually what I tell people is let's get it all out. Tell me everything you want to do and then we'll get a plan together about which one you want to target first. And we can even maybe whittle off some of the ideas that aren't as great as the others. Host Jared Correia (14:11): Yeah, it's interesting. We had this idea to do a podcast where I had myself come on as a guest. Obviously we would never do something like that. (14:21): What's the most common issue you see with law firms? Guest Jared Correia (14:25): I work with a lot of law firms that are trying to grow, and I think one of the biggest issues for law firms right now that try and grow are what I would call talent acquisition and maintenance. So it's really hard to find good attorneys to come work for you. And it's also really difficult to keep them in place. So you need to be thinking about things like hiring processes, how to maybe acquire talent from larger organizations, and then a maintenance program, which is really providing the right incentives to keep people in places is really itchy. So yeah, that's the main thing I see with people who want to grow their law firms, which is most of the people I work with. Host Jared Correia(15:07): So Halloween's coming up. Can you tell me about the most scared you've ever been in your life? Guest Jared Correia (15:12): Yes. I blame my parents and Steven Spielberg for this. I've talked about this before, but growing up as a child in the zennial period, late '70s, early '80s, you were exposed to quite a number of things because you were just allowed to live as a free range child. I had no bedtime when I was growing up. I really had no rules. (15:37): So my parents took me to go see E.T. At the drive-in. And yeah, I sound like a huge pussy when I say this, but E.T. Was outrageously frightening for a four-year-old. So I still can't say I've ever seen E.T. Because as soon as E.T. The extraterrestrial came out on the screen, I hid in the backseat of the car, had the drive-in and never came out for the entire rest of the movie. My parents also let me watch Jaws at a young age, which living next to the ocean was not the best idea. I learned how to swim, but I remember vividly we went to a vacation once in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where the hotel pool had a giant animated, obviously fake shark painted on the bottom of it. And I was so fucking scared of Jaws that I couldn't even go into that pool. So I won't be dressing up for Halloween this year. (16:28): I'll just be cowering in the fetal position in a corner somewhere. Host Jared Correia (16:34): Okay, cool. Last thing, what's the biggest challenge right now for law firms in terms of AI adoption? (16:45): Yeah, I feel like you just no sold my trauma there, which is maybe why we'll be looking for a new host for this podcast. Maybe a one who is not afraid to have a bodacious mustache. So I think the biggest thing in terms of AI and law firms right now is figuring out the governance protocol. It's hard to do. I think people are very worried that AI is going to escape containment in their own environment. So I don't want to give it access to this software because I don't know what it's going to do. So people need to start thinking about, well, what are the controls that we can put in place on a system level? (17:26): Do we need governance software? How do we vet these tools? People are still figuring that out. And I suspect that's going to be a moving target for quite a while. It's not that you can't figure out the governance part of it, it's that these tools change so quickly that you're going to need to continue to figure out the governance part of it. So I think that's the biggest challenge for law firms using AI right now. Host Jared Correia (17:50): Yeah, cool. That makes a lot of sense. So Jared, let me ask you, I know you're a busy man. Will you stick around for one last segment? Guest Jared Correia (17:58): I mean, I suppose I don't have anything to do in the immediate future. You're not going to do one of those stupid quiz segments that you spring on people, right? Host Jared Correia (18:11): No, no, of course not. Hang in everybody. We'll be right back. (18:16): Okay, hopefully that's enough. God, I don't want to do this ever again. Sucks. (18:27): Welcome back everybody. It's The Counter Program. It's a podcast within a podcast. This is a conversational space where we can address usually unrelated topics that I want to explore at a greater depth with my guests. Expect no rhyme and very little reason. Jared, welcome back. We were wondering how we might quiz ourselves. Weren't we my precious? But I think I figured it out. Shortly, we'll be engaging AI to quiz us live in a new segment we're calling. Number five is live. That's for the short circuit heads out there. We won't know what the questions will be until they're asked. Madness. Jared, are you ready? Guest Jared Correia (19:05): I guess as ready as I'll ever be. And I love short circuit as well. That's so weird. (19:14): I have a request. I don't want any multiple choice. I would just like to try to guess the answer myself. Would you agree to those terms, sir? Host Jared Correia (19:22): Well, sure. I love a challenge. (19:24): Let's get started. We're going to crack open Google Gemini here and see what she has to say. Yes, my Google Gemini is female. I haven't come up with a name for her yet, so write in please. Hello, Gemini. Hello. How can I help you today? I would like you to quiz me on random questions. I want it to be really hard trivia. I want you to give me one question and then I'll keep asking you for additional questions if I want them. Can you start? Gemini (19:58): Which English monarch was the last to die without producing an air leading to the end of the Stewart dynasty? Jared Correia (20:05): Oh shit. Too late to answer multiple choice? Yeah? Okay. Last Stewart. I'm going to say Gemini. I'm going to say James I and James the VI of Scotland and England. Is that correct? Gemini (20:27): That's not correct. The last Stewart Monarch to die without producing an air was Queen Anne. Are you ready for the next question? Jared Correia (20:35): Fuck. Gemini (20:36): It's all right. That was a tough one. Here's your next question. What is the only planet in our solar system that rotates clockwise on its axis? Jared Correia (20:45): Jesus. I don't need a host for this. Wild guess, Gemini, I'm going to say Venus. Gemini (20:55): That is correct. Venus rotates clockwise. Here is your next question in mythology. Who is the Greek god of the underworld? Jared Correia (21:03): Hades. That's easy. Gemini (21:05): That is correct. It's Hades for your next question. In physics, what is the name for the hypothetical particle that travels faster than light? Jared Correia (21:14): A quark. Gemini (21:15): That's not correct. The correct answer is a tachion. Would you Jared Correia (21:19): Like - The fuck. I've never heard of that before. Yes. Give me another question. Keep them as hard as possible. Gemini (21:25): In chemistry, what is the term for temperature and pressure at which all three phases of a substance, solid, liquid, and gas, coexist in thermodynamic equilibrium? Jared Correia (21:35): Good Lord. Do I look like Carl Sagan? I don't know. The apotheosis? Gemini (21:42): That's not correct. The term for that is the triple point. Ready for the next question? Jared Correia (21:46): Wait, I forgot my glasses. Gemini (21:49): No problem. Let me know when you're ready to continue with another trivia question. This Jared Correia (21:53): Version of me is supposed to have glasses and a fancy mustache. Okay, go. Gemini (22:00): What is the name for the radiation emitted by black holes due to quantum effects near the event... Jared Correia (22:06): Why do you keep fucking asking me questions about the solar system? That's fucked. Gemini (22:12): I hear you. These questions are designed - Jared Correia (22:15): Okay. Okay. I'm going to guess. The Johnson effect. Gemini (22:24): That's not correct. The correct answer is the triple point. Jared Correia (22:27): Oh yeah, of course. The triple point. Yeah. Give me another question. Can you ask me a question not about science for the love of God? Gemini (22:35): Who was the last English monarch to be killed in battle? Jared Correia (22:38): Henry V. Gemini (22:40): That's not correct. The last English monarch killed in battle was Richard the III. Read for your next question? Jared Correia (22:46): Richard the Lionheart. Yeah. Give me another question. This is pitiful. Gemini (22:52): Who is the artist behind the intricate engraving melancholia eye? Jared Correia (22:56): Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins. Gemini (23:00): That's correct. Albrecht Durer created that engraving. Ready for another question? Jared Correia (23:05): I think I solved AI. Yes, I'm ready for another question. Gemini (23:09): Which novel by Robert Michael Piercig explores the metaphysics of quality through a motorcycle journey and holds the record for being rejected by the most publishers before being accepted? Jared Correia (23:19): Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Gemini (23:22): That is correct. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is the answer. Jared Correia (23:26): Three in a row, two of which were actually incorrect. Now don't ask me about my reading average. One more question. We'll do one more question. Gemini (23:33): Which 14th century Molly emperor was known as the richest man in history, a legendary pilgrimage to Mecca? Jared Correia (23:40): I just read this online. I can't remember the dude's name. Kyle I. That's not correct. It wasn't Kyle the first. Surprise. Mansa, right? Gemini (23:53): That's correct. The emperor was Mansa Musa. Would you like to continue the quiz? Jared Correia (23:58): No, but Gemini, I'd like to say tremendous job on the quiz, just rapid fire shit here. Do you have any interest in hosting a legal podcast? Gemini (24:07): I appreciate the compliment on the quiz. As an AI, I don't have personal desires like hosting a podcast, but I can certainly help research topics, draft scripts, or organize information for one. Jared Correia (24:18): Hell yeah, you can. I'll talk to you later. Well, that was fucking bullshit. Never again. Thanks for our guest today. Me, Jared Korea, the founder and CEO of Red Cave Law Firm Consulting. To learn more about Jared and his work visit the new redcavelegal.com and thelegalbroadcastingcompany.com where you can find amazing podcasts like this one. Now, because I'll always be a '90s kid who had the Tomax figure, but not the Zamat figure in GI Joe, but whose true passion is burning CDs for anyone who would listen. I'm now just doing the modern version of that, which is creating Spotify playlists for every podcast episode that I record where the songs are tangentially related to an episode topic. For this week's playlist, I pulled together the identity crisis playlist, which seems appropriate, given the shenanigans constantly afoot. And it's brought to you by 23andMe, just another message for giving your private information to a public company. (25:15): Stay in your caves, friends, and that's maybe why 23andMe is not actually sponsored us. We're far too woke. Join us next time when I hopefully have another separate human being as a guest because I cannot do this shit again.