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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Fear and Greed Business Interview. I'm Sean Almam.

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Speaker 1: AI isn't just coming, It's well and truly here, and

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Speaker 1: those who aren't using it run the risk of being

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Speaker 1: left behind. But Australian executives are being warned that while

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Speaker 1: they might think they're embracing AI, they're stuck in outdated

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Speaker 1: operating models that move too slowly, cost too much and

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Speaker 1: deliver too little. Throughout his career, Clive Dickens has held

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Speaker 1: senior digital roles at companies like Optus, seven West Media

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Speaker 1: and Southern Cross os Stereo, and advised tech businesses like

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Speaker 1: Shazam and air Tasker. He's now launched the Meleura Company

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Speaker 1: me E l Ior Meleura Company, an international consultancy to

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Speaker 1: work with businesses looking to harness the power of AI.

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Speaker 1: He's also a great supporter of Fear and Greed and

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Speaker 1: joins me in the studio. Clive, Welcome to Fear and Greed.

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Speaker 2: Thank you having me.

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Speaker 1: So we talk a lot about AI. Do we actually

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Speaker 1: know what we're talking about? Do we understand what we're

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Speaker 1: talking about? And we're generative? II here is think.

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Speaker 2: About I think you need to think about November twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty two, because November twenty twenty two is when chat

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Speaker 2: GBT became available. Now, machine learning has been around for

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Speaker 2: a lot longer than that. In fact, I made my

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Speaker 2: first investment in an AA company about seven years ago.

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Speaker 2: But there's really that November twenty two moment that was transformatory.

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Speaker 2: And not since the arrival of the iPhone and the

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Speaker 2: app Store in two thousand and seven or the arrival

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Speaker 2: of the World Wide Web in the mid nineties have

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Speaker 2: we seen something quite as transformative as this. And really

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Speaker 2: it was those gen AI lllms that really changed.

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Speaker 1: The lefkay GENII l l m's large language large Generative

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Speaker 1: Model Artificial intelligence large language models.

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Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, And so obviously we've all used the various

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Speaker 2: products I'm sure claud Gemini, Perplexity and chat GPT, but

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Speaker 2: the real innovation is around tokenizing that LM to solve

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Speaker 2: a business problem with an application. So Google, for example,

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Speaker 2: announced their fantastic video tool last week and an amazing

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Speaker 2: product called Beam, But the real gem of the story

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Speaker 2: inside their announcement was the billions and billions of token

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Speaker 2: requests the Gemini had served to third party businesses solving

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Speaker 2: complex problems with their LM. So you go back to

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Speaker 2: the nineties and people said to you, you really need

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Speaker 2: a website. Someone has told me I need a website,

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Speaker 2: and of course we knew we definitely needed a website.

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Speaker 2: Fast forward to two thousand and eight, someone told you

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Speaker 2: you really need an app. I need an app. And

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Speaker 2: whether it's Uber or Iirbnb, or our banking apps or

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Speaker 2: email apps, the apps changed everything we did on the

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Speaker 2: mobile internet. Now you need to deploy a GENI application

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Speaker 2: in the application layer to solve complex business problems. And

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Speaker 2: that's what we're trying to hope to help large and

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Speaker 2: medium sized businesses do here right in Apack and across

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Speaker 2: the world.

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Speaker 1: So in a way that I will understand it. How

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Speaker 1: do you do that? I get where I'm up to

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Speaker 1: with this conversation so far. How do you involve yourself

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Speaker 1: in generative AI such that you can use these large

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Speaker 1: language models to provide solutions to business problems.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's probably three core ways of which you

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Speaker 2: could start. And the first one most people have started

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Speaker 2: by using some form of GPT product or clawed product

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Speaker 2: or Gemini. And I encourage businesses small, medium and large

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Speaker 2: to move from the free products to the pay products

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Speaker 2: as soon as possible, because the pay products are orders

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Speaker 2: of magnitude better than the free ones. And that's really

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Speaker 2: a really good start, whether it's in homes, businesses, or

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Speaker 2: large enterprises. And you're seeing big companies like news corps

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Speaker 2: deploy premium products for their journalists and stuff. But the

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Speaker 2: real innovation happens when you actually think about using looking

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Speaker 2: at the many hundreds of startups who are actually now

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Speaker 2: building business applications in the application layer. So, for example,

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Speaker 2: there's a business I've just invested in it which is

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Speaker 2: a procurement a business that completely automates small and medium

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Speaker 2: procurement from everything from a cafe to a small business.

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Speaker 2: Because business owners waste huge amount of time doing procurement

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Speaker 2: and they obviously want to get the best price. So

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Speaker 2: this business really automates all of that. So you can

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Speaker 2: deploy this particular business and this product, and you can

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Speaker 2: improve your procurement as a small business. And there are

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Speaker 2: thousands of businesses now who are using their tokenization to

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Speaker 2: think about how they can solve complex business problems. And

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Speaker 2: the third way would be if you had your own

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Speaker 2: developers and your own product team, and you decided that

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Speaker 2: we're going to do it ourselves a bit like you

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Speaker 2: might build technology inside a business yourself. You might build

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Speaker 2: an app, you might have your own website, you might

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Speaker 2: have some of your own technology, and you can actually

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Speaker 2: request those tokens and actually solve complex business problems that way.

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Speaker 2: So three different ways, the GPTs and premium, the one

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Speaker 2: hundreds and maybe even thousands of startups that are solving

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Speaker 2: business problems or effectively having your own team and getting

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Speaker 2: into it.

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Speaker 1: Stay with me, Clive, who will be back in a minute.

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Speaker 1: My guest this morning is Clive Dickens, managing partner of

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Speaker 1: the Meliora Company. Okay, so I think I know how

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Speaker 1: I can get into it. How do you optimize it?

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Speaker 1: So what's interesting in what you said just ahead of

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Speaker 1: the break, right, so chat GPT I've used. I didn't

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Speaker 1: realize that there's going to be the functionality is that

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Speaker 1: hundreds or thousands of small companies at the moment working

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Speaker 1: on functionalities. So for me and my business, it's like

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Speaker 1: getting something off the shelf, yes to just like just

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Speaker 1: like yeah, okay, So that kind of ecosphere, I'd imagine

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Speaker 1: that there's going to be all sorts of products that

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Speaker 1: come out of that. Whereabouts do you think we're going

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Speaker 1: to see the big development. Is it at the SME level,

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Speaker 1: is it at the big business level? Where do you

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Speaker 1: think it's any come from?

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Speaker 2: Well, I think this is industrial revolution type change. So

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Speaker 2: it's going to be every single level, from our children

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Speaker 2: the way they learn at school, through to our families

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Speaker 2: and older families around age care. It's going to impact

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Speaker 2: and it's already impacting the whole of society. At Meliora,

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Speaker 2: we focus on TMT, telco, media and technology. That's our niche,

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Speaker 2: and of course in the middle of that is that

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Speaker 2: media category. So we're trying to specialize in that area

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Speaker 2: and trying to help telecom businesses, media business and technology

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Speaker 2: businesses improve their efficiency. And the other key thing for

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Speaker 2: us is that we feel that there's business growth opportunities

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Speaker 2: that come out of gen AAI. So much of the

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Speaker 2: discussion is about efficiency or fear or fear and missing out. Actually,

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Speaker 2: we are what we call relentlessly optimistic about GENAI and

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Speaker 2: we actually believe that we can help businesses not just

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Speaker 2: grow their button bottom line through efficiency, which of course

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Speaker 2: is very important business skill, but actually grow the business

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Speaker 2: at the top line through revenue as well. So because

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Speaker 2: we have very much a growth business and that's where

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Speaker 2: we specialize.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting. Telstra's Vicky Brady last week talked about

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Speaker 1: the fact that we are fewer people employed at Telstra

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Speaker 1: to provide the same service, which is an efficiency. Suncourt

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Speaker 1: was at the same conference run last week and they

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Speaker 1: talked about seven thousand cyclone alfred people being serviced via AI.

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Speaker 1: But what you're talking about is actually, let's go beyond that.

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Speaker 1: Let's think not so much about productivity, although it is

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Speaker 1: part of it, It's actually about new markets.

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Speaker 2: That type of thing, absolutely new markets. So I'd like

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Speaker 2: to see the banks and the telcos and the other

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Speaker 2: technology companies talk about new businesses that they could split up,

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Speaker 2: new problems they could solve, and new things that they

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Speaker 2: could do with this amazing capability. I'm just seeing lots

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Speaker 2: of chatter about how it's good for shareholders because it's

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Speaker 2: going to be more efficient, How's it going to be

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Speaker 2: good for humanity, How's it going to be good for business,

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Speaker 2: how is it going to be good for people? And

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Speaker 2: that's really why we exist a business.

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Speaker 1: They're listening to this this morning, what should they do well?

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Speaker 2: One thing I always said to everyone I talked to

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Speaker 2: whether it's my family or friends, is really get in

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Speaker 2: and start paying for a product, because if if you

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Speaker 2: are free, then you are the product. Or we all

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Speaker 2: know that, and actually this the sort of entry level products.

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Speaker 2: At twenty dollars a month, that's probably not investing enough.

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Speaker 2: You know, you need to be probably spending two or

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Speaker 2: three hundred dollars even in a small business. Now all happens,

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Speaker 2: although that's a lot of money for a lot of people.

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Speaker 2: Once you start paying for something, it's amazing how much

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Speaker 2: you'll use it because nobody likes wasting money. And that's

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Speaker 2: a bit like whether you're going into further education and

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Speaker 2: you're trying to improve anything about yourself or you're going

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Speaker 2: to the gym. You know, actually this is about self improvement,

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Speaker 2: and now this is the next big learning. So make

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Speaker 2: a big investment of time and money and then start

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Speaker 2: to think about how what business problems you will solve,

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Speaker 2: and also talk to companies like us and plenty of

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Speaker 2: other companies around the world that help you accelerate solving

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Speaker 2: these business problems.

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Speaker 1: How fast is it coming? Where will we be in

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Speaker 1: five years?

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Speaker 2: Well, I'm definitely not a futurist, but I am an optimist.

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Speaker 2: I think I've worked for over thirty years, I've seen

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Speaker 2: these incredible technological changes in my career in the past.

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Speaker 2: This is by far the most significant and the fastest.

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Speaker 2: It's We've started a business today that has been based

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Speaker 2: across three regions, across Apac America and EMEA, which is

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Speaker 2: very ambitious. I've never started a business like I've got

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Speaker 2: lots of business, but I've never started a business with

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Speaker 2: three offices and three jurisdictions because we think there's so

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Speaker 2: much work out there. So if that's an indication of

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Speaker 2: the rate of change, then that's hopefully that's a good one.

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Speaker 2: So hard to predict how fast, but definitely the fastest

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Speaker 2: of anything I've seen in my thirty plus career.

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Speaker 1: Is it exciting or scary?

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Speaker 2: At Maliora, we have one of our values is relentless optimism,

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Speaker 2: and we have to be optimistic about the future. It's

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Speaker 2: how you get up in the morning and how you

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Speaker 2: motivate yourself. And having worked for over thirty years and

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Speaker 2: you see the contribution that technology makes to society and

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Speaker 2: the impact that technology can have on society, you sort

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Speaker 2: of decide to yourself, well, this new technology, let's be excited.

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Speaker 2: Let's make it exciting, and let's shape it for a

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Speaker 2: better humanity. And that's the way that we think about

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Speaker 2: it each day.

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Speaker 1: Clive, thank you for talking to Fear and Greed. Thank

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Speaker 1: you very much as Clive Dickens, co founder and managing

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Speaker 1: partner of the Melee Aura Company. That's me E l

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Speaker 1: Io r a meliora company, a great supporter of this podcast.

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Speaker 1: This is the Fear and Greed Business Interview. Join us

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Speaker 1: every morning for the full episode of Fear and Greed

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Speaker 1: Business news you can use I'm chanelma Enjoy Torday