Episode #8 - The Responsibility Protocol: Guiding AI with Human Intent w/ Kenji Hayward

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (00:02.39)
AI is here. It is fast. It is capable, but it's not self-aware. In customer experience and support, we're not just using AI. We're also teaching it. The question is, are we guiding it with our intent or letting it act without accountability? Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future with AI. I am your host, Mykel Salomon.

We are at a real turning point where companies write algorithms, governments write law, but someone has to write the human story. And this is what this space is and will be about. Each week, we explore at the intersection of technology, leadership, and purpose, uncovering how values, meaning, and impact endure in a world being rewritten by code.

Today, I'm very excited because I'm joined by my friend Kenji Hayward. He is the head of customer support at Front, the modern customer service platform that helps companies delight their customers, engage their teams, and build stronger businesses. Kenji has over a decade of experience in support and has recently launched Crab CX, the first metric to measure AI support

quality. Follow him on LinkedIn for more hold takes and I promise you, will learn a thing or two. My friend Kenji, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Kenji (01:40.741)
Thank you, Michael. Thanks for having me.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (01:42.974)
Absolutely. You know, it is a real pleasure to have you here today. And I know this conversation that we are about to have, it's something that you're also very passionate about, as I am, and looking forward to this conversation today. In this episode today, we're going to be talking about what really means to lead AI responsibly, right? In contact center, in support workflows.

and what is the decisions that really shape the customer experience at scale. Kenji, to kick things off, I want to start with a question that I ask every guest, which is when we strip away the LinkedIn bio, the title, the roles, everything that ShadGPT knows about you, who is Kenji at his core?

Kenji (02:32.698)
You

That's a good question. and if you took away my LinkedIn and my support stuff, that's there's not a lot left. but I would say I'm just, you know, I'm pretty normal person. I'm from the Bay area. I'm in Japan half, half of the year, a big family guy. So I've got two kids and a wife and also I don't have a lot of hobbies, you know, shockingly. this is maybe why I'm so obsessed.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (02:44.142)
you

Kenji (03:02.617)
with support, I go as far as even want to go to the grocery store and I see the self-serve like checkout. I think about how that relates to like support and scaling. It's kind of a problem. My wife has told me that I need to get a hobby. So Michael, maybe you can help me figure out what my next hobby is. But right now I used to be a much more interesting person 10 years ago when I was just getting into support, but I love support so much that it's.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (03:18.958)
You

Kenji (03:29.699)
honestly become so integrated in my life I can't tell what the difference is.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (03:33.742)
Yeah, thanks for sharing that. I know how your love about support is as we get to experience that every day. And that's why there is a lot of people always looking for your insights, your notes on LinkedIn and stuff. So we all appreciate all you do for the community. It's important to have people and voices like yours that are learning but are also teaching others, whatever we're learning.

That's, think, it's extremely important. But back to our conversation today, and when we first discuss about, hey, this is the overall message of the podcast. What is one topic that you're passionate about? And that's when you told me we should maybe talk about how to lead AI responsibly. Because I'm seeing a lot of companies and a lot of people that are kind of just copy and paste.

AI into their frameworks, into their processes, and this should not be the case. And that's what we're going to be discussing today, right? How to implement design AI in a way that we are not only copy and paste, but we are teaching it our way, especially what is our intent, right? As we model these solutions into our daily processes. But at what point can G

As much as you can recall, at what point did you realize that AI was going to reshape our industry and transform it?

Kenji (05:11.715)
Yeah, I think it was about two years ago. So I go to lot of conferences and I went to a support German expo, maybe two years ago. This is before we met. but every topic was about AI. And so was like, okay, this is definitely a real thing. think another benefit is because I work at a support company, I also get early like access to what's coming for support teams. And so

between hearing it from the community and the buzz. and then I, my talk was also on AI and how to, how to implement it because honestly, like we're just starting all of us two years ago. Now we're kind of figuring things out together. And if anyone tells you they're an expert, they're full of shit because I'm not an expert. I work in an AI support company. Nobody is an expert. We're all figuring this out together. but I think about two years ago, and then you notice if you go back and

I think a fun thing to do is to look at previous, whatever your favorite conference is, go look at what the main agenda was. And that's probably what was happening that year. So like think the year before that was driving revenue and support and you know, like other, other topics. But if you look at the last two years, even the one I just did last week, they're very AI heavy. So I'd say about two years ago.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (06:17.56)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (06:28.13)
Yeah, I think that's when we started kind of starting seeing more and more news about AI, what people were doing with AI. And in the past, I think in the past six to 12 months, we have seen an acceleration, kind of a boom of AIs everywhere, especially in customer service and support. And as you're saying, if you see the agenda and the speakers at conferences today, it's a lot of AI driven topic, right?

how to implement, how to design, how to use it, how to teach it. So, and I think that's what we're going to continue to see moving forward, a lot of it more and more. And you're absolutely right. No one knows everything. We're all learning as we move along. And that's why it's important that we embrace this from kind of a student point of view, because we will continue to learn. It's kind of we're going to practice, we're going to try to implement something, we're going to see what works.

we're going to correct course and then we keep moving. That's the important message here, right Kenji?

Kenji (07:29.219)
Yeah, exactly. I mean, if I could redo the question about me, I'm also super into Japanese philosophy. And so like what you talked about the student mindset that's Shoshin, which is you're always learning. Like whether you're a CEO or even in support like us for over a decade, we have to have that continuous learning mindset. And I think with AI, the problem is people don't understand how much control they have.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (07:35.189)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (07:40.11)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (07:54.787)
And so what I mean by nobody is an expert is you're the expert. Like, you know, your customers, you know, your support team, but for some reason, this new technology makes you feel like you're out of your depth and you're an imposter because you don't know all, you know, everything about it, but it's not as complex as we think. And so I think that's, if I can get any takeaway from this conversation that we have, it's that people, support leaders, whatever, whatever job that you're in, you have a lot of control in how you use AI.

And so you shouldn't rely too much on experts to kind of tell you how to do it. You should definitely learn the foundation and the basics and like see how others are using it and go, I really liked that. But at the end of the day, it's, it's your journey map. It's your customer experience. And so that's, yeah, that's what we'll get into.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (08:41.826)
Yeah, and it's, when I hear you saying this word is exactly what we all should be doing, kids, we should follow others' lessons, learn and listen to those. But at the end of the day, as you said, these are our customers and each industry and each customer, have different needs. They're used to different type of things. So it's not like a one side fits all type of thing.

Kenji (09:08.025)
Exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (09:08.084)
Let's continue to listen and learn from lessons learned, but also when you are rolling it out, implement it, make sure that you are involved in it, right? Because you need to have your voice, your customer support voice embed in the solution. So it feels a lot like you and your processes and your people, and less like others or like a robot that I don't think that will add any value to the customer experience.

Kenji (09:35.375)
Yeah. And I think you are doing something really important here with this podcast, which is the human element. And I think mindset is the first step. And so before you think about all your fancy workflows and what the, you know, what method you use, which LLM use, which platform are you in or out when it comes to AI and if you're out, you're already behind. so like when I thought about, you know, how the talks were two years ago, it was like,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (09:44.718)
Thank you.

Kenji (10:03.469)
It's coming. We weren't sure. Everyone was a little scared. It's going to take our jobs. It's been two years now. I think we have a good idea of where it's landed and where we could still fit into this and where humans are still important. But you'd be shocked at how many people are still sitting on the sidelines waiting for something. I don't know what they're waiting for to happen. So that's where you have to start. Like if you don't have an AI first mindset, none of this is going to work. Like there's no point in building all this fancy stuff.

You gotta start with you.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (10:34.412)
And you know, Kenji, that is exactly my concern, not only in our industry, which is customer support, that we are still seeing it, like you're saying, but overall humanity. We have so many people that they don't have a clue what is AI, how these have an impact now and in the future in my life. How can I leverage any of these AI solutions to help me be better, more efficient? And those are going to be left behind because this is kind of, you know, something that is accelerating very fast.

Kenji (10:44.357)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (11:04.33)
And this is really kind of the main reason why this podcast was created to try to bring visibility to those voices that, right? That's still not totally embracing that this is here to stay and it will transform our lives, professions, personal lives, everything, as you name it. And we have to, we have to, because if not someone that is using it will have more capabilities.

We'll be more efficient. We'll have better ways to find solutions that those that are not using. And at the end of the day, especially in customer support, at the end of the day, we want to bring better and faster solutions to our customer while keeping the humanity as part of the process. And that's when you and I, and many other dealers, we also need to continue to bring that visibility to others that everyone needs to get started.

Start evaluating what makes sense for your organization, for your customers, what are the problems that you're trying to solve, and make sure that you are involved in the process to keep your intent, your human intent and processes along the side.

Kenji (12:17.935)
Yeah, I think it's the most important. It starts with you. So you have to walk the walk. You can't just tell your team to go use AI. Like you better be using it. And like the thing that I hate the most is seeing news of layoffs, know, humans impacted because of AI. So for example, Salesforce laid off half of their staff due to their agentic AI, it became more efficient. Whether that's true or not, you know, it doesn't change the fact.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (12:38.882)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (12:46.393)
These folks were, were laid off. but one person who responded to a post that I did about this made a really good point, which is if you as the support leader or whoever's in charge of enablement are not. Actively upskilling your team and preparing them for these changes, then you're kind of enabling at that point. So I really take it serious on not just me.

learning about AI, but making sure my team is ramping up with me and so that we can all evolve into these new roles together. Um, so it's not just about us. You got to also think about your team and how you're going to grow our people because it's people, it's a, you know, this is why we love what we do. I love helping people, but I also really love my team. And so how do we help them? We got to help them grow. If AI wasn't here, we would still help them grow just in different ways, but

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (13:21.674)
Our people.

Kenji (13:38.423)
Now it's like, even if I think about my son who's five, I need to think about like, if I want him to be successful, I know I'm going to have to integrate AI into his, wait, wherever, I don't know when it makes sense yet, but I know it's going to be a part of his life in, in, I mean, just imagine in two years, as much as change, imagine in 10 years where we're going to be. It's pretty wild to think about.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (13:47.426)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (13:52.342)
Little by little, yeah, especially.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (14:02.112)
It is wild and it is our responsibility to make sure our teams are as informed as possible. And some people may not like this, but it's not about you like this happening or not. This is here, right? It is a mindset shift that we all need. We really need to embrace what comes to it, right? It's what are the logical reasoning that we will need to change, right? How we approach things because this will push us to change things, right?

Kenji (14:14.82)
Exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (14:29.908)
our critical thinking being part of these equations more and more. But our teams, need to embrace this, right? Because it's all we're going to have to evolve. Customer support, as we have seen in the past 10 years, it will be a totally different one in the next, I think, five years maximum.

Kenji (14:48.815)
Yeah, I I've seen the shift even in one year. Like I, I don't know what the number is. I'm going to make this up, but I bet you at least seven out of 10 teams, support teams are using AI. Definitely a hundred percent of front users. I, the cool thing about my job is I support other support teams. So I support close to 10,000 support teams using front. So I have a pretty good idea of like the mind to this. Yeah, this is like where a lot of my inspiration comes from is like, I can't escape it even at work.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (14:59.839)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (15:05.805)
Right.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (15:10.934)
of what's happening.

Kenji (15:17.103)
You know, I'm working in support, but I'm supporting support teams. So I know the struggles that they go through. and everyone's kind of battled this, but you have to just understand it's like anything else. It's like, imagine when support didn't have CSAT or support didn't have this metric or this way of doing things. I'm sure there was friction at first, but now it's, this is just a part of how you need to do support and how you do that is still up to you. But yeah, you're right. Like there's no question that it's here.

and there's plenty of data to back this up. So I listened to, was telling Michael before we started, I'm in the office in San Francisco. I listen to podcasts, especially AI ones on the way to work because I'm stuck in traffic a lot. And the one I listened to recently, it was really good because it just kind of proved that AI is not a bubble. Like if you look at all of the indicators financially. So if you were thinking, AI is a bubble, it's going to pop and it's just going to go away next year. That's absolutely not the case. We're going to boom right now. And so.

Yeah, I think for me it's just I'm completely looking ahead. And if you're looking backwards, you gotta look ahead.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (16:22.157)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (16:26.966)
I've been thinking about this whole thing about this being a bubble or not. I know there are a lot of companies and products that are overvalued, right? Maybe. But I don't think this is a bubble either. I think this is here to stay unless something goes very bad with the technology and the backbones of this, right? But this is already transforming our lives. And it's not only businesses, it's really everything.

Kenji (16:52.271)
Yeah.

Kenji (16:56.153)
It's everything like think about the railroads or electricity or the, my head of AI likes to say it's like the internet, it's AI is the new internet. So at some point it won't be special and it's just going to be a part of our life. And, know, we're all going to talk about how funny it was that we had a chat with chat GBT on a computer, just like when we had to use, you know, dial up to connect to the internet. But now it's just a part of life.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (16:56.246)
everything.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (17:20.611)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (17:24.059)
You know, and I think that's what's going to happen. And I'm sure if we rewound 20 years ago, they, you know, there were people who resisted this change and they were still doing things by filing stuff and faxing. And yeah, I think we're in that moment right now, which is a really interesting moment because there's those of us who know, but there's still a lot of us who are just in this phase of, know, it's not that they're in denial. They just don't have enough information and they just don't know what they know.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (17:52.312)
Yeah, it's like when electricity first came along, Railroads, as you mentioned, internet, email. Every single time a new technology came along, new technologies are disruptive at nature, right? There are some people that may have to move jobs, Or jobs will be revamped and added a new skills, right? Because of the changes. But it is a disruptive technology.

Kenji (18:07.247)
Exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (18:23.074)
The problem with AI is how accelerated it is. It's just moving fast. It is the fastest. Every day there are lot of news about things developing at a scale, basically. And that's what people need to understand. Time is ticking as far as you embracing this learning.

Kenji (18:30.959)
Yes, it is the fastest, yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (18:49.43)
and taking a look how you can leverage the benefits of it, right, to your daily lives and to your business. And if you are in customer support, for example, how can this technology can really make you more efficient? So if you implement it the right way, which is make sure that you take the time to review, design, test it, test it again to make sure this is providing you the output that your business is looking for.

then you can have our people to focus on more value added tasks instead of being so much reactive in a day to day basis. This may provide us the flexibility to have this time focus and maybe more value added to the organization.

Kenji (19:40.879)
I really think that's the play. mean, that's way I look at it is the benefit of AI for me is not to stop customers from talking to my team. It's to hopefully provide good self-service. And then with that extra time, allow my human team to spend more time with customers. Cause I think that's going to be the most valuable interaction that customers have. Yes, AI will probably.

at some point be a hundred percent of the first interaction that every customer experiences. And it's got to be really good because that's the face of your brand now. But when the moments matter, it's going to be a human. Like we're still going to crave human connection, you know, no matter how advanced this gets. And I think that that's how we have to do it. This is why we have to upskill our team. There are skills, soft skills that sport teams like mine don't have that we need to work on. We've never done upselling. We're not a sales team.

We're not a CSM team. So these are things that, you know, I can work on and evolve. one example that I'm doing is I'm now having our senior reps start to own accounts, not in the CSM way, but have cases route to them first, and have them be kind of like the first touch. And that's a way that I can go. Look, we've upleveled, we're creating more value for our support team. Our highest paid resources are now managing our

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (20:47.502)
Any more questions?

Kenji (21:03.547)
biggest and largest accounts. So there's a lot of advantages to doing this. I think where people get stuck is in the recent support is always one of the first conversations that happens with AI is we're on that list of top 10 of jobs that are going to be replaced. And people get so obsessed with, we're going to get replaced. Like, what do we do? You got to do something. I mean, if you, yeah, if you don't do anything, you might get replaced and that's for any role. So for me, I actually get motivated.

by this kind of stuff. I'm like, let's go, let's figure this out. Let's try new things. And I actually really have enjoyed this whole experience and change.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (21:40.59)
It's when people hear and listen to those news, I don't think those news add value other than kind of scare people more and more. But this is when leaders like you and I and everyone else that is on a leadership position should be communicating and letting the team know what is the strategy, right? How these, yes, this will impact us all one way or the other, but here is our plan. Our roles will evolve.

Right. The job that you started doing three years ago may not be the same one that you're going to continue to be doing. But this will also give us possibility for us to develop other skills that maybe you didn't know you have on you, like in your case, what you're doing, maybe assigning accounts to more senior people, right, to handle those accounts. And as far as we are embracing this with this period that we always continue to be learning.

right, as we move along and be open to do and perform other tasks that will be kind of what the job will require in the future, then I think we all are going to be kind of changing together.

Kenji (22:55.611)
think it's really cool. I the thing that I always wanted to see in my 14 years doing this is support be up-leveled, not be at the bottom of the stack when it comes to the last team that's thought of. I'm just seeing an evolution of supports like we're going to get paid more because we're going have to more technical skills. We're going to be working with more valuable accounts. There's always been this disparity between...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (23:14.518)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (23:21.217)
sales-driven teams and support teams because we're reactive. But I think that's going to change. that's one thing you should be excited about is, yes, your role will change. But with that comes a lot of benefits. And so when I'm looking at my team, I'm more thinking of how do I just give everyone superpowers to do more and grow here? I may not be hiring as much. I'm still hiring when we need to, but not at the clip I was a few years ago. Head to count used to be

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (23:39.406)
Yeah.

Kenji (23:50.243)
or hiring people, you know, used to be the solution for a lot of problems. And now you have to ask yourself first, can AI do this? How much is it going to offset, you know, our efficiency? And there's a lot of different, a lot of, now we're thinking about things a lot different, which is actually fun because for you and I, we've been doing this for a while now where, you know, for the team, they're getting to do new things. They don't want to be in the queue for 10 plus years. And for us, we also don't want to keep running the same playbook over and over. So.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (24:02.38)
That's exactly right.

Kenji (24:19.311)
that AI has disrupted the support playbook, it allows us a chance to rewrite it, which is really exciting.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (24:26.154)
is and will continue to allow us to handle more capacity, more demand without having to add more head counts. As you said, in the past until recently, more demand, more volume demanded more head counts, right, for organizations, for businesses. AI is changing that already. As it has many automation opportunities that you can implement that will allow us to continue to run a much leaner organization.

without the need to have to keep adding head counts if we really don't need it, right? Of course, we need to keep and maintain the very basic that we need to keep the human as part of it, because we need the human to continue to be kind of the guiding principle of what the intent is needed. And for that, we need human beings to oversee, to take a look, to see how AI is behaving.

And that's where, and I know you and I, we both see this in the future. It's human working alongside with AI with vehicle pilots, right? But the human understanding, analyzing, reviewing, if AI is kind of doing the job that it's intended to be doing. And that's where, when we first discussed this, that's where the responsibility protocol comes into play. This is our responsibility, right, Kenji?

Kenji (25:40.26)
Yeah.

Kenji (25:50.011)
Yep. Yep. Yep. It's funny because the way you describe it is kind of the analogy I said in the beginning about the self-serve checkout lane in the grocery store. You know, you've got, now you've got one person kind of overseeing 10 customers working with, you know, automation. So it does allow you to do more, but I think the critical thing that I want to drive is just how important the human element, like my team is my greatest resource.

No matter what, like that never changes. Their roles will change. but it doesn't change their value. So I just want to make that super clear. Cause they, I think it's easy to get caught up in, efficiencies, especially as leaders, we get excited about it, but also this, you know, this is why I wanted to do this podcast with you. Like the fact that it's, there's not enough, people focusing on the human element. So I'm really glad that you are shedding light on it.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (26:44.492)
And this will continue the way I see it to amplify our value because it's still we're going to become even more valuable into this equation. Because if we have AI doing everything, AI in this company, AI in another company will be the same. What is going to make us different? A company still needs to have that specific flavor that the human and their people adds to it. And that's where us humans

Kenji (26:48.846)
Exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (27:11.436)
we'll have to drive the intent, right, to make it front, for example, or in my case, to make it what is the exact support that we provide, that type of specific flavors that we add, our way of doing things, our way of handling customers, right? And that's still on us. And I see it will continue to be on us. There is no way.

Kenji (27:17.36)
Yeah.

Kenji (27:34.747)
Yeah. Well, here's, here's the thing that I'm seeing now, which is people, I work in the support space. So I'm not, this is not a bias statement about front or anything. just think in general, there are, are two different approaches to AI and support today. There's the top of funnel approach, which is easy. And so it's the one that we're prescriptive, know, prescribed the most, which is top of funnel. mean, you literally throw AI chatbot agent at the top of your stack. the first time the customer.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (28:01.934)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (28:04.101)
talks to you, that's the barrier, which is, that's what it's supposed to do. So it's, it's either trying to self-service or it's going to triage you to even, but the first interaction a customer has is with AI. You don't have to do it that way. And so like a lot of people don't know that and they just go with the default of, this is the popular way to do AI support. So I'm just going to do this top of funnel stack method. What if you just decided when to use it? So instead of every interaction has to go through the same door.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (28:04.92)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (28:33.625)
What if you offered different doors? So for example, a customer wants to cancel, you know, has to do with payments. I used to work in the payment space and credit cards in my first support job. It's like, that's the, when you mess with people's money, you're messing with their life. And so you probably don't want to throw a chap on in front of them. So maybe just have that go straight to your human team and you get exactly. And then you can go a step further. Like maybe AI can help triage that to get to the right human agent. Like get to the person who's

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (28:47.618)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (28:53.171)
to the human agent, yeah.

Kenji (29:02.363)
Familiar with account who's really good with deescalation. So, or maybe it's the finance account if you don't have a person on your support team. So I just think it's really interesting that you do have a choice when it comes to AI and support. So that's what I want to empower support leaders with is even if the tool that you're using, whether that's front or something else prescribes to do support a certain way, you don't have to do it that way. You can just leverage those tools and build the journey that you want to create.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (29:13.762)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (29:32.95)
No one knows our customers better than us, right? Representing and supporting our customers. A tool, this is also a tool like any other tool that we are implementing in our daily lives. We have to take the time to analyze it and see where it fits, right? Where it makes sense. And like Kenji is saying, you don't have to repeat the same processes or workflows that others are doing on implementing AI.

No, take your time, analyze it, see what it makes sense. You can start little by little, implement it, and rolling it out, and keep checking, right? The way I see it today, even if you don't want it to be in front of your customer, because I know there's a lot of support organizations, Kenji, that they're concerned of throwing this in front of the customer at this stage for one reason or the other, but add it as a co-pilot to your people, right?

Kenji (30:26.98)
Exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (30:27.33)
to help with triage to help to getting insights about your ticket history. Make it this a human support agent plus the AI as a copilot and start there and give it a try. And then once you feel comfortable, create it as a chat bot or integrate it as part of your level one or level zero processes. And little by little you keep tracking, but

I understand there is a concern to put this in front of the customer. If it's not done right, can harm your operations and it can even get that customer to be angry for whatever reason and walk away and that's something that no one wants. That's not the outcome of this. But take a step, implement it, make it this your human agent copilot and start trying there.

Kenji (31:21.243)
I 100 % agree. mean, think so if step one is the mindset, step two is to test and do an internal use case. think like trying to give your team more superpowers is the best because one, you're not exposing it to the customer and the human is in the loop and gets to make that final decision on if that draft is sent, but also two, your team is starting to use AI.

You know, like in a very familiar way. And so by doing that, you're kind of killing two birds with one stone. You know, you're getting a little bit of AI and efficiency. You're testing the waters, but also for your team without them even knowing it, or maybe they know it, like they're getting familiar with using AI, you know, whether they are a huge fan of it at first or not, it doesn't really matter. Like the fact that they're using it is a huge step forward. So I would totally agree. Step one, mindset shift as a support leader. Step two, think about doing some internal co-pilot.

AI use case with your team. And then from there, you can have educated conversations with your team on like what they liked, what they didn't like, what, who should we roll this out to? Again, like these are choices you can make. Uh, I remember the first time I did a live chat, this is pre AI like eight years ago at front. Um, we made a huge mistake. Like it was like a rookie mistake. I turned it on for everybody. I didn't think I didn't test it. I didn't think about it. I'm just like, here's it. We got this new feature. I'm just going to turn it on. It was the worst decision. Like I still get flashbacks of that.

Don't do what I did. Just roll it out slowly. Like try, who are three customers? have a really good, exactly. like, you know, select customers, know, are comfortable with this. That would be okay. I'm you feedback. Exactly. And then, and then roll it out. So if that's, that would be step three for me is run a small pilot. If you're thinking about customer facing AI, step four, which is actually my favorite use case. but for

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (32:51.032)
Select some pilots, customers, correct.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (32:57.356)
to give you feedback exactly.

Kenji (33:13.571)
A lot of people, it's the most boring one, support operations. so I get really like our friend James Baldwin, and I get really excited. And so as Michael, like about the internal use case for AI, it's not all about, it is all about the customer, but for AI, that's not the only application. It's not, you can give your team superpowers. You can get really efficient and provide super fast instant customer service, but also.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (33:17.346)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (33:31.672)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (33:40.449)
You can now finally use all of this customer data that you've had and been sitting on, which is your ticket queue and get insights from it and then funnel that back to make improvements. So that's what blew my mind was when I first connected like front conversation history to like AI and then just literally prompting and asking it. Why did this happen? Like what were the trends? So those are the levels I would take. I would start with the mindset and then move to an internal copilot.

And then start thinking about a small pilot for customer facing. then when you want to really get into it and the fun stuff, get into like the, you know, connecting to your data and then pulling insights. Yeah. And then it's a full, it's a flywheel because you use that data you get, feed that in and improves the model, the workflows. And then it just keeps going. And that's what I built today, which is a really efficient AI flywheel that we're gathering information here.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (34:20.494)
connecting the dots.

Kenji (34:38.373)
We're using that to improve this, which is improving this. And then it just keeps getting better and better.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (34:45.07)
And that's kind of also our job to bring that type of visibility and benefits more and more to our people. Hey, in the past, it probably was a human being spending time reviewing tickets manually, trying to do all the triage, trying to find if there was another ticket with the same issue, well, AI as a co-pilot will bring that visibility, right? Our intent, what are we looking? How can we avoid, for example, escalations?

You can have AI also reviewing keywords and try to understand when the customer may be getting a little bit angrier with this support conversation and try to alert you, for example, in a way that you avoid things escalating because of keywords that you're looking on your ticket. As you mentioned, data insights, extremely, extremely important. If you

Developing operations with AI helping you to analyze the data and give you insights, of course, that's something that it will come as you move along. And that should be part of our goals to continue to try to have insights from all this data that we accumulate from our customers based on our interactions and to continue to improve the products, right? And continue to make sure that everybody is aware as far as

as other organizations of what the customer voice is telling us. I think that's a key benefit.

Kenji (36:14.959)
Yeah. I'm so my goal is to get to proactive support that to me is the next unlock, which is we're starting to get like the things you mentioned, we're starting to get there to get signal on conversations and like sentiment analysis getting really good. But imagine if AI could tell you there was an incident brewing before it happened. And then your team could proactively let your customer base know like that's the best level of service is not.

no support, it's proactive support. It's when the like, isn't that cool when you just get a heads up that, hey, like just want to let you know FYI already fixed it. That's the best experience for a customer. And it still requires a human support member in the loop, but you're leveraging AI to give you the signals. And then you make the call on, yeah, actually it looks like there's an outage about to happen. Let me let the product team know and let engineering also I'm to let all our customers know versus how we do it today. You and I know this.

Incident hits, we update the status page. We just kind of wait till everybody writes in and then we're like, my gosh, I think something's happening. And so I think that's what we're going to see next, which is more proactive use cases for AI, which I'm really excited about.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (37:25.74)
Me too, me too. I know all our customers, always, they want us to get there because it's going to be a much better customer experience if everybody is alerted some way or the other of something that is critical happening before they even notice. Or hopefully in the future, you know, even detecting it that something may be coming and fixing it even before it happens. Right. That would be also

Kenji (37:50.235)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (37:53.024)
when we get there, would be amazing because that's really what productivity means. It's the communication part, of course, that's key, but really fixing things before the customer even feel it and notice that I think it creates a much better experience. Because let's be honest, support means we are there for our customers, but every time that the customer has an issue, Kenji, and you know that, right? It has to stop what they're doing.

and pick up a phone or submit a ticket and spend time trying to report it instead of continuing to focus on delivering value to their business. So as I look at support into the future, yes, more productivity as far as anticipating issues and hopefully fixing it before the majority of them actually experience it.

Kenji (38:45.357)
Yeah, I think they also like the next step is meeting customers where they are. So not having to submit a ticket. Who knows? Like I just saw Meta's glasses they're releasing. Like maybe support at some point is integrated into whatever AI channel that you're using, whatever device. I don't know. I'm kind of getting off tangent, but I can imagine a world where the things that we're building today still are foundational to, you know, things that we're going to do in the future. So I can imagine.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (38:49.23)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (39:12.315)
cheerless support, which I know you've written about, can imagine, helped us agnostic support where customers can kind of ask wherever they are for help. And then the system just knows and then we can respond. what we're doing today is still what's needed to get to that point. exactly. But it starts with mindset. Because again, if you're not in, none of this is going to work. None of it will play out.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (39:14.563)
Yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (39:28.242)
to get to that point.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (39:36.778)
It's a journey, right? And there is no rush, but we all have to get started on it. And then the longer it takes for us to embrace and get started on it, even step by step, well, the more you're going to be pushed away from this whole conversation. And as we embrace AI, implement design AI into our kind of daily operations.

Kenji (40:01.369)
Yeah. mean, the advice I would give is just block off 15 minutes on your calendar, start your day, starting day, end of your day, just to play with chat GPT or anything like something fun and just try to help with one task. Maybe it's writing an email, but more professionally, maybe it's just being a thought partner, but that really helped me when I started. So the timeline for me was, yeah, it was two years ago, but really when front's new CEO, Dan O'Connell.

came and he was an AI founder. He came from Dialpad. So I knew, I was like, I need to step my game up. Like I do not want to get left behind. I want to be ahead of the curve. So you don't have to take a course like I did. I think the most valuable thing I did was just by doing stuff every day, like experimenting, trying things, trying to build things. You don't have to be an expert, but just try to make it a habit so that it's not so scary.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (40:33.612)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (40:57.422)
Yeah, get started. Play around. You're not breaking. You're not going to break anything yet. Understand your business. What is that your business needs? For me, that's the key to before you even start analyzing any tool or anything. Where are those bottlenecks in your operations? What are the things that your customers are telling you that you should be improving? With all that information, leverage and analyze the AI solutions that are there.

and start reviewing little by little where it makes sense to implement that in your organizations. There's a lot of material online. We have ChatGPT and others that can help us visualize how you can do things. And you have people like Kingji and I that I'm sure we are going to be just a phone call away or a message away if you have any questions. And we're here to support anyone based on what we have experienced so far on implementing this solution.

But get started. It's not a matter of if you should be doing it, it's when are you gonna get started.

Kenji (42:04.475)
Yeah. And I've got a free, so I vibe coded, which is another thing I wanted to always do. So I've, I've coded a free app that basically it's a quiz and it kind of, it's your AI readiness score. And so if you take this answer, three questions, it'll give you exact steps on where to start. So I can give that to you for your audience and then they can just go and kind of see where you are. And it's, it's, you know, it's kind of interesting to see how you benchmark against other folks, but it'll give you actual advice.

And you're using AI, so by doing that, you've already started.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (42:37.864)
Using AI with your intent, with your creativity, and that's the beauty. And I tell this to everyone. I think AI will continue to unleash what you were saying, our superpowers that maybe we did not even know that we had to begin with. Because with all these AI-driven tools, you can actually build applications like Kenji just said via prompting. That's what vibe coding is.

and you build a whole application or even a website with prompting the way you want it without you being a software developer or a designer. So those are the type of superpowers that in the past they were not possible because you did not know how to do it. And now in maybe 20, 25 minutes you can build a whole website from scratch with VibeCoding, which I think is amazing.

Kenji (43:35.899)
Yeah, it's, so cool. Cause the thing with me has always been that I've always felt like it wasn't technical enough. I can never start a company. I'm not technical. I would need to like hire an engineer. Now we don't have to do that. So I've been talking to other support leaders and more of us are becoming founders. More of us are starting to do our own thing. So it's really cool to see us empowered because I think it's a level of the playing field where this there's not this barrier between what I want to do and my skillset. I can literally do anything.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (43:58.968)
Yeah.

Kenji (44:05.435)
My biggest problem now is what do I want to build? Um, so that's been really fun too, is like going from, you know, building support team, building apps for fun, which I never thought I could ever do, but it is so easy. Uh, I did that in like 10 minutes, so I promise it sounds a lot harder than it is. And then I even started a company, which I never thought I would do because of AI, because it's enabled me to be more technical. So it has given me superpowers as a support leader.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (44:34.594)
And one of the episodes in October will be for these same topic that you just mentioned, which is what we're going to see in the future is more a lot more solo entrepreneurs, right? Or even maybe one or two people maximum plus AI, right? Which before, if you didn't have the skills, you were not going to be able to create a company or build a company if you didn't have the people and the resources.

Kenji (44:41.498)
Nice.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (45:04.204)
Well, with everything happening and all these tools and all these capabilities that AI provides, we are going to be able to build companies. Of course, the creation, the creative part of it, you still need to come up with the idea. That's still on us. But the technical aspects of doing and handling the operations of this company, that's where AI is going to help us with. Because now we have AI tools that can help you with finance, with support, with marketing, you name it.

So don't necessarily, you need to have the resources to build and grow the company with more people, but just leveraging AI to allow your dream to happen, right? To visualize and even develop it, basically.

Kenji (45:55.599)
Yeah, how can you not get excited about that? Like it's literally changing lives, support, but everybody. And so it's really a choice you have to make, which is, I want to leverage this new technology to do things that I could never do before? Or do I just kind of want to sit and wait and see how things go? And that's really up to you at the end of the day. But if you're working in support, we have to make a choice sooner because our

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (46:07.47)
Yes.

Kenji (46:24.279)
market, our job is on that short list that folks see the market opportunity to automate with AI. you know, maybe, I don't know, maybe there's some roles, manual labor, like things like that, that you don't, you're like, it's never going to hit us, which is fine. But for us, we have to make this decision very quickly because it's already here. It's already replacing jobs. There have already been too many layoffs that I've heard of in the last year for support teams related to AI efficiency. And so.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (46:27.286)
Mmm.

Kenji (46:55.417)
You gotta get excited about this. Like, I don't know how you can't like, you you hear us talking and we could probably go on and on and on, do another whole episode about the way that we're using it. But I just cannot say enough how much has changed my life. Like not because I had to do it because I got a new boss coming in. Yeah. Maybe that was the catalyst, but since then I've started a book. I would not have been able to do that without AI and like being a thought partner. Again, I started a company. I took an idea that I had.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (47:08.622)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (47:22.971)
the metric and I made that into an actual thing that is built for people to use. I've just built my personal brand up and so, so many things I never did before. And you probably never heard of me last year was because I didn't have AI giving me superpowers because I'm one person and people ask me all the time, how do I do all of these things? It's because I leverage AI superpowers to help me. Cause otherwise I'm one person who wakes up at 4 a.m. It's, it's so cool. It's so cool.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (47:43.096)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Isn't that exciting? That's super exciting, Kenji. Everything that you're saying, it should excite people. It's transformational in nature. It has transformed yourself, right? Which in the past, you probably, you were not going to be able to do it.

Kenji (48:00.079)
Yeah.

Kenji (48:05.967)
We wouldn't, we wouldn't have met because I wasn't act like, I think that got me over the barrier, which is, you know, using AI. That became my topic that I started to post about how I'm using with my sport team. I don't think I would have met the 50 plus people I've met up in the last six months without doing that. So like not only, you know, just it's improved my quality of life in a lot of different ways, but especially with friendships and connections and building a community. Like that's the most human thing about being human and AI has enabled that for us.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (48:14.562)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (48:36.302)
Absolutely. And we have talked a lot and mentioned this mindset shift. We really believe it's a mindset shift, guys. It's gonna require you changing the way you have think about work your whole life. This is not gonna be a lot more about doing the same things over and over as you have been doing the 10, 20 years ago.

it will change. We like it or not, it will change. We will have to adapt to kind of this new way of working. But what's very interesting and exciting and amazing about this is which we all want you to think about. How you gonna use your creativity in the future to maybe pursuing your dreams or that you

did not even think about in the past because you thought, hey, how can I build a company if I don't have the money to hire people, for example? Well, now you probably don't need to have the money or at least a lot of money to start building your company, your own thing. And as you heard from Kenji, he's writing a book, right, with the help of AI. And he's writing the book with the help of AI, keeping his voice and his brand.

Because authenticity is still what's going to make us different. And I wanted to just ask you, Kenji, what can you tell people listening to us, OK, but if you guys are using it, how can you make sure that still keeping your voice on this?

Kenji (50:17.625)
Yeah, I think that's the one last thing that will never be automated, which is taste. So the creative decisions you make, those are up to you. So yes, you can have AI. So use the book example. AI can generate a draft of an outline. I don't have to use that draft the same way a support agent doesn't have to use the AI generated draft that they send to a customer where you can come in and actually put your creativity is add a little bit to it.

add in a mode, know, like add your voice to it. So I look at AI as yes, an amplifier, but at the end of the day, it's my voice. And so before I send something, it's got to have my last check off. And so I'm in control. I'm in control. Like whenever I'm using AI, it's up to me what gets sent, what doesn't get sent, what gets used, what doesn't get used. Um, so I think that's the most important thing, which is just, you still gotta be you don't over-rely like never.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (51:00.482)
your

Kenji (51:16.347)
have AI be your taste and your creativity, because then you're just lost. And then you, what's the point at that point? So as long as you can maintain your creative thinking and you have taste in what gets created, then it is yours at the end of the day.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (51:35.51)
That's it. That's where the responsibility protocol comes into play. Don't let AI take control over decision making. It should not. Decision making is still on us and should continue to be on us if you want to keep what makes you, you. What makes you human, human. Don't copy and paste.

Take a look at it. This is a technology as any technology. There is room for mistakes. There room for things that you maybe not want to say. This is your message. Is your branding. If you're doing it on your personal life, it's extremely important if you want to keep yourself being yourself and not like sound like the rest. And if you're doing it in your daily job,

Right? It's you know your business. You know what are the problems you're trying to tackle. It is also our responsibility when implementing all this to make sure that it follows our intent. What it's how we want to deliver services for our customers, for example. And this is why we are trying to pass on the message to those of you that are planning or looking at implementing this. Make sure that whatever you do,

is not just following another framework. Take the time to test it, understand what you're trying to achieve, and make it sound like it's you, right? Like it's still your team. And that's kind of the key to all this.

Kenji (53:07.887)
Yeah, couldn't agree more.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (53:10.114)
Yeah. Perfect. Kenji, thank you very much. We are kind of approaching the last phase of and chapter of this episode. And I have it's a it's one overall question, right? But kind of in divided in four different groups. So I want to start with the first one. And what would be your piece of advice?

for those individuals, regular individuals, that haven't even started working with AI or trying to figure it out how they can use AI in their lives.

Kenji (53:50.863)
Yeah, I would say kind like what I said earlier, just make it a habit. Make it 10 minutes, like a very low effort part of your day. I recommend the start of your day. Just and think about one task that you think it could help with. think email is something that we all use no matter what job that you're in. start there. I would start with just help with the draft. Even if it's

You can't think of something to put on a birthday card. Just like think of, you know, every day there's gotta be something that you can use AI as a thought partner for. So I would just say start there, put 15 minutes on your calendar, and then you'll be shocked at how intuitive it is. And before you know it, that will snowball into actual bigger use cases.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (54:37.324)
Nice, thank you. One piece of advice for those support leaders out there looking or trying to make sense of all these, how they can get started to reviewing and analyzing what makes sense for them.

Kenji (54:50.267)
Yeah, I would take the quiz that I mentioned, which we can link, also leverage your community. Like I said, nobody is an expert. Michael and I aren't, but we know what we know with our own teams and we're happy to share that knowledge. So I would say leverage communities like support driven, elevate. there's some really good AI channels in there, but more specifically, I think the advice that Michael gave is probably the best, you know, start slow, start internal, and then kind of follow the steps.

from there, but also remember as a support leader, you call the shots. So there's a lot of responsibility, know, with great power comes great responsibility. So you need to be AI first and you need to be that example for your team.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (55:35.064)
And remember, you just put it beautifully there. With great power comes great responsibility. So it is still our responsibility to keep and deliver the same level of service that our customer expects from us, even if it comes from a human being or from an AI-driven solution. So this is on us to implement it the right way, right? Because the customers still expect us to deliver quality service one way or the other.

Kenji (55:55.322)
Yes.

Kenji (56:02.853)
This is such a good point that you're making because you can't lower the bar. the bar should not be, okay, humans should be 95 % CSAT and AI is okay at 60 or 70, but this is what we're seeing. that's, yeah, I would agree. That's the advice I would give is whatever standards that you hold and you consider amazing support for your team, consider AI part of your team and don't like, don't lower the bar for them. Cause that's what I do. I have the same goals.

I want it to be even because you wouldn't do that. Imagine if that was a human talking to your customer and, you know, six out of 10 were terrible experiences. You would probably let that person go. But for some reason, because it's cheap with AI, you're okay with that happening. And I think that we forget at the end of the day, there is a customer talking to us on the end of the line, end of the screen, end of your phone. But with AI, it creates this barrier where we tend to dehumanize and forget that we're

those are customers just because they're not reaching you. They're still trying to talk to you and they're talking to your company. So that's a great point that you make.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (57:06.798)
There is no room for sacrificing quality for cheaper. This is not. This is a make it or break it. And we have seen in some companies where they have enrolled these out the right way where customers have been just leaving them because of this. Remember, support is and will continue to be the first door that opens for customers in your organization.

Kenji (57:12.304)
No.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (57:33.3)
It is as important as it ever be and it ever will to make sure that that door continues to be open and you just continue to improve and build from that point on. This is to amplify the quality of our services, never to downgrade them.

Kenji (57:51.419)
Because you what's going to happen, I think a year from now, if you don't do that, it's a silent killer. So today, you may not be hearing from them. Those are customers you probably haven't even heard from because they kind of just abandoned the chat or whatever. But I guarantee we're going to start to see trends with churn uptick due to poor AI interactions. But today, it's not a problem, so we don't worry about it. But I think downstream, that's going to be a big indicator of silent churn. And we're going to go back and go see.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (58:12.078)
Mm-hmm.

Kenji (58:21.413)
Told you, you should have kept the bar high.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (58:22.71)
And it only one bad catastrophic interaction for that customer to walk away. that's... No.

Kenji (58:30.809)
And they don't make a difference. Like, this is the reason why you don't know where the bar it's still you. It's still, it's whether it's an AI agent or a human agent, that is your support team. That is the company that is your brand. So don't sacrifice your quality.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (58:45.026)
Yeah, back to the topic of this conversation, it is our responsibility. So keep it like that. Kenji, what would be your piece of advice to these AI companies building new AI solutions, product services? What would you like to tell them that they need to focus more on specific topics? What keeps you awake at night on those AI companies building these products?

Kenji (59:11.261)
I just posted about this yesterday. Two things. One is don't focus on deflection. I get that's how you get paid because so what I mean by that for the folks listening is most AI support companies today are on an outcome or resolution based pricing model. So instead of SaaS where it's annual recurring revenue, they get paid every time the AI resolves the case. So they're actually incentivized to automate more.

And they don't care about the quality as much as we do because to them that is money in the bank. Every time that happens, I work at a support company. know exactly how this all works. I think front approaches it in a much better way as we don't do that. and so what I would say is again, you have a choice. So you have a choice in how you use AI. but that's the advice I would give is, know, for deflection is not the end game. It's, it's one very small part of.

how support works. we talked about, you know, giving your team superpowers. I want to see more AI companies focus on that. Giving support operations superpowers. I want to stop seeing my friends and I trying to connect things manually with tools because there's nothing that fills the gaps, whether you're using a Natan or, you know, like Zapier. That to me tells that there is a gap in the market for that. So I would say deflection is good where it is.

If you're in the AI space as a founder, focus on the more the quality side.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (01:00:40.238)
Great, great, love it. Always more quality. It's very important, always. And last but not least, one piece of advice to governments working on everything that it's AI as far as regulations is concerned. What would you like the governments to take a look more and more and be more engaged regarding AI, for example?

Kenji (01:01:05.207)
I like to more enablement. know, I think again, a lot of the responsibility lands on us as leaders to enable our team, but I would love to see, you for my own family, like for my kids, I would love to see more government sponsored enablement trainings, know, free courses. I don't know what they are exactly, but I think that we hear a lot menus about how much investment is going on with data centers and like how fast things are going to advance, but I haven't heard enough about.

how we're gonna help humans keep up with this advancement. even if that's local community wise, that would be amazing to me to see.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (01:01:44.782)
Great, yeah, I think we'll also need more than that coming from customers and especially keeping a close eye and looking at smart regulations and safeguards related to data privacy and security around that. And I think we're starting to see more more paying more attention on kind of forcing these companies to, you know,

provide more efforts on the testing side of things, which is also good.

Kenji (01:02:20.367)
Yeah, exactly.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (01:02:22.734)
Kenji, my friend, thank you very much for sharing your insights with us today, your leadership, for intentionally being with us today. Really appreciate you. You know that. And you have made it clear, AI won't drive value on its own. It needs our ethics, our empathy, and really our direction. So thank you for being with us today. Appreciate you, okay?

Kenji (01:02:48.731)
Thanks. Yeah, thanks for having me.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL PODCAST (01:02:51.416)
So if this episode made you rethink how you lead AI or how AI is leading you, share it, follow the human protocol, and join us every week as we keep asking, what does it mean to stay human while building the future with AI? Thank you all, and see you next time. Take care.