Conversations on Applied AI

Łukasz Borzęcki - AI for Business and Development: Practical Tools and Strategies

Justin Grammens Season 4 Episode 15

The conversation this week is with Lukasz Borzecki, the CEO of VM Software House, a company specializing in bespoke IT project implementation using a nearshoring model for the central European countries of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

Lucas has a background that combines both sales and IT, starting with selling ERP software before transitioning to development, and eventually management. He emphasizes the importance of understanding business language for developers, as well as the need to move beyond just writing code. He also believes that AI developers will replace those who don't. Lucas is also a husband and father of three and enjoys playing the guitar and the accordion and hiking in the mountains.

Lucas's unique perspective is that AI is a tool that helps with productivity, reduces busy work, and allows for more strategic thinking. He believes that AI is constantly evolving. However, he also stresses the importance of human involvement and decision-making, especially in areas governed by laws such as the EU's AI Act.

When he's not working, Lucas enjoys playing the guitar and accordion and even uses his accordion skills to create a unique and positive work environment by playing "Happy Birthday" for employees on their birthdays.

If you are interested in learning about how AI is being applied across multiple industries, be sure to join us at a future AppliedAI Monthly meetup and help support us so we can make future Emerging Technologies North non-profit events!

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

Key Topics Discussed

  • The importance of understanding business language for developers and the ability to communicate with clients.
  • AI as a tool for increasing productivity, reducing busy work, and focusing on strategic tasks.
  • The role of AI in modernizing legacy software and processes.
  • The evolving nature of AI and how it is not a 'zero to one' change, but rather a gradual process.
  • The need for human involvement in AI processes and decision-making, especially in legal contexts.
  • Using AI tools such as Copilot and Midjourney.
  • Applying AI to various industries such as semiconductor, automotive, education, industry, and finance.
  • The importance of considering the business impact of AI, – increasing revenue, decreasing costs, or decreasing risk.
  • How to use AI for learning, and how to apply common sense when using AI tools.

Enjoy!

Your host,
Justin Grammens


Lukasz Borzecki  0:00  
You mentioned about books about AI, but I think apart from Ai, it's also good to read other books. So for example, I read a lot of books which combine business and sales, and when it comes to business and sales and AI, I can recommend book McKinsey way it helps to understand how to AI may be applied, even though it is not written about AI. Why is that? Because companies, it's only three factors relevant. So one is the increase revenue or decrease costs or decrease risk. And when you would like to persuade your boss or your employees or anybody else to use AI at your company. I would like to ask you for a recommendation, or write you some arguments based on these three levels, because all of them will, for sure, pass for somebody who is in charge of business. So either increase revenue. So what you how using AI will increase your revenue in the company, or how using this AI will reduce cost, or how using AI would reduce risk.

AI Announcer  1:09  
Welcome to the conversations on applied AI podcast where Justin grammons and the team at emerging technologies North talk with experts in the fields of artificial intelligence and deep learning. In each episode, we cut through the hype and dive into how these technologies are being applied to real world problems today. We hope that you find this episode educational and applicable to your industry and connect with us to learn more about our organization at applied ai.mn,

enjoy.

Justin Grammens  1:40  
Welcome everyone to the conversation on applied AI podcast. I'm your host, Justin Graham, and our guest today is Lucas rosette. Lucas is the CEO of VM software house, a company specializing in bespoke IT project implementation using a near shoring model for the Central European countries of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The team is made up of experienced developers who in Java C, Python, JavaScript, and over the years, they have successfully completed more than 400 projects for clients from various industries. He's also a husband and proud father of three. Although he loves his work, he also makes time free the guitar and the accordion. And finally, he enjoys gaining a fresh perspective of making time to hike in the mountains. So I love getting out and taking walks in the nature as well. Lupi, thank you so much for being on the program today. It's a pleasure. Justin, thanks for having me. Awesome. Well, great. You know, I talked a little bit about your company, and we will definitely talk about VM software houses we could join. But I'm also always curious to find out how people got to where they are on their career today. So maybe you could kind of talk through a little bit of the trajectory of your career becoming CEO? Yes, of course. It's funny because I've started with sales. So my first job was to sell ERP software for other clients. And in the meantime, I studied Computer Science Technical University of roswaff, and then I decided to make a shift from sales to it. And it's funny, because now I can combine, you know, sales and it it's even better, because I remember from my beginning of my career when I talk to my clients then or answer the questions my colleague said to my clients, okay, so now I would like to say what to cash has just said, because they understood me, yeah, so I used the jargon instead of business language, and then, you know, step by step, I tried to adjust, and I learned the business language. And so I used to be a developer in the beginning of my career path, but quickly I realized that probably would not be an expert, and I joined the management path. In the management path, I didn't see any issues, to go further than to be more experienced. Then I was a project manager, product owner. Then my colleagues invited me to be as member of the board, and now I'm the CEO of the company. Nice and how long did that take? Like, how long were you there? So I My first job was in 2002 I'm CEO now, since 2016

so I've been CEO for eight years. Nice, nice, good. Well, that, you know, I always find people that can kind of play these dual roles, right? They can kind of talk to the engineering speak, but can also talk to the business. I mean, I yeah, I encourage people to come out of school that are computer scientists or programmers or whatever, to make sure that they get out and maybe either present or talk, because it's not just all about just sitting down and being a good coder and just writing code these days. That's my feeling. Yeah, exactly. So my developers are now afraid of losing job. I try to replace them that AI won't replace employees, but employees who use AI will replace employees who won't. And of course, I'm certain that developers should be more focused on business language so understand clients. So not only read the documentation or read the specification and do simple code, because this AI can do, but.

But they should ask additional questions, especially business question. And the business should be more important than the pure code, or, you know, very good written code, but without common sense, without have possibilities to sell it. Yes, and I think these developers who understand this and apply this would have a very good marks on the market, and every entrepreneurs would like to employ them. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, you know, I guess one of the questions I'll ask you is kind of, how do you define AI? But you know what I always think about is have machines do the things that they're really good at, which we're starting to find they're pretty good at writing code, and have humans keep doing the things that they're really good at, which is really connections, interactions, understanding the big picture, all that type of stuff. So how do you define artificial intelligence? It's kind of, I think it's difficult, but I always like to ask people on here, like, when people say, what do you do when you're working in AI? What do you tell them? In the beginning, I was skeptical that AI could help me, but since then, so I found a lot of ways that it makes me more productive. It helps me, not only with busy work, because nobody wants to do busy work, but also to be more productive. And I save a lot of time. And for example, now I have time for writing a post on LinkedIn, which I was missed for many years as CEO. I knew that I should do this, but I didn't have enough time. So for me, AI is kind of tool which help us to be more productive or reduce this busy work. So be more focused on strategical thinking and strategic tasks, and think how to use AI on a proper way. And this shift changed me a lot. Yes. So in the past, I wanted to do everything by myself, because, of course, I'm, you know, the best guy who made the first action. I'm also an workaholic, yeah, and now I'm all the time. Have on the back of my head the question, okay, so what else? What other tasks AI can help me? Yes, for sure, for sure. And it's an exciting time, because AI is changing the capabilities of what it can do. Seems, you know, every week there's more and more capabilities of what it can bring to the market, right? We talked a little bit about your company, and let's dive in a little bit more. You guys are called VM software house, and you guys do lots of work in, I guess, tell me a little bit about, sort of like, what industries you guys working in? How are you guys applying AI, what are you seeing from customers when you're out in the field talking to them? We help our clients to deal with legacy software. So many of our clients have developed the software for the last 2030, or 40 years, and products, but not only product, but also thinking about quality, also processes infrastructure. Automatization is quite obsolete or doesn't exist. And our goal is to help our clients to modernize the software together with all process and we teach also developer how to implement it. So we not only share the summary with 3000 pages how to do this properly, but also step by step, we help our clients to make it together with us. And for sure, AI is very important tool for us. For example, we teach our clients how to use copilot in refactoring. I mean about GitHub. Copilot, of course, because it's specially written by to write the software which may release developers from repetitive tasks like writing the documentation, writing test automation, writing README file for example, or at least to work as a pair programming so developer who is hesitant, you know, introverted, to talk to other people, ask your algorithm how to make it better. And when it comes to sectors, we are present in semiconductor, automotive, education, industry, finances. So all the industries where software were exist in past many years. You know, it's funny, you talk about copilot. I absolutely love it. I've been programming for more than 25 years now, and a lot of people that I have met over the past couple years have been like, oh, you know, it always gets stuff wrong. It always gets stuff wrong. But I'm finding it more than often times, it always gets stuff right, actually, for me. And obviously they say this is always the worst that it's going to be right. It's always going to be getting better, of course. And it's especially some of those mundane things, like, when I go out and speak to, you know, I present at a fair amount of conferences and stuff, and even things like, one example that I show is writing like a cron job, right? And that, you know, these are things that it's pretty easy to mistake it and basically have the cron job run the, you know, hours, minutes, days, seconds, stuff like that. And so I show an example, really good example, where a machine can check those things and be like, Oh, based on the known requirements, this thing is wrong. So it's those little meticulous things that computers are really good at that. A human would, if you were doing the code review, you'd be like, yeah, that looks good. Let's just move on with it, right? And then come out missing code. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, this, you know. So again, it's small stuff, but it's also, for me, I also maybe I'm dealing with a new library that I don't really know a lot about. And of course, there are some documentation out there, but oftentimes.

Speaker 1  10:00  
Disease for me to say, how would I write this in whatever? And it was just spit out the code for me. So, so Dustin, I have the same issue. So I feel myself as evangelist about AI. So, for example, all of presentation I prepare as being CI I made a lot of presentation for a public for investors, for you know, member of the board, for employees, for our clients, and in all of them, I include AI pictures, even though they don't look perfectly fine. So 100% fine. You know, it's 2024

Speaker 1  10:31  
how it will look like in the following two years. It's incredible function. Well, of course, the huge change was when I changed from a chat GPT or copilot to mid journey. It was huge shift. Huge, amazing what midjourney can do. But going back to copilot, you mentioned, let's take, for example, irama. You can use it also offline, but then require, for example, to change mindset about buying hardware. So in the past, you were more focused on processor, and now GPU is more important, and not only for gaming, but for make it more smoothly. And then when you are in the airplane or when you are in public transport, for example, you can use ilama to suggest you, of course, it doesn't bring you the 100% accurate answer. But of course, for example, in the Chrome, as you mentioned, it will allow you to make it much faster and without so many errors. So the people who are telling me that AI is now in a gimmick only, I persuade them, okay, maybe for some reasons now, but for sure, in the few following years, many of us would be required to use it on a daily basis. Yeah, yeah, for sure. You know one thing I think is interesting, just about the history of AI, right? It's actually been around for quite some time, right? It's been around since the 50s. I guess we started in like Dartmouth College, and has gone through these. It's not your idea exactly, yeah, now it's smart watch popular. Yeah, it's gone through these phases. I think what's new is the generative AI piece, right? That's what kind of is. What you're seeing is the sort of the turning point, and people are using it a lot for now. So I was amazed when I listened to volts, one of Polish guy who is on a high position in open AI, and he told us that it's now like change, but it is not like no from zero to one. It is all the time developing, for example, some of algorithms in some fields are now better than human, and in other fields, they will be better than human in few years. But it's similar like with evolution for the human or for other tiers. For example, it's not possible to find on it happened in 1500

Unknown Speaker  12:50  
BC. It's not possible. And from 1501

Speaker 1  12:55  
it was something different, no. So it's kind of evolution, and it's same with algorithm. It will be still developed it, it's, you know, the question about also hardware, about the software, about the people, about use people, the software, also about the law. Yes. So law is, for example, in the European Union, very important thing. And sometimes it's stop us to develop faster than, for example, in the United States or in China, for example. Yeah. Well, what are you seeing? Are you watching that pretty closely in the EU so it's a lot of different, I guess, how you guys handle this first United States? Yeah. So Poland is a member of European Union together with, for example, Germany or France. And it's not easy, to be honest. So now it's published AI act. It's kind of document which describe what's possible or what's possible, and I can mention one of our project we developed for our clients. It's a project for a company who make a certification of German knowledge. So somebody who would like to study in Germany needs to pass a certification, and we help them to move from paper version to digital version, using also AI, for example, to assess essays or some long tests on a various level. Or, for example, recording audio or video. And in AAR is written that such kind of soft not skills, but processes can't it's not possible to use only AI also. Human needs to be evolved like, for example, if you would like to take a loan, it's possible that AI would prepare credit ranking, but based on AI act, so this law document, it's not possible. So in all of processes, human has to be involved, and human needs to make the decision at the end. So for sure, it's not so flexible compared to the United States law. Interesting, all right, so that human has to be in the loop, and ultimately they need to make the final decision. Yeah. So AI can help to make this decision, but the final decision, or no signature, needs to be shy.

Justin Grammens  15:00  
By a human Exactly. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with that, at least right. Now, there's an interesting book. I probably have mentioned this in a prior podcast, by a guy named Ethan Malik. He has a book called co intelligence, and the whole idea is that we should be using AI systems collaboratively, right? We should bring them to the table and have them involved, but not ultimately, sort of hand the reins off to them, right? So it sounds like that's the spirit of the law, exactly in the EU, yeah, exactly. Interesting. Well, cool, cool. I mean, so, yeah, so that's a good example of ways of maybe some of the work that you're doing with your clients. I mean, the other thing I think is interesting is AI is just sort of this umbrella of things. You might have machine learning, you might have deep learning. Some of these systems are actually using kind of computer vision, who it's kind of already been around for a long time. Have you guys been using that, I'm guessing, in some of your applications? So we have started thinking about the project together with our clients who make grinding of wood. And now the issue they have the people who are working on these big machines in a fabric working shifts, so 24 hours. So at least they have four shifts. And all of engineers who set up this machine have something different in mind. How to set up this kitchen at the end, the product is also different. So not the same deepness, not the same shape and everything. And we work now on the gathering information, how to put into the machine sensors, how to put the cameras to analyze the data, and then help these engineers to set up this machine properly, that in all of the shifts, 24 hour, they receive the same product all the time, whoever worked there. So, you know, for example, in Germany, it's a lot of people. Some of our clients have 28 nationalities in 200 companies, and it's not easy to onboard everybody, especially that not everybody speaks German, for example. And such kind of tool may help new employees to be on board much faster and to have better results. So I believe the computer vision is very important, and for sure, we will use it in our product as well for our clients. Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. Again, it's one of these things where, I mean, that's using AI. It's been around for a long time. Of course, it's getting better and better, but everyone loves talking about large language models and generative AI. But there's a lot of really, really good applications, just using computer vision, for sure, as a part of that. Yeah, one of the things I mentioned at the beginning was playing guitar and accordion. You know, how long have you been doing that? And, like, how do you think that maybe changes the way that you approach your work? I play accordion. CSI was probably not, maybe child, so my grandfather and father played accordion, and they found the wives by playing instruments. I also find my wife by playing guitar, so probably it's a kind of tradition. I will see if one of my children will also find that wife playing instrument. And for example, I use accordion now to make the better environment, or better family environment. In our companies, for example, I take accordion and in all of birthday our employees have, I take accordion and play Happy birthday for them, I believe it's something unique. So I don't know another company which does this. So even though they will leave, or they left our company, they all recall and sent me sometimes SMS that I missed your accodion playing. And, you know, celebrate the birthday because it's something, you know, special for employees. I love that. That's awesome. Yeah, no, I think any way you can make your workplace unique and have it stand out. I've never heard of that before, so that's great having the CEO come and playing you happy birthday. It's important. So every, every three weeks, for example, we make some kind of summary what we did in last few weeks, what we are going to do in next few weeks, to be up to date with all of our employees. And we take this opportunity to send in a graduation for people who have anniversary at our company, for example, birthday. So it's important, you know, we are quite a family with this approach. We have lower fluctuation, and the people are more engaged in our clients project, and I believe we receive a better result, and our clients are more satisfied. So it's only small thing we can do, taking according to this pleasure for me. So why not to do this? That's great. That's great. Well, speaking of new people, kind of coming into the field, like, how do you recommend, like, if I was coming out of school, how do you think I should get in and sort of approach AI and start learning more about it? What are some good ideas? Yeah. So AI somehow combined with computer science. So, for example, I was devoted computer science in the very beginning. In late 90s, my father started working in some German component. Received laptop, probably it was the first laptop in our city, and I could use it and show myself on this computer science. And I knew.

Lukasz Borzecki  20:00  
So from the very beginning that I would go somewhere in it, I was not sure if I would choose hardware or software. At the end, I use software, and later the management when it comes to AI, it's a huge change. So, for example, my son is in scouts, so he organized some group of scouts, but also have his own challenges. And he found the challenge of web developer, and I wanted to help him to achieve this challenge. And in the past, you know, you needed to install the environment, connect this, configure and everything, and by simply ask chat, GPT, okay, so could you help you? Yes. The past 15 minutes, we had everything set up. Nice. We were common sense, we were commendation and now my son is talking to chatgpt, how to go deeper. Yes. How now he he moved from PHP to Python, for example, and it's really easy. So when it comes to AI, I think the first thing is not to be afraid, and we can't do anything wrong. So at the end, we need to use our common sense, and we need to be sure what we would like to achieve. And then it's a lot of tools which can be used, like probably in the beginning, Gemini or chatgpt or cloud to chat with these tools for generic pictures, probably mid journey. I would recommend for other things. For example, I also made my AI generated clone. It is really funny. I recorded it and I met last time my German teacher, and he told me, Bucha, probably the video when you stand is better recorded than when you sit. And I told him, Volga, it was my clone, really, yeah,

Justin Grammens  21:42  
he didn't know that.

He didn't recognize the difference between myself as real and the clone. We use it in outbound marketing, yes, so we combine my clone and real video to attract our client that we do something special. Because, you know, our clients receive 1000s of emails every day, yeah, from various regions, various countries, and so we need to be creative. And for sure, AI help us to be more creative as well. Nice, nice, good. Yeah. I mean, I've 10 in a 12 year old, but my 12 year old son, we started doing the thing where we would just ask chat GPT to give us a math problem at the end of the day, right? So we're generating math problems now. Obviously he already has enough math problems at school, but the ones school, but the ones that chat GPT generates are actually really, really good, and they're fun. It always creates something new, right? You can kind of endless. Yeah. So last time, my 12 years old son also asked me about helping him in math, and I tried to recall how the procedure of doing this task was, you know, in his age. So then I asked chatgpt, and he wrote all of steps how to do this properly. I was impressed. Yeah, incredible tool for other example, for, you know, teaching for education, really, it's a very good tool. Yeah, are you concerned at all that? You know, again, my kids are still pretty young. They don't use it to find the answer yet, but I'm thinking, obviously, more and more kids are doing that, right? They figure, well, geez, I don't even need to memorize this stuff anymore, because I can just automatically ask chat, GPT. And it's interesting, because, you know, when calculators came around, everyone's like, well, we don't need to do stuff the old way. Let's just calculators will speed up the process. And so, you know, some people have said, well, this is just no different than the calculator. It's just another tool for people to be finding the answer. But it's, I feel like it's taken it to a new level now, right? It's now it's starting to logic and reason. It's not just doing one little, simple operation. I think it depends. So of course, you can use, for example, some translators, but having a knowledge of knowing foreign languages puts you on the complete other level. For example, I make every Saturday economic lesson for my children to teach them how to invest, how to understand stock market, how to understand bonds, the percentage, you know, loans, low everything, which is, you know, combined with economy. And I told them, basic calculating in your head is something crucial, for example, to calculate how much you can earn on various instruments, or something that is really crucial. Even though you have calculator, you need to know the basics. Yes. So, of course, Nobody of us remember all of lectures from, you know, philosophy, from history, from Geography and everything, but at least all of us know the basic which can help us to understand the environment, the real life we are now. So I believe AI will enhance this process and help us, especially when we are bored, for example, or tired. You can use it, but I can't believe that it will replace us or replace this way of thinking. Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I think I still think that yeah, you need to know where to apply the tool and where not to apply the tool. And oftentimes, I mean, even right now, you still need to double check the tool Exactly. Yeah, you're not exactly sure, yeah, because touchability Sometimes wrote you something which doesn't.

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
Exist, even with links

Speaker 1  25:03  
only. When you click these links, you discover that it doesn't exist. Yes. So sometimes I ask him to double check what he wrote. Going back to my LinkedIn posts, it helps me, for example, I make a post about some subject and I write him, okay, so please write me two, three sentences about this subject. So for example, in two weeks ago, I wrote about roswa, and I didn't remember how many islands it has, how many rivers are in our city, how many citizens is there, and so on, so forth. So I wrote only the bullet points. Okay, so please write me. Please check and he did it, you know, all the time. So normally I would spend a lot of time by research to take this data. Of course, I knew more or less how much it is. So for example, if he mentioned that rot has hundreds Island, it's not sure, yeah. But still, if it's different seven to eight, it's not a huge you know fault, sure, sure. Yeah. So how do people get a hold of you? Lucas, oh, I'm active in LinkedIn, of course, I also can mention my email address, of course, phone number or WhatsApp. I'm available. So being so a public person, everybody can reach me and use the channel is convenient for them. Gotcha, and your website is vm.pl, so w.vm.pl

Justin Grammens  26:22  
gotcha for sure. And I guess I should have said this, we always post links and stuff like that and notes on the podcast so people will be able to follow and find you through the podcast. Yeah. Is there anything else that maybe I didn't touch on that you specifically wanted to highlight, I guess, in our conversation today? Yes. So mentioned, you mentioned about books about AI, but I think apart from Ai, it's also good to read other books. So for example, I read a lot of books which combine business and sales, and when it comes to business and sales and AI, I can recommend a book called McKinsey way it helps to understand how to AI may be applied, even though it is not written about AI. Why is that? Because in companies, it's only three factors relevant. So one is the increase revenue or decrease costs or decrease risk, and when you would like to persuade your boss or your employees or anybody else to use AI at your company. I would like to ask you for a recommendation, or write you some arguments based on these three levels, because all of them will for sure, pass for somebody who is in charge of business. So either increase revenue. So what you how using AI will increase your revenue in the company, or how using this AI will reduce cost, or how using AI would reduce risk. And I think it's very important, because when you say okay, it will give me additional freedom, or will reduce my time, or okay. So for you, it's very important. But for somebody who needs to prepare a report for a stock market or for investors, he needs to use one of those, these free fields I've just mentioned, yeah, no, I love it because, yeah, you can't really sell to leadership or management just the technology alone. You can't say, Well, we're just going to start using AI. Well, these are the questions they need to make run their business on, right? Yeah, exactly, yeah. And this is regardless of whatever it is. I mean, AI is just one piece. Yeah, people are talking about cybersecurity. They're going to be talking about quantum you know, it's like there's always new technologies coming down the line. So you can kind of boil it down to those three principles, you probably have a better use case of getting it kind of taken on by your business. And another recommendation is book called model story brand, written by Donald Miller. It's funny because it's based on plot in the film. In the movie, suggesting introducing AI, it's good to be humble. So a little step, a little bit back how it works. So our clients and our boss should be a hero, so he needs to make the final decision. It's his business. It's his role, his department, yes. So please, I recommend to give him a freedom. But we need to be a guide, like, for example, Luke Skywalker was the hero, yes, but Jedi was a guide for him. Without Jedi, Luke sky, Bucha would not win in the movie, and we need to be a guide. Okay? So a humble person who is has big knowledge, experience, who may make suggestions, but still be a humble guy who is in stake in the background, and anytime when our boss or somebody in our company would need us show up and then suggest, okay, so this is the solution for your issue? Yes, no, I love Donald Miller. I love Donald Miller. That's great. You're preaching the choir. I have his building a story Brand Book, and basically, yeah, that is one of the exercises I went through at my company.

Company was to sort of, you're right. You be that guide, and you find out from your customers. Well, how can you support them? Right? So you're there to support them, what their ultimate storyline is, and you basically try and tell a story of how things can be better if they engage with you, and how you can help them get to their goals. Yeah, awesome. Well, I will make sure I have a link to that book as well in our notes. So it's very good recommendation. So I love it. I try to implement this insights, you know, in our company, also to persuade our employees, but also to teach them how to work among the team now, with our clients, with employees, and I believe it's a good approach, absolutely. Well, awesome. Lucas, thank you so much for your time today. It's been a great, great conversation. And yeah, look forward to keeping in touch with you in the future. Yes, I'm looking forward also. Thank you all the best for you, and thank you for your great job for this podcast, and that you share your knowledge with society. It's a huge thing. Thank you very much. Oh, sure. All right. Well, great. Have a good day.

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