CAVO Ep. 85: Ways the Human Cloud and AI Are Revolutionizing Remote Work

Cloud computing and AI have transformed the world of work to create some of the trends that we're seeing today. In this episode, Dr. Stephanie Menefee, Associate Dean of Professional Studies in the School of Public Service at National University chats with Matthew Mottola, CEO of The Human Cloud and a leading authority for leaders embracing the freelance economy. Matt has been featured in Fortune, Bloomberg, YPO, and Yahoo Finance.

Learn more about Matt at https://matthewrmottola.com/.

Transcript

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
0:02 
Welcome to the Center for the Advancement of virtual organizations podcast. How the human cloud and AI are revolutionising remote work. I'm Stephanie Menefee Associate Dean of the School of Public Service at National University. And I'm joined today by Matthew matola global leader on the human cloud. For those of you who don't yet know, Matthew leads the ethical adoption of the human cloud, the digital, remote and decentralized model of work that over half the US workforce will transition to within the next five years. Wow.

He's a trusted source for public investors, leadership teams, media, and aspiring entrepreneurs looking to build sustainable talent models. He's got 10 plus years of experience spanning across all angles of the human cloud. He's founded venture backed venture l, a Shopify for independent professionals to grow their business. He's published the human cloud. It's 2020 ones leading book on how technology is transforming work. He has led over 50, fortune 500 companies to spend up to 100 million on freelancers from leading the Microsoft freelance toolkit, and you can check them out after you listen to this podcast at Matthew are mottola.com. It's ma TT HEWRMO, TT o la.com, where you'll also find the book The Human cloud. I highly recommend following Matthew, If you don't already. And without further ado,

Matthew, Welcome, and thanks so much for taking the time to come and chat with me today about all things human cloud.

Matthew Mottola
1:39 
Thanks for having me, Stephanie, that was gonna have you do my intros from now on? Oh, great.

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
1:43 
Nice. Yes. So so I'm really excited to just dive into the subject matter, because I know it's so popular. But first, would you mind sharing a bit about yourself? And like your journey to becoming this global leader on the human cloud? How does one get here?

Matthew Mottola
2:00 
Yeah, of course. So let me let's start super, let's make it super, super simple and basic. And let's define the term freelance economy. So because I think this will, this will underpin everything we talked about. So when we say freelance economy, we simply mean working in a way that's not chained to one company, meaning a full time contract and typically remote first. So under that lens, so sort of the way my journey has evolved, has been I started freelancing over 10 years ago, and college, it was the way that I could do an internship while still making money, because I played college sports. So we couldn't take a you can do a full time internship, I still went down the traditional path.

And I saw the disconnect in that freelancing made more sense to me specifically, I loved choosing what I was working on, and seeing the direct impact of my work. And so I did and I went and worked at a big for professional services firm expected it to be this dream of how awesome work will be. And for me, it was the total opposite. It just wasn't, it wasn't a good fit. And so I dove headfirst into the freelance economy, specifically freelancing myself, and then building models around it. And so I was early at a company called Gigster, where we did custom software through freelance networks.

And this was people all over the well world building custom software for beloved brands that you know, we all we all use. Then I went over to Microsoft and built the Microsoft freelance toolkit that was enabling every enterprise to hire freelancers at scale. And so if you've heard of Upwork, and Fiverr, think about how an enterprise that has very, very strict requirements around security compliance, a lot of not sexy stuff, think about how they're actually going to access these these freelancers and these freelance marketplaces. So at a very, very high level, my world has been seeing a different model of work that works for many, many people better than typical full time employment, and simply doing everything it takes to get that world up and running. That's really

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
4:09 
neat. And it's it's funny how sometimes our experiences put us exactly in the right place at the right time. Ken, can you tell us exactly what the human cloud is and how it's, you know, going to continue to change the future of work?

Matthew Mottola
4:28 
Yeah, so the human cloud is a buzzword. It is. Yeah, it is a buzzword that is trying to describe how technology is driving this new world of work. And to be honest, we're torn whether we call it a freelance economy and independent contractor economy, a digital economy, there's so there's so many terms, right that get very confusing. And so for us, the reason we use the term human cloud is we Because number one human will always be here, right? Whether we're talking about AI, whether we're talking about the gig economy, and these various models, the person doing the work will always, always, always be most important. And the reason we use Cloud is because cloud computing is really what's driven this revolution in enabling remote and independent contractor models.

And so we, you know, to be honest, we had the, the book was fully done without this term even used, it was used in a Chapter context describing what the freelance economy was. And right before we were, we were in the testing stages of the book title. And people just kept saying human cloud. And so he literally just went, alright, if, if the market wants it, then that's what we'll use. And I think it, I think it does do a good, a good job of describing what is really happening. And you know, just to go back, it's talent will always be most important, right, the human will always be at the center. But Cloud computing is what's really revolutionized the world of work to create some of the massive trends that we're seeing today.

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
6:07 
And that it, it seems really interesting, how that intersects with what we're, you know, learning and seeing with AI, which also is not a new thing, but it's just really catching on now. You know, how do you see sort of this future of AI and everybody's saying, you know, AI is coming for our jobs? You know, why might that statement not be entirely accurate, as you're talking about humans being the most important piece of work?

Matthew Mottola
6:39 
AI to me, simply augments and amplifies. And I'll get into what I mean by that. And just for context, so my co author, Matt Coatney, he is one of the leaders in the AI space, and not just a leader in the past year, he's been a leader for over 20 years. And so he was actually building some of O'Reilly's deep learning courses back before we had the terms like generative AI and machine learning. And so, you know, just want to make sure that's sort of the frame of reference.

And, and when I, when I started working with Matt, around five years ago, I was this beady eyed, sort of leader that was saying a lot of the, the jargon at the time, which was AI is going to replace jobs. And, and I was fully bought into that. And then in working with with Matt, what, what I really realized was, it's a lot more simple than we think. And even though the models behind AI, which I mean, we talked about neural networks we talked about was it MLS MLMs there's numerous terms that are very complicated. But in reality, all AI is doing is it's augmenting our ability to produce. Now, I'll be honest, I invested in a company in September, that figured out that around 40% of freelance projects could be fully automated.

So there is absolutely some replacement happening and will and will happen, but in really working deeply with Matt, and I want to give him most of the credit, right, because he's the expert on the AI side. But what what what we really learned and working deeply with him is that thinking about AI is actually no different than thinking about hiring someone and teams to help you. And that they can push you further along than you could on your own.

And so we like to use the two terms augmentation and amplification. augmentation, because whether it is an AI tool that you're using, like Chad GPT, or whether it's a freelancer or teams of freelancers that you're hiring, they really comes down to augmenting what you're able to do. And then we like the word amplify, because amplify amplification to me is the best. And the best word to describe the impact this is going to have. And in terms of the impact. What we say in the book is technology. And we call it the amplification effect. But technology is value neutral, it always has been you can do great things with it, you can do terrible things with it. And so when we look at AI, those that are sitting in a place of you know, good fortune, whether it be because they put themselves in the right place, whether it's because of skills, or you name it, those people will do better.

And the people that are not doing well will do worse. And whether it's AI or the freelance economy, this amplification is is true. And so I'll sort of frame it by saying when we look at AI, to me, it's no different than actually having freelancers or a team of freelancers. And the two things it does is it augments the individual and amplifies the existing conditions and work

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
9:54 
that we already have. Okay, yeah, that's, that's interesting, and it's settled. I like hearing you talk about this, it's calming me down, I think I gotta tell you, this morning, friend sent me an article from The Wall Street Journal, about AI in hospitals, and how it's creating tension between the nurses, and the AI machines. And the quote that I almost fell out of my chair, when I read it said, the computer doesn't know the patient is an out of control pain.

And so we hear AI is coming for our jobs. And then we read things like this, and it, you know, make some people and you know, myself included, I won't, I won't hide from it incredibly nervous. And so, you know, I don't know if you can give us an example of which industries you think might be most impacted?

Matthew Mottola
10:49 
Yeah, for sure. I think all I'll give you the framework that I would use to think about this, and then a tactical application for it. So I would say that a framework to think about is, and this is true with all of software, I guess we should sort of start by saying what is software and what is AI, it's really just replacing known actions, known activities. And for those listening, if I know none of us really have free time, but I think we should all fit some free time into taking Harvard's CS 50 course, it's totally free. And it'll give you a basic foundation on what computer science really is. And I think it'll ease a lot of a lot of concerns.

But so in terms of, you know, a framework to think about this, roles that do not need contextual understanding, along with a human to human type relationship, I do think are at risk, and I'll give the relationship. My you know, my family and partner, they're all most of them are doctors, and I'm always trying to mess with them about, you know, do we really need you in terms of can, you know, are you the really the best ones to diagnose me with whatever it is. And the reality is that there's going to be an AI that's able to just crunch more data, and come up with more patterns to give a recommended diagnosis than than any human that is the reality. But the second reality is, no one is going to ease my concerns, slash be able to provide me a service better than my partner and her fellow and her and her family.

And so I always use that framework of it's, it's contextual understanding, meaning being able to see beyond the data, and then also the relationship side to be able to actually communicate and work with people on that data. Now, in terms of tactical roles that I would be scared, scared of, if you are simply collecting and processing data, I'd be very, very, very scared. If you are simply producing content that is not necessarily uniquely differentiated, or not necessarily, in line with having a strong relationship with your client, then I'd be very, very, very scared. And so if you are a social media management producer, and you you don't have unique differentiation, I'd be terrified. If you're a writer who's pumping, say, 10 articles a week.

Yes, I would be terrified. And so those type of roles, especially writing right now, chat, GPT, I mean, to be honest, we I've been thinking, we've been thinking about hiring, and we always do of hiring more writers, we don't need to, in most cases, chat GPT can create a lot of the collateral get it 98% There. But um, so that's the framework I would use is I would say, really, really, really deeply understand is this role. Do you need a contextual understanding? And do you need the human side of building the relationship? If yes, double down on those two things? If no, then I'd be pretty scared.

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
14:16 
Yeah, that's a really great way to look at it. You know, especially, I especially like the example that you gave about. You know, it's not necessarily the whole field, it could be parts of the field. And earlier, you mentioned pushing to do better. And so, you know, maybe part of being scared. If you're one of those data people right now is a new, a new way to do things a better way to do things. Because somebody does have to program the machines. Right?

Matthew Mottola
14:53 
Exactly. And one way to think about it to Stephanie that you know, all the credit to my co author Matt Coatney. Is Is he He thinks about AI no different than hiring another human. With with any AI tool, there's going to be the onboarding required to get it up and running, there's going to be the ability to iterate with it, just like a good employee. And that's why I tie this all with the freelance economy, because hiring freelancers is a much easier quicker, and I would argue more impactful way to get work done than hiring full time employees or agencies.

Likewise, using AI and chat GPT. And these various technologies, which, you know, we were talking about AI today. But if we step back, the whole the whole concept that you and I can be talking today, in totally different places across the world. That's nuts, the whole concept that if I have a question, I can literally just type anything into a search bar and get good enough data. That's crazy, right? So we're already living in a world of high high augmentation. AI is just another way of augmentation. That is really powerful. And I will say one, one principle that is true. And I, you know, I think it'll become even more true, is you need less people to get more more stuff done. That is, that is scary. And so we do highlight in the book, that you can now have a 16 person company, go get a billion dollar acquisition, that that wasn't possible, even even 15 years ago.

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
16:30 
It's definitely interesting to see how time propels us forward home. Yeah. So kind of keeping in line with the pushing to do better theme, and realizing that most of our listeners are indeed remote. What if somebody isn't incredibly tech savvy, you know, instead of getting terrified? What can they do?

Matthew Mottola
16:54 
It's a good question. I would just say lean into the relationship side. And to be honest, don't think that you have to out out tech, the person next to you. The end, I know, this is not a this is probably not the most scientific thought leadership read type answer. My my business partner is 71 years old. And we daily have calendar F ups and blips, because he's not the most technology savvy. Now, with that said, he is incredible at what he does. And so I don't care that it's easier to FaceTime him, rather than use calendar automation and automated note taking tools. So I would one just pause and say Don't, don't worry, you know, it's not, it's not like you're gonna get left behind just because you're not up on the the most updated tech.

Now, that is assuming that if you are, you know, older, that you are a clear expert, and very, very valuable in your space, where I would be worried is if you are not at the top of the value ladder, meaning not in the director and above levels, that because those those roles are very highly contextual and relationship based, right? I wouldn't be worried if you were you're measured by productivity, because that's where technology is just leaps and bounds, always going to beat you. And always be there to justify either replacing your downsizing. So I would I would break it up into separating it by, you know, Where do I stand in his productivity? What I'm mostly measured by? If yes, then yes, I would immediately be taking as many free online courses as possible related to computer science. And if no, I would continuous be leaning into your expertise in the relationships that you have.

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
19:00 
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And, you know, as we're learning how to stay relevant in all of our fields, I'm getting the sense that most of the freelance future that you talk about in the human cloud is not you know, freelance is not a full time job. And we're moving toward more remote opportunities so people can do them from anywhere in the world. You know, how how can our listeners you know, prepare themselves for a successful future when everybody's competing for these part time? positions or freelance roles and everybody still has a mortgage to pay and and children to take care of and all of the life's responsibilities and freelance still comes with that kind of nervous will I be able to get another gig after this one ends sort of thing.

Matthew Mottola
20:04 
Exactly. So, so let me let me start by saying that one, I understand how terrifying the future, the future seems, if it is freelance first and there's there's another words like gig economy free agent economy, these words that I just think are terrifying and not necessarily true. So So with that, let me Let me shine a light into where the word work is going. And the first thing is, it's not going to be 100%. Freelance. That's just that, I can't imagine that, I think more. So it's going to look like right now. It's around 90%, full time 10%, freelance. Most companies themselves are actually over half external. So the condition of companies getting worked on not what their core full time workers that's already that's already gone.

But so it's going to look predominantly freelance. And what that really means is it's going to be predominantly fractional, and project based. And so freelance is a word that we use when we talk with enterprise clients. But we seldom use it when we talk to individuals, because it's kind of it's too vague and in our opinion, so what we what we advise more so with the from you individual side, is it's it's fractional and project based. Now, fractional means, imagine, instead of having one full time job, you have one to three clients that you work on in a fractional basis basis, which either means the percentage of productivity or hours.

And so this is this looks like a fractional cmo that does that creates the specs, creates the product roadmaps, creates the OKRs, and then meets with the team twice a week, rather than being in an office full time. This also looks like a software developer working 10 hours a week, or 20 hours a week. So that's, that's what that's what it looks like. Now, in terms of how to prepare yourself for this. I would number one, quantify what you do today, and look into what you want to do tomorrow. And so instead of saying I am, you know, a program manager at Microsoft, and all I care about is my Kinect, right?

The feedback that I get every quarter every year, instead of that I would step back and say, Okay, what value can I truly add to any organization or the organizations that I want to work with? And then quantify that. And so a great example that I've seen is, let's say that you are a right now you're sitting in a corporate strat type role. And you are a senior corp strat analyst. Well, what in that role do you absolutely love, it might be presentations, you might love creating presentations for executive teams, that in itself is now your quantified skill.

And so instead of being a senior corporate data analyst, you are a presentation developer and strategist for the world's best brands, something of that such. So to kind of just put it all together, the world is not going to be 100%. Freelance, I just can't see that. Instead, it's going to be heavily influenced by fractional and project based work. And you as the individual, this gives you an opportunity to quantify the skills and value that you currently have and want to have. And instead of just saying, Here's my job title, it's all about quantifying these this value, and getting opportunities related to that value.

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
23:49 
That is so incredibly helpful. You have a really great way of putting things into fantastic perspective. Matthew, thank you so much. This has been an amazing conversation. I am wondering if there is any thing you would like to share with our listeners that I didn't ask you specifically?

Matthew Mottola
24:12 
That's a good that's a good question. What did you forget? Man? We talking anything I can give you barbecue Rex anywhere in the country now. Just kidding. Yeah. The fun stuff? I would the only thing I would say is I would Oh, there's two things. I think, you know, I don't know when this is going to go out live. But we're sitting here in the middle of June, I would say that prepare for what's the word where life is going to be tough. For the next two years.

We've been seeing lots of signs of that and what's the what's the saying where it's like, you know, you're in a, you're in a rut when your neighbor gets laid off. You're in a recession when you get laid off. Alright, I've to be honest, I didn't live through 2008 So I can't I can't compare. But I've been seeing that quote now. And I'm just, you know, it's really scary. Actually, our family is having a conversation about it last night, we've seen a lot of incredible people that have been laid off, right are looking for the next opportunity. And so I just, I don't know the nice way to say it. But the next two years look look bleak, right? Prepare, I would recommend prepare for that. The second thing I'd say, though, is no matter what, whether it's AI, the freelance economy, you name it, nothing will ever replace having a good relationship, and being someone that people want to work with.

And I go back to when I was, you know, this little high school, or maybe made a middle schooler, I thought that when I got into the working world, I had to be the best person in the world and I had to outcompete everybody next to me, that literally was my mindset in terms of how did I look at work. And I had a really, really good mentor who she told me that, you know, before when my first job interviews, she said, what the person is going to ask me the interviewer, is, if I get stuck in the airport with this person, am I going to want to talk with them?

And honestly, nothing has better encompassed how I think about work than literally Are you someone that if stuck in an airport, I would want to be around. And to me, whether it's freelance or AI, I've yet to see something of get to see advice be better than just be good to work with. So oh, I'll leave it at that. You know, I know, like I said, the next two years might look bleak. But if you're somebody that people like to work with, I promise you that the future is very, very, very bright.

Dr. Stephanie Menefee
26:48 
It's fantastic advice. Everybody, I think it's worth saying again, they, the human cloud is a fantastic book, if you visit Matthew's website, I'll spell it again for you. Ma TTHEWRMOTTO, la, Matthew are matola.com You can find the book and a whole host of other resources. I went yesterday and had myself a good time for a very long time. You have a lot of great things available on your website. And I saw that there was a place that people can connect with you also.

And so I hope that anyone interested will reach out to you there. It's it's been a real pleasure chatting with you today. Thank you so much for joining us in support of the Center for the Advancement of virtual organizations. We truly appreciate your insights and we know our listeners will benefit from your experience too.

Matthew Mottola
27:53  
Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie.