Welcome back to GenAI in the Enterprise! Today, Zach talks with Caleb George, the Director of Training and Curriculum at Centriq.

As someone who works in education (specifically training devs), Caleb says that at first, GenAI tools like ChatGPT caused a lot of fear and concern in his community. However, further research quickly revealed that Generative AI is not a replacement for human programmers, it’s just another tool in the tool belt. GenAI isn’t going to replace programming roles, but programmers who can effectively use GenAI will rapidly rise above and perhaps replace those who cannot.

View This Episode On:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/Ubalvbpl4h0
• Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/caleb-george-director-of-training-at-centriq/id1730289289?i=1000649986451
• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3VKkbmAosZzreMuX6marLQ?si=2b8e4335950948cf
• … or wherever you get your podcasts!

About Guest Caleb George:

Nearly a decade ago, Caleb George embarked on an extraordinary journey into the world of IT. This adventure not only allowed him to unlock his own passions but also inspired him to help others discover their passions and potential, whether students in his classes or members of the teams he leads. As an innovative and accomplished IT leader, he has developed a strong affinity for creating and delivering cutting-edge solutions to the many challenges that he has faced in this field.

Caleb on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/calebageorge/

About The Generative AI In The Enterprise Series:

Welcome to Keyhole Software’s first-ever Podcast Series, Generative AI in the Enterprise. Chief Architect, Zach Gardner, talks with industry leaders, founders, tech evangelists, and GenAI specialists to find out how they utilize Generative AI in their businesses.

And we’re not talking about the surface-level stuff! We dive into how these bleeding-edge revolutionists use GenAI to increase revenue and decrease operational costs. You’ll learn how they have woven GenAI into the very fabric of their business to push themselves to new limits, beating out competition and exceeding expectations.

See All Episodes

Partial Generative AI In The Enterprise Episode Transcript

Note: this transcript section was created using generative AI tools like YouTube automated transcripts and ChatGPT. There may be typos, slight content changes, or character limits for brevity!

“[Music]

Zach Gardner: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future. My name is Zach Gardner, and I’m the Chief Architect at Keyhole Software. About three to four months ago, I set out on a little bit of a quest. I wanted to learn more about generative AI, talk to people with different opinions and backgrounds than mine. So, as one does in 2023-2024, I scoured the internet and happened to bump into a few people at a conference on Saturday. If I remember correctly, it was at UMKC where we met.

I’m joined today by Caleb George, the Director of Training Curriculum at Centric. Caleb, thank you for meeting with me virtually once again.

Caleb George: Yeah, absolutely, glad to be here.

Zach Gardner: Just as a reminder, all the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the participants and do not reflect their employers in any way. I do dig your shirt, by the way—very on point, very on brand.

So, to get us started, maybe you could talk a little bit about your background. How did you become the Director of Training Curriculum at Centric?

Caleb George: Yes, so my professional journey actually started in manual labor. I did a lot of work for a guy who owned property, flipped houses, and did property management. He was getting out of that game and was going to sell all his houses, so I started looking for what I was going to do next. I didn’t really want that to be more manual labor, so that journey led me to Centric.

My start in IT was going through Centric’s career changer program—it’s been almost 10 years now since I did that. I went through the administrator track, did my four months, got a couple of jobs, and then came back as a trainer. I spent my first five years at Centric doing full-time training. From there, an opportunity came up to start a new product, and I was positioned to jump in and take that on. I continued to develop my leadership role, which eventually led me to managing the team of instructors, building new products, and now transitioning into the Director of Training and Curriculum. I’m overseeing all of the trainers and all of our technical curriculum for both tracks.

Zach Gardner: Very cool. And in that time, things have probably changed quite a bit. I’m trying to think—10 years ago would have been 2013-2014. The first Teslas might have just rolled off the production line, and we were all so young back then. The tools that people have now, both on the instructor side as well as the student side, have probably drastically changed. So I’m curious, in the past year or so, what have you seen that has changed with respect to different tools people can use for learning programming? What’s your take on it?

Caleb George: Yeah, so obviously, ChatGPT came in and just rocked our world. From the education side, there was a lot of fear around what this was going to do to our jobs, especially for our coding instructors. There was concern that this could potentially wipe out the need for entry-level programmers. We had to really think through what that would look like. But we saw it as an opportunity, honestly. Being able to use copilot tools and publicly available generative AI models, we see that as an opportunity for learners. Yes, there’s going to be some risk for entry-level programmers, and it’s going to change—and I think already has started to change—what that looks like. But ultimately, it’s just another tool; it’s not a replacement for people at this point.

Zach Gardner: Totally agree. I’ve personally found it beneficial when I need to have multiple documents open, and I don’t want to synthesize them all together. I’d rather say, “Hey, what is the difference between these three or four or five classes? Which ones should I be using? What are the pros and cons?” So yeah, if anything, it’s just another tool in the tool belt. Based on everyone I’ve talked to, it’s certainly not going to replace us. The major disruption will be for those who can use it effectively compared to those who choose to be luddites and live in the early 2020s.

Caleb George: Yeah, one of our coding instructors, who’s the team manager, summed it up pretty well early on by saying, “ChatGPT isn’t going to replace your role as a programmer, but somebody who can use it well will replace your role as a programmer.” And I think that’s really what it comes down to—it’s not so much the tool itself but being able to effectively use the tool to its full potential, to elevate yourself and position yourself for whatever role you’re looking at.

Zach Gardner: Mhm, I like that. I’m curious—given the diversity of opinion on this, I’m sure this is something you all have been talking about for the past year plus—are there people who are still on the fence about it? Are there people who are all in? Is there a consensus in the education field about how these tools will either help or potentially hurt the next generation of programmers?

Caleb George: Yeah, I feel like these tools in education—at all levels of education—have brought up a lot of tough conversations because, obviously, this is a way that you can cheat. It’s a way to try to skim by and not put in a lot of effort and still get through something. I think for traditional education, that’s probably more of a concern because of the way they’re structured.

For us at Centric, from the first time I heard about ChatGPT on NPR, I brought it to my leadership team that next Monday and said, “We need to be on top of this, and we need to know what’s going on.” From that point on, we were pretty much all in. We’re continuing as a company to figure out ways to effectively harness it into our offerings, whether it’s to our career changers or business-to-business, doing some training on that side. For us, we’ve been pretty much all in, and we see this as a very positive tool set and a way that we can empower our students to stand out above other entry-level coders by being able to more quickly get to a solid understanding.

In the coding training space, there are views that say, “No, we don’t talk about it, we don’t touch it, and we discourage people from using it.” There’s value in that, right? You can’t just say, “Oh yeah, here’s this tool, it’ll do everything for you, you don’t need to understand anything.” There is that concern, but I also think that you’re doing a disservice to students by not teaching them the value of the tool and the value of having the prerequisite knowledge. They still have to do the hard work to learn and understand what’s actually happening.

For us, I don’t care if you use ChatGPT to get a correct answer on a lab or a coding challenge—that does nothing for us and nothing for our student. What we want to really empower them to do is have their foundational understanding of what’s happening in code and then give them productive ways to use large language models to actually learn something. We’re focused on finding creative prompts and ways to showcase how to use it as a learning tool, not just as a way to get answers and cheat your way into a new career because that’s not effective for anybody, no matter what the tool is.

Zach Gardner: For sure. There’s been a lot of hesitation, at least on our side, in terms of how much senior developers should use this—is this a tool specifically for junior developers? The best analogy I’ve heard is that it’s a rising tide that lifts all boats. A junior developer 10 years ago would have a very different skill set than a junior developer now, who would have a lot more information, resources, and a larger corpus of knowledge to draw upon. People are worried about them missing out on the opportunity to learn some of the difficult things we had to learn back in the day. There were some things that were very tough for me when I first started programming; I had to scour the internet and learn how to Google search effectively. That’s a large part of being a programmer—knowing not just what to do in a particular scenario, but how to conceptualize the problem you’re having, express it in a way that others will understand, and evaluate the answers they give.

For example, regular expressions never seem to stick in my brain. It’s much easier for me to go to something like ChatGPT and say, “This is what I want, these are the parameters, can you give me a regular expression that does this?” Nine times out of ten, it’s fairly accurate. Some people are worried that the next generation will miss out on those “fun” activities—the difficult pieces of our life that we had to endure—but I don’t see that as much of a concern. I’m guessing you’re probably in the same boat too.

Caleb George: Yeah, I mean, do you lose out on some of that grit and understanding things at a deeper level? I think you do. But if you have a tool that can effectively bypass that for you, there’s value in getting people up to speed faster. Ultimately, it’s the responsibility of the individual to decide how to leverage this tool. Could you use it to find regular expressions and just say, “Okay, I’m assuming this is correct, so I’ll use it and move on”? Sure. But you could also say, “Here’s something I can use—now, why does it work?” And take that as an opportunity to dig deeper. And I think that’s something that, again, with the foundational understanding, people will be able to do. We’ve seen that some students come through, and they have that level of desire to really dig in and understand the why behind the code.

At the end of the day, this is a tool that people are going to use. I use it every day. It’s extremely valuable, but it’s not a replacement for understanding why things work the way they do.

Zach Gardner: Well said, well said.

We’re almost out of time, so I’ll leave you with one last question. If someone who is just getting started in the industry or who is interested in the IT field came to you and said, “Should I be concerned about AI and large language models?” what would you say to them?

Caleb George: I would tell them not to worry about the future and to get started now. These tools are going to continue to develop, and they’re going to make certain areas of our industry better, and they’re going to disrupt other areas. But the need for developers isn’t going away anytime soon. So, if you want to make that change, get into the field and learn the tools that are available. Ultimately, you’ll be okay.

Zach Gardner: Love it, love it. Well, Caleb, it’s always a pleasure to talk to you. I hope we can meet again at a future conference, and maybe this time we’ll have more than just 20 minutes to chat.

Caleb George: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me.

Zach Gardner: All right, see you.

[Music]”