How AI Agents Are Quietly Reshaping the Workplace

00:00:06 Mark Smith
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out. Ready. I do a YouTube series called how to become an MVP. The link is in the show. Looks. With that, let's get on with the show. Welcome back to another episode of the Microsoft Innovation Podcast. Today we're heading to Ireland to meet someone who's working with AI. Please welcome Frank, an application and engineer with competition Team Island and one of the. To Albus minds to mystifying Microsoft Copilot right now, Frank unpacks how Copilots transforming real work, cutting through the hype to show practical, actual AI for professionals who can't afford to let be left behind from building custom copilots and low code tools to rethinking how developers write debug. Plug and ship code. He's got the front end seat to what is happening in this AI shift inside the Microsoft ecosystem with that welcome. To the show, Frank.

00:01:14 Frank Falvey
Thank you, mark. Thanks for having me.

00:01:17 Mark Smith
Good to have you on and I'm I'm keen to get your insights just off air. We you just mentioned that you've done a presentation recently to a large customer around a, what was it about what was your focus of of that presentation?

00:01:31 Frank Falvey
Well, a lot of people kind of know what these agents are all about. You know, they're hearing AI agents talking to AI agents and. And I got the opportunity to speak in Dell Technologies. It's, UM, centre of excellence here in Clark. And we had 80 people. In person, which was great, you know. And then. So I've done a kind of mix of some slides. For people that were entry level you. Know kind of. And then I done 2 simple demos. You know retrieval agent and a task agent with copilot studio. And then yeah, we had loads of questions at the end. It was, you know, super.

00:02:23 Mark Smith
When you think about practical AI, what are what are you seeing? Where are you seeing it practically applied and and what are you encouraging?

00:02:31 Frank Falvey
I see a lot of, Jenny, I know people are using it for, you know, doing making a pictures and generating documents and stuff like that. And the autonomous agents are a bit more advanced, you know, but I think you know, it will come eventually. You know, where things are coming at us so fast now it's like, whoa. You know. Because when you see stuff like agents going to be talking to other agents, it's like, oh, what's going on here like? Cool stuff. Yeah, yeah.

00:03:10 Mark Smith
How? How is? It affecting coding in the developer landscape.

00:03:15 Frank Falvey
Yeah, there's a lot of kind of stuff about developers now, isn't there? And you don't know what to believe. Like the percentage like. I heard one thing there last week that that could affect 80% of them. UM. I see they've introduced it. To get up there recently. Then you know you just go in and type the prompt and tell it what you want and it's like all the code is in front of you. Just edit what you want, you know. It's amazing stuff.

00:03:50 Mark Smith
What? What do you think the impact is on on professionals, you know people, whether they are you know developers is one side of of the professional landscape then there's you know. What Microsoft have for some time is called information workers. People that are doing a lot of, you know, office space work which potentially. AI agents etcetera are are going to be able to do these things that people do. What do you think the impact is from your perspective?

00:04:21 Frank Falvey
But I think. The take up is going to be very slow. You know people are kind of saying AI is coming out as fast and we're companies are kind of saying, hey, hold on a minute, you know, and we're not. Going to leave these. Co pilots run from Russia to over our whole business like we want to take it easy here and maybe, you know, do pilot projects 1st to see what will happen. And with large companies like you know the likes of Dell Technologies now you know where they've got. Something like. Over 100,000 employees, you know, it's going to be slow.

00:05:04 Mark Smith
How how do we though that are in tech? How do we maintain our skill set moving forward?

00:05:12 Frank Falvey
I think the. The knowledge base is very. Low at the minute, you know, and companies are not kind of getting out there and training up their employees. You know, I mean opening. Up to AI and stuff. That. You know, even the fundamentals like AI 900, you know, there's that big take up on it. You know, I think there's a lot of. People are nervous about it, you know, kind of. No, this is a, you know, it's very complex, you know. UM, last year I went to our local. Office to do. The AI 900. Myself or yeah, AI 900. And look, I'm in my 50s. I'm walking in the door. This young guy in his 30s, seeing me coming into an exam, he's like, oh. It's going on. Here like. So I said to say, hey, you know we have to learn this, you know, open your mind, go and go and learn it.

00:06:17 Mark Smith
Do you think that? Generations coming through or entering the workforce are going to get the level of kind of, you know, the junior training. Like when I started my IT career, I started with. How to build a computer? You know, how do networks work and did things like, you know, CompTIA A+ and things like that, where? I suppose the people entering the tech workforce nowadays are not gonna necessarily have the opportunity to do either like level 1 support on help desks, cause that's probably gonna get taken over by agents and time and level 2 support. So how do we ultimately get to senior professionals in 10 years time after this? Technologies bedded in and all those roles of kind of those junior roles don't exist anymore.

00:07:07 Frank Falvey
Yeah, but they we had the thing here in this country and they were short of people in IT and they started all these courses like fast track to it, you know, kind of cuddled all the stuff. Like, we kind of learned, like, building the PC, put the right RAM and and all this kind of stuff, they bypassed all that and just brought them up to another. But you know it's. You know kind of colour, colour, all that stuff, you know, like I I remember when I was in. It college and they were learning stuff like UM. You know, Seamus, like complementary metal oxide. Semiconductor, what do you want to know all this kind of stuff for, you know? You know this is the MOSFET, it's the, it's the chip on the board. Why do you want to know all that stuff? So I think they kind of bypass all that stuff and maybe just get them in on board and just learn the stuff that they need. To learn, you know.

00:08:04 Mark Smith
Besides AI, what's your? What's your main focus from a tech side of things?

00:08:10 Frank Falvey
I can do everyone a show there every weekend. Now you see my LinkedIn. There you see. Azure and AI show. And I kind of two two of them, two women actually. They just got their MVP's over the over the line this month and we're actually we're celebrating it this this evening this morning here in Ireland, you know probably an evening over there but we had seen the can and. And and me Hernandez, they got their MVP, two women in tech, and then we run the show every every week and they all give you an opportunity for people to come on and kind of talk and kind of job. They can do 5 minutes, 10 minutes. You know, just to get your confidence up and wherever like that. And then I also like on that on that, that's a weekly shows the Azure and AI show. And we are people from the US, India, Africa, the UK from all over, like seeing the candles from Bahrain so. Some weeks we might have 12 people around and we stream out through stream art. You know, stream art. Yep. So we could be out through YouTube 6, LinkedIn live, things, whatever. So the first Thursday of every month. And we have another show monthly show. It's called journey to the. Good. And that's open. That's open for anything and anybody can join or wherever we we don't keep it to kind of technology we can open up anything like we had one week there we had somebody on you know talking about mental health you know. You know just. Just kind of. Day and age. There's so much coming at people that you know people can't cope, you know, it's.

00:10:12 Mark Smith
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And. How long have you been in the MVP program?

00:10:17 Frank Falvey
This is my first year I just. Became an MVP in October. And it's. It's a M365 copilot, so I was doing a lot of kind of demos in kind of you know how copilot works in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook. You know, those sorts of things is the main thing. Yeah. And the Excel 1 is very exciting. As they're built in Python into it, you know. And you don't even have to know how to code, you can just go in and hit a button and the whole pipe and runs across Excel and give you all the insights from your your data. It's and it.

00:11:02 Mark Smith
Interesting. And and are you seeing the in in in you in the demos that you're doing? Are you seeing businesses see how they're going to start using? Tools like copilot in their in their work.

00:11:15 Frank Falvey
I think it's more more. Individuals are using it than actually companies you know because. I think the licenses are a bit expensive, you know. For. You know €20 or $20.00 a month which is 240. So if you kind of give them that across, we'd say like Dell Technologies, now they've got. Over 100 or is 100,000. Employees. You know, a few 240 do the the math on that it's it's expensive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think if it gets a bit, if the price comes down a bit on this. Maybe you know?

00:12:01 Mark Smith
It would be interesting to see what happens being that I think Microsoft has invested a heck of a lot of money into the infrastructure. And of course it takes a long time for people to get on the technology before they get the economies of scale to start lowering the price, so it will be interesting to see what happens. Is there any fears out there around AI at all in the community that you're in?

00:12:24 Frank Falvey
I hear a lot of people talking about the energy consumption, you know. I was. I was at a. Talk there recently where there was an engineer giving the talk about UM. At the moment you want to. Energy being used globally is 1 GW. UM. So do you reckon by 2028, which is kind of like about 2 1/2 years time 2? To three years. It's going to be up around 10 gigawatts. So what is going to happen, you know? Two years after that, they reckon it could be up around 100 gigawatts. That's that's the scary stuff, right?

00:13:09 Mark Smith
Where's it gonna come from that Power. I don't know.

00:13:12 Frank Falvey
I know that I know in. All the big tech companies like Google Mesa. And in the states, they're kind of coming together and they're getting these kind of mini nuclear reactors. These small ones so. How much are they going to generate, you know? But I I think 100 gigawatts. Is probably way. Out up there. You know, I can't imagine. To get up to that by 2010.

00:13:42 Mark Smith
The interesting times I think that who who knows what will be invented in the next few years as well.

00:13:45 Frank Falvey
Sorry. Yeah. What are those do to do? Robots that Elon Musk is making. What are, what are what? Are they going to be doing? Yeah.

00:13:58 Mark Smith
Exactly. And I mean, his ambition is that every person will have their own personal robot.

00:14:03 Frank Falvey
Yeah, I think it's a bit. Like going to Mars, you know? It is, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. Look, see how he I kind of jumped up there in the last last two years? Amazing. I remember the first. Time we used the. Poor pilots and PowerPoint, you know, and I typed in. Can you give me PowerPoint presentation on water conservation? And it just gave me, I think it was about 6 or 8 slides and the first Slade. Was kind of. Water flowing. It was like, Gee, wow, this is fantastic. And. Every everything was, you know. I didn't have to, kind of don't have anything. Everything was right. You know, I was showing how how to save water, how to clean water, all this kind of stuff. Very powerful.

00:15:08 Mark Smith
As we go to wrap up, how did you become an MVP? What was the process for you? Is Claire Smith. Is she your Claire Smith, your CPM?

00:15:20 Frank Falvey
She she is? Yeah. Claire Smith. And so I I was actually giving a talk in 2016 in, in Dell Technologies. I worked there for 20 years on machine Learning studio. Do you remember that one machine learning studio? That's kind of bad. Now. This is like, yeah, you just have. To take over. It's like. And it was only nine years ago, and it's just totally gone, like, you know. And there was a Microsoft person there kind of trying to promote the MVP thing. So I. Said yeah, and nominate me. And then they kind of. Got more active in this. Well, I was kind of in the Azure space. You know, I kind of watched the stock market and see what technologies were over and around that time. And Azure doubled in one year. So it's like, geez, this is amazing like. I'll have to learn that. So I was doing that for a few years. And done the certifications and whatever and. Try to get DMVP on the. Azure space which there. Was too many people. In it, I think it was kind of packed out. So I just moved over into. Coal pilot because it was new and was a bit more exciting as well. So that's how I ended up getting into the 5th. And. I'm the first person. In Ireland, to get the M365 call pilot so.

00:16:55 Mark Smith
Congratulations. That's that's very, very good. Last last thing, any advice for other people aspiring to be in the 3.

00:17:04 Frank Falvey
What I case of of. Of it is, you know, helping people and you know. You know, they're they're grateful for the help of wherever you know, there was a post on LinkedIn. If you look up there, somebody's out to calling me an Angel and. I says what? I want to be. An Angel? I just want to, you know, meet through people and help them and, you know, do you appreciate it, you know, which is, which is good. Well. And. Microsoft learned what a platform you know, I introduced everybody to that. You. Know it's free. And they introduced the thing there not so long ago, if you're, you know, especially for people doing certifications now and. You can actually go in there and you can actually do practice exams, you know. I don't know for the a 900 lbs so they say. Go in there. Practice practice. If you get 85% three times in all the exam, you know. And I did. I went in and then. You know the. Pass and scored. 700 and I got 900 mark 900. And anybody who's heard Geo gun 900 and never seen the 900 days to tell me. You know, so it's good and look.

00:18:30 Mark Smith
Very well done. Thank you.

00:18:31 Frank Falvey
You're never done learning. It's. That's why I tell people, you know, keep learning, you know, to bring users are losers. Ever hear 2.

00:18:46 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buy me a coffee.com/nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time.