AI: Hype or Help? Let’s Be Real About AI

Good day and welcome to the show. I'm your host Pete Cooper from Skillion. Today's topic is AI hype or help. We're talking to Pablo Mets. He's based out of Cyprus with his company Latitude 35. It helps companies be taxsavvy by operating out of Cypress. But we're going to be talking specifically about how I is helping him with his business and what the future brings or what he believes the future is going to bring. Let's get into it. So, welcome Pablo. Welcome to the podcast. And we've known each other through a network that we um that we work with and um you're one of our early volunteers to be on the podcast. And uh thank you for joining us. Uh we're going to be talking about uh AI.

Is it hype or help? And I but first of all I'd like to hear a little bit about you and your business is then we can start talking about how AI is impacting you.

Well hello Pete and thank you very much for inviting me to this podcast. Surely I was the the first one to put my hand up on that opportunity. So thanks for that. So um look I I am the CEO of Latitude 35 which is a company that um helps business owners um residing in high tax countries to um to open up company in Cypress and enjoy uh the low tax jurisdiction that is here in Cyprus um all legally under the EU umbrella. Um and basically that's what um that 235 does.

And of course once those owners have business owners have saved um quite a lot of their money in taxes here we help them um invest that money into strategies that work for them.

Nice. So did you move to Cyprus for the tax advantages or did you move to Cypress then realize the tax advantages? How did that come about?

That is a good question. So I was living here back in the 90s when Cypress had a a special tax regime for shipping companies where they were charging two and a half% at that time. And so I already knew the favorable tax structure that Cypress had but at that time they were not in the EU.

So it was a bit of a it was a fiscal paradise more than a low tax country if you know what I mean. So then I moved to Canada where taxes are um extremely high let me tell you

weather is not very cooperating either. Um, and so I decided enough of the climate, enough of the taxes and let me go back to um to u to a little Mediterranean paradise where I can enjoy 330 sunny days per year and then get 12 and a half% corporate tax as well as 0% dividend tax. And hey, I mean, you know, it cannot get any better than this.

Wow. Wow. That's amazing. So fantastic. So I mean Cypress isn't perhaps on the top of everyone's mind. Maybe just some headlines for us so we can get where are where is it?

What's nice about it? What why would I come to Cyprus um other than for tax? So, so Cypress is a Mediterranean island um that is basically located in between, I'd say, um Turkey, uh Lebanon, Israel, uh Syria. Um it's a Greek island. So, it's it's a it's well actually the island is divided into two. The north, which is the Turkish part, and the south, which is the Greek part. The Greek nation part is about twothirds of the island. And so it's um your typical eastern Mediterranean Mediterranean island which you know which has again amazing weather. Uh the produce here is fresh. Uh um you have fish, you have sea, you have I mean it's just an absolute paradise of an island, right?

So I it gets a lot of tourism. I think actually they get about um three or four times their population in tourism per year. So it's it's really quite amazing. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it is growing because it's relatively cheap compared to other um countries in the area, you know, and um and so they are really really pushing for more and more tourists. So it's becoming very popular place. So is Cypress one of the is it the Manoans or one of those very early civiliz bronze age civilizations? Was that was that Cyprus or am I getting that mixed up?

No. No. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And you know this island actually has a a heck of a history has been invaded by everybody and their brother.

I mean everybody has invaded because

it has a very um geopolitical um uh it's a very important geopolitical spot. Um you know you you have the the Swiss canal not very far away again you know you can take a plane and you're in 15 minutes you're in Tel Aiv or in Beirut or in Damascus in one hour you're in Athens uh you know it's it's very very strategically located here in the eastern Mediterranean right so so it has been invaded by everybody you know whether the the the Byzantine uh empire the Greeks the Romans the Phoenicians, every even even the the Venetians were also invaded. So I mean everybody and their mother invited invaded Cyprus in a way, right?

Because of the importance of the location. So

well, [clears throat] you've sold me on coming down there. So I guess it's a big undertaking to to move uh personally. Um but it sounds to me like you could actually move the company's head office and get some of those advantages. Is that what or do does the founder or does somebody for the company actually have to move to Cyprus?

Well, that's one of the beauties and one of the reasons I I I founded Latitude 35 was just to make it easy for business owners to be able to establish a company in Cyprus without having to go to like 10 different parties to to set up whether it's accounting or audit or or or legal or immigration or you name it, right? So you don't have to actually be physically in Cypress to own a company in Cypress and to uh take advantage of the law taxation of Cypress. You just need um a company like like mine um that will actually make it happen for you by um offering um local directors that will make the company local.

Plus of course a certain you know there's a certain process and procedure that we need to talk about with the business owners to to actually pass part of the business to the company in Cyprus. I mean you know it cannot just be a paper company has to have it has to have substance here in Cypress right to make it legit and and to be able to enjoy those that um that tax bracket.

All right. Well this is great. So let's switch on to the sort of topic of the day. Is there anything that you're seeing that you're using right now in the space of AI that's either helping your job or helping your clients?

So, I have to tell you, I'm I'm a bit green in in the AI world, but um I do use a couple of um AI um platforms that um have um helped me um very much in in doing research, research in terms of um what countries um offer what,

under what circumstances. Um get summaries of the most important um tax law topics of each country so that I can actually give a very informed decision to my clients whenever they they come and ask me. Right. Of course, I do try to um compare and make sure that the information I'm getting is actually correct. So, I do check and I I have to say that I would say 99% of the time is pretty good.

Like I you know I hear people saying oh you know you should check AI because sometimes it's not really accurate. I I I have to say that I haven't I maybe I don't know whether it's black or whatever but I haven't come across any inconsistencies in that regard. So

that's that's great. Yeah. I mean I I use it myself um just recently exactly about tax. Um I was researching what I can do to be taxsavvy for my company. It's coming to the end of the year here and I need to maybe make some adjustments. Um, and it gave me I was using ChatGPT and I typed up and one of the keys about using the

tools like that is to prompt them really well.

So give them all like a full paragraph, you know, I'm the CEO of Skillion doing this and doing that and I want to have some smart tax strategies um and so on. And then it it would list them. It listed me 10 of them and I okay I like that one and then it was actually giving me links to uh legitimate websites that correct take me across and this is quite new in in at least in ChatGPT where it's actually grounding you down in in some third party evidence um on a website and I found that

really helpful because then I could I can legitimize it. It's not just hallucinating. It's uh it's actually uh giving you a reference. Little bit like a you know in engineering we call it a peer review.

There's something a third party out there you can reference. Yeah.

Absolutely. I agree 100%. Absolutely. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Another another topic I use it quite a bit also is um to make for me an structure of um of a blog on a certain topic. Just the structure because I mean I can of course let him do the blog too.

I mean they can do the whole thing right but I find that still there is this human component that I I like to give to my articles and my blogs and so I don't let charity do the whole thing but the way the structure is done um I like it a lot because it kind of grounds me and it it focus you know I can focus exactly on how to go about it

and I think that's a great great strategy as well from church

I'm the same I use it too to help structure my written language. Uh I was never good at writing essays at school or even writing emails at work and I think that worked to my disadvantage. I was okay talking to people uh and I think my success was through that.

But uh when I had to go and write something, everything would get in the way. My spelling, my grammar, my structure. And these tools give you all of that. And it's given me like a superpower because I've got the ideas now. How I can communicate the ideas in written form that I can do quite well verbally. Prior it was all verbal and now I can do it with written tools as well. So, okay, we got two things there. We've got research, we've got blogging. Any anything else that you've come across

that way? I found lately I found another one that is helping me quite a bit actually. Um it's called I'm sure you know it. It's called Canva.

And so it helps me a lot with uh I do um a lot of PowerPoint presentations that um that give visuals to clients about you know there are many clients that are very visual and they like to see um uh the presentations more than here. And I find that um it has helped me a lot to create those powerpoints with absolutely brilliant um images and pictures that you know I I was struggling a lot before to try to get those images right. So uh yeah this has helped me a lot. So you you prompt a uh a thing like chat a tool like ChatGPT.

You prompt the tool with make me an image with Cyprus showing you know the bronze age man or something and it'll it'll do that for you and you can put that in your presentation.

Correct.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh that's great. Well I mean Pablo you sound like you actually are using AI quite a lot. I mean there's three areas as well. Uh there's a couple of areas I wanted to bring to the table. Having thought about your business, um there may be some processes uh which take quite a lot of manual work.

Um we have a client that we're working with that um has um a lot of insurance claims and it comes in through email and then it has to connect to one system and then they have to reconcile those two systems and then they have to go to another system and reconcile that. We're using AI and automation or agents as they're called to try and bring all that together. Now, our strategy is not to completely automate it. So that you know there's always needs to be a person involved for this particular work. Um and so we use that sort of 8020 rule where we can actually save the company you know 80% of the costs but we still need to preserve that 20%.

Is there anything in your area where you're seeing that uh we could automate it, you know, and speed it up and make it more time efficient?

Well, what I can tell you is that um that is a good thing to know because um I have a lot of clients that are having um are having a hard time in all those processes. And I think that um this idea of letting AI at least do um an 8020 split would help them um get free time to do other things that are that would be much more productive for them, right? To to to do this. You know, I usually tell my clients, you know, do what you do best

and let others do what you don't do best.

And if processes is not your thing, then let AI for instance do it for you. Like I don't know of course the details on how that that gets done. I'm sure of course you are the pro and you you know how to do that. But I will um I will be very glad to introduce that to my clients because obviously they could benefit a lot from

that's yeah

well that's great. That's a great lead for us.

And um so just to sort of tell you kind of a little bit more how it works out there in the internet there are things called APIs which basically if you want to talk to some some system there's a interface called an API and we talk to that that API interface uh and then we create the the the AI to do that talking between one API and the other API and it says okay give me your emails and this one says give me your um you know the records for that invoice and then it ties the two together. And the way we've solved that problem and keep the people in the loop is that we pull all that information and then we put buttons down the bottom that says, "Does this look right to you?

I mean, is this approved or is this rejected? " Um, now are you familiar with QuickBooks?

Yes. So that when you do the reconciliation in QuickBooks, it's got that little match button. Now that's that's the philosophy, right? We just make sure the person's still

sign. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, that's how we that's how we're going with it. We we like to keep people involved and make sure that AI doesn't take over the world.

Yeah.

And that's one way we can do that is to keep keep people in the loop. So, that's one thing. Okay. So, another thought that came to mind was a chatbot, right?

Um so, as you're presenting Cyprus and your business latitude um 35 and that's 35 latitude, right? Latin is 35. That would be geographical point of Cyprus.

Yes. I'm sure the listeners figured that out before I did, but get it in there.

Figured it out.

I got it. Well, interesting. Sydney is 34. Yes.

34. So, only one degree away, but on the other side of the um Oh, funny funny thing about that. I was watching a movie last night and he was saying, "Oh, I know we're in the northern hemisphere because the the uh the water goes down the center

the clockwise. " That's a that's a myth. That is not true. I don't know whether you know that.

It does work if you have a really really big system like a weather system.

And I believe it's possible to make something big enough like a a size of a swimming pool, but not in a bowl.

No,

not in a sink.

Exactly. Sorry, back to my point about the the chat bots. Um, we have a few chat bots and they help uh answer questions quickly. When people come to your website, you can kind of have an engagement where they can you can do a quick way. They can ask you quick questions and they can give a quick answers. Even if it's just like who is the CEO of Latitude 35 and it'll give you the answer and how can I contact them?

Is I don't know about you, but often when I'm searching on the web, finding the contact information for someone can be the most challenging part. Like there's nothing on a website. You have to submit a ticket or all those sorts of things. So the chatbot can just I guess can really help your clients get contact with you really quickly and you know that can be the

the deal maker in some cases.

Absolutely. Yes.

And not only that, um, it can, you know, they can ask questions about, you know, I'm sitting here in Germany and I'd like, you know, I'm sitting here in Frankfurt, Germany, and I'd like to to know how much would I say if I was to open up in a company in Cyprus, you know, and the chatbot would reply back, okay, give me some more information and maybe u it can already guide them in the right direction. Um you know uh with the final contact our you know our CEO Pablo Bets for further information.

No, I think that is the way to go Pete and I think that um I'm definitely I have already been thinking of it because I came across chat bots in certain websites many websites actually they already said hey can I help you or you know my name is Lily whatever and I think that is very cute and I think it's it's actually very nice. I find it very nice.

Yes. And so I think it can also help you on the other side.

So if uh if your clients are interacting and they're starting to probe questions, we could set up an automation or AI could set up an automation that serves you up all of the stuff that they've been researching and also goes does a little bit of research on them and presents that to you like ready to go.

So that you you know soon as you making contact you've got all the history there and you know Pablo you know you've been in business for long enough to know that it's it's selling the solution right but to sell the solution you got to know the problem so you can infer the problem and then you can sell the solution and

you know you're halfway there if you know you can make that

make that connection.

All right so let's go up a level now and talk about AI in general. Where do you think it's going Pablo? Where where do you think we're going to be in say 5 years with AI?

I don't know where we're going to be, but I I know where I would like to be.

Okay.

I have to tell you, you know, I I don't I know that there is a big big part of the population that are have all these fears about AI and I I know that there could be some substance on that. I'm not sure. I am all excited about it. I think that this is fantastic. I mean to have all that information at your fingers at your fingertips I think is phenomenal because it will help us save so much time and and you know we would be able to continue doing whatever we are doing and you know yes there will be people that will I guess get affected and jobs will be lost but I think that many other jobs will be created and uh I think it's fantastic for humankind. I I am I'm totally pro AI.

I have to say I I have no fear and I think that you know everything has a risk. Everything everything even today even if we had no AI right so I think that the pros are way are I mean are way better than the cons in this case in my opinion.

Okay. Yeah.

Well, Pablo, do you have any questions or comments you'd like to to share with me and the audience today?

Well, I I wanted to ask you talking about the chat bots.

Um I know maybe this is a bit technical or not but how do you would you then um when you create a chatbot for a company on a website do you then once this chatbot is created or programmed or do you then contact the website people and put it together with them or how how does that work exactly?

Yeah. So we need access to to uh as if you we were a web developer, right? We would need access to the platform that it's built on and and and to go in through there. Um so yeah, we need access to the tools and then we build the chatbot on top of the website. So in that sense, it's the same access that you would have or you would give to us as if you was a web developer.

And then then we usually hand it all back over. So we we go hands off and then you're running on your own. If we need to come back in then we can do that. But we don't like to sort of have lots of passwords for lots of our clients obviously. We like to come and do our bit and then hand it all back over. Yeah.

And let me ask you then, can I then uh set up the parameters with you as to what I want the chatbot to reply to and what not?

Like for example, would I be able to say, I want you to reply to whatever information you find on my website and on my website only without getting out there and start to become uh you know or u and or um will in time this chatbot learn patterns and stuff like that that can help me um perhaps expand those parameters or how how do you

Yeah, I think let's call that some guard. Rails, right? So, you can define some guard rails. It's possible for us to create a chatbot that just looks at the information contained on your website, but that might be quite limiting because they might ask questions you don't actually have in there.

So, it's good to have uh you know, some guidance for and this is where AI really has its power. It has to kind of make a judgment as to how much from the website and how much outside the website. So it's not like we can put a piece of logic in there like you could did back in the old days and say if like an if statement if the client says please go outside the website to answer this question it'll go and do that. AI kind of interprets and says, well, we're going to prioritize everything on the website and we're going to know the questions that can be answered uh from the website, but outside of that, we're going to look more broadly, right?

So, yeah, you you're kind of leaving a I guess there is that sort of trepidation, right? You're leaving a little bit of control to the AI, but we can put some uh some sort of gray guard routes in that uh sort of brings most of the focus back to your your content.

And the chatbot will be able to also give me information on that um in on on that company that is inquiring or that person that is inquiring.

Well, not the chatbot itself. We would tie that in with what's called an automation or an agent. So once that once they or during or after the the exchange then it'll go and collect some information and then it'll it'll forward it all to you. So it's all

okay. Okay.

That's that's very interesting. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's pretty cool, isn't it? Um

it is very cool. Yes. I'm I'm very excited. I tell you these things uh I think this this is phenomenal. So yeah, I like that.

All right. Well, Pablo um last question. AI is it hype or help? For me help 100%.

No good.

What can I say?

I totally help.

All right, Pablo, this has been an absolute pleasure and a lot of fun. Um, I'm going to see you this week at our networking group and

absolutely

we'll continue the discussions. All right,

thank you very much for the opportunity, Pete, and I'll talk to you soon.

Okay, thanks. Well, I hope you found that podcast interesting.

Pablo uses AI in his everyday work for research, for writing blogs, for creating Canva images, and as we discussed today, there's future ways he could use it as chat bots on his website to help improve his engagement with customers and lead him towards his customers and help with solution selling and also for some automations which would again reinforce the use of that chatbot. He was very positive about the future of AI as indeed I am. But he also warns that you know AI can be used for nefarious methods and it's up to us or how we choose to use it. If you're interested in how AI can help your business then please contact us in the description below and we'd love to help.

Thanks for watching.