[David] Yeah. Alright, Allen, we’ve set this all up for you. We’ve just had all this discussion and tee it up for you, Mr. Pollack. Our Mr. AI tech, everything, guy, what’s your job?
[Marc] Hey David, can I do a lead in for Allen? Yes, please. He has said this over and I wanna say this again and I’m echoing what he said, the biggest mistake people make on AI, I think if they’re the kind of people that just let the AI do all the work, AI can make mistakes. If you and I were researching internet and we needed a number for something, we would go every place in the world. When we get stuff through AI, I compare that to what I do my research on. But I still do my research because I don’t know where AI is selecting that from. Sometimes it selects from everything sometimes, and I found many things that AI gives me that are incorrect. So if you’re doing an article about something and I think Allen would agree, you damn sure. Better check.
[David] Check. Do fact check it? Absolutely. Allen, good to have you here. We missed you last week, Allen. What you got, friend?
[Allen] Thank you. Marc you’re a hundred percent right. And in some ways it’s garbage in, garbage out, or it does what it tells you to do. There’s a lot of people out there. Actually, I was with a mortgage lender all week and a couple folks were in the conference room and they were talking about how they’re starting to use ai and the company actually purchased a corporate version of OpenAI that runs on their own servers and they’re giving access to the whole company and, they’ve got some controls around it but ultimately everyone was like you have to learn how to prompt it. Now you’re talking about everyday people who aren’t embedded like you and I and others in it every day. And they said there is these courses you can get online. They’re really inexpensive. Some of them are almost like Instagram reels where you can scroll and watch them and they teach you how to do better prompting and I went through it and I did so much better. So people are starting slowly to learn how to better interact with it. But to answer you exactly, David. You said there’s a couple things that are very interesting here. One is I wanted to answer you, but I wanted to answer you in the word of ChatGPT. So I told chat GPT what it is the topic was, and I said, if you were on the program today, what would you say? So here’s what it says. And I said, give me a quick hit opinion. It said, AI is not the next pandemic. A pandemic spreads without permission and forces reaction. AI spreads because we adopt it. That’s the massive difference. The real risk is not that AI makes us unable to think. The risk is that convenience makes us lazy. If people stop struggling through problems, creativity and judgment will then weaken. But that is the human choice, not AI. Inevitability and then it said what’s coming? AI becomes invisible, embedded in everything. Cognitive outsourcing increases. The gap widens between people who use AI to amplify themselves and people who let it replace them. That’s a big one and then critical thinking becomes a premium skill, not a default one. And it goes, will we still be able to think the question is whoever chooses to.
[David] So yes, it’s whoever choose G chooses smart, choose more. That’s a great statement. That is such a great statement. Yeah.
[Allen] Then I said, okay, can you make fun of humans? What do you think? And here’s what it said. It gave me a bunch, but it goes you invented a tool to save time. Then you used save time to scroll social media. It said you built machines to think faster than you. Then you asked them what to have for dinner. You say you want the truth, but mostly you just want confirmation. And then it goes, You complain about being distracted while carrying the distraction in your pocket and it goes on and on with a whole bunch, but Ultimately, yeah you can make your own definition, David. Is it a pandemic or is it not? But that’s what GPT thinks.
[David] Yeah, that’s what I like. What this, the response was, AI isn’t coming for your future. Fear is, that’s the fear of it or however you want to characterize it. A suspicion, remember we talked about interest rates lately or earlier? We were talking about interest rates and if you get focused in on the wrong thing, it’s going damage your business. You get focused on the right thing and then getting loans closed. It’s the same thing here. It’s really, are we gonna focus on this and use it properly? Anyway. I wanna get your update on what you’re seeing out there. We can continue this conversation, but I know you, you are great at reporting and our listeners love listening to your research and what you’re finding in the marketplace becoming a new a powerful new, legitimate voice of what’s happening.
[Allen] Sure. Lemme start first with just, I always bring up one or two cool things that I find. Yeah. So this one’s pretty interesting. It’s called Want my mtv.com and it’s over 50,000 videos, 60 channels. And you can even get to live recorded concerts or broadcasts. Like you can dive into the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, the Black Crows, the Rolling Stones Unplugged videos. You can even watch yo MTV raps or MTV cribs. So the gentleman takes donations, but I checked it out and it’s great quality. You click, it’s instant. It’s very cool. So it’s wantmymtv.com. So if you ever need a distraction you can go check that out. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Now talking about Tesla and the automation, it’s truly, if you’ve never driven a Tesla folks it’s truly just different. It’s best in class across all electric cars. My brother has a genesis and tries to tell me that it’s great. The Tesla just outranks and outperforms everybody. Not only is it smooth and it’s a great ride, they’ve made the interior much better, but the power it has is unbelievable how the battery gets charged. Even how Tesla’s thought different about features and how it functions. And I mentioned that because in the mortgage industry we have to think different. A lot of people originating loans in many different ways. So it’s the same but different. But you have to think different. So think like Tesla. But I do wanna mention, Tesla just had this really interesting, the autopilot is ticking over like crazy. I use it by the way, nonstop. It’s amazing. It even pulls in my garage when it gets home, it opens the door and automatically pulls in the garage.
[David] Are you kidding?
[Allen] No, I’m not. A man was saved by his Tesla. He actually had a heart attack and it detected that and it drove him to the hospital automatically.
[David] Are you serious?
[Allen] Uhhuh? True story. Wow. So check that out. Tesla is doing some cool stuff. I know there’s other companies out there, but for the folks you know that are, that drive Teslas, I know you’re shaking your head up and down. It is a cult in a little bit of a way, but they are just unbelievable, really is just unique. Okay. On the Rob Crisman report, I always get great content from him. There is, it’s called Reclue. Reclue, which is a company, it’s called the Now Next, Later I bring this up because they’ve got some folks that are going to talk about the shift from document driven origination to data first lending. And the conversation will explore whether lenders are still relying on PDFs and what realistic timelines look like for phasing them out, and whether the industry will truly see the last PDF in its lifetime. That’s interesting, David, because since it’s year 2000, we’ve been talking about going digital before that. But I’m just trying to put a mark on this century. Sad that I have to say this century when we’re talking about going digital, but yeah some lenders still use paper. Some people still print the paper. Some people print it and re-scan we’re all over the place, so very interesting. Go check it out. I may go myself. It’s February 23rd at 1:00 PM it’s called Now. Next, Later. So cool little session there. Also, David, there is a company, it’s called Elphi. I thought we were done coming up at more LOS systems. I don’t, we I must have been under a new one. Yeah. I must have been under a rock. ELPHIO.io. They’re saying I love their advertisement. I really wasn’t gonna talk about it until I read their ad and I was like, oh, it’s funny. The advertisement is who actually owned your loan data. If you’re on a legacy LOS, the honest answer is not you. Who wants to add a field, submit a ticket, update and integration, budget for development, change a screen layout, get in line. So they’re basically saying that they give you control over all these things, unlike anybody else. I don’t know them. I don’t know the platform, check it out. But I’m intrigued where we’re going to a world that everybody doesn’t want the all in one system or let’s say it’s 50/50, right? But you’re tied to your vendors and you don’t have flexibility because there’s so many. We could talk about the benefits on both sides that we have a new LOS system. So there you go. David, you sent me an article, just a new topic about AI. It was the AI war is over Google won, and I was intrigued by it. ’cause I don’t agree and it turns out…
[David] That’s really good to hear. By the way, we’ll put a link to that article listeners, because there’s so much stuff that I run by Allen ’cause he has become just such a trusted source for me. Why do you not agree?
[Allen] I don’t agree because first it was an opinion piece. I feel like ai Oh, it is? Yeah. There’s so many things. There’s so many platforms that do different things. Just because Google sits on top of their own infrastructure and they have all the search results. Search results are available to everyone on every platform. And it’s not just about the search results driving the content. So there’s more to the article and if you want, you could take the link that David’s gonna post and run it through ChatGPT or Gemini or any Grok and have it explain what’s in the video to you so you don’t have to watch it. It argues that Google already won the AI race because it’s infrastructure advantage, it’s data, it’s chips, it’s cloud, its disruption. But a lot of people don’t agree with that. But at the same token, Open AI in many people’s minds may lead in public perception because of the speed and the quick global use of it. But they’re saying Google owns massive embedded reach through search, YouTube, android, and workspace. So the real question. Whether AI is a winner take most market or if it’s fragmented across platforms and industries. Interesting. And I think it’s the latter, but it was a great article video. You wanna check it out. And then, next week, David, I’ll talk about some stuff I found with MMI. They’ve got some interesting information just about where the market’s going and analytics and stuff. It’s more of a conversation, so I don’t wanna give it only halftime. And then the last thing I’m just gonna leave you guys with which maybe we’ll also talk about next week. I’ll tee it up, but it’s vendor contracts. And, there’s somebody that was in the Crisman report. They were advertising themselves for hire, but I liked what they said, so I just took one sentence and it said, vendor contracts should include performance based incentives that protect delivery schedules and return on investment. We talk about that all the time absolutely. Vendors would probably don’t want to hear that, but you can’t say you’re gonna do everything and then not deliver and then blame the lender, and then the lender’s blaming you and then they’re just forced to spend another $20,000 to find a new platform. That’s a cycle that nobody wants to be in anymore or lose. We can talk more about that. Yeah, exactly. We could talk more about that one next week. Yeah. Outstanding. Appreciate it very much, Allen.
Allen Pollack
, Chief Operating Officer, Tech Consultant
Allen Pollack, a Mortgage & Financial Services Technology Advisor, is a subject matter expert in the mortgage origination process along with software product management and software development.
In today’s financial services push to all things Digital, Allen has been helping lenders and financial services solution providers align their digital transformation and technology strategies by removing the human element of risk, and automating processes that drive efficiencies and margins into profits.
Over the course of his career, Allen has co-created and developed technology business models that have birthed highly successful, innovative solutions and companies.
Allen co-founded and served as CTO of New York Loan Exchange (NYLX), a loan product eligibility and pricing engine (PPE) that made an immediate impact on the industry, scaling the company quickly and forming partnerships with multiple mortgage and financial lending companies. In 2012, Allen was a co-founder of a merger between NYLX and Aklero Risk Analytics that created LoanLogics, A Mortgage Loan Quality and Performance Analytics company. Allen served as CTO where he continued to bring new and innovative product solutions to the market that made a significant impact to mortgage lenders that reduced risk, scaled business channels, and grew profits in a very competitive and highly regulated market.
Allen is also is mortgage and finance technology contributor on a weekly live industry podcast, Lykken on Lending, and is launching a new podcast soon to be released, TechStack Radio, dedicated to technology and innovation in Financial Services.