[David] But let’s get over to Allen Pollack. Allen, my goodness. The world is fast changing. It seems to be accelerating, especially when it comes to AI. , We’ve been talking about it forever, but what report do you have for us today in the world of technology?
[Allen] Ah, always. Technology doesn’t work when we always think it does. My entire day has been my router. It’s funny, you bought new routers. I have to pick one up today. But my entire day has been my internet connection on and off, and I pay a crazy amount of money for this super high-speed internet- And it wasn’t working today, and then when I got, finally after waiting 30 minutes, I got their chat person on the line. The chat person said “By the way, make sure you, you respond to any of my questions within two minutes or our chat will reset and you’ll have to start over.” Oh, no. Yeah, so every time she asked me for something I wrote her back and said “Please make sure you respond to me within two minutes,” because I was getting really frustrated. Anyways they told me that, Oh, my gosh … th- and this is the point of this is about technology, and we all just need to take a deep breath and understand it’s still technology. They told me that my router is five years old, although I’ve only had it for a year, and then they made it seem like I should thank them for the opportunity to have a router, and that they’re charging me more money, and they wanted me to do auto-payment out of my bank account in order to get the new router, and it was gonna take five to seven days. And so in the end there’s no new payment, and I’m gonna pick a router up at the store nearby. However, I got an email saying all of my devices have been shipped. So technology just is not what we always think it is, and it’s the same thing, David, with AI. Yeah. There was a robot in China that was doing it at a child’s birthday party that was dancing, and it had- a clown hat on, and it was really awkward looking, and the robot by mistake did a move and kicked the kid in the stomach. Oh, really? Yeah. Yep. Robotics has a ways to go yet. So l- let’s not assume- That’s kind of technology … technology’s perfect. I also saw a post I’ll give credit, I haven’t talked to him in many years, but Rich Serbinsky, Yeah I think David Kittle used to work with him at TMC. Yeah. I don’t know if he still works there or not. Yeah. But- act- actually, Rich we’ve signed him and his company and on a contract basis, so he’s back working with us, yes. Oh, great. He made a post that said something about LinkedIn, and you can see the people that are, that have posted or posts that are AI, and it talks with, talks about the dif- typical things that AI says, and what a great idea, or single sentences or things like i, I can’t remember what they all were, but they were hysterical. Anyways, those are a- AI is AI. And that’s just the way it is. But let’s talk about the good use of AI, David. AI does a lot of good things. It doesn’t tell you the order in which you should eat a pickle in your sandwich, so I do wanna mention that. That’s it. Yeah. And I probably should’ve started with this, but my internet crashed right as you asked me to speak, so most of my notes- … aren’t showing. But I have I did get some of them up here. So did you know, David, that when you get a pickle and a sandwich at a deli or a restaurant, do you know that you’re supposed to eat the pickle first? No, I didn’t know that. You are. It cleanses your taste buds. It opens them and makes the sandwich taste a lot better. So the next time you’re at the diner or anywhere and you get a sandwich, make sure you eat your pickle first. Grab do the pickle first. Yeah. Do the pickle first. And from my report today, David it’s really simple. A lot of people are talking about every day if you’re not on Instagram or TikTok or YouTube, folks then you’re missing out, right? I know everyone calls it doom scrolling and a lot of useless info but there’s a lot of great info. And if you follow people or they hit your feed, they talk about all the new AI updates, right? And they say, “Comment, sunshine to get today’s tips,” and everybody’s trying to get people to engage ’cause they’re getting paid for it. But at the end of the day, there’s a lot of really good content creators that are creating content that explains what’s happening with all the different AI models. One of them, which was interesting, is who’s winning the AI race, and it’s back and forth between all of them. They’re all winning, and depending on the usage, they’re all doing great, so there’s no one leader or winner. But what is interesting Is that the things you can do are expanding. I have a vendor that I work with right now for my tech company, and they don’t have a feature that the salesperson sold us, and we’re not able to leverage it. So I built an automated bot in Claude that runs on my computer and does what’s needed until they have the release ready. And I notified and told them I’m gonna do that, and they gave me a thumbs up. So there’s a lot of great uses for technology. It just depends on what it is you’re doing. But our industry, and I mentioned this, we’ve gotta really be careful. I know if Marc was on he would have a rant about this. Everybody can build something, and we’ve gotta be careful as mortgage companies. Remember, we didn’t sign up to be tech companies, but we all are. We’ve gotta make sure that we’re not allowing our originators and the folks internally to start sending our data to these bots and letting them automatically just start processing borrowers’ data or sensitive information or making decisions. Even the vendors that have spent millions of dollars building the technology they have in our industry today still are not saying to trust the underwriting decision or the determination that our systems are making. What they’re saying is, use it to help guide who’s gonna look at a file and identify what’s good or bad, or it’s gonna speed up things you’re doing. But we’ve gotta be really careful on letting AI make those decisions and take control over what we do as humans. So I’ll leave it at that. Probably a couple comments that we’ll wanna pass around, but the overall, the summary is let’s leverage AI where it’s good, let’s be careful what our originators and our staff are putting in AI and let’s not let let AI overtake us.
[David] Good point. Really good point. Don’t let it overtake you. It’s a bit overwhelming when you are trying to stay up on all the latest revisions, especially when one seems to be leapfrogging another over things. When you define what is a successful AI, it comes down at some point in time which one’s gonna be around. And where you’re gonna invest the money. For example, Anthropic with, is in financially such a stronger place than is OpenAI and the whole ChatGPT world. And so Sam Altman has gone deep in debt and with that company. So if I’m a betting man I’m … Am I wrong in thinking? I’m a, if I’m a betting-
[Allen] I think you’re wrong You are, really I am. You can’t look at debt as a risk or challenge in these global models right now. E- either someone will fund it to buy it, take it over, sell it. It’s not going anywhere. Oh, I agree with that. So you- the other thing is the decision shouldn’t be based on… If it’s a s- it was a smaller company, right- that’s a different story. It’s what fits your organization, these companies, these platforms have models. As a mortgage company, you can get your own private Claude instance for your organization, a private cloud, or load it on your own servers, and you can do the same thing with OpenAI. You can do the same thing with Google. Yeah, I know. So the- Yeah … at the end of the day, you gotta figure out what are you doing with AI, how are you gonna deploy and how are you gonna control it? In addition to having my own company, I also work at a mortgage company. I run innovation for Benchmark, and at Benchmark they have very tight controls over AI over the platform, and they release it, and they’re offering their staff to use it. make yourself better, but there’s controls around it. Yeah. And they even provide tips weekly to their employees about, “Here’s how you can win this week or do better this week with AI.” But again, you gotta pick the platform, David, that fits your model, what you’re looking for.
[David] Yeah. And this is somewhat, I’ve always been a ChatGPT guy. I have a tendency to go there, although I’m finding what I can do. I just designed a new wedding website for- … my fiance and I, and it did it amazingly quickly and and completely. Oh, yeah. And that was Claude Design. It’s just code. Then there’s C- Claude Code, there’s Claude all the… And the fact that they own it free and clear, and that they’re in the best financial condition- give me a little bit of that. But I still end up, when I’m doing a quick question. So here’s a question for you, each one of you. What do you, Alan Pollock, default and go to if you have a quick question that you need researched, and a good, dependable response back? Which one’s your go-to?
[Allen] So I use Grok when I’m in the car. I do have a Tesla, and 80% of my driving is all automatic, which is amazing. If you don’t have a Tesla, you need one. Yeah. I use Grok, and they just updated it where you can say, “Hey Grok,” like you could say, “Hey Siri,” which I probably- Yeah … shouldn’t have just done that. You also I use Claude for deeper things and different opinions, and I use GPT as my typical go-to. If I have something quick I’m just used to like people are used to going to Google, Yeah … but I do use all of them.
[David] Interesting. Mr. Kittle, which one do you go default to from a browser? For your AI chat ChatGPT
[Kittle] What’s AI?
[David] Oh, you are a dinosaur.
[Kittle] Yeah. Chat, ChatGPT.
[David] Yeah. And Mr. Corbett, what you find yourself doing, going?
[Bill] More and more Claude. Yeah.
[David] I’m departing Claude, ChatGPT land. I’m heading more into Claude land- … and it’s because of the diversity of what I can get done with it and all the other areas, man. But it’s amazing. We’re in an amazing new world. David. Yes, sir.
[Allen] Let me frame it this way about AI, and I know I interrupted you with kind of tailing off there. Would you trust a robot to give you a haircut? Probably not. Although- so then don’t trust AI to do everything for you. Yeah.
[David] Yeah. Good point. That’s a good way to put it. Although I use a Flowbee to cut my own hair, so that could… I’m gonna say there’s some automation that goes on there- that’s old school AI. Yeah, that’s old school AI. It’s still mechanical in a ways.
[Allen] David, one more thing on the market that I… when you guys were talking, I just wanted to bring one thing up. Hypothetically, we’re talking about there’s a chance, rates will actually increase, not go down. Do you ever think that the powers that be, whatever, whoever and whatever they are, right? We know who they are, but just hypothetically, there’s scare tactics involved to say, “Hey, we can’t control the market as much as we want to. We’re not gonna lower rates right now. We may raise rates, so go buy now.” Go buy now. Yeah. And the scare tactics are, is that things could change. We don’t know how they’re gonna change. Now’s a great time.
[David] I think, whether it be a scare tactic or just solid reasoning, if you’re in the market to buy a home, then now’s a good time. We’re seeing too much evidence that markets are picking up around the country. Even in where I’m at, my house has been on the market for over a year. And so we’re in a new world, and it is gonna be recovering. So don’t wait. Buy. Your house is still on the market? Still on the market, Allen. I have not- Have you baked an apple pie? But maybe we have to do something different in there, but it’s yeah, it’s still on the market. But that’s like a lot of… 80% of the homes in our area are still over a year- Wow … on the market. Just a, it’s just a unique thing. But that’s changing. Activity is picking up. That was great. I so wish I could have been so fortunate as you.
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.