New Nissan CEO, Carmax Chaos, China Teaches Elementary AI

Paul J Daly  0:00  
Good morning. It is Tuesday, March 11. We have like a real mixed bag today on the show. We're talking about Nissan's new CEO, someone driving a car through a car Max and China teaching AI in their elementary schools. This isn't a well rounded program. I don't know what state of

Unknown Speaker  0:19  
the union, of what's

Paul J Daly  0:21  
next, whatever is bio hacking tips. Have you my bio hacking ticks? This organic super

Kyle Mountsier  0:28  
greens to drink today? Do you remember? Oh, look at your super greens and faint seats. The only way to get it off Instagram. You know what I mean? I

Paul J Daly  0:36  
think we got them from Costco, like everything else in my life. That's fair. That's fair. Do you remember

Kyle Mountsier  0:40  
Paul, just so everyone knows we're 12 episodes away from from episode 1000 that's not which, just so you know, we're planning a little something special that's not like too crazy, but a little bit of nod to doing this 1000 times. Do you remember back when we used to talk about blockchain and the metaverse, like every other day, bro, that was a whole thing. It was that was this, that was a scene with guys,

Nathan Southwick  1:06  
remember? Remember crypto? Yeah, crypto. I remember

Paul J Daly  1:09  
crypto. Remember every day when I look at Coin base, right? Everybody remembers crypto, right? Now, if you have anything involved in crypto, exactly, no. Blockchain metaverse. Would you say crypto is fine, right? No, obviously you're not paying attention. Bitcoins under 70, like 78k like, everything's dropped like 20%

Kyle Mountsier  1:28  
this week. Well, that's, well, it's fine relative to everything else, because everything has dropped 20% this week. Absolutely

Paul J Daly  1:35  
yesterday was a whole call on all stocks. So you were just, you just embodied the the video version of that, the meme where the guy's in the fiery room and it says, everything's fine, right? Everything the market

Kyle Mountsier  1:49  
fine. All of the world is dropping out, but everything's No,

Paul J Daly  1:54  
I, you know, I wonder what, what were the other things that we went through in our 1000 emails? I mean, obviously, COVID, Blockchain, crypto, the metaverse, the emergence of AI. I mean, we've been talking about AI for a long time. Mr. Beast. Do you realize that that the whole, like, everything around the UAW, that was, that was a year and a half ago, that's like forever ago. That was not like a year ago. That was, it doesn't feel like it was last September, but it was actually last September, plus a year. That's the nothing that's crazy. We're get. I mean, we're, I would say we are 1000 episodes older, easily. And I've had a few count wrinkles you can face. You can count the gray hairs. Wrinkle here, it's, yeah, we were young. I don't know if I would say we were happier, but we were certainly younger. Yeah, I'm definitely happier now. Just so much fun. I bet having a blast, I have a few less aches than than I do now, probably little pops and cracks if you have, if you ever want to hear like, a bunch of like, like pops and cracks coming out of somebody's knees, just asking me to do a squat when you're near me, and just be quiet for a second. It is, it is. It sounds like a fourth of July celebration. So that 12 episodes away from using our first three minutes. I think our work is dead here. So episode 1000 coming up, 12 episodes away. Thank you so much for being a part of this. However many episodes you've been a part of it for, and if you'd like the show, and if you like it more and more every day, send it to somebody and share it with them, because the more cool people we have in this ecosystem, the better. Obviously, we're trying to get our whole community together at ASOTU CON this year in May 13 through 15th in head over Maryland, which is south of Baltimore, north of Annapolis. Tickets are as cheap as they're going to be right now at 499 and the hotel rooms in the event Hotel, which we basically book out the entire casino hotel with ASOTU CON is almost sold out. So if you're coming, tickets are as cheap as they're going to be. There are still hotel rooms in the event hotel. What are you waiting for? Go to ASOTU CON com. Get your tickets and come be with us. Get in there. All right. Grab Bag of news today. First and foremost, Nissan has appointed Ivan Espinoza as its new CEO. No, no applause. I was just wondering the Nissan dealers or the Honda dealers. Applause, tasking him with accelerating the company's turnaround after four No, after more than four years of turmoil, he takes over from Makoto cheetah, who struggled to win find full support internally, and is stepping down after five years at the helm, his leadership saw mixed success, with progress on restructuring, but falling short on sales targets and the Honda merger talks that fell apart. Espinoza is 46 years old. That's close to home. I just turned 46 was selected at a march. Do I look? Yeah, sometimes I look at other 46 year olds like, Wait a minute. Is that how the old the whole world sees me? Down, moments clarity. He was selected on episodes, feeling selected at March 11, at a board meeting, and will assume the role on April 1. I mean, couldn't they make it April 2? Product driven, executive. Espinoza has been serving as chief Planning Officer, overseeing Nissan's Global Product Strategy and helping shape its EV and perform its vehicle direction. A lot of people are saying, like he is a real car guy, they have mount Nissan as mounting losses, weak sales, a junk credit rating, a significant debt load maturing next year. I mean, talk about a challenging situation, and Espinosa says he is going to take a 360 degree look at the company and emphasize stability, growth and strengthening the North American lineup.

Kyle Mountsier  5:31  
Look that. I mean, at this point, anything goes, and the goal is to figure out if it's possible, right? You know, kudos to Nissan for finding someone, and hopefully they can kind of turn around probably any of these talks of Mergers Acquisitions, because that is something that Nissan needs badly. They've had a ton a few years of trailing sales, of sales decline. So looking forward, obviously, for Espinoza to try and plan into this. It is interesting, though, that they kind of like brought someone from within the company that has been failing. We'll see if there's like enough ingenuity and startup mentality to kind of turn take, take a look around and move things forward. But all Nissan dealers edge of their seats. Can we

Paul J Daly  6:18  
do it? I'll tell you what to take a position like this, you have to be brave.

Kyle Mountsier  6:22  
You have to be because you're coming in with every eye looking at you. I What does

Paul J Daly  6:26  
that even first day look like? What does the schedule look like? What are the meetings look like? That's mind boggling. I would never take that job. I don't care how much not cut out for it, not cut out for it. And we'll see if he is very soon. All right, moving on. Oh, this is, this is another one. It's like two of these in like, a couple of months. Two of these a routine vehicle appraisal, and all the used car guys lean in, Brian Kramer leads in, Joe Chur leans right. Are you a routine vehicle appraisal turn into chaos at a car Max location in Inglewood, California, when an angry customer drove his Subaru Outback through the showroom, injuring eight people after being upset with the number he got for his trade, the incident occurred this past Saturday at 2pm when the driver ramming the store twice. He went in, backed up, hit it again. Two people were critically injured, while six other had minor injuries, including two Carmax employees. 25 year old Andrew Aurora reportedly on probation for a reckless charge. Turned him in, turned him in, turn himself in at the LAPD Academy. A video of the event service on Tiktok is being used in the investigation. Witness whit Mitchell Marshall described the scene, said he backed up, made a big U turn and rammed it, not once, but twice. Carmax issued a statement confirming their employees were among those injured, and thanking authorities for their swift response.

Kyle Mountsier  7:53  
I mean, here's just a couple things here. If you don't think that a vehicle is an emotional item, you're sorely wrong. And if you also don't think that the Yeah, actually, yeah, Nathan just mentioned, like the video is, is probably too intense for us to even show on this show, Brian Ortega saying the video is wild, not going to, but, but, but here's, here's, here's. What I would say is like, it doesn't matter if you have someone that is like on the edge, like this, or like a regular consumer, the trade is such a critical part of caring for the vehicle purchase and like walking along a visitor in that process. And I think obviously this is a way extreme and feel for those Carmax employees and like everyone surrounding that, coming to work the next day, deciding if they want to, you know, they want to offer another trade appraisal to anyone, right? It's like, Oh no, that's traumatic fear. There, there's, there's some trauma. But this is where I think we we lean in as an industry and say, Okay, what is it like to, like walk a customer through the process well with empathy and make sure that they're well educated along the way, and and, and you're kind of like hearing and watching feedback and looking for signals where there's where there's distrust, or, you know, any issues in the process like this is a training opportunity for our industry, we're dealing with real humans that have emotions and are, like, emotionally tied to a major purchase or a major decision. And so hate to see this for sure, but it's definitely an opportunity to kind of, like, give your people more access to training. Yeah. I mean, just my thought is going to, right, like, you can't make up for, like, a crazy person.

Paul J Daly  9:45  
But I wonder, you know how, like, certain industries, unfortunately, they've had to do this, but they've come up and in schools, and then they come up with a protocol where, if something is going off the rails, and it's going off the rails in a major way, that there's some protocol where they can, like. Make it known very quickly, like a word that you yell out, and everybody's like, you know, like, pay attention. Yes, I wonder. I don't know. Nathan is Kyle breaking up a little for you too. Before we go into last story, he

Nathan Southwick  10:12  
is, it is, I think it's our local internet, because I just checked on YouTube and the stream is fine. So

Paul J Daly  10:18  
okay, all local internet, I mean, they're all local internet, the old local internet. I mean, they're building that Starbucks across the street. Somebody plugged in an EV out front. They're probably taking all the Wi Fi. So Kyle, go ahead. Lester, she's all yours. Oh.

Kyle Mountsier  10:31  
Beijing is making artificial intelligence education compulsory for students of all ages, including elementary schoolers starting this fall, schools must provide at least eight hours of AI instruction per year, either as a standalone subject or integrated into existing courses. Elementary students will get hands on AI lessons, while middle and high schoolers will focus on AI applications and innovation. Their their goal is to create a teacher student machine learning model while incorporating AI ethics into the curriculum, California, obviously and Italy are also pushing for AI education in

Paul J Daly  11:08  
schools. Just California to Italy, huh? That's like

Kyle Mountsier  11:12  
the random ones, but California kind of makes sense. Obviously, China has a very aggressive AI strategy with deep sea Alibaba making waves in the global AI race over the last 30 days. So they're pressing in and giving kids access to this type of learning. I

Paul J Daly  11:28  
don't think there's any better decision to make right now than to teach children how to interact with AI teach. Like a lot a lot of people, have been operating on the fear first, right? Like, Oh my gosh, high schoolers are gonna write their term papers with AI. It's like, yeah, they are right. How can you actually leverage AI and teach them how to use AI in a way that progresses their education, their ability to think, their ability to be employed, their ability to innovate, and I mean us, needs to get on this train real, real quick.

Kyle Mountsier  12:00  
I can tell you, we homeschool and like, I bring AI into our conversation so the kids understand how I use GPT in my work and other models and like, it's not a scary thing in our world. You know, I think leaning into that a little bit more and kind of like helping them understand how to leverage it alongside their their functional learning, I think is going to be a real key. It's, it's like, it's like, when we finally figured out that we should start teach, teaching kids typing and coding when they were in elementary school.

Paul J Daly  12:31  
I know, I think we still need to get on the the bandwagon where we teach kids in elementary, middle and high school basic financial skills. Too true, right? Like, this is a budget. This is how credit cards work. You're right. This is why you don't want to use them all the

Kyle Mountsier  12:44  
time, because the old home act man, is how to use the problem, dude, I remember, did you take home ec in high school? No, I didn't see there were still, we had, we had, like, something like that. But I just

Paul J Daly  12:55  
enough, just enough. Older than you that, like, I learned how to sew. And this is public school, yeah, in like, Philly New Jersey, I learned how to sew. I learned how to make cookies. It was awesome. I was like, well, am I, as ever, one

Kyle Mountsier  13:09  
of my childhood family friends, his his job was woodworking in high school. Like, he had a whole woodworking shop in the high school, and that was an entire, like, class load crazy go

Paul J Daly  13:21  
so AI workshops, and that's Hey, even if you your school isn't teaching them, and you're in the auto industry, you have a very distinct advantage to bring your kids along, because it's a very family oriented business, and you likely are starting to leverage AI, because in the industry, we talk about a lot, we're trying to move it forward. By the way, I wasn't planning on doing this. We have an automotive industry email about AI to contextualize it for what you do. So auto industry.ai, Nathan, ready with the graphic, boom

Kyle Mountsier  13:50  
passive. Hit him with it. Go

Paul J Daly  13:52  
to auto industry. Ai, get get that email. Bring it with your kids. It's a lot of fun. It is trying to make a lot of fun. Look everything else we're trying to equip you to not just be great in this industry, but to care about the people, that means teaching them, educating them, loving them, serving them, setting them up for a future. Look. Thanks for spending some time with us. We have 12 episodes until episode 1000

Unknown Speaker  14:12  
you

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