Introduction - Haleh Magnus
This edition of “AI, Software, and Wetware” features an audio interview with Haleh Magnus, a 🇨🇦 Canada-based legal operations expert and personal coach. We discuss:
her chapter in the new international bestseller, Midlife Reimagined, released on Dec. 23
how she learned to program in Iran when her dad got them their first Commodore
why she drove migration of their law firm to newer operations technologies as early adopters
why people should pay a human lawyer for a contract (or at least a contract review) instead of relying on an AI tool write it for them
using ChatGPT to help her study in English and in coaching language for her ICF credential
how AI is like QuickBooks, in terms of needing to use our wetware with it
why her daughters and many of their peers abhor AI, refuse to use it, and think “smart is stupid”
her one and only experiment with ChatGPT Agent assistance on a task
and more. Check it out, and let us know what you think!
This post is part of our AI6P interview series on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. Our guests share their experiences with using AI, and how they feel about AI using their data and content.
This interview is available as an audio recording (embedded here in the post, and later in our AI6P external podcasts). This post includes the full, human-edited transcript. (If it doesn’t fit in your email client, click HERE to read the whole post online.)
Note: In this article series, “AI” means artificial intelligence and spans classical statistical methods, data analytics, machine learning, generative AI, and other non-generative AI. See this Glossary and “AI Fundamentals #01: What is Artificial Intelligence?” for reference.
Interview - Haleh Magnus
Karen: I am delighted to welcome Haleh Magnus from British Columbia, Canada as my guest today on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. Haleh, thank you so much for joining me on this interview! Please tell us about yourself, who you are, and what you do.
Haleh: Hi. Thank you for having me. I’m pretty excited to talk about AI. I am, as you said, Haleh Magnus. I live in Vancouver, BC. We have a law firm that I do the operation management part of it, and I am also an accountant by trade.
Recently I finished my certification in coaching and organizational coachings. Almost getting my ICF credential, which is Associate Certified Coach, pretty soon. And I’m starting a whole new chapter in my life. And I recently published a book called Midlife Reimagined.
Karen: That’s great. Congratulations on your coaching credential and on your book. That’s really awesome. Can you say a few words about your coaching services and the book?
Haleh: Well, coaching services is new to me. As my book name is Midlife Reimagined, so I’ve been doing the accounting and operation management and running our own business, for so many years, like 20 years in total, in different parts of it. Based on that experience and where I am in life, I decided to do something to give back more to the community, based on my life experience, my past.
And so I just got to UBC, did my coaching program, which was a year. And right now I’m giving services to individuals who find they’re struggling in their career or in life. Or some youths that just don’t know what they want to do for their future. I’m also partnering with a couple of my cohorts. We’re offering group coaching for organizations as well. And my website is just in progress of getting completed: H magnus coaching.com.
Karen: Nice. And how about your book? It’s Midlife Reimagined, and the publishing date is December 23rd, I think?
Haleh: Yes, yes. Yeah. It’s a collaboration book that I got a part in. I like the subject Midlife Reimagined because it resonates with me and where I am at in my life right now. I’ve been doing business and being very involved in the community. But I’m at the stage of my life that I thought, if I could help one person to find their path and do better for their future, and they don’t think there’s any time that they can do a change in their life, so I’ve inspired them to do it, then that made me more happy than keep doing the business, which I’m still going to do and focus on making money versus helping people.
Karen: Well, making money enables you to help more people in the way that you want, right?
Haleh: Yeah.
Karen: That’s an awesome overview of your background. Thank you. Tell us a little bit about your level of experience with AI and machine learning and analytics and how you’ve used it professionally or personally, or if you’ve ever studied the technology?
Haleh: I’ll give you a little bit of background. As I said, I’m an accountant by trade. Back in the day when I was in university, the computer was just coming in. I still remember my first Commodore computer that my dad got us, and he put us in classes to learn IBM, which was considered computers, and how to write programs. And then in university accounting, I remember, there’s an option learning how to write software in our program, and I went and learned how to write software. It was really cool, yeah.
But I used it to cheat, because then they put me in charge of our registration, because it was just becoming computerized. And I learned how to extend the classroom so I get my friend in. And they caught me, and they kicked me off of it. Because all of a sudden, they see all the classes have more students than they should, and they figure out it’s me. So I lost that position not too long after that!
But I always loved the technology. Even back when it was just coming new to this whole world. So I always try to keep myself up to date with that since then. So meaning that in the accounting world, when I was getting jobs and moving up in life, and people said, “Oh, do you know Sage?” Which, back then, was simply accounting. and I was like, “Ah, I do Sage, I do QuickBooks, I do Accpac. I do any accounting software.” And then people will say, “How?” This is all related. You just have to understand it and be able to do it. And I saw the progress from the Commodore all the way to here. So I kept up with the technology.
So that said, in our law firm, I saw that coming. And we invest quite a bit of money, change our software from a software that was not AI or technologically friendly, and it was server-based. We took it off from server and we spent lots of money. We went to a software called Leap. We were the first people on it in BC, which created lots of problems for us. Quite a bit of problems. And after three years, because they consider smart software and they introduced AI and everything, but it was so many problems. So we paid lots of money to get out of it, believe it or not, because we have to buy our data back from them. It was a struggle. We really had a hard time with that program. So now we went to a different program called Clio which is integrated with AI. And it’s quite smart and we love it. It works really well.
And in the meantime I can see QuickBooks, which I use primarily for the accounting part of it, is now integrating with AI. And it’s fascinating. It’s fascinating, it blows my mind, but I’m always taking courses or keeping up with what AI can offer us and integrate into our office. So I bought everybody in our office ChatGPT, and I offered it to our staff. We also had training, how much they should use it, because in a legal and accounting profession, if you solely rely on it, you are in real deep trouble. So we don’t really use it to draft anything. But we use it to fix our letters so the lawyers don’t have to fix errors as much. The letters look better right away. I know there’s much more to it, but being in the industry we are in, we are very cautious about it because it can create lots of problems for us.
Karen: You mentioned that QuickBooks is integrated now with AI. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? AI features built into QuickBooks, or is it actually integrating with a commercial AI tool?
Haleh: No, it is integrated. It’s crazy. You’re training QuickBooks now. It’s crazier now because somehow it picks it up from your email and attach it to the expenses. And I’m like, “How did this get attached to this? This receipt attached to this expense has posted here.” And, like, did I post? And I have somebody here who worked with AR [accounts receivable] and AP [accounts payable] and I was like, “Did you do that?” She said, “No, I didn’t do it.” How did this thing go there?
So it’s getting really smart, makes it so much easier. But you’ve got to keep up with those things because, I’m telling you, it’s smart, but it’s not smart enough. You still have to use your own human brain on it. Otherwise it just posts things for you, which it did for me last year, and I saw everything is posted somewhere, then I had to spend the whole week to go fix them all one by one. So you do need to have lots of experience to be able to know how to use it properly.
Karen: Do you ever use AI tools outside of your professional life? It’s actually pretty hard to avoid AI in daily life nowadays.
Haleh: I’ve heard it from so many people. “That is your new best friend.” I don’t use it for consultation, stuff like that. I know lots of people do that. I don’t like to do it. I just feel creepy about it, so just stay away from that. But I use it from my letters. You hear an accent. I haven’t born with English language. So I struggled in the past to write a good letter. I knew in my head what I want to say, but I couldn’t put it down. So I never get that professionalism in my communications. But now with AI, I trained it to sound like me over everything, because I think we were one of the first people who got on it.
I remember, my daughter – she went to UBC business school – she came home and she told me “Mom, the Sauder business school is introducing this thing called AI. And if you ask, it answers really quickly.” So she pulled it up. And it wasn’t like chat – you have to open a link. And we ask a question. It took a few seconds and it answered – something that was a two, three years old answer, but it was really quick. And she explained “It’s like a brain. It’s going to train and get better.” I don’t think it took six months before, pfft, it goes everywhere.
So we were pretty much one of the first people got on it. Most people I told had no idea what it is, back then. So then I start telling everybody in the office, “There’s this thing coming called AI and I’m going to look into getting the software.” That’s why we changed our other software because I know AI comes, we’ve got to keep up, otherwise we will be behind. And I hate to be behind.
So I use it for my letters. I use it for my search. I love Google. I’ve used it all for a long time. Ever since it came in — before Google, was Hotmail and Yahoo, I don’t know if you remember, we used those for searches — but then when Google came, we stopped using those. But now it feels like I’m not using Google anymore. I’m using ChatGPT AI to do it. I mean, Google is also AI too, now. It does AI, but it’s not as good as ChatGPT. So I search everything in there, and then I go look in Google. Because it does it faster for me and it knows me very well now, especially I used it to help me write my book chapter in that book. So it really knows me now, like it knows what I like, what I don’t like. So it tells me exactly where to go. Makes my life so much easier.
Karen: I’d love to hear some specific stories about times that you’ve used these different AI tools and how the AI features worked – what worked well and what didn’t work so well.
Haleh: So what worked well for me was that, like, when I went to UBC to study, again, not studying for, like, what, 30 years, and in English. I did go to school in Canada to finish some of my accounting stuff here to upgrade the taxes and all this stuff, but mainly I started in Iran.
So the AI was pretty fascinating. Look, I have business running right and it’s so busy, so busy. And then my life is busy, basically. So adding a school with the amount of reading they were giving us was a struggle. And I’m a slow reader, you know? Especially, English is my second language. I talk easy, but then I want to read, I struggle, right?
So ChatGPT helped a lot. Sometimes I read this and I have no idea what they’re talking. It was also a different language, coaching business. My brain is accounting and business, right? It has nothing to do with psychology and coaching. It’s just – I don’t know if I have the vocabulary. So I was like, “I have no idea what this means.” And they said, “Oh, remember when you were writing this? And it means that. That’s what it means.” I was like, “Oh, makes sense, makes sense.”
The fact that it exampled my own personal life to make me understand the chapters was fascinating. Or I make it summarize it. I say, “Hey, I have to read this. Summarize it. Tell me the point, what I need to know.” And then I’ll ask a question. And basically, it’s like a private tutor. I literally used it as a private tutor to help me learn this stuff and make me understand it.
With writing my assignment, it helped me to write my assignment. I wrote my own wording and it made it sound right. Otherwise it wouldn’t sound as clear as if I would’ve used my own word. I should have used my husband or somebody to help me to correct it. But I don’t need my husband now. I’m very independent. I’m an independent woman. Thanks to AI, I don’t need somebody to proofread my writing.
So, yeah, so that was really specific in terms of using it. Things that didn’t work? Okay, so I mean I’m telling you about the law firm portion of it. So we had this articling student. So we assigned something to her to go research. And she is younger and she would have used AI, and then we’ll know right away because it didn’t make sense, right? So then we had to talk to them.
So we just put the regulation. Because we noticed it made up cases. I’m not joking. It made cases up. There’s no such case. And it said, “Oh, there’s this case.” And if you’re a young lawyer, you have no idea. My husband is practicing for so many years, he knows everything inside out, but this is scary for some young professionals.
People should not use AI for anything like that. But people write contracts with it. I have heard a lot, “Oh, I’m going to use AI to write a contract.” What?! You don’t know that if you forgot to put something in it, and then things go sideways, your contract means nothing. You can still get sued and lose lots of money. Because you just use AI and AI didn’t put everything to consideration, so it’s not reliable for those things. And I really think people should be careful with that.
But it makes us richer because we are litigators, right? We go to court! We go to court. We’re going to have lots of cases like that. And, you know, seriously, those increase such chaos and make law firms that – like, our law firm has litigation – actually make money. Because then they have to come to us because their contract wasn’t right. They rely on AI, on something else, and they just put themselves in trouble. So they’ve got to really be careful with those things. You know? There’s lots more I can come up with, but I don’t want to talk for the rest of the day.
Karen: Right, I’m sure there are plenty of examples!
One thing I’ve heard a lot from people is about the AI tools not doing well when it comes to numbers and schedules and anything that’s mathematical. With your focus on accounting, have you ever tried using it for anything that relates to crunching numbers? Or have you really just said, “No, this probably doesn’t work”?
Haleh: I don’t think I use it. Look, if you want to use it, you have to have a mathematical brain yourself. I don’t know how much you’ve done math in your life, but when I was writing my exams, there was a formula for us to calculate the answer in a quick format. So then when we are spending a whole page calculating it, we just crossed if we got the right answer. So if we don’t get the right answer, we go back and list, say, which part we missed that we didn’t get right, and there was always a check formula for us to do that.
So if somebody doesn’t have that in-depth knowledge and they put this information in there, there is a high chance they’re doing it wrong, because they just don’t have that background. And there’s lots of bookkeepers out there, and they post things, they just don’t know where to post it. But you have to have knowledge of this. Because they just rely on the software. They just delete this stuff. Okay, you’re deleting it. Do you know how many you’re messing up by just clicking delete? So that’s a simple software, like accounting software. We had lots of control feature on it. They have audit trails on it that you can go back then, who deleted what, and then fix it. That’s why accountants made lots of money at the year end, fixing the bookkeeper’s work, right? That’s where they make the money.
But AI is even scary – if you’re actually using it fully without understanding what’s the result you actually should have, then you shouldn’t use it. You shouldn’t rely on it. You shouldn’t. Really. It’s not there yet. I don’t know if it’s ever going to be, because basically, it’s software with the tools that you have to know how to use it, you know? So if somebody gives you QuickBooks and says, “Use it”, you don’t know how to use QuickBooks? You’re going to mess up your books, regardless of: this is QuickBooks. It’s one of the best software out there. It’s really precise, complete, user-friendly, everything, you name it. But if you don’t know how, you’re still going to mess up your books. AI is the same idea, so if you don’t know how to use it, it’s going to mess up everything. So use it as much as it doesn’t hurt you more, basically.
Karen: I’ve been hearing about with law, in particular, there are some additional tools that are being built that will only let it draw from a validated list of actual cases, for instance. It’s something they call RAG, Retrieval Augmented Generation. And so they’ve been able to really cut down the hallucinations on that. But again, you still have to know what you’re doing. And obviously a real attorney has to vouch for everything that they put into a filing, right? They have to know for themselves and verify all the references.
Haleh: No, yeah, they should. They did introduce it to us at Leaf, and Clio too. There are things that they said, “Oh, there’s an actual lawyer here doing it for you.” But again, if you don’t have the in-depth knowledge and you’re solely relying on it, then you should understand your potential. Is it a chance that you should be fine? Yes, there is a chance. But you should be prepared to put yourself in trouble too. Because you might. Especially with law, if you put a column, a bracket, you miss a bracket in there, your whole thing might go collapse, right?
Even if you do it, I would suggest to people that, still, take it to a professional and give them, I don’t know, $500 or whatever the hourly rate is, just have them to glance through it and see if it is okay or not. If you don’t want to spend, I don’t know, a few thousand dollars to let them do it, at least get them to look at it, if any lawyer wants to do that. Some of them I know might not want to touch it, right? But if somebody say, “Yeah, I’ll look at it”, and they say, “Yeah, that’s fine”, do it. It’s worth it. It’s really worth it.
Karen: Yeah. So it sounds like you have a good perspective on the impacts and the risks of the hallucinations when it comes to law and accounting. You mentioned using it as kind of a search engine, and obviously there’s some risk of hallucination there. So how do you deal with the risks when you’re asking it for advice or shopping or researching purchases? How do you handle the risk of hallucination in those situations?
Haleh: Oh, the way I do it, I say, “Hey, I want to buy a rain jacket that is like a designer look in Vancouver and good quality. So tell me, what should I look for”, right? And then it suggests a whole bunch of names. Then I’ll take it to Google! And then I’ll take it to Google to cross-reference. I say, “Okay, now let me look at them in Google and see, where is that? How is it then?” Then I’ll just go by the actual website that it’s suggesting. No, I won’t solely rely on it. I’ll use it as searching and give me the hints. And then I’ll do my own research. Still, it has improved my productivity significantly more. In ChatGPT you can create projects, right? I have a project for my daily tasks. I have a project for my school. Add a project if, let’s say, I’m going to go to an organization to coach them. Like project information I’m getting, put my mind together. And then I have to draft it myself. But it just keeps me organized. I don’t solely use it though. Definitely not.
Interesting enough, the young generation, my daughter who is in the first year at university, they hate it. They hate it so much that I can’t even use the name ChatGPT in front of them. The moment I say ChatGPT, she thinks we are stupid. She thinks stupid people use ChatGPT. They said “There’s Google – you should use Google.” And that’s not just her. I noticed pretty much most of her generation, at least the smart ones, they don’t use it. She does not touch it and she said, “I’m not touching it.” And she hates it. So I can’t even use the name chat in front of her without her getting mad. So I say Google. I had used chat. “I Googled it.” Then I won’t get attacked by her, “Why are you using ChatGPT?” They hate it so much, that generation. I don’t know why. I don’t understand it, but they hate it.
Karen: So they’ve never called out a reason for why they dislike your AI tools so much?
Haleh: I think it’s lots of the stuff that you pointed out, that it’s not necessarily the right information. And also I think they have a fear that AI is going to make their lives so much harder, their generation. And the fact that everybody’s using AI for everything, I think it starts creating a fear of what’s going to happen to them. Lots of jobs are going to go, frankly, I feel like, in the next 10 years. We are not that big, but we have like 14 assistants working here. I don’t think in 10 years from now, we need 14, with AI, right?
Karen: Mm-hmm.
Haleh: So lots of jobs. I don’t know if you remember back when we have Blockbuster, we have video cassettes, and we have videos. Do you remember those days?
Karen: Yes.
Haleh: Do you remember there were jobs, that we take our video to the video store to fix it?
Karen: Yeah.
Haleh: I remember those, right? Not even Blockbuster exists. There was a job back then when we were younger. So some of the job does get vanished over time. But people should be smart and be on top of it and go with the time. You should always, always be ahead of the time. That’s why we put software that is AI smart in our company. And we spent quite a bit of money, I’m not joking, but lots of money we paid to transfer the printer, everything, to this new system. Because you’ve got to keep up with the time. People should think about 10 years from now, what jobs are not going to exist, and just plan it ahead of time, right? Like anything else in life.
Karen: Yeah, I’m really curious too about why your daughter and her peers are opposed to it and how they are going to cope with it. And having jobs in five or 10 years from now, like you were saying, and how it’s affecting their studies. I think that’s so interesting.
Haleh: Yeah, you know what? I think there is a thing that “smart is stupid”. That’s my daughter, not me. There’s smarter and not-as-smart kids. The ones smarter, they tend not to use AI. They just think that it’s taking away their ability to learn. They’re noticing the kid that, they’re using it, they’re not training their brain to learn enough, because it just makes it shorter, and finish the thing. So they’re staying away from it.
I have another daughter, in law school. She says she uses it for searches sometimes. But she never uses it like tools, like how I used it to study at my age. They don’t do that. They don’t use it to write. She just said, “I don’t like my essay or my answers sound like AI, so I just don’t want to do that.”
So neither of them uses it. I use it. My husband doesn’t use it. My husband doesn’t even have ChatGPT on his computer, period. He is against it too, though. Even though I bought the company version, but only some people use it. Some people are still resisting it. But I think younger kids, they are the ones that want to actually do something with their school, not just finish it. They don’t touch AI because they felt they can’t learn as much. Or their ability to learn, it’s going to reduce. And they don’t want to sound like AI, so they still want to be unique on their own. I think that’s it, though. And I generally think there’s a little bit of intimidation that AI is taking away some of the stuff from them in near the future. But that’s just life, right?
Karen: Mm-hmm.
Haleh: You’ve got to keep it up, yeah.
Karen: I think it’s great though that they’re recognizing that – how it could impact their learning – and that they’re not just trying to check the box on completing the course, but they actually want to make sure that they learn. They’re aware of what I call, in this series, our ‘wetware’, which is our biological brains, and thinking about how the tools that we use affect our brains and what we learn. So I think it’s kind of neat that they’re aware of that.
But at the same time, I would hope that at some point in their courses, there will be some guidance on how to use it effectively and safely. I don’t have a lot of great insights into that; I’ve only talked to a few people. But that’s something that I think is important. Like you said, it’s everywhere. It’s not going to be avoidable and it’s something they’ll have to eventually learn to cope with, even if they are understandably not using it for their learning itself.
Haleh: It is inevitable. They have to use it. It’s going to be everywhere, honestly, like computers. Like I remember back in the day, people didn’t want to use the app to pay their bills. They still go to a bank and pay it because they wouldn’t trust the app, right? But 99% of people right now, they just pay online, right? But that took so many years. This is one of those. I’m one of those, again, a technologically friendly person. I always keep up. I want to know all the apps out there. Like one of those moms that knows everything comes out. I know them. But not everybody’s like that.
My kids are graduated from high school, but I was on calls with the superintendent of our school district. We were part of this school district pack we call DPAC. And when I was going to our meeting, our superintendent said that they are going to introduce an AI just for school, and they allow them to use it. So the high schools are bringing AI in. They’re developing their own AI, so the students will be able to use it. Because they can’t really do anything about it. So they’re putting classes for it, to train people how to use it. I think, still, you know, it’s coming, it’s like the “Winter is coming”.
Karen: Yes, yes. Winter is coming!
Haleh: Yeah. So I’m talking about Game of Thrones, right? You know?
Karen: Yes, exactly. Yes. Yeah. That’s a famous meme.
Haleh: It is, yeah.
Karen: Yeah. I’m curious. You mentioned about using Google or ChatGPT to research for purchasing. Google obviously has had ads for a long time, but there’s talk about ChatGPT and other large language models, chat tools, introducing ads and integrating shopping agents into the chatbots. And I’m wondering if you have any thoughts about that?
Haleh: I haven’t really thought anything about that. But I did see an option in ChatGPT. I forgot what it’s called, the assistant or something. So I was looking. It was Airbnb. There was something I had to update. I have a cabin. And I got a notification from Airbnb that I have to do something, update, in order my Airbnb doesn’t go offline. So I went to chat. I said, “What the hell is this talking about?” And he says “Do you want me to help you fix it?” I said, sure. It said, “Okay, give me your Airbnb login information.” And I gave my Airbnb login information. It logged in, in front of my eyes, it fixed it for me. I did it only once. I freaked out. I never did it again.
Karen: Wow.
Haleh: It was actually scary. I can’t remember what this, I think ChatGPT Assist or something [ChatGPT Agent]. And it was like, “Yeah, just give me a login. I’ll log in.” And I logged in and it just went in. And I was watching, I was like, “Oh my God, this is so crazy.” I freaked out. I never used anything. But it is coming. I’m sure lots of people are going to start using it, but I do have a fear of giving my personal information because I still don’t know where it’s going.
That’s one other thing. My daughter got really mad because the book I wrote is about a summary of my life, right? And that relates to how I change it in the midlife, at age 51. So I talked about my kids in it at the beginning. I mentioned their names. So when I was integrating with ChatGPT to help me write the chapter, so I give all the information. I was talking about it, about something with ChatGPT, and I said, “Yeah, Lila, since she’s 17 and she’s doing this. And I’m like, oh my God, like this is crazy. She is like...” referring to everything. And I mentioned it to her. And this is the young one that who doesn’t like chat, too. She was so upset with me. “You see, you do not share my personal information with ChatGPT. Why would you do that?”
So now I’m quite cautious about that, giving information, because I actually don’t know where the information are going. So I’m being very cautious. I don’t use staff employee name or, obviously, never a client name. So just generic question. Because especially when I see talk about Lila in the chapter, like God knows, about the general question, about something referred to her, it’s like, “Oh, who else knows everything?” So that’s why we just try to keep the privacy. Yeah.
Karen: Yeah, that’s a really good point, the concerns about data privacy and where it goes. If you look at terms and conditions around these different tools, they pretty much all say that they can use whatever you put in as additional training material. Now, with the enterprise license you bought for your company, that may be better protected. But if you’re using a personal copy for things at home or for your writing, then that may be different. It’s definitely a concern that I hear a lot of people about. They call it semantic leakage, that things can leak out, and that then you are losing control over that data.
And social media. I don’t know if your kids maybe avoid certain social media as well for similar reasons?
Haleh: Yeah, yeah, they do actually. They’re very cautious about social media. They don’t post so much. Just post back of their head or picture of the view, but like nothing beside that. Versus us, we just post everything, right? You know, they are a different generation, I would say.
Karen: Well, they’ve grown up hearing about data breaches and all these other concerns that they have nowadays. The risks of deep fakes, they’re probably hearing about that too. So it certainly sensitizes them in a way that wasn’t happening when you and I were growing up.
Haleh: Yeah, that’s for sure. They’re worried about things that sometimes we don’t worry about.
Karen: We talked a little bit just now about where these tools get their data. One concern that we hear a lot more about is whether or not companies are misusing data, and they’re not being transparent about how they are going to use our data when we use their services.
I’m wondering how you feel about companies that are using our data and our content for training their tools. For instance, people have written books, and books have been scraped and used, in violation of copyright, for training a tool. Or music or images or videos and such are being scraped up and generally without consent.
Some people feel that a tool company should be required to provide what they call the three Cs: to get Consent, and to give Credit, and to Compensate the people whose data they want to use for training. Other people say that, well, if it’s all for the common good, then it’s okay for them to do that. And I’m wondering what your thoughts are about it.
Haleh: You know, it’s too big to figure out who’s using it and then how it’s going to get used to give us credit. How do you explain it? I think it’s a bigger word than that. Do I like them, use my information? No. But I should be aware of it. And I don’t give them information that I don’t like them to use. So I’m fully responsible of what I put in the AI. And if I don’t want to use it, I might want to create a website and put it on my own website, and not put it there. Or just go do my Google search as a generic thing, but not all the information up in the chat. Or don’t post anything. So I feel like people should stop complaining and take ownership of their own mistakes. And if they don’t like something to be used, just don’t post it or put in ChatGPT. If you do it as, like you said, for greater good, that’s just part of life. You can’t avoid growth. The word is growing too fast. Like, my grandfather used a carriage, and they saw telephone come, TV come, all those nine yards. And that’s not a hundred years ago, yeah.
I had a TV that had massive, big remote controls. I don’t know if you remember that massive remote control. I remember MP3, the little thing for the music that we don’t have to walk with our Walkman, the ginormous Walkman, right? Our generation saw so much significant changes over time. This is just one of those.
This is one of the things that guided me into coaching. I see most people in life, they don’t take ownership of their own mistakes, and they want to blame others when something goes wrong. Anything goes wrong in life, it’s 100% your fault. So yes, this thing needs to be getting information, in order to improve and eventually be better, you know? But some people don’t want to put their information. They should just not put the information in. Or do it the way that they get the credit they wanted. Otherwise, if they want to give credit to every single person put this, I just don’t even know how they want to do that.
Karen: There’s a lot of talk about what’s technically possible. And it’s certainly hard. But AI itself is already hard. A lot of people do feel that it is possible, especially with words. Words are simpler, I think, than images. But to be able to give credit or to only use material that they’ve worked out an arrangement with the copyright owner to get their consent and to give royalties to the people who wrote the books and who published the books. So I think it is technically possible, but the companies haven’t been motivated to do it. It’s sort of the “ask forgiveness instead of permission” attitude, which we see a lot of.
I think the bigger concern a lot of times is that people will go to a website and they want to sign up for a service. And it isn’t at all clear what’s going to happen with their data. I think we used to just kind of trust that if Netflix is asking for my birthday, it’s just to make sure I’m old enough to watch these videos, and they’re not going to sell that information to a data broker, for instance, or use it for some other purposes. So lack of clarity around what companies will actually do with our data. Terms and conditions are not exactly very clear in a lot of cases. And you know, they’re 20 or 30 pages long. They’re written in legalese and it’s very hard to tell what you are agreeing to. It’s not really informed consent at all. And so that’s one of the concerns.
Even if people are trying to be conscientious about how their data would get used, sometimes there’s not even any choice, like with government systems for traveling, you know? Or if you want a driver’s license, you have to give them some information and you have to trust that they’ll manage it responsibly. And that’s where I think a lot of the concerns are coming in.
Haleh: Yeah, I don’t personally don’t give up three things. I don’t give up my date of birth. I don’t give up my driver license number, or I don’t give them anything like that. The moment they ask me, “Can you put your birthday?” I just don’t do it. I just get out of that software. I don’t want to get involved, because they can do a lot with your birthday, right? I have this email that is called my hacking email. I just leave it. They use everything, they want email. I just put that email in and just make my own life easier. Birthday? No, I’ll never give my birthday anywhere. At all. Period. Or my driving license number, I just blocked that website. If somebody asks my driving license, they’re automatically out. Just don’t even do that. So I don’t need that. I’d rather go to somebody in person and do it in those cases.
Karen: Do you know of any cases where your data has been stolen or been involved in a data breach or misused in some way? You know, your number’s on a phone spamming list or anything like that?
Haleh: No. I never had that. Sometimes I go check to see if any of my passwords have been breached, or my email isn’t anywhere spammed out. But recently I’ll just use authentications for everything to connect to my cell phone. So everything has double authentications, so I haven’t had that problem for a long time. For a long time. I experienced it once. And ever since I’ve just been really ... one of my relatives, they reached out to her that their Bitcoin’s account is selling out and they need to move it in order not to whatever. And she gave them all the information. So they took all her Bitcoins.
Karen: Oh geez.
Haleh: Yeah. It was so legit. One time I got an email saying one of my staff changed my direct deposit payment. And then we looked it up. They put one dot extra. One dot.
Actually we had a case law, a suit in some company, the other company, because somebody requested the money from them. Was like over $400,000 type of money and they had just one extra dot in their email. And they send the money to that company because that was a company they owe. The company never received their money. But they did send the money. And they lost. “I never got paid. You still have to pay me.” And it’s not their fault. So because of the industry I am in, I’m really being careful.
Karen: Yeah. I just read about a scam recently where the letter ‘m’ looks kind of like ‘rn’ if you don’t look too closely. Someone was spoofing a domain name by doing that, I think it was with Microsoft. I think they did that with the M in Microsoft. If you don’t look really closely, which most people won’t think to do, then you may not realize that it’s not legitimate. So people are getting, I guess creative would be a nice way to put it. So you’re very sensitive, then, to those concerns.
So social media, that is another area. And it’s something that we obviously can mostly choose to avoid. Some people do run their businesses on social sites and now they’ve been taken aback by the fact that the data they put in years ago is now going to be used for purposes that they didn’t intend.
LinkedIn is one that has come under some fire for the way that they’ve treated our privacy. They gave us some opt-out options last summer. I don’t know if you heard about that?
Haleh: The one that they’re asking for my driving license or something. The verification? I was very worried about that. I don’t know if I ended up doing it or not. I just didn’t like it. I said, “How am I giving my driving to LinkedIn? This is crazy.” I don’t know if I ended up doing it or not. I really didn’t like it though. Maybe I’ve not done it yet.
Karen: Yeah, they’ve been leaning a lot on the verifications. I was specifically thinking, though, of the opt-out provisions. Last summer, they announced that they were going to implement an opt-out so that you could say, “I don’t want my content, what I create here, my personal information, used for training AI.” But when they made the option, they automatically opted us in for everything we’d ever put on the site up to that point in time. And we had no choice about that. The only people who had a choice about it really were the people who are covered under GDPR in Europe, for instance – they didn’t have their old content opted in. But ours did, those of us who aren’t in such countries.
Haleh: Oh wow.
Karen: They took a lot of flack for that, and deservedly so, I think.
Haleh: No, I have not noticed that. I’m not that much on LinkedIn. I go on it though, but not as much. I should be doing it more with coaching, you know? I think that would be a good place to go do it. I just finished my school a week or two weeks ago. So 2026 would be my focus of marketing it and getting out there and hopefully I get more international clients.
Karen: Yeah, I’ve heard a lot of different opinions from people about whether opting in or opting out is better for them professionally. So that would be something to look at, I think, when you’re getting yourself set up for that.
Haleh: Yeah, I will look into it for sure. Thanks for letting me know.
Karen: Yeah, yeah. I can share some links about where to go to look for your privacy settings. There’s two places you have to go, actually. It’s not just the one to opt yourself out completely, or to opt in if that’s what you want to do for visibility or whatever other reasons.
Haleh: Yeah, I would appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, LinkedIn is a whole new thing. I have to master myself on it.
Karen: Yeah, well, it sounds like you have what we call a learning mindset or a growth mindset. Always looking at learning things. So I’m sure you’ll do well with it.
Haleh: Yeah, there is an old saying in Farsi that, from birth to death, you have to learn. In Farsi, we say, “ze Gahvareh ta gor danesh bejo”, meaning that from birth until you’re dying, you have to learn. So this always sank in my head that we should always learn. The moment you stop learning, basically, you are ready to die. That’s what I learned, right? It’s just in my head. I can’t get it out. So this is how I am, I should keep learning.
Karen: Yeah, that sounds like a good saying!
Last question. We see public distrust of AI and tech companies that’s been growing lately, partly because of what we’re learning about how they use our data and such. What would you say is the most important thing that an AI company would need to do to earn and to keep your trust, if that’s even possible? And if you have any specific ideas on how they could do that?
Haleh: You know what? I just told you I don’t feel comfortable putting any personal information. You know what would be nice? Because I’m logged into my account and stuff that I put in my account there, maybe there could be an option. Make it like my own area, that whatever I put under it, they don’t share it. Just let it stay my own, like a cloud-based memory, you know? I like how I feel good about Dropbox or Google Drive, you know, you can save things on it, and you know it’s there and safe. Similar idea, if they can do that, some sort of a drive inside ChatGPT that I can save some of my personal stuff in there for reference if I need to use. And they don’t use it and don’t share it. But then maybe there is a part of it that, whatever I search or did, then they can share it.
So then that would be a good option. Because they’re totally capable of creating something safe, a safe space like that. Then that would make people more comfortable uploading stuff and saving it there. Maybe some sort of a combination. Maybe they should merge with Google and the Google Drive ChatGPT combination. Seriously, like, it can search inside my Google, because I allow it to search on my Google Drive for my own use, but don’t share it. You see what I’m saying?
Karen: Yeah. Well, they do have that partnership with Microsoft, so maybe they’ll integrate with Microsoft OneDrive at some point, right?
Haleh: I know. I’m just saying give me an open, I think that would be a good idea. They merge with one of these cloud drives. And then if I want to search, you know, how many documents I have in Google Drive? I’ve been using it for a million years. I don’t even know what I have in there. I can use ChatGPT to organize it for me. “Hey, can you find this in my Google Drive?” Do you know, some sort of a migration like that? And then, “Can you look at my data and see what I’m looking for?” To do a Google search in my own, and help me based on that to find some[thing], but then don’t use it elsewhere – that would be awesome.
Karen: There are probably AI agents that are being developed that will do exactly those kinds of things. I’ve seen people talking about having it organize the files in their computers. So organizing files in a Google Drive is probably not much of a stretch.
Haleh: Yeah. But I have to trust. I trust Google or Dropbox, because I’ve been using them for, like, 20 years, as long as they’re here. So if Google comes along saying that we are doing that, I feel like I can trust it. But ChatGPT, I can’t. You hear what I’m saying?
Karen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Haleh: I don’t think Google is going to jeopardize their reputation of messing things up. So if Google says, “Hey, we’re doing this”, I’ll trust it.
Karen: Well, Haleh, that’s the end of my standard questions. I appreciate you coming on the show and making time for this interview. Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience about AI, about your thoughts about it?
Haleh: Just be careful. Especially the law aspect of it, be careful. Don’t write your contracts or divorce agreement or whatever you want to do through AI. If you are using it, make sure you get a professional to review it. And same thing with accounting, if you’re doing it, just talk to a professional and ask them to review it. It’s worth it to pay that money and not get yourself in a bigger problem in the long term.
But also don’t complain too much. Keep up with time. Time is moving way too fast. You have to jump on the train, otherwise you fall behind.
Karen: That is certainly true. Can you say a few words about your coaching services and your book? Where can people find out about the book and find out about you and get in touch with you if they’re interested in exploring your coaching services?
Haleh: Yes, thank you for giving me that opportunity. So the book will be on Amazon from December 23rd. It’s called Midlife Reimagined. So if you downloaded it on Kindle, which is 99 cents, that would be pretty awesome. Or you can just order your paper version.
And about my coaching services. I’m really looking forward to help people. Right now I still am building it up, so I’m looking to do things pro bono the next few months. So just get myself settled in, and then I’m going to start making it a complete business. But I really enjoy helping people, and I think I have lots to offer because of my whole background. Hopefully get my book and read it, from where I started to where I am right now. Born in Revolutionary War, divorce, start a business, didn’t work, started another business, didn’t work, and then just keep moving up and pushing forward. And my marathons and all the nine yards.
So I think I have lots of life experience that helps me inspire people to do better in life. I’m looking for women who want to be inspired and move forward and looking for people that are in a stage of wanting to change career, or changing life. And I’m really passionate to help youths because I think if they can get help around high school, if you’re struggling with your kids, can’t figure out what they want to do with their lives, just tell them to come and talk to me. I’m still in a pro bono stage. I would love to talk to them. I have all the time for them, and help them figure out what they want to do with their lives, which is really important to figure out at that stage. Versus you finish four-year undergrad, and you pay the money, and you just don’t know what you want to do with your life. So if you help your kid at the right age, encourage them to get the help they need, they will be way better off than finish four years, and then even a master degree, and still don’t know what they want to do, right?
So yeah, come and see me. Love to help people. It’s h magnus coaching.com or find me on LinkedIn. There’s only one Haleh Magnus, H-A-L-E-H Magnus. So just find me either way.
Karen: That’s great. You have a unique name, a lovely name. And I’ll make sure we get the links into your interview. Well, thank you so much. Thank you for making time for the interview. It’s really been a pleasure to talk with you today.
Haleh: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoy talking to you too. Have a great day.
Interview References and Links
Haleh Magnus on LinkedIn
Magnus Law Firm
H Magnus Coaching
“Midlife Reimagined” book, released Dec. 23, 2025: US, CA
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This post is part of our AI6P interview series on “AI, Software, and Wetware”. It showcases how real people around the world are using their wetware (brains and human intelligence) with AI-based software tools, or are being affected by AI.
And we’re all being affected by AI nowadays in our daily lives, perhaps more than we realize. For some examples, see post “But I Don’t Use AI”:
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