A Beginner's Guide to AI

AI is no longer just a chatbot that helps you write emails faster. In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI, Dietmar Fischer sits down with Ethan Ouyang to explore how agentic AI is changing the way businesses are built, managed, and scaled. Ethan is publicly identified with ATOMS, and the platform’s official site is atoms.dev, where it is described as a multi-agent AI workflow for building products without code.

This conversation goes far beyond simple prompting. Ethan explains how AI agents can work together like a business team, handling research, planning, product creation, workflow automation, iteration, and even revenue optimization. The result is a shift from “vibe coding” to something much bigger: building real businesses with AI.

You’ll hear:
✨ Why ChatGPT-level use cases are only the beginning
✨ How AI agents can support founders, solo operators, and managers
✨ Why judgment, taste, and domain knowledge still matter
✨ What it means to become an AI native company
✨ How leadership changes when your team includes AI workers
✨ Why custom AI tools may beat bloated SaaS products

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🎙️ About Dietmar Fischer
Dietmar is a podcaster and AI marketer from Berlin. If you want to know how to get your AI or your digital marketing going, just contact him at argoberlin.com

💬 Quotes from the Episode
“Atoms is fundamentally different. This is not code. It is decision.”
“You have a team, not just an engineer.”
“The trivial work, the tedious work, should belong to AI.”

🕒 Chapters
00:00 Welcome and what ATOMS actually does
02:26 From prompting AI to building a real business
05:33 Why AI agents matter more than coding alone
10:18 Who uses ATOMS: founders, managers, and operators
13:03 How to integrate AI agents into real workflows
23:22 Leadership, hiring, and managing AI workers
27:13 The future of agentic AI and autonomous systems
31:37 What an AI native company looks like
35:18 China, the US, and the AI application race
40:03 Safety, the Terminator question, and responsible AI
42:14 Where to find Ethan and ATOMS

🔗 Where to find Ethan Ouyang
Platform: ATOMS.dev
Company: DeepWisdom.AI
X: com/atoms_dev
YouTube: youtube.com/@atoms_dev
LinkedIn: Ethan Ouyang

🎵 Music credit: "Modern Situations" by Unicorn Heads
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Human-Centered AI at Work with Monica Marquez: A Practical Adoption Playbook
If you’re still treating AI like a shiny gadget, this episode will be a polite intervention.Monica Marquez (Flipwork) shows how to build a human-centered AI adoption playbook that actually sticks.We dig into AI as a partner, not a tool; psychological safety for teams; and the one-workflow-per-month rule that turns experimentation into measurable AI ROI.You’ll learn how to avoid work slop, build agentic workflows, and translate machine output into authentic intelligence that reflects your expertise. 🤖

What you’ll learn
Shift identity first: “I experiment with AI daily.”
Redesign workflows before adding tools.
Create psychological safety so teams can try, fail, and improve.
Kill work slop and layer your context for quality.
Build agentic workflows that scale judgment and consistency.
Track time saved and quality gains to prove ROI.

📧💌📧 Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes, don’t forget to subscribe to our Newsletter.📧💌📧

Quotes from the Episode
“The real danger isn’t killer robots. It’s disengaged humans.”
“Don’t ship work slop. Turn artificial intelligence into your authentic intelligence.”
“Redesign your workflow first, then layer AI. Otherwise you just automate the old mess.”
“Stop treating AI like a tool. Treat it like a partner.”
“Adoption starts with identity: I experiment with AI every day.”
“Use AI for five-dollar tasks so you can solve five-thousand-dollar problems.”

Chapters
00:00 Welcome, who is Monica Marquez and what is Flipwork
02:59 AI as a partner, not a tool
05:34 Practical example: recruiting, prompts, and human judgment
07:02 Generational beliefs, “artificial intern,” and mindset shifts
11:24 From effort to impact: redefining success with AI
12:46 Redesigning workflows before layering AI
14:44 Psychological safety and daily experiments
16:55 Leaders model usage, run side-by-side experiments
18:37 Avoiding “work slop” and building authentic intelligence
21:44 Doing more of your “zone of genius” with AI
24:39 The one-workflow-per-month rule
29:25 Industry adoption patterns, lessons from Blockbuster vs Netflix
33:12 Personal AI use cases and voice-based workflows
36:32 Matrix, Terminator, and Monica’s real fear: disengaged humans
37:58 Where to find Monica and Flipwork

Where to find Monica Marquez
Her Agency: Flipwork
Monica’s site: themonicamarquez.com
Newsletter: Ay Ay Ay, AI

About Dietmar Fischer
Host of Beginner’s Guide to AI. Economist and digital marketer helping teams turn AI from hype into workflows.Training, talks, and courses with thousands of participants. 🎙️
Go to argoberlin.com to see how we can help you!

Music credit: “Modern Situations” by Unicorn Heads 🎵
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of A Beginner’s Guide to AI, Dietmar Fischer talks with Alex Levin, the Co-Founder and CEO of Regal.io, about how Voice AI is bringing real human conversation back to customer service.
For years, businesses have been hiding behind IVRs and chatbots - cutting off the personal touch that customers crave. Alex explains how AI voice agents are transforming the experience, allowing brands to actually talk to their customers again, at scale, with empathy, emotion, and precision.
We dive into what’s behind this transformation - from the technology (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, ElevenLabs, Deepgram) to the psychology of trust and emotion in customer communication. Alex shares how Regal.io helps enterprises in healthcare, insurance, and finance use AI-powered voice agents that can outperform human representatives while lowering costs and improving satisfaction.
From replacing call center frustration with warm, natural conversations to the rise of empathetic AI agents, this episode explores what happens when voice meets intelligence.

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Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes — and don’t forget to subscribe to our Newsletter: beginnersguide.nl
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Quotes from the Episode
“If a customer wants to talk to you, you’re lucky - and if they want to do it by voice, you should let them.”
“The personalization possible with AI agents is more human than humans.”
“Everyone told me voice was dead - they were wrong.”

CHAPTERS
00:00 Introduction - Why Voice AI Is Making a Comeback
00:54 Alex Levin’s Journey from Startups to Voice AI
03:42 “Voice Isn’t Dead” - The Moment That Sparked Regal.io
06:25 How Voice AI Actually Works Behind the Scenes
08:47 Using AI Agents to Talk to Customers at Scale
10:58 Data, Scripts, and What Makes a “Good” AI Conversation
13:33 Legal Hurdles and Privacy in Voice AI
15:50 Why Healthcare and Insurance Are Early Adopters
18:26 How Customers React When They Realize It’s an AI
21:12 Real Use Cases - From Banks to Everyday Services
24:19 Human in the Loop: When AI Hands Over to People
26:55 Can Small Businesses Afford Voice AI Yet?
28:48 The AI Startup Boom and Smarter Investment Strategies
32:20 Leadership in the Age of AI - New Skills, New Metrics
35:12 Why Young Professionals Must Learn AI Tools Now
37:45 How Alex Personally Uses AI (and Where It Saves Time)
39:24 The “Terminator Question” - Should We Be Worried?
42:08 Closing Reflections and Where to Find Regal.io

Where to Find Alex Levin
🌐 Website: www.regal.io
🧑🏻 LinkedIn: Alex Levin

🎙 About Dietmar Fischer:
Dietmar is a podcaster, AI marketer, and economist from Berlin.
If you want to get your AI or your digital marketing going - just contact him at Argoberlin.com!

🎵 Music credit: “Modern Situations” by Unicorn Heads
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, Dietmar Fischer talks with Tallulah Le Merle, a humanist technologist and investor, about how to think clearly in the age of AI without falling into doomsday panic or blind optimism. You’ll get a practical mental model of the AI stack, a grounded take on AI alignment risk, and a refreshing argument for hope as a strategic posture that shapes what gets built. 🤖🌍🧠

What you’ll learn
✅ Why fear based AI narratives can freeze action and distort decisions
✅ How the future of work may shift from routine cognitive tasks to deeper human capabilities
✅ The overlooked forms of intelligence AI cannot easily replace somatic, ecological, communal
✅ How AI investing works in early stage startups and what responsible due diligence looks like
✅ The AI stack explained simply infrastructure, model layer, application layer
✅ What agentic AI means today and where it is heading

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About Dietmar Fischer
Dietmar is a podcaster and AI marketer from Berlin. If you want to know how to get your AI or your digital marketing going, just contact him at argoberlin.com 🌱🚀

Chapters
00:00 Meet Tallulah Le Merle and why “hope” is her AI stance
03:52 Fear narratives vs hope as a practical posture
08:06 Disruptive to what Rethinking modern work and human thriving
10:14 Jobs replaced vs jobs created and the transition problem
12:36 What’s left for humans Somatic ecological and communal intelligence
18:47 The humanist builder and why ethics should unlock capital
28:55 The AI stack explained infrastructure model layer application layer
32:30 Why apps and agents are the near-term investment boom
40:32 The alignment problem Terminator narratives and the futures we build
46:12 Fantasy, imagination, and why it matters for tech trajectories
49:36 Where to find Tallulah and the upcoming book

Quotes from the Episode
💬 “AI is a tool. And like a hammer. Hammer, you could use it to build a house or as a murder weapon.”
💬 “Hope is this sliver of openness to the possibility that something good could happen.”
💬 “Disruptive to what Actually, a lot of the way we live and work and operate as humans today is dystopian.”
💬 “It forces us to ask these existential questions, like, what is a human”
💬 “I actually think it should be a prerequisite for unlocking capital.”
💬 “We are so early We’re in inning one of a nine inning baseball game.”

Where to find Tallulah
🔗 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/tallulahlemerle
🔗 Website: tallulahlemerle.com
🔗 Updates on her book: don't forget to follow her on LinkedIn 🚀



Music credit: "Modern Situations" by Unicorn Heads
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

🎙️ In this episode of Beginner’s Guide to AI, Dietmar Fischer sits down with Torrey Leonard, CEO of Thoughtly, to unpack the real business use case for voice AI agents: follow up with every lead, qualify fast, and hand the best conversations to humans.

If your funnel generates thousands of leads, the bottleneck is not “lack of interest.” It’s speed, timing, and the grind of dialing. Torrey explains how Thoughtly’s AI phone agents call inbound leads, answer initial questions, build rapport, and then transfer the call to a licensed human closer. Humans stay in the loop for the big life decisions. The AI handles the repetitive first steps that burn out teams.

You will also learn:
✅ Why voice beats typing as the fastest interface for human communication
✅ Why customer service voice AI is harder than sales and lead qualification
✅ How onboarding works with CRM integrations like Salesforce and HubSpot
✅ Why A/B testing matters before ramping to 100% lead volume
✅ Why the “moat” is orchestration, workflows, and guardrails, not just a great voice model
✅ What agentic AI and omni-channel “next best action” looks like next

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Tune in to get my thoughts and all episodes, don’t forget to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠subscribe to our Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠: ⁠⁠⁠⁠beginnersguide.nl⁠⁠⁠⁠
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About Dietmar Fischer: Dietmar is a podcaster and AI marketer from Berlin. If you want to know how to get your AI or your digital marketing going, just contact him at argoberlin.com

Chapters
00:00 From Minecraft to voice first AI and the origin of Thoughtly
02:44 What Thoughtly does AI calls that qualify and transfer to humans
07:45 Trust, disclosure, and why customer service voice AI is so hard
12:50 Scaling across verticals dialects and the model orchestration stack
18:12 Onboarding CRM integrations and A/B testing to 100% volume
28:21 The next wave autonomous agents OpenClaw and a sane take on AI risk

Quotes from the Episode
“After 90 seconds we’ve got a great rapport built. Boom, transferred over to a licensed agent.”
“The voice isn’t the unique selling proposition. It’s the orchestration of the whole stuff.”
“Nobody needs to worry about the Terminator scenario, unless we humans build Terminator.”

Where to find the Guest
🌐 Thoughtly: thoughtly.com
🔗 Torrey Leonard on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/torrey-leonard/

Music credit: “Modern Situations” by Unicorn Heads
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.