00:00So I'm going to do the same thing I did, starting with just the macro, and then I want to
00:07get into what you guys are doing with AI, because I do think there's so much coming at leaders, investors,
00:12every day, markets react sometimes, and sometimes they don't, but when you think about the constant things that are coming
00:19at us, how does it impact any of your decisions that you're thinking, whether it's investing in technology, doing things
00:25with your workforce, whether it's AI, what do you do?
00:28Anything changing?
00:29Yeah, so there's certainly a lot happening right now.
00:33There's a lot in the headlines for sure.
00:37At NASCAR, we are laser-focused.
00:40We are committed to growing our sport.
00:42That's our goal for this year for sure, and everything we're doing is pushing that down the field, and so
00:50whether it's what we're doing on the track, off the track, everything is going towards how can we grow our
00:55sport, how can we get in front of more people,
00:57how can we make it more exciting, and our AI initiatives are a big part of that, and so I'm
01:04excited to get into what we're doing and how we're using AI to really help transform our company.
01:10How big a part is it?
01:11Tell me about a little bit of the conversation about how you guys are approaching it.
01:14Yeah.
01:14Is it all in, everybody, top to bottom, bottom to top?
01:18I think we want to make decisions that make the most sense.
01:20You know, I think we, in 2024, it was kind of the year of the wow.
01:26We were just exposed to what AI could be, and there was a lot of excitement around that.
01:322025 was kind of the how, and so we were like, okay, how do we integrate this?
01:36What do we have to have in place to make sure that there is kind of this front door to
01:41a lot of our AI tools?
01:43And then 2026 is really the now year for us, where scaling up is our goal, and so how can
01:50we get this tool, this artificial intelligence, into the hands of our people who are already doing great work, help
01:58them to do greater work in fractions of the time?
02:02That's the goal for this year.
02:03And it's really easy, right?
02:05Absolutely.
02:06Super simple.
02:06No, I was being sarcastic.
02:08Oh, well, you know.
02:09Or is it easy?
02:10Well, I think you realize, and one of the things that we realized at the company was just that there
02:15were people already jumping into these technologies before we even stood them up as an enterprise, and so a lot
02:22of that moved our decision.
02:24Like, where are our people right now?
02:26What do they actually want?
02:27Where do they feel comfortable, and how can we come alongside of them and empower them to do better work?
02:32So, Rich, give us an idea of what you guys are playing with, what programs, which LLMs.
02:37Give us an idea of the process and who's doing what right now, who's kind of playing, who's maybe getting
02:41more serious in terms of workflow.
02:44Yeah.
02:44So, we've partnered with OpenAI, so ChatGPT, and we are setting up our organization to be able to have each
02:54and every employee at some point in the future where it makes sense to be able to utilize that with
03:00their work.
03:01As a matter of fact, I think when you start your day one at the job and you get that
03:07laptop, you should also receive a contextual way of using AI for your role, and that's where our goal is.
03:15How can we equip you from day one being AI-enabled?
03:20So, where are you in that process?
03:22And give me an idea of people, what they're doing, and if anything has already had an impact.
03:27Yeah.
03:28So, we have, I would say, around 500 users who are playing around with AI.
03:35Out of how many at NASCAR?
03:36I would say we're looking at maybe around 1,400, and so we want to do things that make sense.
03:44We want to do things that scale well.
03:46We want to build good foundations.
03:48As AI tools come out, we want to make sure that governance is in place and that people feel empowered
03:55but also competent when it comes to using these tools,
03:58that we're not just giving everybody a race car.
04:01We're also giving them a license and giving them training to get that license, and we're seeing reductions in the
04:08most repeatable tasks,
04:10which represent the majority of the work that most of our people are doing.
04:14And so, it's been great just to see and experience how much people are enjoying and seeing how much more
04:22work they're getting done.
04:23How do you think about individuals who might be like, eh, I'm not so into this?
04:28Yeah, I think, you know, NASCAR is a sport, been around for over 80 years.
04:33You don't get to that place without having the ability to pivot and adapt when the technological landscape changes.
04:40The current wave right now is AI, and we are already adapting to that.
04:46And so, we are making sure that this is, the two engines that are driving everything we're doing in AI
04:53is,
04:53is this proven to be effective, and is it inspected to be safe?
04:58Those two engines are driving everything behind our AI tools.
05:03I want to talk to you about governance issues, because there's governance for the company.
05:07There's company, there's governance, excuse me, for the customer.
05:10There's governance for the workers.
05:12If you're a publicly held company, think about governance for investors.
05:16So, how do you kind of get around that?
05:18And I think we're talking a lot about that, considering the spat that we've seen between Anthropic and the Pentagon.
05:24And what's interesting, even this morning, OpenAI came out and said, yeah, we want,
05:28now that they've kind of come in to say, we'll work with the government,
05:31but saying, we too want some guardrails, especially when it comes to mass surveillance of U.S. citizens.
05:36So, how do you think about that?
05:39Well, I think these stories should cause everyone at every company to think about AI governance
05:44in a way that speeds up our attention to that idea way faster than we've been doing in the past.
05:51And I think, for the most part, you get a sense that governance is the brake pedal
05:57when you front load all the tooling.
05:59So, you want to make the headlines.
06:01You want to get that sense of speed.
06:02And so, you might push tools that have not gone through that governance,
06:07and then it'll seem like this is going to slow us down to have to circle back and check to
06:13see.
06:13But if you front load that governance, if you say, hey, we're going to inspect this tool,
06:19we're going to understand how we're going to deploy this, who we're going to deploy it to,
06:22who's going to manage that, it really gives the freedom at the end
06:27for people to be able to utilize that tool in a way that they know is safe.
06:31You said something that was really cool to me on our planning call,
06:33and this whole idea that basically every employee, certainly with agentic AI, becomes a manager.
06:38Yeah.
06:39And so, not everybody is – we've all worked with people who weren't meant to be managers.
06:43But having said that, like, there are skills with managing people or processes or workflows, correct?
06:51Or an agent, an AI agent.
06:54Yeah, yeah.
06:55And I think the faster we realize that that is what's happening when we offer these tools to our employees,
07:02I think the more robust we create on-ramps to things like managerial roles,
07:07because there's a lot of experience you're getting in how you deploy your AI alongside your work.
07:14How are you positioning it?
07:16How are you setting it up to be in your workflow will really speak to how you might bring in
07:22a human being to do the same.
07:24You know, what's interesting, too, that you said to me, you know, you mentioned you're working with OpenAI, ChatGPT,
07:29but you talked about bringing in a partner to develop department-level champions.
07:36Yeah.
07:36And so, one of the things that we –
07:38Like I think of a race team, right?
07:39And to some extent, you've got folks who are kind of championing everybody.
07:44Absolutely.
07:45And one of the things that we all have to realize is that there are people in your companies right
07:49now
07:49who have amazing ideas when it comes to whether it's just using the chatbot or even some agentic stuff, some
07:58custom GPTs.
07:59What's beautiful about our partnership is that when we bring in a partner to help us do that,
08:06we're saying go in, look at our people, research, find the people who are not at the intermediate level,
08:12the people who are at the advanced level, really pushing the envelope,
08:15really coming up with some really interesting use cases.
08:18We take that, turn it into a playbook that we can then distribute to other employees.
08:23So now we have repeatable workflows that continue to increase the ROI we're already spending.
08:29You already see that.
08:30Yeah, absolutely.
08:31How long does this process take?
08:33And I'm curious about expectations and having realistic expectations about putting this into effect,
08:39having all workers, it sounds like, or most of your workers at NASCAR doing it.
08:45What's the expectations around that and what's the timeline?
08:48Because the world is moving really fast.
08:50For sure.
08:50And I just think about the AI discussion that we're having,
08:52that we've gone very quickly, you know, from building out the infrastructure,
08:58spending on chips that's still happening, to inference and agentic AI.
09:04It's moving rather quickly.
09:06And so I'm just curious how fast you guys want to do this and what's your timeline?
09:11Yeah, you know, at NASCAR.
09:13At the same time, people will say, forgive me, that we still don't know a lot.
09:16Correct.
09:16And we don't know about kind of what's the smart impact of all of this.
09:19Yeah.
09:20And I think the best thing that we can do right now is to, we need to investigate.
09:27Find what works.
09:28Deploy that.
09:30Be skeptical.
09:31Be skeptical about the things that we're not so sure about.
09:34And to have the courage to delay things that won't stand up to the enablement
09:40and governance plans that we have as a company.
09:43Obviously, we want to move quickly.
09:45But at the same time, we're not willing to sacrifice safety for that speed.
09:52And so the industry speed is something to definitely observe,
09:56but not necessarily one to copy if it compromises us on the governance end.
10:01Any advice to the folks that are here as they think?
10:04I mean, it's an investment audience.
10:06You think about this process, the things you need.
10:09Any kind of final thoughts?
10:11Yeah.
10:12I would encourage you all to really think about AI cross-functionally.
10:16And so it's not just for your IT departments.
10:19It's really for everyone.
10:20And so I would encourage you all to talk to your leaders.
10:26Get them together.
10:27Figure out what use cases can be.
10:30When you say leaders, is it your C-suite involved in this?
10:33Absolutely.
10:33So go ahead.
10:34Yeah.
10:34Yeah.
10:34C-suite, your departmental managers.
10:37How are we coming together to look at use cases and ways in which AI can really take us to
10:44the next level?
10:45All right.
10:45We're going to leave it on that note.
10:46Rich, thank you so much.
10:48Really appreciate it.
10:49Rich Bowman of NASCAR.
10:51Thank you so much, Rich.
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