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MBS992 - The AI Advantage: Inside the Race to AI Unicorns with Mark Simoncelli · Matt Brown Show - Conversations That Power The Business World.

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone and welcome back to yet another cracking edition of the Matt Brown Show.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: This is the AI Advantage Series where we are talking to business leaders all about the impacts of AI on what they are building and doing.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: And with us in the hot seat today is Mark Simoncelli.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's the CRO for a company called Mach 49.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: But Mark, you're also an entrepreneur and been around the block more than once.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, great.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me, Matt.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Excited to dig in.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Happy to chat about AI, talk a bit about my journey.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, there's a lot happening in the space right now, both on the value extraction side and the value creation side.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So exciting, excited to dig in.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the elevator pitch for you and your background and what are you guys up to?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I started really in technology implementations, and that was more around operational excellence, effectiveness, and efficiency.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then really this kind of love affairs started with value creation.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: So looking at business model innovation and how to extract further value.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of a lot of work was happening around digital, particularly IoT.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously now it's all about AI, agentic.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think IoT is still a big, big area.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really been my focus is how how can we get the intersection between human capital, business model innovation, and some of these technologies to coincide and create additional creative value.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, what are some initial thoughts around the impact of AI?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because you mentioned Agentich as an example, and I've actually got uh the head of AI for Salesforce coming on the show tomorrow, um, and to talk about what they've built there at Salesforce, which it's like a self-service build your own agentich AI on you know processes and stuff like that, and agents on their platform, which is which is quite interesting.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then obviously, from what you're doing at Mark 49, there's a lot of innovation that's happening in this space.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, talk to us, give us your initial thoughts on uh what AI is going to do uh in your industry and more broadly for startups.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I think the couple of things.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I think the first thing, like with any wave of new technologies, it starts on the X, you know, efficiency and effectiveness side of the equation.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: So already there's cases where AI has been used to improve billing processes, improve efficiency by 20, 30% on core processes within companies.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: What I think you're going to start to see is now on the value creation side, you know, a lot more, a lot more coming out using AI.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing some startups that we're working with.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So even colleagues of mine have started companies, ex-colleagues, that are running startups with one person, you know, single founder.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got a CTO agent, you've got a product agent, and you're literally having stand-ups and sit-downs every day, treating them like humans, and working with a with a founding team of agents with one person.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, and obviously within that, exploring all sorts of different avenues with where AI can take this, both on the software side and the integration with hardware.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where I think you'll start to see more POCs, prototypes coming out on particularly on the value creation side as well.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: So initially a lot on value extraction, but I think you'll see more and more on value creation as well.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that's pretty disruptive.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Let's think about that for a second.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine a startup, you know, if there's some have said who will get to the first unicorn with a single founder.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we're starting to see that with early stage venture teams because you can create agents that are, you know, as they start to get better and better, similar to what humans could be doing in those roles.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: So when do you think that's going to be a like an actual thing?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where you don't, it's not just, well, you're starting to see it, but it actually has happened.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's actually feasible though as we move forward?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm seeing, I mean, it depends on the the type of startup that you're looking to build.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think with simple software and product, we're already seeing that today.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, as I said, I've you know, I I've got examples that I can think about already today, where you know, there's a single founder and he's using agents, you know, as part of his team, or you know, she is.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I don't think anybody can really predict.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people are saying, well, you know, impact on jobs, uh, you know, I think with any new wave of technology, people tend to over-predict longer-term impacts.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I the way I like to think about it is we're at base camp.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if we're climbing Everest, we're at base camp.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: This thing is not gonna, the genie is out the bottle.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: This thing is only gonna accelerate.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, and if people are already placing some interesting experiments and getting results, running this pretty autonomously, you know, it's only gonna it's only gonna accelerate from here.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree with you completely.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think are some of the most exciting startups or use cases for AI?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think to your point, there's there's guys who are building AI models, and then there's guys that are applying it.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the large majority are applying, they're not building.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And where they are building, it's uh there's a lot of constraints there, there's a lot of you know realities, for instance, like you can have the best data in the world, but how do you stop a model from you know from hallucinating?
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Because that that can be a complete shit show if you don't fix that.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so the the application of AI is uh is is probably where most people are.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: There's a website called um there's an ai4th.com.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've seen that.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh it just goes to show like this how many AI applied AI applications are out there at the moment.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, what would you say are some of the most exciting use cases that you've seen?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think it's I mean, it we have to go back to any principle of starting a company.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you've got to go where there's a lot of pain.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's let's park the technology for a second.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where is there a lot of customer pain?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the you know, that's the first thing.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is there real visceral pain and does it is it worth solving that pain?
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: That's point number one on you know which user cases make the most sense.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing linked to where there's pain, will will customers spend money on that pain?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, so because I think sometimes what what I typically see is people get excited about a new technology, we build, we kind of put the cart before the horse and we build a whole lot of stuff before really going back to first principles, which is is there pain?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is there enough pain?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is that a sizable market opportunity when it when you think about pain?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then will people spend money on that pain?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: So the user cases and and those differ B2B, B2C, B2B to C, depending on the business model.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's it's really starting there.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I've attended, I work across industries.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I've been at a you know, attend a number number of different conferences.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's some pretty interesting user cases around drug discovery, precision medicine.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: So if you take just, you know, on the pharma biomedical side, there's some really interesting application areas for for AI that's you know, that's past just experimenting and actually moving into the next phase.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Automotive is and mobility is doing some pretty interesting stuff.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you think about software-defined vehicle and many other user cases, there's some pretty, pretty interesting application areas there.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, IoT in the industrial side has been brewing for a while.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is this is this the breakout time for IoT as we start to think about digital twins and where that goes and IoT?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's some interesting user cases there.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the consumer side, there is a number of areas where they're applying AI.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, so I think it but once again, I think it's back to where there's visceral pain.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Start with the basics and then get into where people are really spending money to solve that pain, not just interesting experiments, new cool, funky products, actually worth taking it forward.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love that because I think it's very easy to get overwhelmed around where to start, you know.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's like you said, first principle.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's like as much as like you mentioned Internet of Things, and then there was, you know, then there was blockchain, and then there was DT, and there was all these like, you know, rare tri technology-driven uh revolutions or opportunities, but like we're not paying for bread with crypto.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a very long way off.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um if if if if it's gonna manifest at all that that would be a thing.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so the the thing that you mentioned, which is I 100% agree with, which is like start with the problem, you know what I mean?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's always going back to the as much as things change, everything stays the same.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if and if you can find the problem that, you know, well, where are we, you know, spending uh where where are we paying 1099 to do things in our business?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and can we then not do that and automate it with uh, you know, I don't know, processes or some form of um uh AI tool, you know, automation tool or something.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it is always going back to like, well, fix the business problem or identify it first.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think oftentimes teams don't actually know what to fix because they don't know what the problem is, you know.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, as Einstein said, if you had one hour left to live, you'd spend 55 minutes on the problem and five minutes on the solution.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there you go.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: I used to use that in my talks.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: So spend time on spend time on the problem and then figure out how you know I think what it is what it is doing for us is it's really creating the art of the possible.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, what I'm just seeing with it, and I I use it a lot myself.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: I've created a lot of different agents to support me.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: I do think we're moving towards an agent of agents, akin to you know Iron Man and using Jarvis, where you have sort of Jarvis managing your agents, where you can, I mean, it's pretty powerful, as everybody knows, on synthesizing information, bringing it together.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: So almost the democratization of ideation and testing, testing early concepts, value propositions, etc.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's extremely powerful for doing that.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, that can never, you can never be used as a substitute if you're in a in a startup or a venture team.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_00: It can never be used as a substitute for testing this with real humans.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what we're seeing is I like to think of this as back to Iron Man as the jetpack.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: How can we leverage some of these tools to get smarter, synthesize new topics, test concepts a lot quicker in minutes, which typically would have taken days of kind of wandering in the desert to figure out the pain.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: We can get that very quickly now with a lot of these tools.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: So you can use synthetic personas as customers to test concepts.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of different tools out there already to figure out is there pain?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is it worth solving?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: What are some of those early concepts?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously you need to still do the hard work, which is test this with real customers, real humans.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't go away, I don't believe.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I I think of this as an augmentation uh exoskeleton for folks to really leverage startups, startup founders, teams in large corporates that are tackling different areas, etc.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_01: How do you think the world of venture capital is going to change with this technology now?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um and because I, you know, I did a whole I interviewed like 50 venture capital GPs in the US, some of the biggest firms here.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they're one, I think one of the questions was like, well, how do you when do you decide or why do you decide to cut a check to someone don't?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it's usually a case of, well, it's about the team.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we back the team, you know, and the business can take care of itself.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so then that raises the question if everything's been run with agents, and you oh like, does the team does that answer now is it becoming sort of more and more irrelevant in the sense of right, yeah, there'll be two people in the business, the founder, and I don't know, you know what I mean?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's no team, or maybe the team, the human team is now being replaced with AI agents.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So do you how do you evaluate agents to be effective in you know taking a business to market as an example?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, venture capital, you're right, will tell you that it is about the team and it is about the problem that they're wanting to solve.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Same thing.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, I think you're still first principles, even if they're fewer team members, you're still gonna go back to is this am I willing to bet on this jockey or this jockey team?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there they're still gonna be, that's still a critical criteria for any venture capitalist.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: What I've been seeing in venture capital is obviously a lot of investment has gone into AI.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you said it beautifully earlier.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's those that are placing bets on, you know, the large language models, and then there are those that are betting on the ecosystem and the surrounding adjacent bets of application areas.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then if you take that even broader, we know that this is gonna result in a huge need for energy, etc.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's I like I'm a systems thinker, so I like to think of the system.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're placing a series of smart bets, obviously you can invest you can invest in the you know the AI itself, you can you can invest in the surrounding application areas, or you can invest more broadly around the you know the required infrastructure that's going to be needed to make this successful and sustainable.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you're seeing a myriad of those bets, but obviously AI is getting a lot of attention if you look at corporate venture capital and traditional venture capital.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm doing this series.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because there's actually a lot of noise uh and not a lot of signal, I think, uh, in this space.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: But to your point, like you can't be sitting on the sidelines.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, you actually have to be thinking about this stuff.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Where would you say, you know, we are in the sort of Gartner hype cycle around AI?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are we like super early or are we actually further along the adoption curve than what most people might think?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I go back to my base camp.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Everest, we're at base camp in my opinion.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I think you know, a lot of progress to get to base camp.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not a joke getting to base camp.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh not that I've done Everest myself, but I can imagine just all the effort to get to base camp, all the training, the preparation, and okay, now now we're gonna now we start in the ascent.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I th I think we're at I think we're at base camp.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: But I mean huge a lot a lot of progress is made, has been made already to get us to base camp.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And you you can move pretty quickly.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think I think this technology is moving extremely quickly.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um we've got all the back to our journey, our expedition ahead.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: We've got the tools, we've got we've got the direction, we've got um so now it's just a question of put your head down and and see how quickly you can ascend the peak.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: So don't do you think first loser advantage in the adoption of AI is a thing, or do you just think it's a win?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's a win if you adopt it?
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's a race.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I do think it's I mean, I think nations are are treating it as a race.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: I do think it is a it is a race.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's you got you gotta move quickly.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um however, obviously companies, some companies like to wait and see.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I've engaged many different companies across different industries.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Some like to be, you know, FOSS followers.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I do think I think it's a race.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think you can just see by the investment that's gone into it, you've got to treat it as a race because it's moving quickly.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh there is a there is a risk of being left behind and getting disrupted if you don't embrace it in one way or another.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I do I do think it is a race.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's interesting that you made reference to that it's a race for at a sort of a country level.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I know Trump's been banging on and Mark Zuckerberg and Sam Altman and and Elon building these massive compute centers and things like this.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like they're and then obviously there's the protagonists, and they're like, oh well, this is terrible what we're doing.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where do you fall on that?
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Are you positive about anything that we build around AI, or do you feel that you know we do we we need to be thinking differently about the scale at which you, as you mentioned, AI is evolving and without guardrails, without regulation, governments are I mean, how the hell are they gonna keep up with that?
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so you've got the private sector that are literally just running with this stuff, you know?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think you I mean the genie's out the bottle, so you ain't gonna you ain't gonna put it back.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's regulations tend to catch up if you look at you know other technology uh technological examples.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Entrepreneurs and innovators are gonna push, you know, they're gonna constantly push.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's um regulations will need to catch up.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I am a believer that it should be done in the right way.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Governance matters, ethics matter for sure.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think it's it's getting all of those pieces to come along the journey.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go back to Everest.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_00: You want you want the whole team coming up, but I think you know what's happening now is entrepreneurs are going to continue to drive.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, that doesn't change.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's we've seen that with you know whole lots of other technologies, uh, crypto and you know, many other examples, as you referenced earlier.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's it absolutely is important.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like let's think of Silicon Valley for a second.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why has Silicon Valley been successful as a you know as an ecosystem?
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because you had academia leaning in, you had banks leaning in, you had lawyer law firms leaning in, you had the entrepreneurial ecosystem leaning in, you had venture capital leaning in.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: So back to a system of systems, you need you need the ecosystem leaning in.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: So everybody needs to embrace it, government, you know, uh regulations, etc., so that this does become sustainable.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a race, so it means people need to figure out where the puck is heading and to move pretty quickly to to catch up so that everybody, so there's orchestration in this expedition moving forward.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, it's gonna be interesting to see how it played out how it plays out.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned ethics, um, and I think that you know there's a lot of the big question I'm thinking about is what role does trust now play in this economy, you know, um, because it's all going to change.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you think going back to what we discussed earlier, like as much as things change, they all stay still stay the same.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's quite easy to over-index towards the new shiny sexy stuff and whatever, but it's really about um playing with fundamental principles because as you know, like the the and underneath every transaction is trust.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if you don't have trust, whatever, then you know, like for instance, if you take a an AI voice model, so do you tell a customer that this that it's an AI that's phoning them?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: If you're thinking about custom experience as an example, or do you not because the model's so good?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Or in the case of uh content marketing, you've got AGI putting out, you know, ads, avatars, crazy shit.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: People can't even see necessarily that it's AI driven, you know, unless you're looking at this stuff every day.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So for instance, you know, if you were to do a fake customer testimonial, so I can put you on stage mark and go, you know, I was really battling with this problem, like you mentioned, and then Matt Brown showworks uh from Showworks phoned me and he and he's just changed my business, you know, and there's an auditorium with actual people there.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: So that's like you could ethically you could do that, but then you know, it's not it's not an actual customer testimonial.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: But the same thing applies to like traditional ads, you know, it's like if you look at car ads, I mean like they embed or motorcycle ads, like I ride KTM adventure bikes, and then it's like you see Chris Birch or Adam Riemann like mauling an 890 going up a steep rock face, doing huge jumps, you know, and just like getting it all sideways.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not the average rider, but KTM will sell you that idea, so it's not ethically correct, but you because but because you aspire to it, you're like, oh shit, I'm gonna trust this bike to be able to help me do that thing, even though it might take you 30 years of actually like you know, so it's the same thing playing out, I I believe.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I think you've I think you've nailed an opportunity space.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think there's trust is always gonna be a factor.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: Let's look at banking.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: Banking was built on the you know, a physical bank, there's trust, there's you know, that that that and that was disrupted with e-commerce and digital banking.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, can I still, you know, a fully digital bank, can I trust it like I can trust a traditional bank that I can go and meet somebody and I can see, you know, so trust is a is a critical cornerstone, you're 100% right.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: But I think I think you've nailed an area that's pretty interesting for entrepreneurs to explore.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is it watermarks?
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is there a way to we see it in you know, fake news?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is this can I is this verifiable or not?
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is this real or not?
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: People are always gonna have, you know, in the consumer space, in the business space, trust is their critical component.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's That will create other opportunities for entrepreneurs to explore, you know, to come up with an interesting solution that solves for trust.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not just regulations.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think it creates so once again, back to the ecosystem, yes, like you said it beautifully in the beginning.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: There's the large language models, there's the application areas.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: One of those is trust.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna solve for those?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Who's gonna solve for trust?
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Because trust is a big pain point for consumers.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's important for you, it's important for me.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: So there, you know, there again, I think that that'll create a whole lot of interesting opportunity areas for people.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it's the same thing with crypto, right?
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think like all these things have uh an implied undercurrent of trust, like the scoring of it in everyone's mind.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like that, I spoke to an author um who wrote the book on um what customer experience is all gonna be like and how AI is gonna change that.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: And he was referencing a study that they did where they had two product names or service names.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the second one, it was powered by AI.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: And they had a focus group, whatever, they had like a 60% drop-off because just because it was the same thing, just said powered by AI.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: And because people like fundament, you know, they just don't trust it.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing if you say Bitcoin, you know, to someone that doesn't understand it, you know, it's like, well, I'm never gonna use it, you know, or any crypto for that matter to disintermediate the banks and the trust that I have with a 150-year-old back as an example, you know what I mean?
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: So someone has to solve for that.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise And we've experienced that, you know, hallucinations, you know, is this model you know giving giving you the right the right answers?
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but once again, I think of it as the exoskeleton.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think, yeah, I say this to my I've got three boys, I say this to you know, my boys, kids, like I think people that embrace it, you know, and their different roles, and you know, you can go down the list of roles, I think we'll get ahead faster.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because this thing's not slowing down.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, but it's not, you know, it's to me, it's an augmentation.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's the exoskeleton to make me more efficient and effective, but also to speed, you know, part of that is speeding me up, synthesizing, giving me options, but I still need to apply my brain, you know, and I need to apply some of the skills that I've developed in whatever whatever field you are.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's I think of it as an augmentation.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I still think humans are incredibly important in the story.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: We have to take a human-centric view as to where this is going, you know, because think about it from a change.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: I saw it in system implementations, yeah, the current state to future state.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: What happens if this disrupts a whole lot of jobs, autonomous tracking to whatever?
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: What are the shifts that we're looking to make with people?
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have to take people on the journey.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: We have to give them the tools, the insight, the knowledge, the confidence in order to make some of those shifts.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So, whatever we do, what I would like to see is is is really putting humans at the center of this and thinking about how we can take them on the journey.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously delivering to customers, because customers are customers matter in the story, as I said in the beginning, but humans are critical in the story.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: And how can we how can we take them on this expedition of Everest together?
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, Mark, if you were to predict a fun and surprising way, or fun and or surprising way that AI is going to affect everyday life.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe you could double-click on, you know, if we if everything manual is automated, like what would we actually be doing?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, what comes to mind for you is um what those uh your prediction might be?
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think it's if I just use myself, you know, I've been teaching myself how to build agents and use agents across from travel to support, admin support to, you know, I think there's I think just in, you know, if you just take some of the white-collar collar professions, I think you're gonna see a lot of um a lot of agents, you know, a lot of agents being used for, you know, for different user cases.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the way I think about agents is it's the same as a role.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want to give one agent too many things to do, because then you sort of dilute in the focus.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so you'd want to build an agent that's really good at travel, one agent that's good at contracts, one an agent that's good at stock analyzing, you know, analyzing stocks or whatever.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think um if you if you want to learn in new topics, how can you leverage how can you leverage these models and agents to come up with interesting insights that you still need to make decisions on, because that's keep the human in the story here.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I I see a lot of that in my, you know, and then I think the next if you take any other trend, you start with software, you know, you'll see a lot of disruption happening in software with with AI.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I think the next opportunity is going to be in the physical realm.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: So the, you know, the the convergence of the digital and the physical.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then obviously that's robotics and you know, a whole lot of whole lot of other areas.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: But I think as we're seeing a lot of interesting applications in software.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think the next realm will be inter-robotics, and then maybe that'll really deliver on the promise that IoT and and other areas have always spoken about.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, a complete merging of the digital and physical worlds.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, that's what they were saying about AR, right?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: A long time ago.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: Still also it didn't get mainstream adoption.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: It was used for like retail marketing campaigns, you know.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Google Glass didn't work flops, you know.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Apple, I think Apple's doing another sort of goggle thing.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_01: But um I don't know.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: I think back again to pain.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: Like, do consumers, is there enough pain?
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Is that like a gimmick?
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is it really what consumers want?
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Is there pain?
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Is it worth solving?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: Do you forget the ARVR technology for a second?
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do consumers want to interact like that?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or does it, you know, with the goggles, you can kind of see it.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: It creates tunnel vision, you can't connect in the physical world.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: You humans are social, humans want to connect.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: If you're putting blinkers on me and I can't properly connect, is that something I really is that a big pain for me?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's back to whereas you can see it making sense for simulation training, learning, um, you know, pilots, you know, there's a go down the list of simulation training.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: But is there, you know, is there is there enough pain in everyday life that's worth solving with some of these technologies?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if there is, there's gonna be a there's gonna be some interesting startups that will solve for for that pain.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: But once again, let's not put the technology before the pain.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start with the pain and see if it's worth solving.