Latest / Hardly Artifical Podcast / The AI Bubble Is Showing Cracks
Transcript
- Episode 4: Welcome to Hardly Artificial. We explore tech and the human experience. Sit back, relax, and let's dive in. Okay, well welcome to episode number four of the Hardly Artificial Podcast. I'm Derek Major. And I'm Mike Bukowitz. Welcome. So? Good week? Yeah. I guess we had a bit of break there 'cause craziness going on, but Yeah, yeah, life gotten away a little bit. I think I think the break did us did us more favors about this conversation than anything though, 'cause I don't think I had way too many topics at this point. So and it all happened on Thursday. man. It's crazy. But Yeah, it's good though. But yeah, last time we chatted, of course we were in California. the AI conference twenty twenty six, which was pretty cool. it's it's It's amazing that how many people just wanna talk about AI. I told you about that story, how I this isn't one of my stories, but you know, going through customs, the the the US guard said to me, He's like, so you're going to an AI conference? He's like and he leans back in his chair and he's like, Hey, so Derek, tell me. Do you think they're gonna kill us? Like, what? He's like, you know, like Terminator. Terminator style. I'm like What? Well I don't know, man. I'll be honest, I don't think it's in either of our control what happens with that one. He's like, Yeah, yeah, I think you're right. Anyways, you have a good day, buddy. I'm like, You too, man. And it's probably the most brief, interesting conversation I've had going through customs before. So th and there's so many people like that because nobody's tr keeping tr tabs on what actually is going on necessarily. And honestly, not to put a sales pitch in front of you guys, but I mean this conversation it alludes to the The known and the unknown. And I even find out things just researching for these conversations where I'm going, What? And I have to go, no, that can't be real. no, it is. You know? So it's it's a wild world out there. It is. And I think every day it's just evolving more and interesting stories. it's some of it is a little far fetched too, I think. And I'll talk a little bit about one of my stories today, but the the whole market side of things, the whole the you know, the money involved, the valuations, the investors. A lot of these guys are investing a lot of money and they have no clue. They hear all the doomsday stuff and it's amazing how the rhetoric gets people so wound up and excited about these things so that they're like, yeah, here's all my money. It's like this is the next big thing. It's like if the guy just said they're gonna kill everyone like but everyone gets excited 'cause they don't want to be left behind. But exactly. It's the it's the fear of missing out. Right, like I feel like that's really all it is anymore, and it was at the beginning. I don't think that's changed yet, but I think it's getting more perverse to be honest, because if you look at what the market's doing at the moment, all this money's getting thrown at something that nobody understands, yet we're evaluating these companies as if they're creating massive like impact and you're going, We haven't even seen the impact yet. Like you what is happening? You know? Yeah. And and everybody's an expert, like we were just talking offline before that we kicked off the podcast. So listeners, one of the things going on in the whole service area, service business world, especially like Eligio is a good example, is going through different certification programs with OpenAI, Anthropic. And a big one is just seeing a lot of people saying, Hey, we're certified on this, certified on that and the reality is people might be getting certified, but what does it mean to be certified? this stuff's changing so quickly every day. Mike, you're just talking about doing an exam that You know, three months ago was a lot easier and then you went to take it and you're like, Holy cow, they completely changed the whole thing and it's much, much more challenging, which is rightfully so it should be, but yeah. I you know, to to make sure that we say both sides, right? 'Cause I don't wanna be new I don't wanna be biased to saying it's not a good thing to be certified in this kind of stuff, because one thing I did learn was they're really pushing people to understand the security and guardrails that need to happen. And in order to do that, you need to understand the at least the basics like the Fed ramp, the HIPAA, the all the compliance that is going on behind the scenes. And I think with you know, the open-ended nature of how you can knit data together, I just don't I don't think people realize the security parameters and and this risk they're taking on in doing so, even if they're in a paid account that might be specific to their data, there's still risk. And it's just I I just think I think to be positive about it. I appreciated the focus on that one. That was that was well done. I was able to reaffirm my understanding of what I knew of it. Others might struggle with that because they don't live in that world. They just live in the UI specific, hey, let's make this look pretty and work, right? It's not the world we're living in anymore. True, yeah. And I guess on that note, congratulations on your certification. yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I'm glad I'm glad to get it. Not for the reason of having a clawed cert. But I I like it because now I'm like, hey, I know a few more things. I I'm not a smart man, but I do love AI, so you know. Yeah, and I mean I've I've gone through part of the claw training. well I'm not sorry I wasn't agreeing on that part, but But I mean I wouldn't I wouldn't even blink an eye, do you see? I didn't even react, I was just like I accept I accept it. no, I I I I was doing I've done s some of that claw training already too and yeah, there there's lots of nuggets that you pick up along the way. And by no means am I an expert. Like like you and I are on here just kind of learning through the journey and sharing that journey with everyone here and that's very much the same thing. Like I because of some of the training I did with with the the Claude program, next thing you know I'm firing up Hermes and doing, you know, connecting to local models, but I understand the concepts behind them a lot more. but for how the reasoning works, you know, the temperature of of the reasoning, all these different things are pretty cool. and I just still have ton to learn. Like I'm by no means any expert and I mean this is not meant to be a technical talk. it's meant to be just that, you know, average person just trying to understand and navigate through all this. So Yeah. But yeah, let's why don't we why don't we dig in with our first story. Do you want to kick it off this week? Sure. I'm gonna go with one that I think some people might know about. I only just heard of this recently, but it just happened as of today. So it's a little bit fresh and we might overlap. I'm not sure on this one. character.ai went bankrupt. Mm. And that wasn't on my list, but that that I saw it. Yeah. Yeah. And it was interesting because about they filed for chapter eleven. The assets were valued at twenty million US And w and the expected to close in late November at this time. But what's interesting is not that fact. It's the fact that Google two years ago paid twenty two point seven billion to license its model and the platform had twenty million monthly users at one point. So what we're seeing here is the filing list liabilities between fifty and a hundred million at the moment, but the lawsuits, legal pressure and AI costs that grew with every new user is what caused them to not be able to keep the platform in progress. So I what what I'm inter I'm more interested in hearing about is is it was it the biggest wave of the chap GD GPT era and then five years later it's Whitewater? Or is the fact of how they're handling the scaling methodology when you're trying to be too big for what you're actually trying to produce. I this is an this is the first that I've heard of yet on on this front. I I'm I've just learned about character. A I think I've heard about him in passing before, but so I had to look it up. Like I think it's like con conversations with your favorite characters 'cause Disney's like licensed something. Like li Disney characters are licensed. Is that what it is? Yep. Yep. It's the yeah, it's like Disney's buying some of the assets for the characters and whatnot and just making sure that they've got some of the you know it's the information. I mean it's all data, right? It's all data. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But it's when I read about it I was like, that sounds kinda cool. Right. But I mean, I don't think that's the end of it. There's a lot of investors pulling back. I was reading other stuff this morning too, touching on, you know, the the financial side of things. There's a lot of investors getting a little bit nervous and I guess maybe a crossover is like one of the things out of my list was the International Monetary Fund, IMF. they they they put out an alert over the weekend about the sheer amount of capital going into AI companies And they're like, great, you know, three point one percent attributed to GDP growth, but from AI. But the concern is that all this wealth, all this money is being concentrated in there. And it's a pretty ugly web, man. Like it's you can take Oracle, Oracle with all of their GPUs, SpaceX, all of their GPUs, SpaceX trying to get money from other investment arms to fund more GPU purchases. Google's got some loan, I think, with SpaceX too or some organization. I I'm not a hundred percent sure. It's it's it's just so confusing. But when you start it's literally a web. I wouldn't quite call it did I use House of Cards? I might have used House of Cards with you or someone recently. But it's like a House of Cards by the way. It's relevant. I mean let's be honest. You're you're describing the world that was, you know, the monopoly businesses back in the day, right? Where you're constantly wondering who owned who. Like I I'll I'll tell you this this crazy story, and this is unrelated to tech, but it's basically the best metaphor I can come up with. So at my old house I had this refrigerator that just kept having the same issue, a manufacturer's issue, where the ice line would back up, block, and then it would freeze over, and then we couldn't get ice and st you know, anyway. What was interesting about it though is when we started getting into the warranty of it, because we were still technically under warranty. So it's like, okay, let's go find out. That Refrigerator was a kitchen aid in the US that's a big it's a big product, right? What was fascinating was is I called the line the first time and I was like, wait a second, did I call the wrong number? And they're This is World Pearl Enterprises. And I'm like, Wait, what? And then I was like, No, that is right. And then they had, What line are you on? And they own like five different lines of appliances. And I go, I never want an appliance from you again because the fact that you guys own all this means all the same problem is the same manufacturing problem that encompasses everybody. And it's just like it's the same principle I think we're we're getting into here is it's all the same model and it's just different skins. And we're just continually seeing it over and over and over. And that's why I don't think this product boom is gonna be the end all, right? And I I don't know how it works down there in the States, but I'm assuming there there's there's sub brands, but up in Canada, there's like three main wireless carriers. There's Bell, Telus, Rogers. They're the three main ones. You have some smaller ones like there's Videotron in in in Quebec from Quebec or there's also Freedom Mobile, which was I think it's in I think it's I could I could be actually I think it is independent. Or no c I Quebec Cor bought them. I stand corrected. 'Cause Rogers purchased Shaw Shaw cable which is Western Canada. Now Rogers owns all that and they had to divest of of the Freedom Mobile. But r all intents per there's really three, maybe three and a half, we'll call them three and half, just 'cause the footprint for freedom isn't as big as the the big three. But for a while there there was a lot of reseller brands. Virgin Mobile was one of them. that was a big deal. there was other ones like Kudo. there was Chatter. there were there's just a bunch that kind of popped up in the two thousands. And then slowly Tellus, Rogers, and Val start buying them. So Bell owns Virgin. Kud Kudo is owned by TELUS. I think Chatter might be owned by TELUS. Like I I get all confused. But there's all these little smaller flanker brands that some people, you know, they they don't realize they're actually owned by the bigger entity. so it's like this the the whole house of cards piece, you know, like everyone owns anything and everything. It's like I I don't think it's far off and I think it's really worrying the way the AI side is like The bubble will happen. I think there'll be a bur there's gonna be a pop. I don't know how big or how bad it'll be. I think it just kinda depends on how things shake out. But if you have that much wealth concentrated in one one segment and the worst case scenario is open source and open way models make it so that open AI and Anthropic can't actually compete. Well they'll compete, but Do you want to pay that much or do you just want to run local models and all that? I think they're gonna have a big problem. And I think investors will start saying, there's no moat. This isn't as big of a moat as I thought it was. And I g I I guess that's where the IMF is concerned, is that there's a lot of people investing into that space on the hype, not on the whole It's the name brand, right? It's the name brand that just keeps popping up. And and you're not wrong, the the cell service here in the US, same way. Right, like visible is owned by Verizon. It runs off Verizon, right? Mint Mobile, what the one that Ryan Reynolds packed, right? T Mobile bought them out. Like it's it's all these things are happening for a reason. So yeah, you're not wrong. Like this is exactly the trend in this market that we see every single time it's fresh, it's new. How it settles, I think that's yet to be determined because this is this is new new ground. I don't know if anybody knows how this settles. I really don't. I I don't know either. And I think it's yeah, like I said, nobody don't think anybody has the answers to all that. It's it's it's like anything rhetoric again, right? Like if if you're open AI and anthropic, you're gonna wanna be out there getting you wanna make sure that the open source stuff, that's that's the boogeyman. You wanna make sure that's the boogeyman because IPOs are on the line. There's all billions, trillions of dollars on the line for these guys. And if they don't if they don't pull it off It's like yeah, it's not about AI hacking anybody at this point. It's gonna be like a a colossal disaster from a financial perspective, I think. No. No. I don't know. I I think I think to go into your next story, one of the things folks need to understand is we are facing what we did in the dot com bubble, we're facing what we did in the industrial revolution. It's the same changes going on. And if people are saying this now, they're realizing it. But I don't know what the impact's gonna be yet. But I think that's yet to be determined because we're just seeing the start of this. Nobody's really been publicly announced going under. I think this is the first of many that we're gonna see moving forward, which will be interesting. I think you're right. But you know, on on that before I jump in, like I think that it's kinda not to be on a sour note, but I I wanna make sure we're kinda happy too. I I am excited about the potential, right? Like I think there's a lot of good potential that can be utilized. I don't think I just think we have to be careful that There are people that are still trying to make a buck and they're not looking at the actual benefits on the societal side of things and exactly I think that that's we just have to balance that and at the same time too, there are concerns that, you know, these open source things can be a problem. Which takes us into our next story, which is another thing that just kinda came out in the last, you know, twenty four, forty eight hours is the article around IOT. So internet on device. So I l I I laughed when I saw it, but You mean IOD or IOT? IOT. IOT. did I say on device? my god. Internet of things. My bad. Okay. I was like I was like device. I was like Yeah. my god. We're queuing up new words here, ladies and gentlemen. It's new terminology you didn't even know you had. Okay? Just so you know. IoT. T is in Tom or Things. but it I I I I I hit device on my head because the the the headline this morning was your oven is gonna be hacked. Your smart device is gonna be hacked. So Anthropic announced just some research. Again, I take a grain of salt. Like there I I have no doubt that there's some posturing going on to make sure everyone's don't forget about us. We're doing the right thing. We're doing the noble thing over here. the reality is that they're concerned that lightweight models like open open weig models that are lightweight, not heavy to install on a computer, could actually take over your fridge. It could take over your oven and whatnot. And there is a report, I haven't read the I don't quote me if this is actually true. I haven't actually looked it up, but I did see something as I was reading a bit more about I not IMF but the IoT Anthropics report was that a French grocery store had all of their fridges for all the produce and like dairy and all that. hacked because it was controlled I guess by by a computer for temperature sensing and all that and it was shut down. so everyone's concerned now that we're gonna have AI somehow get into the these devices and part of the reason why is that traditionally you don't try to protect these devices from hacking as much as you say what a computer. So Which kinda makes sense, right? Who's gonna go hack a fridge? but now there's concerns, okay, what if an AI gets into it, takes over your fridge? Again, it's kinda comical in a way, but then I I guess where my head starts going, Okay, I've heard about how the idea of AIs coordinating different devices to do inference across each other, not just off one device. So I've heard of that I've heard that concept, so maybe that's maybe that's some of the concern around there, but What what do you think of that? Like are do you have a smart device like that? Do you have a smart fridge? We we do. And most most com most of these appliances now come with some kind of connection, right? It's not not like if you go I don't know if you guys have this up there, but the Samsung appliances were it's very, very smart, right? Like in terms of it's got you know touch screen, all that stuff. That's not that's not the version we have. However, I find this interesting at the timing of it, and here's the reason why. Who do you think is the most dominant right now in the h smart home ecosystem? And I'm talking totality. I'm not talking specialty, because I know there's some ones out there that are dominating certain specialty. But who do you think is the dominant one right now? Like for d like appliances, you think? Just in general. Ho smart home, like making your home. I I would say either Amazon or Google. Right. Those are the two big, big names. And what's fascinating is and I I I use the Google home ecosystem, but what's Really interesting, I got this notification a couple weeks ago, and I didn't think anything of it. So I was like, yeah, of course, that's the direction they've been headed for six months now. Is they're completely eliminating Google Assistant going into Gemini. Now, what's interesting about that is you mean like the original Google Assistant version? It's being deprecated, right? It's completely being deprecated. So they're completely moving over to Gemini, which makes sense. That's the direction they're headed. But this now you've entered in an interesting conversation is what is Google doing? What are they doing to help assist? Because guess what? All of their third party hardware, right? Light bulbs, plugs, whatever you want to call it, right? They didn't inherit that. Are they inheriting the security parameters of it? Or is it opening it us up for even more of that kind of risk? I don't know. Like that it just came to mind. I like, that's interesting. I didn't think of that. Well, and this is like where I I I'm I'm happier to like at My home, I have my own server. I think we might have talked about it before on the show, but I have my own server. I have home assistant installed on it. And I feel like that that's like my my area that I can control and I don't like the idea of letting that out. So that's all VPN'd in through tail scale at home and all that. So it's I I I like I probably will end up locking it down even more. it is always connected. The server itself's connected to the internet, not through AI or anything like that. But I'm kinda getting to the point where I might not even have the internet on unless I need it unless it's like the only connection will be through the V PN. Which it yeah, it's it's behind a firewall anyhow, but I just feel like that you you have to be more security conscious. And we don't have any smart devices in our home that we're in now, but the last place that we moved out of, you know, we renovated the our last place and yeah, everything was smart, like it's The barbecue, right? which is kinda silly. It's like, I got an app showing my temperature in my barbecue. But I think it could be an evil doomsday AI soon too, so Yeah. Yeah. But Yeah, so I thought that was I thought that was kind of interesting, the whole IOT side. not too surprised, but it's I I I guess I have a hard time I guess when I put my my thinking, you know, developer brain on and how this would all work as a as a software developer head, I I have a hard time picturing how that will work. And maybe that's the point, I don't know, but it just feels like if my fridge starts yelling at me, mm-hmm, I'm probably turning the internet off. Right? Right? Like that's Even though it's a utility, right? Like that's the thing that we always forget is even though it's a utility, we deal we do have the power to be able to basically switch it off, which is a benefit to all of us. I would say though, just to not scare people that are unfamiliar and are listening, I don't believe that the flickering of lights needs to be worried about, to be honest, like turning them on and off. Now, make for a good movie. It could be the alternate to poltergeist where now it's like AI Geist or something and we'll come up with something like them. But but I what I would say though is I don't think this is an immediate risk or you know, your house is gonna be targeted. I think what it brings to our attention is more the flexible yet flimsy foundation we're on at the moment that just introduces more and more horror stories that necess may not ha happen, but it could, right? It's like, hey, you know, we're up here in the Pacific Northwest where we both live, Derek. We know that there's a potential for the big one, right, at some point in time in the near future. Rover due for it. Now, will it happen in our our what as we are, you know, in our generation? I don't know. We have no idea. It's it's basically almost the same thing to some degree. You know where I can get behind I IoT malware in that instance is if AI uses all of these smart devices to track for rumblings. Just like we have earthquake sensors. Yeah. And AI says, whoa, all the fridges in the Pacific. in the Seattle area are freaking out right now 'cause there's some there's a change. I I don't know, I'm just but I can get behind that. Okay. But yeah, like so yeah, so that was that was the that one kinda popped up this morning. Like I thought that was quite interesting. that topic. But I also feel like there's a lot this is kind of like a downer episode, I almost feel like, 'cause we're talking about some of the bad stuff, 'cause I think that's because bad stuff or bad news around AI is popping up a lot more right now. And it's because of everything to do honestly with money. Yeah. I think there's a security element to it too. I think there is a genuine fear on what this stuff can do. I just think that I I still think money is a big driver of all this stuff too, right? I think we could still build products that are safe. I don't think we should be going other rushing products that are not safe. So and I sorry, I'll add to that one article. One other thing that I they they mentioned on there. is how they stopped they took away the internet access from their new model. It's like that's so brave of you guys for taking away the internet from your AI model, but it's like these AI models are just like spinning up a piece of software every single time if you set up an instance of this model, right? It's just it's a reference guide in a way. I realize it's very powerful, but it's why are you guys not why are you testing with live stuff? Like, should you not create sandboxes and like lock it down? Like but y that's Yeah. You would you would think. You would think. But you know, I mean that's this brings in, you know, the the very element of this next story that I think just it tell dovetails well into it, which is we do have some variation of control. And it's not to do with what we know is gonna happen. It's more what we can do to be proactive to make sure it doesn't happen. And I think what's interesting is the group that the CEO of Palantir. So this guy he came on to the Zeta Live twenty six New York on October eighth. And what's fascinating is his perspective on what people's positioning is going to be moving into this new era of AI. And it the article is pretty pretty out there, I'm gonna be honest with you, where he said two jobs are gonna be are two types of people, two types of jobs are gonna be the ones that make the history or or create the future of what we're what we're doing. And it was funny, one was And we all know this one, blue collar, right? Skill w skilled labor is gonna be really hard to come by, but really hard to automate too, because there's so many variations. I mean, it would take I mean there's not a lot of repetitive nature on that. There's very few to be honest. I've been in that trade, I know what it is, it's it's not gonna happen. The other one though is the one that really caught me off guard, and it was neurodivergency. And I was like, Wait, what? That what are you talking about? So I did a little digging and what I found out was he is dyslexic and he believes having that type of thinking are going to be the future of how we re envision work as we do it today, because those that connect dots think outside the box. Those that are linear thinkers are the ones that are gonna fall behind due to these agents don't think linearly. They can think very you know, globally. So two two quotes I want to bring up that he said was if your person down the street gets it right, even if you're they're inferior to you, they will outperform you now. And I thought that was really strong statement. But the other one that caught me off guard is the soldiers at the bottom have gotten much more value valuable because they are learning a lot faster. Right. I think both of those are very interesting and I think this is the direction that needs to go because we need to reimagine and have these people that are in the work doing it start actually making decisions for us. And I think there's something to say about that. But I wanted to get your thoughts on just like the fact that this is coming out now, especially with people trying to get laid off all the time, you know, to be able to meet that margin. What what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, I so a Palantir guy. Those that don't know listeners, their their big deal is like the government contracts. So they're doing a lot of work with the US military. And so when you made the comment, you know, the people on the front lines. Yeah, I think that I'm a linear thinker, so I might be screwed. But it's but I I I don't disagree. The cre the the creative people that are creative, I think for sure are gonna have an edge. And I think that's because we've heard time and time again, AI models can't be creative. And the best way to think about it it's all the data that's that we're training these AIs on is is originally it was like if you think back four years ago when Chat GPT first came out, came I think we're coming out on the four year anniversary of that right now too. Mm-hmm. Was Reddit. Right, Reddit was a big thing. And then all of a sudd's putting in API limits or X, you know, X Twitter was doing the same thing. now it's pretty common for all these social media sites to have some kind of throttling or some kind of API access fee for for companies to do this. So that's pretty common. But then they also have four years of training data that they've been using now too. Right. The difference is though, the AI is not the creative one in this aspect, right? It's just it's it's Doing things if we didn't have the internet, A is not possible. You can't do AI. We it needed the internet, right? It needed all your data. And now it's taking all these conversations that people are having and they're actually turning it into basically a large dictionary. But to kind of put it in simplest terms, if you think about the way AI works, it's like what if you ask it one question like what color is the sky? Mm mm and it should respond blue. But if you go and ask it again a follow-up question after it, without including the first question, it's like a brand new message, and say, Could you say that again? It'll respond back with like, I'm not sure what you mean. So we have to combine those things together, because then what the AI does, let's say you sit let's use another example. The sky is b is what color is the sky? And it says blue. And then if you say, Well, that's great, what color is the sky on a cloudy day? Right now it has com it what it does inside the AI tool, it's trying to predict what the next word in the conversation needs to be. So it's if whenever you see that thinking thing going on there, listeners, that's really what it's doing. It's trying to predict what the next word is, and that's what your tokens and all that kick in. So it's trying to predict the next word. But the longer you go along with these conversations, it's still trying to predict the next word based off of everything that came before it. Right. So that's about as creative as it can get right now. And that's based off the AI technology today. Right. So and there's new tech I read there's new techniques they're trying to think of with AI, right? Like at the end of the day, this is software we've built, right? And it's really efficient, obviously. it just it's takes a lot of energy, a lot of power to do that. But that they're they're trying to find better ways to actually make it more creative and I don't know if that's actually possible, but I have read the way it's it's designed now, it's not. So that's a long winded way of explaining something but at the same time illustrating that creativity is extremely critical. the this is why actors are getting upset. artists are upset. They're like, hey that picture kinda looks like something I drew, right? there was a guy on X the other day, actually might have been this morning. they have like this new app they built for Mac. And he's like, Hey, I got my new app da da da and the and There's this webpage, a nice little slick webpage that goes with it. Another guy replies after, Hey, I guess this is just what to expect in the new age, but this looks like the app that I launched in September. And you go look at the web pages, like both these dudes are like vibe coding their apps. yeah. They vibe coded their webpage and they're like, Hey, it looks like my site. Well, dude, everything looks the same now because it's all coming from the same spot. There's no creativity. So Right. Right. anyway, that was a funny thing but that You know, th going back to your point about that, I I I agree that I I think the the people that think a little differently, I think are the creatives. I I think a lot of them are upset with AI, but I think they're the ones that have all the edge. the the days of methodology, the days being a linear thinker and all that, I think I think there'll be some room for that, but I think it'll be such a high level structure that that box for creativity will just have to be that much bigger. Yeah. Yeah. No, I I mean you you bring up good points for like the w what we're missing, but what what we're also ignoring, right? Is yes, AI can come up with ideas, but how original are they? Right? They can't they bring them from somewhere. Like you you're they're sourcing it from somewhere. They're not just saying, here's a great idea out of the blue. Like I remember I was playing around with it a bit more one day just for fun and I would ask it like, Hey, come up with a great idea that would be an invention. Just just to see what it would come up with. And it you know, it came up with like stuff that you knew it was already out there. Like you you've seen it and you're going, Well, those aren't ideas. Try again. It struggled. It struggled because it's not it's not able to from nothing create something. Right. And I think that's where we need to be very aware of what it produces because it's not our voice. It's not it's not what we would traditionally produce, and honestly, it's not even trained on the business aspects. of why you're doing it or even personal aspects for that matter. I don't think it's there yet. So I I I truly I that article spoke to me a little bit because I think people forget, yes, AI is moving fast, sure. But is it really going to produce anything that outproduces somebody that is unique enough to stick out in the market? I don't think it's there yet. I really don't. Yeah, I I completely agree, man. Like I think I I think it's The best way to put AI, it is the number one problem solver. But to solve problems you need the data. Right. Exactly. And and a creator's not s typically solving problems. They're they're just coming up with new stuff, right? They're making problems. I think so. All right. All right. What what do you got? One more. Last one. Last one. Yeah. this is a fun one. you know me and my Apple and tech and all that stuff. Apple announced new products, a whole new product category for them today. they announced the home view. right. It's the home view is like it's like a desk it's like it's almost like an iPad on top of a speaker. but it's like a desk mode, it's the designed to be in the kitchen. it uses face ID, it uses voice activation to kind of determine who in the household it's talking to or communicating with. but basically it's designed to be the new home unit to connect your home with your cameras, your locks, your lights. It's the stuff we're talking about earlier in the IoT stuff. I was a little disappointed. And I mean it's not out yes, pre ordered today. I think it's out in a few weeks or at the end of the month. I actually think Apple's losing its swagger. I'm 'cause I looked at this thing and I mentioned remember we're talking about IOT stuff, I have my home assistant server at home. The first thing that popped in my head is like, what is what is this even trying to accompl I I can do all this already. In fact, Alexa can do all this already. Google Home can do this already. It's been able to do all this for ten years and like they're they're and I know Apple's always late to the game on stuff, but this just really felt like there's a new CEO there. I know he's trying to make an impression. But I keep thinking about Steve Jobs and when he came back to Apple in the late nineties, the first thing he did is he got rid of all the bloat. There's so many products that they had. Right. And they cut it down. They cut it down significantly. And then now I kind of feel like Apple's creeping into that territory and this is the last piece I'll I'll mention on this, is their big push with Siri AI. And I think Siri AI is pretty good. Mm. I still use Chat GPT or Claude more often than not. but for the odd thing I've been using Seer AI, but it's not as good as what Siri was before. People might be like, What what are talking about? I just wanted to play a song sometimes. And that can sometimes be a real pain. Whereas Siri old Siri, like, you just kinda figured out the voice commands and it just worked, right? You kinda have figured it out. Whereas now it's like it's so intelligent that it's almost trying to do too much work to find a song. So when my kids are screaming at me in the car like Dad, I want this song or whatever, it's like you're sitting there trying to have a conversation with Siri AI trying to get that song on Spotify or Apple Music and it's just not happening. So it's so I I I don't think Siri AI is ready for prime time, but the the home view is built around the whole idea of Siri AI too. And last kicker, they also announced new home pods, which are their little mini speakers. And apparently Siri AI, when these speakers get released, will not be available right away. It's all in the fine print. I just read that this morning from one of the analysts. So it's like yeah. So anyways, I feel like they flopped on that. And I I know you're the you're a Google guy, so you're kinda like, yeah, I told you so. but it's not even I it's not even that. It's you know, they there's it's actually more interesting than it is like I told you so, to be honest. Because if I'm going back to what you said about the home pod, I'm thinking back, you know, how long ago is that? Six years ago that Google released the home hub, as it's called, right? Where basically it's the screen with the speaker. So it's the same same principle of the matter. Now I know they probably offer different things, but that it really never really took off. Like it it kind of like the kind of flop tours. Yeah. Yeah. And honestly, I was just I was just looking at the Costco, I was curious what it is in US right now. I remember those home pot or home the home max or whatever it's called now, the nest hub max as it's called. Used to be like five hundred bucks or five six fifty. You know what it is at now? Two twenty nine. It is way lower than what it was, and I think it's due to the non demand for it, because everybody's like, Why would I do that when I could just go on my phone? Right? Like having a speaker, sure. Makes sense. But beyond that, what's the point? So I yeah. I can get behind like the video ca video calling stuff and all that. I think that I can I can appreciate that piece. I I feel like though in a in the the great Apple weight, like you can't even install apps on it. Which is really weird. Because I mean that's been like their whole bread and butter for the last decade, right? Yeah. obviously the iPhone does really well too, but the app store is huge. and always controversial, you know, the thirty percent commission and all that and but yeah you can't install apps on it. Maybe maybe they'll change with an update, but it's like little things like that. Like I feel like the Steve Jobs era which influenced all It still does today, don't get me wrong, Apple still influences. Like, I mean, look at Samsung, like, my phone duo's coming. Well, we better get our full data, you know, out, the the wide one. Right. Right. so it's still influencing to that, but it's not like it was before. Like the stuff that just comes out of left field, you're like, Holy cow, I never expected that. And I didn't realize I needed that. That used to be the what you say about Apple all the time. Now it's kinda like it's like a me too type of situation. I okay, well we got we got a home home thing as well now. It's like, well I I can see a non techie taking advantage of that, but you know, as a guy it's dangerous enough with technology, obviously. I I feel like yeah, I don't know. It's it's it's for the followers. I'm gonna be honest with you. It's for the followers of Apple, which hey, you know what? It's a great product, I use it to work on. Nothing against it, but I think there is something to say around the fact that they say there is no AI coming out with it. Like it's like That was crazy. I couldn't believe they they're doing that. Why would you launch it without your your flagship stuff this year, right? Right. I mean, okay. Hot take. I'm gonna give you one. Maybe they don't think the Siri AI is ready. Maybe there's something there. I'm wondering. Well maybe they're worried it might say something they doesn't shouldn't be saying. That that's the problem with AI in general, right? Like you just don't it's unpredictable. Again, that whole Going back to my explanation, it's trying to predict the next word, right? So when it spits out that sentence, it's predicted all these words to go back to the previous context of your conversation. And maybe they're a little worried about that. I don't know what yeah if that's much different than your phone, it's personal phone, but maybe because the whole family has access to it. And Apple's gotta keep that privacy safe image up too, right? Could you that you could be onto something. Yeah. Cool man. Well that's for sure. That's it on Apple. That's enough for my tech stuff this week. But yeah, I think we'll we'll we'll we'll shift in the segment. we're gonna do another segment this week for episode four. This one, Mike, it's called prediction receipt. So prediction receipt, Mike, is we're gonna do a prediction and we're gonna pull the receipts on it in six months from now. So we'll get Catherine to take a record of this and you know hold us accountable on our prediction. I don't know. Like I already don't like this already. This is the thing is, like I when I was talking to Catherine about it, we kind of agreed that the reality is that our prediction could happen tomorrow. So mm-hmm. So no no real rules around this. Like, you know, whatever whatever whatever angle you want to go with, whatever whatever prediction you want to make. Just give an explanation of why you think that is. Okay. And then we'll take a look in six months. So why don't you kick it off? Go for it. We doing like what's the time l time span on this? What are we thinking? Six six months. We'll give you six months. Six months? Okay. Six months from now, what do you think will happen in the AI world? So there's a couple things crossing my mind right now, and I'm gonna I'm gonna caveat this with what we talked about today influenced it a lot, especially around what I think is gonna happen. Now One of the biggest things in the US that's going on right now that I don't think will impact in six months necessarily because how slow we move, but like the the actual rule book, the regulation, right, around AI, I don't think that'll happen in six months. I think it's coming. I think there's something coming, and I don't know what it's gonna do to the industry necessarily, but I do know it's just gonna overcomplicate and it's gonna create red tape. So what I will say about that though is this influences what I think my prediction's gonna be, and I think what we're gonna see. is most likely that the companies are going to start moving towards a different direction when it comes to the AI darlings. And I predict from what we just saw with character a dot AI that I think I and and this is a big one, but I believe at least two to three more consumer AI companies are going to do the exact same thing. Not necessarily file for chapter 11, but either get put themselves up for sale Or try to just get out of the business because it's too much to handle. And I think this is going to happen more often. Now, who that is, I couldn't tell you. But I think there is there is a infiltration of technology and platforms more there than there is people that are able to use it. And I think there's something going on there that's gonna cause an issue. But I want to hear your thoughts on that one. So hold on, hold on. So what's your prediction in one line? Prediction is at least two to three more consumer AI companies. So things that we see product wise are gonna go under in the next six months. Similar to the character AI guys. Yeah. Exactly. So you predict that Okay. I I think that's very interesting. I'll get to mine in a second, but I don't think you're wrong. I think there's just too much money in there. And I just think it's it's too leveraged. It's too leverage. I mean, I'm no financial expert, but I mean RAM, computers, computing, GPUs. Yeah. Let's get into gamers like PlayStation Five. All this. Even Nintendo's raising prices. Like consumers can't buy anything. Everyone's like something's at a give. Yep. And it can't be just this that vicious circle of paying NVIDIA a bunch of money and then Fundling investing it back into these kind of like Nvidia has invested money in some of these AI companies. Right. So it's pretty crazy. I I think that that's Yeah, I would agree with you. I think one consumer I so I let's just put it that your predictions one consumer company one consumer AI company will go under. I'm actually gonna say two. Two okay. Two consumer AI companies. I'm gonna make it a little bit more pushy, right? I don't wanna say one and be like I'm conservative. no, that's not what I meant. No, no, no. I'm gonna say two, because there's a lot out there. There's a ton out there that are f I don't know what honestly how they survive this. I really don't. I'm gonna put a bigger bold take on all of this. Okay. I I'm gonna go along the same lines as you, except I'm gonna say one of the frontier models, like open AI or enthropic, will be acquired. Interesting. I don't know who. I have no insights. I'm no insider at all, but I I just feel like they're gonna get to a point where money is a problem. Mm and I think that one of them gets acquired. I don't know which one. Might not even happen, but that's gonna be my big take that I'm gonna say that's a prediction I'm gonna throw for six months from now. One of them gets acquired. maybe it's a majority stake. I'll I'll qualify like that, could be a major like a fifty one percent control. I could see that totally happening. And I mean we kinda saw that with Microsoft and open AI in a way for a while. Right. Although it was a forty nine percent control Microsoft had at the time. I don't know what that was let's shake that was when there was like non profit status and it was that weird corp structure. It might even be like that still, I don't know. But I I could see it just seems so unstable to me. I just I don't think any of them are gonna go away 'cause I think the technology and the IP is so valuable. But I think it'd be much valuable more valuable in somebody else's hands. So what do think? I don't think you're wrong. I like that take because it's definitely telling of where the news is going, where these like you know, I go back to that story you brought up of, you know, anthropic or whomever posting these news stories to try and we already saw it earlier, we talked about it, where you know They say, security, we shouldn't advance it any more than anybody. And then all of a sudden both of them come out with the latest model and you're going, Okay, so what is this what is the motivation behind this one? Cause caution to the wind. Exactly. So like I I think there's I think there's something to say. I think you're right. I think there's they're trying everything to influence the market and monopolize it. But yeah, I mean if that does come up. We are gonna be having a full episode on this 'cause I really would love to dig into why. That's gonna be little Well I I I'll put this one other thing out there. Like this is not part of my prediction, but it wouldn't shock me if a government like the US government switched. I could see that. Like I'm not saying nationalizing something like that, but who knows, right? Like it's anyways. All right, sir. Well Let's on that note wrap up on that segment. I think that was a cool one. Looking forward to seeing how that turns out in six months. yeah, I mean any other final notes you want to add on for our call this week? Anything else that kinda surprised you this week? You know, the the only other thing I will say is the hardware behind AI that's starting to s kind of rear its head in the market has really started gotten you know, starting to get me thinking around what is this new trend? Why is it coming now versus when the models are mature enough to handle it and or what are they actually training all this on? That's the one thing that I I I haven't delved into yet, but I would love in the comments to hear everybody's thoughts. Cause at this point, whenever this gets posts, I guarantee there's another product out there, like, you know, they the palm note taker, you've got the pendant, you've got like all these things are coming out now fast. What is the one that really entices you and why? Because I honestly have not seen anything out there yet that I go, I could use that. It's more like, that's a nice to have. I could I could find a way around it, you know? Yeah, for sure. Well at at the end of the day a lot our smartphones still do everything. I had meetings last week where where I didn't have my plod note taker with me and well, we just turned on the computer and just recorded off the computer. Exactly. There's always an option. There's always an option. But anyway. Cool. All right, well I don't anything else, but there's a lot of cool stuff going on. there's and we're back on we're on our cadence, so I'm looking forward to going live. this'll this'll be the last episode that we kind of prep and we're going live on you know, Thursday the fifteenth of October will be the opening of our podcast. So looking forward to seeing comments and feedback from everybody. So all right, excellent. Well, sir, let's sign off. Good chatting as always. And to listeners, Hope you enjoyed the show and we'll talk to you again soon. Thanks again.