s02 e09 Trey Buck – Authenticity and AI

Hey, cheers. Thanks, guys. Cheers. Cheers. Welcome back to the Big Cheat podcast. We're starting this off with the cheers today. This is everybody. Yeah. Take a quick sip. All right. So this is the Big Cheats podcast. I'm your host today. My name is Sean Heis. I'm here today with, as always, Brandon Corbin. Hello, everybody. We have Jacob Wise. Hey, guys. And Trey, it's nice to have you on, man. Yeah, absolutely.

• Trey is the founder and CEO awesomeness. You have a startup.
• Yeah, that's right. I technically not a founder, but we pivoted the business. And I think our CEO Tyler would say that I could consider myself founder at this point.
• Elon says he's the founder of Tesla. So I think that you probably could say the same.
• You know, I'm not sure I try to walk in Elon's footsteps at any time. I might go the opposite direction, but yeah. So chief operating officer of Lomatic Imagery, AKA Popcam, DBA Popcam. So yeah, to start up and we're super excited.
• Yeah, so as you can see, we have this device over here, which is the Popcam. And it's pretty cool. So we met at an event and you guys were doing headshots for everyone that went to the event basically could come up and get a headshot, which a lot of people don't have good high quality headshots. And this thing's strapped with like, you know, some badass camera, which we thought was pretty cool. And yeah, I mean, it's kind of a cool business. Like who are your main customers? Like just talk a little bit about kind of your go-to market and what are you guys are doing?
• Yeah, so Popcam is the only AI powered camera kiosk in the world purpose built for professional headshots. No other tool in the world does it like Popcam. We have built it specifically for a market and then expanded into others. So the Greek market, attorneys and sororities, have composites. They're required to create basically a collage or a listing of all of their members every single year. So it's great for repetitive business, but a headshot's a headshot, right? And we give a brandable backdrop, which is sponsorable. It allows companies to update their online presence to their employees from the lowest level employee all the way up to the CEO, which a lot of times some of that sort of more premium photography is reserved for the leadership teams. But we also serve large scale conferences and events. We didn't actually invent the term headshot lounge, but we're leaning into that. You know, you can hire a team of five or six photographers for $80,000 to come to your conference and shoot headshots. But that's a very different experience, right? You got a stranger, you don't know, telling you to turn your head and smile more. And you know, your left looks better than your right. It's awkward things that people say whereas we put the power in your hands you take three photos You pick the one you like and in 60 seconds you get an email that it's ready and no other human seats pretty cool I always like to first of all, you know, we like physical products. Yeah, we've reviewed a lot of AI physical products Most of them are absolute trash, which by the way, that was the the pin News this week no it basically they they have a million dollars in returns
• Seriously?
• Yeah.
• And they were trying to get bought for a billion dollars, which I assume isn't gonna be happening.
• What was the name of it?
• The main, the main pen.
• The main pen's going down.
• And then you had the rabbit R1, which ended up between a trash and injury device. This thing's got real actual good hardware in it, which we-- - The camera on it. What was the camera again?
• Yeah, it's a Canon camera. It has some capabilities built into it for facial location and eye recognition, those sorts of things. And we'd leverage some of that, and then we send it up to the cloud. We do some more cleanup, we get the background removal. And that all happens within, again, usually a minute. And actually, most of the time, it's simply the upload from a 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 meg file, depending on how much compression happens in the cloud. So we upload this big file, we clean it up, and then give it back to the user. Plus, we give them a whole bunch of other color options. Because guess what? Our business isn't based off of how many photos you take. We-- traditional photography is really based on a human's time. Travel, shoot, edit, and return photos to people. We close that whole loop in 60 seconds, right? So it's-- - Haven't any schools reached out?
• Yeah, we did over 40 academic career fairs last year, and we humans were not at a single one of those. We shift these to our customers, their lightweight, their easy to deploy, stand up the stand, put on a stand and plug it in, it's ready to go. And then when it's all done with it, we give them a prepaid shipping label and UPS can pick it up. So it's a great fit for young people, really getting started in the job market, It's very economical, but we can scale to events and organizations of any size.
• Right, I'm just thinking of like, as kids are going back to school, right? Usually, within a month or of this, they have their photo day, right? And everybody comes in and they're paying some photographer to go through the five, 600 kids.
• So we do a picture day at the baseball league that I run. I mean, it literally takes a month to email these, with this dude back and forth and try to get the schedule. and you used to have to fill out the paper forms and all that.
• Oh yeah.
• And now, but now it's so, it's like, they figured out a way to make it so it's like kinda automated, like you get a text and it's like your photos already. But then they use AI to like, and you don't take a team photo anymore, they take all the individual shots and they blend you all together, no one buys them. They look so bad. The concept of the team photo, it doesn't exist anymore. So like AI has totally screwed like that concept of, you know, we're the coaches, you know, with the--
• And all the kids have like 10 fingers, or 18 fingers.
• Yeah, you get into uncanny valley territory there, right? Where like, you see AI imagery, and you can tell that it's like, not quite right somehow. That's, but you touched on actually two markets so that we're going to be attacking in the next 18 months. One is your books, right? You got kids, right? So my kids go to school, they get their picture, and then I don't see it for weeks. And if I don't like it, Well, I got one retake day, right? And then so what we can do is stand this up and you got a human that is around kids and there's lots of weirdness about that. The time scales, all that. So we can send these to any school in the nation. They can use it at their convenience and we can get the results back to parents within minutes. If they don't like it, they go out and kids do it again. And so we can be the photography fulfillment arm for any yearbook organization. The reality is that that market's dominated by a company called LifeTouch.
• Oh yeah, it's kind of a mafia.
• Yeah, it's really bad.
• LifeTouch, yeah.
• But so we're talking about, I mean, there's one thing is background removal, right? And that's great, great use case for AI, but we're talking today about like authenticity and AI. And that's an interesting topic. We, it's a softer topic than we've typically covered on this podcast, but it's really important. And, you know, we talk about the, you no longer take the team photo, right? And it's just fused together. And it's just something, sometimes when you're using technology like AI or whatever, to create something that is maybe coming off as not authentic. So I guess, just before we... In today's trying times. In today's trying times, we saved you one minute of this cool team photo that you could... But to me, go ahead, Jago. I was going to say, have you seen the most recent Etsy ads that are out? And it's all about like handmade and not like this like, you know, production or, you know, it's authentic. It's about authenticity. And then that's the antithesis AI marketing that you see now, which is happening, which we talked about last week with the Genesis startup that literally went on to the market and saying we're not AI. But like being authentic is kind of elusive. Like what does it mean? What does it even mean to be authentic? To be authentic. I think that that's the philosophical question. Like what, so if I put makeup on, is that inauthentic? Right. If I use Grammarly, is that inauthentic? Right? So I just don't know if it's as cut or dry as we'd like to think that it is, because authenticity seems to migrate as culture migrates. That it's not like an objective, that there's not an objective authenticity.
• I agree. I feel like there was like this knee jerk reaction in the marketplace of like there were a lot of inauthentic like just canned messages that were going out. Same thing happened when automations became really popular. A bunch of canned stuff and people were like, okay, this person clearly didn't think about this. This is not tailored to me. That's why personalization, real like digging into people and having a clear message work still. But like, I don't think it's just like you're saying, I don't think it's black and white either because I could go to Google and say, "Hey, I've got this problem. what are some ways I could approach it and form my message? HubSpot's gonna have some blog about it, and what, if like copying paste is that, how is that any different, which is inauthentic?
• Right, so like going back to even to the Google analogy, right now that they've got their Gemini kind of writing your responses, right? Like, is that inauthentic versus me going to read that blog post on HubSpot, right?
• It's a completely subjective concept.
• Yeah. - So, okay, so here, I'll give you something, a painting by Picasso, an original, right? That has more value than a knockoff of Picasso. Right, why? Is it any better, fundamentally? Does the painting look better?
• I'll answer it with a bit of a, I think superlative is the right word. Authenticity is one of those things that is defined by the inverse of it, right? You know something is not.
• You know authentic when you see it.
• Yeah.
• It doesn't look right.
• Right, yeah.
• It's like, it's like,
• It's like, there's something wrong here. I can't put my finger on it.
• And no,
• Longness is really the purpose, right? So Picasso didn't paint paintings because he wanted to make money, right? Actually, he actually, he did like money. But he painted paintings 'cause he was expressing himself and he was, he was creating, right? The person that sold the knockoff, Picasso was just trying to make money, right? They were just trying to, that was a means to an end, and therefore it had no value. Or it has, it's perceived value decreases, right? So there's a concept in it, it may not be true in all things, but like the things that you're producing, it's like the why, the story behind it versus the object.
• Right, the means, or like what we're trying to ultimately get to, like what was the motivation behind it?
• Yes. - Probably is really where it gets get skewed.
• Yeah, I got a message on LinkedIn the other day that was like, in my profile, that says, I deliver technology driven solutions or something like that.
• Someone used that exact phrase. They're like, "Hello, Jacob. I was really impressed with your ability to deliver." (laughing) Like, "Leave," you know, but like--
• The medium.
• It wouldn't matter, like, the reason that it turned me off is because I was inauthentic, and this person didn't take two seconds to think about me, right? If someone had sent me a message that was a little wrong, but it was clearly, well, like they thought about it a little bit, I'm way more likely to respond to that.
• But that could be AI though, right?
• Sure, I could still be.
• I could have been completely customized towards him. And then you read it and you're like, well actually they paid attention, they listened. I feel that this is authentic.
• Yeah, and I, you know, go ahead.
• Well at what point do we start getting to where we're introducing intentional errors? Like what if there was a typo? Does that actually make it seem like we're like, 'cause it's a new way.
• I made a typo the other day and I didn't correct it because I was like, well now, 'cause I did write it and I was like, I really want people to know that I wrote this.
• So I'll do that, I'll have AI write some stuff, and then I kind of go back through and I rewrite it, and I'll put in like an asshole, or I'll put in things that I know that like an AI would never put in. So you know that like I actually did have my hand on that.
• That's the next product, asshole AI. (all laughing)
• But I would argue like letting AI write something, you give a direction, it writes it, and then you go through, read it, and then curate it to make it your own. That's perfectly authentic to me, where it's like, it's just another tool, it's another word process.
• Right, yeah, yeah. So I listened to a podcast that they talk about the impact of AI and education, right, as a writing tool, right? And, you know, at what point do you get chat GBT to summarize the Iliad for you and then give you all the bullet points and does that mean you read the Iliad? Well, no, but like, did you understand it? Well, that's a different question, right? So there's actually schools now, one, they're banning phones. I assume you guys have seen that. But then two, that are basically saying, your in class time is dedicated to not, it's the homework that we would have taken home, go read this, it now instead it's, when you're in class with the instructor, use AI powered tools to help you with your more rote learning, and then you have an instructor there to basically validate that you're actually doing the work. So other than like, do you know the information? It's less, not less important, but it comes after the, you're you are doing the work. I spit it into some tool that just spit out to me and I regurgitated to instructor.
• So I really hope that we get to a point where that is gonna be the case in the majority of schools where they realize what the power of what AI is. 'Cause right now all they're really saying is you can't use AI, you can't use AI. We're just back 20 years ago, you can't use Wikipedia. And it's like, okay, well that's fine, but the fact of the matter is again, my son, My son absolutely uses Chad GBT for all of his homework, every single one, but I go in and I watch what he does, and he's a master prompt engineer. I mean, he works that thing over. There's things that I saw him doing that I'm like, I'm totally stealing that, right? And so it's like, I would much rather have my son be learning how to kind of control and manipulate the AI versus being able to tell me the importance of Mary and Antonette or whatever it was, right?
• That's great.
• So I go to Beck School Night, you know, it's actually not Beck School Night. You go to school and you take the kids supplies, the day before school starts. And I'm my daughter's sixth grade class, her teacher is young, and she had this nice one page print out about her. And it was just an about her. And sure enough, right in the middle of it, was her AI avatar that she created.
• Oh, okay.
• The elusive one that you know. So we spent the first season of this fucking show, trying to create good avatars of ourselves with a guy. And we never, we tried it with Dolly.
• Yeah, Dolly sucked.
• We tried it with a--
• Stable diffusion.
• Yeah, we tried it with an 11/11.
• That one, yeah.
• Leonardo, that was the worst.
• Right, right.
• And--
• I created one and it looks way better than me. It's like taller and more muscular by captain. (laughing) And so I was just, and first of all, it was really put together. And these teachers, by the way, are using AI to produce their materials. And they're doing a good job with it. But I go, I just have to ask you just one question. I'm like, how did you do that? And she goes, it was a Snapchat filter.
• That makes sense.
• And I'm like, God dang Snapchat. And then so they got me thinking, though, like I'm out there and I'm like looking at, like pictures my cousin who's like 23. if it's posting on Instagram, and almost all of them now seem to be adjusted heavily.
• Yeah.
• And to me, that's a little rough.
• Yeah.
• You know what I mean?
• Well, where do you draw the line? 'Cause the makeup analogy is perfect. Like, how much makeup you put on before you're no longer you, right, or no longer authentic version of you? And like, it's no, there's no right or wrong answer.
• I think the worry you get into it with that one is like, you're like, are you adjusting that because you are expressing, you know, yourself? for you adjusting that because you want the perception.
• You want the perception.
• You want the perception that you look like.
• That is what I look like, right? It's like, no, maybe.
• Like if you had a perfect shot.
• Yeah, and just like social media is not good for our mental health, this probably is going down a better path too, where it's like, I have to now be this image, this perfect, you know, pixel perfect image of myself.
• That's the scariest part about all of this, is from a woman's perspective. All of a sudden, now not only am I competing with makeup and all of this beauty, I'm now competing with complete fake beauty.
• It's not just women, there's the gigachad, we're saying, right? - Oh shit, yeah.
• Like, 100% it affects all of us.
• Yeah, that's a gigachad thing.
• Gigachad, my understanding, and this is, you know, through the conduit of my 10 and seven year old is the--
• I've never heard a gigachad?
• He's got this gigantic chisel jawline, just rippling muscles, he's the chat of chads, the gigachad, as it were, but, so, so, 2023, A guy submitted an AI-generated image to the Sony world photography competition, and he won it. And the rules of this competition just simply stated that you could use any device to create the image. And in their head, they're thinking any camera device, but this guy's like, "Well, I used a device, "I created this image," and he won. And then in the acceptance, he's like, "I can't take this award." Like, doesn't something about this feel wrong to y'all? Like you can donate the whatever to the whatever. And but like, I spent 10 minutes on this or whatever. And so he declined the award, which is super interesting. But that just happened last year, right? Like we're in the throes of this, right?
• People are gonna have to adapt. So I'm very afraid of what this does to people's mental health, right? Because again, we've seen that as more and more people start getting plastic surgery, and it becomes more normalized, it's more okay. We're seeing people that are in their 20s, like going in and getting filler and injections and all this stuff. And it's just like, this is such a bad slippery slope. I don't know, did you complete sidetrack? I don't know if you guys saw the video of them where they did kind of, it's not an X-ray, but it's a certain level where they can get past the skin and then get to the bone. But you could actually see the filler. And when you go get lip injections or cheekin', The filler never goes away. It just travels. It just moves. So then you start seeing it showing up in different spots. And that's why these women and men who are doing it, who do it over a long periods of time, their heads start getting bigger and bigger and bigger because the filler is just migrating to the different parts. And it's like, guys, like if you're in your 20s thinking about getting filler, do not do it. You are so beautiful right now. You have no idea. Like as you get into your 40s and 50s, you realize that youth just has a beauty to it, no matter what. Like there's just a fundamental beauty of youth and you guys are gonna go in this and this is a, it's a catch point too, you'll never be able to get to a point where you're happy with yourself. Don't do it, don't doubt your hair either, man.
• My fear on the authenticity piece is obviously, you can hit the beauty thing is one thing. But the thing that gets me is the, what tray was alluding to earlier, the inability for people to create things on their own. So you need to go through the mental cycles and hurdles of of of writing. And I said it a million times, like you need to become a good writer in my opinion in this world. And that's really the ability to kind of detach from your thoughts from your, from your typing or your right, like just let something flow out, right? and honestly, also understand the technical fundamentals, the other thing that you're doing, right? So it's like shooting free throws, right? I'm a good free throw shooter. I've shot a million free throws in my life, but I do it the same way every time, but I practice and I practice and I practice and I practice. And I think that if there's always these shortcuts to getting things done, especially at a young age, like are you gonna-- - Never learn.
• What is the wrinkle in the brain that's happening there? Is it, 'cause there's a big difference between reading and writing, right? There's a big difference between going to an art gallery and viewing art and taking that in versus getting a canvas and a brush and trying it on your own.
• Yeah, this idea of the ease of things, I think plays into other social aspects, right? So you have, you know, people who are becoming, you know, so the populist dictators of the world, that they make everything seem so easy. like this idea that like you are not only special, but you can do anything and just look at me because I did it without like sweeping over all the lifetime of things that have happened and all the special circumstances and all that sort of stuff. You know, and this isn't, I don't know, you guys politics and stuff and one way or the other, there was just this week, there was an image released of Donald Trump with a bunch of black women and see black women support Donald Trump. Well, that has been debunked and they was posted on X and the author of the image has responded and said no, this is fake. I took people of one color and changed them to another just because I thought it'd be interesting. And in that person, that author is a black woman. So it's not like, you know, somebody was trying to do something subversive or whatever. But all of a sudden that image gets out and then contextually we lose the like with the Y behind it and then what happened. And then all of a sudden. That's the nefarious side of the authentic conversation. And we might as well have it, which is people are creating synthetic information. Synthetic data is going into AI models. We're creating fake, and at this point, everything's so slanted that it's almost all fake because more than half the content we're consuming is written for a specific audience. So even if it's a story about Donald Trump at a rally, you're gonna go to Fox News in this mid-grade turnout. Trump killed it. He had a great one-liner. You're gonna go to CNN and it's like, there was three empty seats in the back and he said something racist. He did horrible. And then you go to X and it's, Trump's gonna have to drop out of the race. And it's like, what can you just go watch the damn speech yourself? And take, you know what I mean? You can't 'cause nobody wants to do that. They just wanna go to their thing. And that--
• That, that--
• That to me is not authentic.
• I agree, there was that Kamala was speaking the other day and the news, I forget what channel it was, but they cut her off in the middle of the speech to talk about what she had just said for the last 20 seconds. That was like, can we just listen? Would you mind if we just like, you go away and we'll just listen to her, so you can then I'll decide what I think of what she just said. You know, I don't--
• That Tom Brokaw was on with Hannity. Did you ever see that in a movie?
• Oh, that was great. And it was very telling how concerned our true journalist was about the fact that information that they're supposed to be reporting on is just being interpolated instead of giving them. You're dangerous to the American people. That's pretty much what he said about Tucker. I don't know if that's how the world worked in the... No, so again, you so back then we reported on what happened Full stop, right? I'm not applying my personal bias to it. I'm not applying my own personal opinion to it. We're talkers gonna be like Right, he just goes off on his own personal bias That's fine We talk about it here like so behind the scenes the reality is is we know that if we say something You know sketchy about Elon or we say something about religion or we say something about this that it gets more engagement on YouTube been on the shorts. That's where our media has become now is that they really only care about getting the eyeballs and not actually delivering the news. And that's where I think that the fall has happened. There was actually a law about fairness in journalism and news reporting that was taken off the books in the 80s, which has led to the 24 hour news cycle that's in Canada. That's where that was used to be actually a law that said that you the news organizations and not forbade them here, but they basically had to report it and they had to report fairness on either side of an issue. Right. And that was removed and they wouldn't do that anymore. But the problem again has been around forever. Like Uncle Sam, we need you know. But that was the beauty of the US, was we have freedom of speech and freedom of the press. And like there was supposed to be a separation of like, hey, you can't stop him from saying whatever he wants to say. You know? And there was some actual-- It sucks that we're talking about that almost in past tense. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, nowadays-- You can say whatever you want, but you're gonna get roasted by one side or another. Yeah, yeah. There's no freedom of consequences. You can go ahead and have freedom to say whatever you want. That doesn't mean that I'm not gonna go put you on blast on TikTok. I'm just gonna keep pounding you until I win. I think it's an authentic to say whatever you want and pretend like there's no consequences. Oh, yeah, 100%. Like, if you're gonna say something and you wanna stand by it, then you better admit what you say. Exactly. Well, and there's a record now. Yeah. The other thing is you rewind a couple of decades and you could say something and it might just get lost to father time.
• Yeah.
• Right?
• Not anymore.
• The ether. But now, yeah, anything you write, and we've seen this, like, what's the Marvel guy, James Gunn.
• Yeah.
• Like, he made some controversial tweets back when Twitter was like early and nobody was really using it and then they dug that shit up. And now he's like, yeah, got fired, no, he's back. And it's like, how do we hold people accountable also for growth? Right?
• Yeah. of authenticity as well. It's like, that was me 15 years ago, but I'm different now.
• And we talked about this a couple of episodes ago as like the intent. Like the trick between AI is like, AI doesn't know our intent of why we make the decisions, right? We can feed it all the data and it can know we predict an predictive analysis or whatever, but it doesn't know why the dude 20 years ago said the slightly or more maybe overtly racist thing. Has he actually changed or has he just realized that that's no longer okay to say and he needs to make a man, you know, make a man's or whatever. Like, we don't know that. You can never know people's real intent. Only they know, right? So we just have to give them a bit of a doubt.
• And social context is important, right?
• Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• Things have changed over time. What's acceptable today is maybe not what it's such before. And vice versa.
• I always say that in my mind, which is people can't control where they were born on the bench or they were born on third base. Or if they were born white or they were born black. They grew up in a family that didn't see any diversity and their father was racist.
• The 50s or in the 2020s?
• You can't control that. And so it's hard for me to judge people to the nth degree to the point where you're canceled and they're done and they're off. Because it's like, you need a little context. You can keep people somewhat of a chance.
• In 20 years from now, I'm sure I'm gonna be canceled for something that I've said on this podcast.
• I do think that we adapt well. And the first thing, whenever I hear someone and they say something that triggers me or whatever. The first thing I think about is like, I have no idea what their upbringing was. They might have had a really shitty dad that was super racist and like, now they just are a product of that environment, right? Where they just might be a shitty person, who knows? But like you have to, we do have to start by giving people the benefit of the doubt. And we might have got a little off track here.
• Well, but I think you're right.
• So you mentioned something a minute ago, intent, right? And so this leans into the paperclip problem, right? So there is a thought exercise in the, you know, sort of AI world of how do we regulate, right? Where basically the idea being if we gave AI the task of creating as many paperclips as possible in the most efficient manner, well, what if it decided that humans, for whatever reason, were the best input to creating as many paperclips as possible and just started murdering humans because we gave it no guardrails, right? So like intent, what is the ultimate outcome but like not just the singular or purposeful objective, But how do you build ethics around AI? I'm sure you guys have covered that to some degree, but that idea of just like humans walking into a machine and just like paper clips flying through the side of it be pushed in a trash impact or a paper clip. So I have the paper cut. I have another slight switch gear on the authenticity piece. It's kind of getting back to the part that's actually really intriguing, right? which is when you ask AI to create something, there is no, that neural network that has no motivation, no nefarious motivation, no motivation whatsoever, right? The output is something that is truly creative in some ways because it wasn't created with a slant, right? It wasn't created, it was created solely based off its inputs and the outputs. Like that we were at that event. And the guy, there was a guy there that creates AI images. And he keeps them all in this photo roll and he really likes his AI images. And one thing he does is he throws garbledy gook words at it. It was like a kerfuffle mugging. (laughing) Okay, he said, "Please draw a picture of a kerfuffle mugging." And it drew this unbelievably cool looking bird. Right? It was rainbow. It had, did you see that thing?
• Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it was a truly impressive creation, and he keeps this all in an album. And it's one of those things where like, we spent probably just as much time in all of AI's image creation, some of the things that it does because it's just going and it's doing something. And to me, that might be some of the more intriguing art that's been created.
• Well, we talk about it.
• Since Bob Ross.
• We talk about the cons, oh, you got it.
• I was saying R.I.P. Bob Ross.
• Yes.
• We talk a lot about the concept of enablement. There's like a really bad side to AI where people can use it to abuse and do it, you know, spread fake news and all that. But like the enablement aspect of like anyone, if you're not artistic, well now you have a tool that can help you unlock your creativity. Like if you can't write that email to a little Susie's, you know, a idle or whatever the Gemini commercial is. Well, now you have a tool that can help you. Like, sure, it can be used and it is going to be used in inauthentic ways, but also in another way, it can help people really tap into authenticity and like get them over that, that writer's block or, you know, hell, I, how I made a logo for my mom. She's got an Airbnb, she wants to turn her house into an Airbnb, I can't freaking draw. But like, we got a pretty cool logo out of it. They like took me like half an hour, working with her, you know, it was a great experience. Like, I, I, I loved it.
• So I would advise folks that are really, you know, trying to get into a creative space or want to create, right? If you wanna be a writer, if you wanna be an artist, if you wanna be a designer, you wanna be a coder. Like one of the cool things you used to be able to do when you were a kid back in the old days, is you'd get a magazine out and you'd cut out and you'd rip out the paper and you'd put it on your wall, right? You'd have a poster. And all those things were there to inspire you, right? You can do that with AI, right? You can say, hey, I wanna design this UI, I'm gonna design this app, this NBA Advanced Analytics app, but I've been wanting to redesign for six months, right? But all I ever do is just feed my ideas into it and generate these concepts. And is it inauthentic if I use that to help me design it?
• Right, well, I mean, when we're designing websites, the first thing I do is go look at 10 that I like that are similar to the type that I'm trying to build. Now, do I just sit there and pixel for pixel? I'm like, hey, they did this and I don't know. Of course not.
• No, like I think baseline, you just have to have good intent with how you use these tools. If you don't have good intent, no matter what tool you use, it's gonna be inauthentic, right? If you have good intent, it can be authentic. Even if you're looking at an example.
• People are constantly on the look for inauthentic and inauthentic triggers the, I'm getting taken advantage of vibe, right? And I think people try to avoid that because no one wants to get tricked. No one wants to get swindled, right? They wanna spend their money on things that are valuable. They want to engage with people that are trustworthy.
• We see this in our business with doctors a lot. For some reason, it seems that doctors get their headshots or photos or professional portraits taken in their younger years, and then you go look them up online and then you go to the office.
• That's your son? Is your son here? Your daughter, was that the picture? 'Cause I was expecting someone different.
• So yeah, that idea of being lied to in a way It's like it almost invokes this more sort of emotional response to people when you see something and you know, it's not right, right? Whether it's close or not. And we've had people try those AI gen tools for their own photos and it like their teeth are all wonky and these.
• If you look at mine, my eyeball, like the only way you really, if you look at my pupils, my pupils are like freaking alien looking pupils. But other than that, it was like, well, and it's not wearing black, right? Like that was the other thing. like every photo that I uploaded to it, I'm wearing black and then it put me in like this tweed suit or some bullshit. Again, that's my wife's like, that's totally not you. The, uh, there's this article that I kind of inspired some of these conversations on Columbia's website Columbia. Is that a good, is that even a American university or is that British? Uh, no, it was a Columbia university. It was a Columbia university. Yeah. Anyways, they wrote this article in 2017 talking about authenticity with AI. Hey, I ran that one.
• Was that the drawing that was--
• Yeah, the drawing. I mean, first of all, that Cardwell would totally agree. It's like, this isn't just a year old problem.
• Right. - Oh yeah.
• They've been the academia, but academia is always ahead of the game when it comes to the stuff, but their academia is always, in schools, and there's always been this concept of authenticity, is so core to everything that they do. And I don't go ahead.
• Well, so in my prior life, I worked at a software company that made tools for schools, and one of those tools that I covered was a plagiarism tool. So this idea of authenticity has been all the way ever present in our world. We call it different things in different contexts, but plagiarism is a problem that, what happens when we both use the tool to generate the thing, and then I didn't know about yours, and you didn't know about mine, but they're the same. Who's, is that plagiarism?
• Right. - I don't even know.
• Right, yeah, I think that the concept of going to school in academia is you're evaluating students' ability to learn and then executing against the learning, right? It's not ever really been, and maybe it isn't business school about getting things done, right? And those are two different things. But getting things done is very important. And so they have to find that balance.
• You said something earlier, and we've touched on this a lot, where it's like, we need to understand the fundamentals. And if you want to understand the fundamentals, output is not really a metric to the yardstick you want to use, right? Like at school, it was math and physics. And I was like, always really struggling with I would memorize all the formulas. I would never really understand why I was applying them. It was still this one dude I went and got help from him. And he basically said I was a fucking idiot. But I was talking to him and I was like, oh, he gets this at a very fundamental level. Like he could take the formulas and turn them into whatever the application of it was. I was like, I need to learn at that level. And once I started going backwards to go forward, like I really, the homework started making more sense to me.
• That's the whole fundamental problem with education though, is that we're not teaching the kids the basics, we're just teaching them how to memorize and how to go through this process.
• The concept of a lot of the math, the common core math says they're changing up how you're doing like multiplication, for example. And it's because they're trying to get people to understand the mental model better.
• Oh my gosh, that'd be awesome.
• I'm trying to help my kids with their stuff and I'm like dude, this is not why I did it.
• Well that's the back left. Exactly, and that's the problem is like, get parents at home or like, well I can't help them with their homework anymore 'cause this is a real problem. You do need parents.
• Give them a chat GBT.
• Exactly.
• Exactly.
• Yeah, I'm an idiot.
• Nope.
• Fuckin' ask somebody you love.
• And this is not on topic, but I went to the doctor the other day and got my shoulder injury, got looked at, and I got MRI. And he gave me these doctor notes that were just so technical. I was like, I don't have any freaking clue what he's talking about. Through it in a chat GPT, I said, give me this in layman's terms.
• It was awesome.
• It was like, you have a tear here, here, and they're gonna do this, and this, I'm like, thank you.
• That's perfect.
• This is a contract, dude. I do that with contracts now. I'll just take a contract, and I'll just be like, go flag, and go mark any red flags in this contract.
• Whoop, there it is. I'm like, all right. I mean, that's a great use.
• Yeah.
• Going back to the fundamentals thing, I got in senior year of college, we had to build a website project, and we had to build a content management system. And the two guys I was working with knew how to build websites, kind of, not really. They could get in Dreamweaver and make a table. (laughing)
• Good old Dreamweaver.
• So I'm sitting there going, All right, I can't move this button where I need to do it. I can't do anything. And they were kicking my ass. And so I was super stubborn. I went in the other room and shut my door. And I was like, really upset, visibly upset, 'cause I didn't know that they knew how to do this. And I wanted to be involved. I did not wanna be the sitting on the sidelines guy. And I tried and tried and tried to go do it. And I sat there and I decided, okay, I'm gonna learn this, but I can't do it this way. And so what did I do? I went to the fucking main library and I got three books, PHP, CSS, and JavaScript. And I went and I locked myself in the informatics basement for like two months, took a ton of Adderall every day. And I basically taught myself how to code. And I didn't talk to anybody, I didn't even really tell anybody I was doing it because I came back out and I was rolling. And that changed my entire life. But like the fundamentals and the learning, but it wasn't just learning, it wasn't just reading the books, I had a problem to solve, right? And so there's a, it's always gonna be tough for kids now that are trying to balance the getting stuff done, 'cause I mean, let's be honest. If they wanted to do their homework, they could have, they could, they're gonna have an AI, they could literally just pull up their phone and feed their homework into it, get it print off, and it's done, the task is done. You even entry level market, like say you go get an MBA in marketing or a master's degree in finance. You're gonna be able to do, AI's gonna be able to do master's level finance work. And they probably already can.
• Well, yeah, I think the latest models can get like an 85% on the GMAT or whatever. It's like-- - By the way, the GMAT, I had to take that, I failed miserably and still weaseled my way into grad school. That test was impossible.
• Yeah, I mean, it's our test, but I think the outcome is gonna be, did no a while, did he just lose?
• What's going on?
• I'm getting really.
• Oh my God.
• Now everybody that has some questions.
• We've got the really watch for Olympics.
• Yeah, but shit. I was gonna say I think homework is probably going to have to go away at some point or not look the same. Because the whole point of homework was like, okay now go home and prove that the way we just talked about.
• Yeah, the train's point was really good. Do it at school. Do that.
• Yeah, look, the reverse classroom or flipped classroom is a concept where you like, you watch the videos the lesson at home and then you do the applied, the homework that's interesting.
• Yeah, that's what they were talking about, right?
• Yeah, so it's the one?
• And I've spent a lot of time in education. So the traditional model, they call Sage on the stage, which in a world where, you know, information in books were not widely available to people, you had to listen to the expert. And so you go sit and you watch, right, the Sage on the stage. And so the flip model is, of course, you go home and you listen to experts, you read books, you have access to the information, And then you come in and then you actually do it in front of somebody that is judging whether or not you can do it, right? And that, that, that makes you so much more sense.
• They can be hard of the process of you learning versus you receiving, right? All the different types of learning methods, visual, auditory, et cetera. There are some people that do great with the stage on the stage. I can listen to somebody and learn a ton and remember all of it, that it's I can, but some people can do that, right? But the idea that rather than spending your time, and the co-location of it as well, right? Like how many students can you fit in a room? The 300 person class sizes, like that whole model has been in existence for so long. And to the point, like we don't know how these efficiencies of learning are really going to impact that. And there's a lot of resistance to it, right?
• Yeah.
• I was a big proponent of comic-core when it came out. I have a son who has divergent learning needs, is very mildly autistic. You wouldn't know if you walked in, but he's been around some other kids that it's harder for them. And so, you know, standardized testing is a problem really large.
• Yeah, that's what, I was gonna say the same thing. Like, there's inherent value in like, okay, the whole concept of Common Core was, we had a problem in this country where someone in eighth grade in Louisiana was not equivalent to someone in eighth grade in Massachusetts. There just was a difference in the level of education. So, okay, let's have a Common curriculum, a Common Core. And like, you know, some of the ways are teaching things are great, but it's just not reality. Everybody learns different. And it's kind of the same problem or slightly adjacent problem with the flipped classroom is like, not Johnny might have a great at home experience where he can watch that video and his mom can help him and make sure he does what he was supposed to do and goes back to school. And now he's prepared. Not everybody has that experience. Not everybody has a safe home environment or access to high speed internet or whatever.
• Or they might actually not even have the concept print and they're in third grade. >> Yeah. >> Which happens all the time. >> Yeah. So there's no like, you want to pause? >> No, keep going. >> No, we can pause for a second. >> No, keep going. >> All right. >> We're paused. >> Pause, I'll pause. >> All right. >> Just going okay. >> Yes, great. >> Yeah. >> It's a good, it's great. >> Keep going. >> It'll be a lot easier to edit. >> Okay. >> Sure. >> Well, now we're two. >> Yeah, there's half of us. Let's talk about the MCU for a minute. That'd be fun. Okay, yeah. I have a huge Galactus fan. Okay, that's not something you hear every day. I know. Well, but like, like eating worlds, I get it. But Galactus, the problem with Galactus is it's impossible to film. Right? Because they're not. So great. Yeah. Because he's like the perfect size for a bad guy. But but fucking Galactus is bigger than the entire Earth, right? Yeah, sure. So like in and they tried to do that. What was the? I forget it was the eternals.
• Kind of had that concept.
• Yeah, where the, the, what, it's not a titan. Is it titan? Is that the right word for the, it's coming out of the earth, right? And it's like literally exploding out of the earth.
• Yeah, it was like a huge thing. But then the other thing that is that, what is it, Robert Downey Jr.'s playing Dr. Doom? Did you see that?
• Yeah, I did see that there, there's some bits of backlash about that, which honestly like, I don't know, is weird for me.
• Why would they do that?
• You know, he, I think they tried and failed with Jonathan Majors and Kang so hard.
• So are they just done with Kang?
• Yeah, he's out. They are rewriting the next Avengers movie to no longer be Kang Dynasty. Now it's a--
• Oh, like King Dynasty's not getting made?
• Yeah, they're, it's no longer in the works. They've rewritten it to, well, their secret words is coming after, but that next Avengers movie is going to be something doom related now. because of May.
• Dr. Doom was always needed. He helped two things about that. He's an actual world leader of a fake country, right?
• Latveria.
• Latveria.
• Like Liberia, it's like a Eastern European country. But he always wears his mask. He never takes it off.
• Is Robert Downey Jr. really gonna be Doom? Or is he a different, is he like a, is he something that's supporting Doom?
• No, he's supposed to be Doom. At least that is the current plan, although like, we were just saying there's been some pretty significant backlash around that. and I wouldn't be surprised if they pull back from that, but who knows? The other thing with the MC right now is like, they are starting to web the multiverse so hard that like, I'm a big fan. I've watched every single series from, you know, the Hawkeye episodes to Agatha to-
• There's a letter soldiers and all of them.
• Yeah, and I am a super fan, and I'm starting to not understand like exactly how they're gonna tie all that together in a way that I'm gonna get and let alone the casual fan, you know what I mean? like how's the fan needs to come in. Like when I watched that, it kind of lost me on WandaVision, to be honest. Like I was into, and I was like, okay, there's just so much going on. I don't know like where the truth is. Like 'cause they can just go back and change anything.
• It'd change anything.
• Which is the timeline I should care about.
• Right.
• But then, one of the comic books though, very much like that, where the comic books just had like complete freedom to do ultimately whatever they wanted to.
• Yeah, so there's like the Bronze Age, Silver Age, Gold Age, and I don't remember exactly which one is, but they started creating Earth, you know, 165, Earth, 3,010, and there are all these different alternate universes where basically they just needed the ability to create more content that was different from the prior content. So you can kind of understand that from the comic book perspective, but even there, they didn't necessarily have this idea of continuity between them. Whereas like, they've kind of set that expectation for us here, and it's funny because DC is almost going the opposite direction with like the Batman and the new Superman movies that are--
• By the way, the new Batman cartoon that's on prime is good.
• I didn't see it.
• My kids really like it. I mean, it's, my kids play Elden Ring. So like, they like see swords and death and shaves.
• Right, yeah.
• But like, dudes are rolling around with guns and shooting people.
• So, when I first-- - So, Batman, oh, it's a spoiler, but you know, he uses weapons in a gun's in a way that's like, the original animated series, that was a no-no, like that was one of the things.
• It's pretty intense. And it's about, it's about, and the penguin's a woman.
• Oh, whoa.
• She's like this mafia boss that like, that lives on this yacht and in the harbor. And she has like her sons are these dumbasses. (laughing) And that is a good dude, that shows good.
• So I've been watching Invincible. So I've not paid, I've not watched it ever. So I'm now into it. So I'm seeing a lot of the trailers for that Batman. I'm like, okay, I can start seeing myself kind of get into the animated stuff.
• I love the Batman animated show.
• I haven't seen the, I haven't seen the, I wrote the original one, the animated series, but I haven't seen the new ones yet, but I really want to, the X-Men 97.
• I was just about to bring that up.
• It's so good.
• It won't like the award for like best animated series.
• Oh really?
• Yeah. - X-Men 97, do you mean like?
• It's a direct continuation of the two season series that was in 1997.
• Well, and I think it was more than too serious. I think they had like many, I don't know a number, but I think it was, but yeah, they ended it in '97.
• But they kind of ended on like a cliffhanger, didn't it? Or an ad-ex-a-cliffhanger, right? It just ended.
• Yeah.
• Anyways, it's just a great series.
• So they picked it up from and they've updated the animation style and its story telling is amazing. It's honestly some of the best content that they produce.
• Did you ever see the episode where they make fun of it where Jubilee is running past the Sentinel. That's like a whole building high. And she doesn't notice it 'cause there's like a little tree.
• There's also like, anyway. (laughing)
• I mean, we're gonna do it. (laughing)
• Another Naga, and I don't know if this is a spoiler for Deadpool, but Gambit?
• Yeah.
• Is that really happening?
• That was real. That was real.
• Yeah, well, so yeah, I've seen Deadpool and Wolverine. He's in it. I won't say any more about it,
• But yes, and they pull a lot of characters. It's crazy the amount of the amount of cameos that they have in that show.
• It's hilarious.
• It's literally supposed to get increased then.
• Yeah, the one, I guess criticism or thing I would say is that it doesn't do the multiverse thing. Like not as hard as you would sort of think based off of some of the other things I've been saying and doing. It's more a Deadpool movie than it is an MCU, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe is becoming the Marvel Cinematic Multiverse
• In a way, right? And so--
• The standalone movies can just do it.
• It's more like a standalone movie than it is. Like let's help tie all this together in a way that's like go for it.
• Well, I'm a big Star Wars fan and--
• Clearly.
• I really like the actual--
• You're wearing the shirt.
• I thought it was great. And it got absolutely review-bombed because "Diver City" or something.
• Yeah, I don't think my son wasn't necessarily as big of a fan of it.
• It's good.
• Yeah.
• And the other one, the other one's good to the one that actually makes it sort of like Game of Thrones, the one that takes place in Coruscant.
• Rebel, not Rebel Moon.
• No, it's about, it's a continuation of the movie in between The New Hope and I can't believe it.
• With Ray?
• No, fuck no. (laughs) Not Ray. That was, I was so disappointed. Like when Last Jedi came out, and like I was 10 minutes into Last Jedi, I was like, oh no, this is gonna be so bad.
• I love Star Wars purists. My son is a Star Wars purist, right? And he just hates any of the new stuff that's coming out of Disney. He's just like, "They're not right. They're not the one who's in the space."
• He's really jaded, but I kept giving stuff a chance. And some of the newer stuff is good.
• There's gonna be somebody that makes a meme of Robert Downey Jr. coming back, like Palpatine coming back.
• That's gonna happen, right?
• Like, we didn't even fail.
• Palpatine's like that. It's gonna be bad.
• Bringing back Palpatine was dumb. and having Raby of Palpatine was dumb. I don't know. Hey, really quick, so check this out. That's Chat GPT's App Store revenue.
• Yeah, so I just, I was just one blank. I heard that today though that they had their best, was it like their best quarter ever in terms of volume and money that they're making? So basically, and this is a weird theory, they think since Chad GPT-40, Omni model, launched in May, they're grossing, they gross 40 million on July on the App Store.
• How so?
• So that's just App Store revenue. So you can do in App purchases, you can subscribe to Chad GPT from your phone with Apple, with an Apple subscription.
• Oh, okay, so that is just--
• That's their App Store revenue that they're getting from being able to subscribe as a premium member is 40 million.
• And guess what? Their take on 40 million, 28 million.
• Oh yeah, 'cause Apple is--
• Google taxing them.
• Yeah.
• So the fucking rising tide flows.
• Yeah, Brio rises all boats.
• Yeah.
• Why did you see that a court has ruled preliminarily that Google is a monopolist?
• Yep.
• And that's a federal court.
• They give, that's why Apple was down a little bit 'cause they give Apple like $20 billion a year for the default search engine?
• So what are they saying is gonna be the outcome of that ruling?
• That, I don't know. I mean, they already tried to go the alphabet route and split it up and make it seem like it's actually a shell. But I mean, the reality is they've been a monopoly in search for a decade and a half at this point.
• Yeah, for every 10 searches, you have to do two Ask Chief searches as a new law that they have. (all laughing)
• I disagree with 100% of that.
• Yeah, because they're products better.
• Exactly, it's not a monopoly because I can go to Bing right now, I can go to Brave and I can search, like again, I search a lot with Brave just because it's kind of like baked in and I haven't changed my default.
• What's interesting is I talked about that plagiarism tool, so when you're looking at plagiarism and you want to figure out if something's copied, you search all the places, right, so Google, or the internet is clearly one of them. We had to use Bing because one, Google was both too expensive and they didn't actually return the results because their results are so contextualized to you as an individual that you can't get vanilla results out of. So we did some other academic publications and stuff, but I looked into DuckDuckGo and, you know, even there is a, I forget what it's called, but it's like, they keep a copy of the internet as best they can. It's like the internet archive or something.
• With that machine archive, it's, yeah.
• Yeah, so we looked at a bunch of different sources, but in the end, I mean, there's nothing that competes with Google.
• Yeah.
• Does it manipulate?
• Probably.
• The monopolistic argument is, okay, so you're really big and then you pay another big boy to make you the default search engine, therefore squashing out competition.
• I guess because they only Android, so they guarantee that they're the default there and then they go and they do Microsoft's have the same problem with IE where they, it was the default web browser.
• But like, I mean--
• But no one's gonna make--
• Build something.
• No one's gonna, like, beings, you're not gonna put being as your default browser and iOS, not because of competitiveness, because it's soft. - My only minute on Apple is why would I not default to Google? Why would I give my users a subpar experience?
• Until you build your own, like use Google and then we're gonna eventually build our own and then we'll-- - It just seems like an regulatory step, the next time you open your, see updates to iOS, you're gonna open Safari and it's gonna be like, what do you want your default search engine to be?
• Right, now.
• I have an Android device, so I don't use Apple Maps, but I hear people say the same about basically Apple Maps is basically so inferior to Google Maps. They like a lot of Apple users.
• We got a lot of hate because I like Apple Maps better than Google Maps.
• Yeah, really, I got skewered on YouTube for that hunting tank.
• But the thing that it's a little bit of a dated take because Apple Maps has gotten better.
• Yeah.
• But yeah, that's funny.
• Yeah, no, there are people that are like, "This is the worst thing ever." And then I'm like, "I like it." But again, I think it also is very much to your locale. Right, like if you're in England, Apple Maps is probably dog shit compared to Google Maps or you're in Zimbabwe or wherever it was. So that was one thing that I didn't take. But for me, for driving around in Indianapolis, Indiana, I find it that I like it way better.
• Well, so there's an interesting thread there that we can pull that relates is like, what is the responsibility of any nation or government to try to regulate something that is, at this point, worldwide?
• Yeah. - Right, like, not just in terms of a company, but even the concepts of AI, right? like is it, can the US, should the US government be able to say two Apple maps? Like you need to be able to provide the equivalent service in the United States at two other places of the world. Zimbabwe, you must have the same fidelity of mapping or else you've done something wrong. And I don't know, like this--
• Well the irritating market, like expenditures and decisions, and I think sometimes my fear is that is like the cookie thing. Like if they actually took the cookie thing seriously, Like right, and some of those regulations about requesting data and all that. Like there's certain companies that just can't, that don't have the scale or infrastructure to be able to--
• Those black bollum, so the UK, again, the UK with how they're like, how heavy-handed they are in trying to pass a lot of this kind of stuff, these companies are just gonna be like, all right fine, you guys don't have access to the iPhone anymore.
• Right.
• Well good luck.
• Maybe, so I was working at that company the education software company when GDPR was implemented. And at the time, I thought, okay, we have to do accessibility, we have to do localization, we have to do translations, all these things, and now we're adding in this other layer. And at some point, we're not building software, we're just amending software to meet the needs of a few, but now a few years on, I like the idea that I can say, you must forget me.
• 100%.
• Yeah, that didn't come from here.
• And the adoption of accessibility and having accessibility as a feature is made things better.
• GDPR, so again, like privacy and those types of things I'm a fan of what the UK is trying to do and I think the GDPR was a very great move. I think we absolutely need to have that here in America where we have a single federal privacy law that's not this bullshit where we've got the CCPA and then every other state's trying to launch their own thing, we need a federal one. So totally agree with that. However, them trying to make Apple say, you need to use USB-C is bullshit, right? And I will fight that to the fucking day that I die, that no government should be telling companies what technologies they should ultimately use because the fact of the matter is, is Apple could come up with a way better approach than USB-C, right? And no, now they just have to stick to it because--
• And they should be coming up with standards not saying how to implement them.
• No, yeah.
• But USB-C is a standard.
• I would counter that a little bit with cars and what we have traditionally considered, you know, charging them up.
• A car?
• So you can go anywhere in the United States and you know that you go to gas pump and you put the pump in, it's gonna fit. That is not true of EV chargers today and there are problems from that. So standardization is painful.
• That's fine.
• But when you only when it causes a problem.
• My $50,000 car got it. my $800 phone. Again, do I really need regulation to be able to plug a USB into the wire, the thing that comes with my phone? Right, like it comes with my phone. It comes with a USB standard to whatever input that I need. The fact of the matter is, is lightning as a cable is a better model than USB-C.
• Oh, USB-C is a male female.
• Right, it's got both the male pro-turning and the female insertion, where both of those are over time, just end up wobblying and becoming broken.
• And not every USB-C devices is equal.
• Right, and now again, you can still get power, but yeah, the power is completely different to the data, the amount of, so that, my thing is, is I just don't think government should ultimately be trying to control and demand what innovations happen within products, because governments suck at that.
• Yeah, yeah, I agree. The whole reason, as I understand it, was because, well, you had to get a new device, then you had all these new charging, all your accessories you had to redo. And I think the reasoning behind it is consumer safety and like they're trying to look out for the consumer. But I totally agree, like that's probably not the right place. But what you said earlier about Apple just being like, well, fuck you, we're not coming. That's the problem.
• That's gonna happen.
• But like that would be the problem and why they would be a monopoly, right? If one company is so powerful that they can tip the scales and say, fine, you don't get it.
• No, no, no, no, I know they can say they tip the scales. I just say they say screw it, we're not doing it. But go have fun. Go use your Android phone. Well, take up as a good point, which is if Tesla was so powerful that they were basically able to put their entire network of charging stations throughout the entire country and make it so they were the only EV company. And no one could create EVs because their charging network was so big that and they didn't and they have a patent on that plug and no one else can use their plugs. That's not good for the market.
• Yeah, it might take 'em back. Like, it could be the best technology, it could be the cheapest, all those things, and it could be good for the consumers today, but it might be bad long term.
• It would make Elon Musk the most powerful person in America. - Yeah.
• It would make Tesla the most powerful company in America, and I guess the goal with the monopoly is you don't want that power to be so consulted. And let's be honest, if you really wanna go down that path, Google is a fucking monopoly. Because you know what? You go search for someone on Google right now, three-fourths of the first page of ads.
• It's all ads, it's all bad.
• But you still use it, why? Because it's so connected with us, they have years and years and years of research history, and you know, I'm fucking jumping ship, I'm over here with this guy. I mean, it is a fucking monomial.
• Yeah, YouTube, right? Like, it's the same issue. There really isn't a competitor at this point.
• Of Cameo.
• Yeah. (laughing)
• But like, it's funny 'cause of my in-laws and my dad, like, they are talking to me about stuff they find on YouTube now as though like, they have just discovered YouTube. And I'm like, ah, this has been around for quite a while.
• I think YouTube is number two search engine in the world.
• Yeah.
• Probably.
• I think Google's number one, I think YouTube's number two.
• Yeah.
• Well, that's, that kinda hit. I'm not even thinking about it like that.
• Yeah.
• But I do think you guys have a valid point about, okay, go build a better product, but once a company gets so big and so good at something, have so much markets here, you gotta figure, like it's just for the general population, like they have too much control.
• You can build a UI, but unless you have that data that powers it, which is really, that is why search results are great, right? It's like I can build the best search engine in the world, but unless I have the data to back it, it doesn't really matter.
• Is Google Analytics the biggest Trojan horse in the history of the digital age? probably. That was when they bought Urchin. Whoever the product owner was when they made that decision to buy Urchin and then integrate it and just that was a brilliant move. Absolutely. They were the first person, first people ever to figure out a way, how can we get this one line of JavaScript on every single website in the entire world? And then we've got everything we need. Your scale is ridiculous. I mean, they offer even today, like their server farms make everybody even Azure or Microsoft at all pales in comparison. >> How many startups in the world do you think are on their pitch deck or writing? We're going to take Google down. >> Oh yeah. >> Somebody pitched that to me, I'd be like, you're insane. >> Well, and so we talked about actually just posted a short about this today, which was we've been waffling back and forth with the big tech versus is opening eye going to be a trillion dollar company. And I keep going back to the point where I'm like, I think it could be, and I think it might be. I don't think that, I think at some point, they're gonna be just as valuable as Microsoft or Google. But then you think about Google, you just go back to Google, Google specifically, and you're like, you know what? I think that they might end up with the stuff that they're doing, they might end up right there, right? And I think Apple be right next to them, and they just continue to grow and grow and grow. And next thing you know, you have two $10 trillion market companies.
• Microsoft. - And they're building robots and cars. - Right. If they don't end up going in that trajectory, then Microsoft just ends up buying them and they just get gobbled up by the Microsoft house. If they aren't seeing that trajectory of being like the next, you know, whatever we'd call the next thing of a unicorn.
• Time will tell. So, time will tell. Lots of time today. And we're all looking forward, go ahead.
• Well, just one little last sort of pivot on that a little bit is the matrix, right? So, one, they're coming out with a, what is it now? Fifth, which sounds like-- - Oh, they don't know.
• I had the matrix.
• Really?
• Yeah, after the bomb of the four,
• The fourth was not good.
• It was not good.
• I mean, again, I watched it, but I like it was not just remotely close.
• So I'm old enough from a VHS tape, right? And I watched all the original Star Wars and wore out those tapes. But I had a DVD set of the Matrix and the trilogy. And with that came a third bonus disc that had what they call the Animatrix on it, which was animated, there are adult animated shorts, right? adult film, like they were made for adults and there were two, two parts inside that that was basically about how it got from the world of today effectively to the world of the Matrix and how the machine war happened. And part of that story is that we as a society built robots to do tasks like manual labor and and waiters and things and eventually the machines became resentful. They had a sense of them. And there's a great book called "The Spiritual Machines" by a guy named Ray Kurzweil. And then actually, R.L.A.D.P. is one of my favorite bands. Had a couple albums called "The Spiritual Machines" after this. And in that album, they have interludes that take quotes from the book. But it's this idea that much like Facebook is what, a billion lines of code that's been contributed to by a human. You couldn't recreate Facebook even if you started today because of all the humans that it contributes to. They called the ghost in the machine, that this idea that like, I write code and you write code. And when it's a language, we speak it, we can understand each other, but we don't speak the exact same. And so you have humans combining many, many, many to create this application that has intricacies and quirks to it and things about it that represent the people that actually made it. And ultimately that leading into like the Santa Matrix idea that the machines have some sense of self that was not intended. And then eventually that becomes the catalyst to what they call I think nation one or something that they form their own nation and they try to get along with the humans and then the humans are like FU, you're not really, you're not live. And then the machines are like, okay, well, we're gonna end you now.
• And so is that what the five is gonna be about is more of a prequel to the--
• I don't think so. I just kind of popped in my head that that major client was coming out But yeah, definitely look up the animatrix and the the two-parter on how the how the war happened and how they got it It's amazing and the animations insane. There's one scene where The machines have they the humans come up with these big mech units that they put a human inside and the machines like rip The arms and legs off the sky while he's inside of it. It's disgusting and amazing at the same time. These are adult, these are adult animations. Yeah, for sure. It's a run believe. Why don't you tell us real quick how can people learn more about you, get connected with you and pop cam? Yeah, so maybe to start with pop cam. So we're at popcam.me, again, authenticity, right? It's about about you being your authentic self. I'm on LinkedIn. I don't really do the Twitter X thing, but you're LinkedIn on X. Yeah. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see stuff all about my car and my kids. So yeah, definitely check Check out popcam.me. Please reach out with any needs for your teams, your organizations of any size. We have a really great experience and we are filling up our calendar for the remainder of the year. So, beautiful. Awesome. Awesome. Really cool concept and good stories too. Absolutely. We'll see you guys next week I think. Yep. Big Cheese AI podcast, baby. Like and subscribe on YouTube. We want more subscribers. All right. Thank you. See you guys.