Tune into AIAW Podcast Episode #119 featuring Erich Hugo, Managing Director - Business Innovation at Delta Track, as we delve into the theme of 'AI Apartheid. With a legendary career spanning over 30 years in digital innovation, Erich has been at the forefront of digital transformation. His impressive resume includes pivotal roles at iconic companies like Nokia and Bonnier, where he led as the Go-To Market Manager & Business Development Director at Nokia Northern Europe and Head of Business Development at Bonnier Digital Services. This episode offers an exclusive glimpse into the insights of a seasoned professional who has not only contributed to groundbreaking startups like Zound Industries but has also launched four startups, showcasing his remarkable entrepreneurial spirit. Dive into a discussion filled with Erich's wealth of knowledge and experiences, which promises to illuminate the ever-evolving landscape of AI and technology.
Follow us on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiawpodcast
Tune into AIAW Podcast Episode #119 featuring Erich Hugo, Managing Director - Business Innovation at Delta Track, as we delve into the theme of 'AI Apartheid. With a legendary career spanning over 30 years in digital innovation, Erich has been at the forefront of digital transformation. His impressive resume includes pivotal roles at iconic companies like Nokia and Bonnier, where he led as the Go-To Market Manager & Business Development Director at Nokia Northern Europe and Head of Business Development at Bonnier Digital Services. This episode offers an exclusive glimpse into the insights of a seasoned professional who has not only contributed to groundbreaking startups like Zound Industries but has also launched four startups, showcasing his remarkable entrepreneurial spirit. Dive into a discussion filled with Erich's wealth of knowledge and experiences, which promises to illuminate the ever-evolving landscape of AI and technology.
Follow us on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiawpodcast
Yeah, yeah, a lot of like sky. If you want a sky box or whatever and these setup boxes were basically Devices with that that had a encoding system that you could actually bring down the channels from sky satellite, you know, and make sure that you can watch it, and then you would buy, come him, do you remember? Come him. Yes, so come him. And boxer, and those guys they made setup box.
Henrik Göthberg:set up boxes yes, the boxer yeah and knock, knock.
Erich Hugo:Your made those setup boxes, but then they decided with let's make one of the Linux operating system and. That basically meant that we had to take the Mozilla browser and put it on a television screen and there wasn't that much knowledge in the world of actually doing that. You know Nokia was leading that and it was actually here in Sweden, because Nokia home communications was down in linchoping. I mean, some of the Brightest people that I've ever met. Can I mention names on the show? Yeah for sure, go ahead.
Erich Hugo:Rickard Nalgear Banked with banks and I can't remember geniuses and they basically came up with this and you should see it. It looks like the PlayStation 3, but obviously the project didn't sell fast, and when projects don't sell fast, this shareholders get pissed off and then they close projects down you know, so, and then the project was closed.
Erich Hugo:I'm at Nokia and the whole. They sold all Nokia home communications part, but then they asked me to stay so that I could Come over to mobile phones, and then there was a very interesting fusion. That happened because in 2003 On about death, do you remember Adobe flash? Of course. So flash was released on mobile phones and it was a game changer because all of a sudden, you could have an operating system on an operating system which was much more capable than anything else. You know, because flash was very much more powerful than anything else. You know, because flash was much more capable than anything else. And what happened then was is that Everybody started developing flash apps for mobile phones and I can mean I should have actually had my. Can you share? Do searches there? Yeah, yeah, if you do a search for the Nokia, we see collaboration West. Do you remember the skateboard brand?
Erich Hugo:We see we see, we see we are the superlative conspiracy. See, yes, do that, they're on the left. So Conrad Barristram and I actually developed that product, which was had a. This was in 2004,. Okay, and it had a full streaming music service in. It, had a full Instagram service in, it, had a full Mapping system in, so you could go, and everything like that. We did this here in Sweden and we developed it and in 2004 and I'm not gonna mention names here, but I can tell you there are some people that we know that have become very famous and Very rich, that worked on this project with us- where they might have curious here where they might have got a very good idea.
Erich Hugo:So that phone was the first phone in the world that actually had like an Instagram service, you know, so you could take photographs and upload it to a, and this was all done via the way we see, flash platform and Take off more, you think, to a head of its time too early, too early, too early, I mean.
Erich Hugo:and and also I would say Jude Buckley, who is now the Managing director of Samsung America. He was, at that stage, the boss for phone. I was Sweden here, I mean, and he believed in us. He really believed us so. So Jude actually brought us into all the stores, but there I met a really creative genius, one of our history who's, I mean, he's got his creative, but it's also got balls, you know he's so he will actually put his money where his mouth is and he will take risks.
Erich Hugo:So what's on right is that we he was a project manager at we, yeah, and then and I don't in the sales guy we had a contra member what his role was. But then he came up with the idea of of colored headphones, you know. So, at first making headphones that aren't black.
Erich Hugo:And in 2004, 2005, and I remember sitting with him in the we see store in in kung-skat and we saw girls. He pointed them out to me, said look at that girl, she's not interested in the sound quality of the of the headphone, she wants it to match her clothes, so let's make colored headphones. And that idea of his actually grew and grew and grew until he got a couple of guys together and and they launched our Industries in 2000 and this is sound industries.
Henrik Göthberg:Storing point yes, an idea.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, well, I, I mean corner of night. It's his idea, so we've been working very close, but but he's, he's a bit like I don't want to stroke his ego too much, but if he's listening but he's a bit like a mini version of Elon Musk. You know, he got a few backers that believed in him and and, and he said we are gonna change the industry. And he launched on industries and, and he had that idea. And all of a sudden You've got this company that's, I think, two billion sec. No, I mean and and he did it. He carried everybody. Yes, there was a lot of unhappy people. Yes, there was investors that were happy and this and that and this and that, but that was basically one guy that had the idea and then he surrounded himself with a bunch of really good people that actually could Visualize his idea and actually put it in.
Erich Hugo:But this is the first project. And then, if you do another search I'm cool, nokia we see color, I would say color phones. Okay, there. So do you see there? So we see this was part of conrad's idea. This is the visual, sound project that we did in 2004. Okay, I hope you're showing this on the part. It will be great, so be so. There we actually, in 2004, when we launched this project was done in Sweden, nowhere else in the world. Okay, and what we did is we color coded the headphones with the mobile phones. I mean that was revolutionary guys. I mean people don't understand that it was revolution.
Henrik Göthberg:No, no, I think it's so obvious.
Erich Hugo:It's so obvious now, but like, I mean, what? What did they have before? And Conrad brought the and and Gregor Higlin was obviously the sea, was the CEO.
Goran Cvetanovski:We see.
Erich Hugo:They brought this, the headset, and I brought the mobile phones, and we actually you know that all colors of electronics are patented, really, yeah, yeah. So this color is patented and this color is better than that, and there's a massive patent warehouse of colors up in in Knifes, a global electronics patent thing. So all these colors were very unique. What do you think about that? Is that a good thing? I do not like patented technology.
Henrik Göthberg:Let's not go there now, but but I was actually. Can you tell us a little bit like if some fly on the wall anecdotes on the conversations when the when Apple phone was launched and what was the thinking? And there's been all these different types of Storytelling.
Erich Hugo:The usual, is also being sucked.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, I mean and that's basically for novices who don't really understand Global economics, because it's an easy digestible thing to decide it was a Completely not. It was a cultural clash. Yeah, because Nokia had at that stage it was one of the top five companies in the world, it had very deep pockets, it could go in any direction, it could change operating systems when they wanted to and stuff like that. The big challenge was for Nokia's that was a European company, because European companies we had raging debates and I remember sitting in meetings Should we collect customer data?
Erich Hugo:Should we collect customer data? Should we actually use the data that people use on members of Nokia a 95, which was Three years after the launch of the iPhone, still ten times better technically, but we were not collecting customer data, so we could not customize the experience. And this was a major ethical debate and and we didn't do it and the our competitors came and they basically just said okay, firstly, remember the iPhone was launched and Then for eight months the sales was zero. They didn't sell anything. People forget that for the first eight months of the.
Henrik Göthberg:It wasn't a hit, no it was.
Erich Hugo:It wasn't even a hit, it was a disaster. They were getting ready to get kicked out of the operators, but then they had a brainstorm they launched App Store.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, the app store is the real launch and, during the same event at the app store, launched. What did Steve Jobs do on stage? I can't you. You, you will remember, he said on stage that Adobe flash is a Is a critical threat to to the security of your mobile phone. And you know what the suckers did? Oh, st Jobs has spoken and all of a sudden, nobody wanted to develop for flash anymore and they just went over to their shiny new toy. And all of a sudden, the developers just went over there. And this is while Nokia was still Struggling with the debate of actually, should we collect information or not? I mean, you have to remember that what I, as a South African, love about the Nordics is. I mean, this is the birthplace of open source, this is the birthplace of collaborative computing, and yet Apple, which is the most non collaborative platform in the world, is such a hit here I it's to me such a contradiction in terms, you know, and and I.
Henrik Göthberg:So, basically, do you think, if you want to boil it down to one fundamental topic, you know where we should Not get could have gone wrong? It's about this fundamental topic, about how do we understand the data.
Erich Hugo:No, no, it's how, how we use the data not understand understanding data.
Goran Cvetanovski:No, no, I'll use it.
Erich Hugo:You can we actually use the data to our benefit without the user's consent? And and that was that was it and Apple said. Apple came on board and they said and they got a great browser. I mean, webkit is a great browser, so it was a superior experience. But that is something that they open source, so anybody could know they couldn't, at that stage, implement WebKit on other browsers, on other devices. But we we were more.
Erich Hugo:Nokia was moral, we can't. We can't do that, it's unethical, but we have to regulate ourselves. Capitalists that regulate themselves lose. Okay, that's basically it. And the Americans came in. They said that the risk of of a A court case against us and we have to pay a fine of 200 million dollars, but we can get a market share of Two billion dollars, I mean let's do the court case and let's just collect it. We suck up the data of the customers. We suck it up.
Erich Hugo:And our mutual friend, mika, and I had a major Discussions about it, because he loves his shiny toys and he's an Apple fanboy. We was at least at that stage and he was like, and I told him but the small choices you make determines the future that you want for yourself. So Nokia, and also then there was our own Nokia's arrogance was a bit hectic. I remember I'm not gonna mention a name because I actually respect the guy a lot but In a meeting I said to him listen, now they've got the app store, now They've got a phone UI that's easy to use. Customers want that and they've researched that because they've got the customer data In no, with that we didn't do. And and he said to me In a finished accent which I'm not gonna imitate, he said Eric, in your microcosm at iPhone is a challenge. We're Nokia and that that bit us in that.
Henrik Göthberg:So there's a part our guest, but also part this force Going a different path on the very fundamental view.
Erich Hugo:It's a fundamental thing is what future do we want to live in? Do we want to my I mean my greatest tutors in life on my children, don, elan, clara? I mean, if I want to be part of their life, I need to learn these new things like Woke-ism and stuff like that and all that because they part of that society. And Daniel told me yesterday, for instance, about a book as the bot got started. So Kim Stanley Robinson, the science fiction writer, brought out a book this year. He wrote red Mars, blue Mars, green Mars, about the terraforming of Mars.
Erich Hugo:But he's just brought out a book now which is mind-blowing. It's called the Ministry of the future. It's a science fiction book and it's basically where, under the Paris Accord, the the human there it is. Under the Paris Accord, the the they create a body of people representing the future generations of the earth, legally okay to To negotiate and negotiate at the table with us about the environmental catastrophe. So these people have got a legal, legal obligation to represent the future, okay of where the earth is going. And this is a book that affected my son so much, you know, and I want to be part of his world. So I mean I start reading these things and the Ministry of the future is is the choices that we make now is gonna affect that? We can't. We can't make our shiny toys choices and Expect the world to remain the same. If you make your shiny Icons and stuff like that I mean sorry, you know how many, how many tortoises that you see with Plastic around them, joining or coral reefs is gonna convince people that we're doing it wrong, you know.
Henrik Göthberg:Wow, with this, eric, I think we should have a bit of a you know formal welcoming. Yes, is that the way to say it? I say yeah, and we know each other for quite some years. I got to know you through my friend, mikael Klingval, who's also a partner in in crime in daredevil also one of my greatest inspirations.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, I really.
Henrik Göthberg:I can imagine an interesting dinner table We've had many of them, and I can imagine also debates where you don't agree.
Erich Hugo:No, I mean I find it in very interesting. I mean we've got similar thoughts, but I mean I find it sometimes interesting, not maker specifically, but that's Swedes I'm half Swedish and I've lived here for 25 years but that Swedes love their bling yeah but they also love being Righteous and fair and just marrying. Those two things are so difficult.
Henrik Göthberg:But here you, here we have South Africa, correct, living in South Africa, growing up in South Africa, meeting the love in moving to Sweden at the half time, 27, 27 and At the same time being quite involved in the tech industry. I mean like working quite early with, taken the, you know, bringing the web, you can more almost say, to South Africa, you know from, from you know, when we didn't have a internet.
Erich Hugo:No correct.
Henrik Göthberg:So very early, building the internet of of South Africa With startups there, and then, of course, in different, you know, from Nokia, and then all the way to being part of a several startups. You know, there's a cool story about the, the Marshall headphones and all that. There's a cool story about most now ending up at Delta track. Correct, delta track is, then, if you I don't know, you should probably say it yourself, but very interesting company who has SpaceX on the one hand side as a customer and on the other side when you working in the cold chain and how SpaceX works in the cold chain too.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, I see interesting the cold chain to share. Yeah, cold in space.
Erich Hugo:No, it's cold. I mean it's composite materials. I mean, if you want to ship, if they build something new, if they want to ship a Product from one part of the United States to another part of the temperature, regulation is super important, so so we give them the real-time data of what the temperature is.
Henrik Göthberg:That's the connection. It's cold chain because it's composite material, cold chain makes this world go around okay, we need to talk about and unpack what cold chain means but, there's a lot of interesting stuff here, and I find it really fascinating how you are shaped by one part South African, one part Swedish and one part Silicon Valley and another part totally nuts. Got some crazy opinion. I'm not gonna go there, but people will find out on their own.
Erich Hugo:I'm gonna post links afterwards.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, it's great, but but let's, let's start. Let's start with what I think when I've talked to you is Something that that is quite interesting and and obviously has shaped you, and for anyone who has read the biography of Elon Musk, you know literally you're born the same hospital in the same hospital, like a few months apart. Few months apart in same hospitals. Yes, give me your money.
Henrik Göthberg:But it's the same era, right and I think you told me some some time what it meant to you know, in one way, growing up with a part hide and that Partite yeah thank you. And and that view of the world and then some, you know, it's like someone is all of a sudden opening up this. We were living in a lie, you know. So can you elaborate a little bit about this time?
Erich Hugo:Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna.
Erich Hugo:I mean, if Elon Musk listens to this, I'm gonna reference to him as well but I hope he does but, um, the 80s in South Africa, in apartheid South Africa, I just told Anders before them it was a functional alcoholic state. Okay, so when I read Elon Musk's biography, I mean, and how his father abused him, I mean it's that that's basically the story of every single boy in South, a white boy in South Africa. I mean we had a, we had a fucked up country which was basically based on a pressing another, another race, but not one race, but because the zealous and the flaws as on the same type of they different tribes, you know, but we were, they are, 11 other tribes and and how do you, how do you bring that? And you're a, the descendant of the, the Central European powers, germany, that, the Netherlands, some Swedes emigrated to South Africa. When it's under, they went to America, but some of them actually, I can tell you a story about one of the most famous Swedes there that you love your beer, but that's another story.
Erich Hugo:But that ethics and here in the 80s they're oppressing a black, black nation. I mean, how do you, how do you put that together and remain sane? How do you put? I mean, the only way to solve it in the 80s was drinking, so all the fathers were perpetually drunk, basically I would say the physical abuse in South Africa. I mean, I love South Africa, it's great, but, like no mistake, it was hard, it was really hard, but we had all the shiny toys. I mean we as white people in South Africa lived a right royal life.
Erich Hugo:I mean we, we ignored the oppression that we did there. We did what the state told us to do Because we could have. I, I was. I saw my first computer in 1978, and not only any computer, it was a Wang computer, I know maybe you remember Wang. No, check out, wang Wang, w A N G Wang computers. So they are the first, one of the first, let's say, multi-networking computers, and my dad worked for the Quasulunatal government. There we go, and they actually had terminals which were connected and this was in it in In a in Zulu land. This was the computers, the most expensive computers in the world, in Zulu land.
Erich Hugo:But you had it because we had it because, because we were so, so so Privileged, privileged exactly. And then my mom and dad bought us a Atari 2400 in 79. You know, we got a ZX spectrum. Then you had the people that went to the Commodore.
Erich Hugo:We're a spectrum guy of course you know spectrum guy, and then with my older brother and, and we had it all and but it was a lie. So we had the latest computing, we had the latest. I mean our universities had data hubs in the 80s where people could actually get email addresses already in 88, 89 I mean. Who had that? I got my first email address in South Africa, which I in 92 I mean, and I still actually use it which was my name and an IP number. That's it. I mean that's early, that's super early.
Henrik Göthberg:That is very you know.
Erich Hugo:But the thing is is that that we were so Rich, that small group of people, and then all of a sudden I went to, I studied law and Didn't make a good success out of it. But then I went to the army because all white boys had to go to the army. And when I came out it was democracy time and Nelson Mandela had been released and we kind of like asked ourselves Okay, wait, we were waking up.
Goran Cvetanovski:But we were like 18 around that stage.
Erich Hugo:I was 21, 21, 21, and Do you know the? The? Where did I put my paper? So this, and Mika will know this guy. I wrote his name down. So do you know the?
Erich Hugo:The sociologist Stanley Mulgrim? Never heard of him. Okay, so Stanley Mulgrim Hypothesized that human being suck. Okay, and, and, and.
Erich Hugo:They will basically follow orders, you know, and they will hurt other people if there's a person in power telling them to hurt another person. That's basically what it is. You can research Stanley Mulgrim, and and that's what we did. I mean, the government told us this is the way it is, and and to protect your life, and, of course, they dressed it up in the blacks are subhuman, and and and that Russians were gonna kill us and all that stuff. But basically what they did is they? There is Stanley Mulgrim, and and and and that's the fact of the matter is that we think we're individuals, but we love following orders. Humans love following orders. That's just where it is.
Erich Hugo:And and then in 94, when Nelson Mandela became I mean St Nelson, because that's not a human that we need in the world right now but and we just realized the government lied, and and I mean the culture, shock, the future, shock that you had not just for the black people Come becoming free, but for the white people. That said that everything that you've been told is a lie. I mean it. It messed up Millions of people. So so I would say there is a culture shock that happened, and that's why I also believe that. That's why South Africans are such adventurers, because we realize that there is no big authority that speaking the truth. You know the that we have to make our own truth. Government and politicians lie. You know and, and, and, and, and the more.
Erich Hugo:I See it happening in Sweden right now. Two weeks ago on television there was a Swedish politician that Basically a woman that sat there and said to the reporter interviewing her yeah, the moderate, and a party wasn't gonna nominate me for for going to the European Union Council as a party member. So I went to to the social Democrats and I'm not the social Democrats, it's very them Swedish Democrats and I told them that I'll switch bodies just if they nominate me, and that type of I Mean for civil servant to do. That is to be shocking. That was South Africa in the 80s. I was like how can you even live with yourself doing that? It's because we live in a self-promotion society, you know and so they did.
Henrik Göthberg:And this are the conversations from this. Like I, I Listen to some podcast and very interesting. I can't remember his name. But if you study evolution, the, the human brain is not seeking truth, or we are not seeking truth, we are seeking community. We are seeking to be part of a group and we have seeking status within that group and and that is If that happens, that's how you can get to Carl's, that you can get to all these lies.
Erich Hugo:But that's why I cannot wait for AI to start managing our politics, because humans have got one key weakness that I've recognized we cannot be fair and empathetic at the same time If. If we're fair, we're not empathetic. If we're empathetic, we're not fair. How do you how? And humans? There's no. We're organic machines, we're organic intelligence, and we've been. Billions of years of development has gone into that. How are we gonna solve that? The only way to solve it is to basically abscond ruling ourselves, and AI that everybody can buy into ruling our society is the future that I hope for yeah, but if you, if the way I summarize, I think there's a couple of things to shape you and let me test you.
Henrik Göthberg:I think, the way I have got to know you, you are one of the strongest Proponents I've ever met in different ways. That always comes back to a couple of things like free speech, you know, open source, transparency. So there are some core values, that sort of that culture, future chalk, that kind of when you are now calibrating and you're finding your own identity at age of 21,. It sets up an erich with, with a quite strong compass in relation to those topics.
Erich Hugo:I think what it led me is not to trust older people.
Henrik Göthberg:Not trust older people.
Erich Hugo:I did not trust older people and people in power. I've got a serious problem with people in power. I remember when I got my Swedish citizen's rep, I was invited to come and meet. The king was going to give me and I was like, remember, you can invite me, but I'm not going to call him as my estate and because his shirts the same color as mine.
Anders Arpteg:What would happen if you became in power then? Would you trust yourself?
Erich Hugo:I would like to say yes, but probably no. But I mean, I've got such a warp sense of righteousness, you know that, that I feel that I'm too empathetic.
Anders Arpteg:Would you agree with the statement that Lex Friedman says often? That is, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, that's why I want AI to come in, because if you look at all the good things that happen and it usually lasts about two generations before the corruption sets in. That's why I'm wearing this. I mean, this is basically all that we're seeing in the world now that we think is new about the corruption that's happening. It happened here and this is the, the emblem of the Roman Republic. That fell to Julius Caesar and everybody thinks you are. Julius Caesar took power. He didn't take power, it was corruption, it was the control of information.
Erich Hugo:Do you know the game Werewolves? It was invented by a Russian guy in a sociologist in the 80s and it's basically based on if six people on a room, two of them are Werewolves and four of them are Werewolves game I would say I think you misspelling Werewolf, and basically two people are Werewolves and the rest of villagers and it's everybody's guess who is. Who is the Werewolf. That's the game of the game. But the reason why the sociologist actually created this game, okay, was that he needed to prove that the informed few will always win over the uninformed many. Okay, so that's the. That's the hypothesis of the game and in the Roman Republic, the informed few basically managed the Roman Empire or not. That that's, the Empire managed the Roman Republic and actually just took on so many more benefits for themselves and so forth, until the population was just so pissed off and fed up they let a fascist take over, julius Caesar.
Erich Hugo:Okay, and and this is happening right now in our faces again I mean, all of a sudden you've got this group of people and it's really concentrating information in AI right now. It's really concentrating information and not only is it concentrating information, it's concentrating information to the scariest group of people share all this and and investors. They determine the future of companies, they determine the, the future of companies. So we had a bit of a discussion about open AI and the color by leak that happened with when Sam Alton was fired. I've got a theory, everybody's got a theory, but there were groups that disagreed in the board should we go there?
Anders Arpteg:perhaps? I have a topic about you know, yeah, if you were to, you know, give a backdrop to what happened there, or I can do it as you want to, you go for it and then you can give you your your view on my popcorn opinion now, but that's what that was in 17th of October, I think in last year.
Anders Arpteg:And then on that Friday, sam Alton got fired from open AI. He was in the board and a CEO of the company. It was a shock to him and to a lot of other people, or to most people except the board. And then the next day they appointed another person called Mira Murati and she was basically the CTO before, but she actually said, hmm, I don't want Sam to be gone, I want him back. And then the board, you know, was upset with her and said, ah, okay, let's appoint another CEO. And they appointed a mature, I believe his name was.
Anders Arpteg:But why did this happen? Yeah, let's wait for a second. And and then he was appointed and he said, as well, I want Sam back, this is not good. And then on Monday, basically, they sent a letter and and Satya Nandela had this awesome move in saying, ah, why don't you come to Microsoft? Then, sam, you can start your own department and bring whoever you want. Then a board or a letter was circulated around open AI and basically, 95 plus percent of the employees that we are going to follow Sam. Now the board is left with a company without any employees. Everyone is going with Sam and it's like horrific and basically they had to be forced to let Sam back and the board was fired, except it's one person, and now they're back and he's not in the board anymore, but he's the CEO and, yeah, running the show again. And now the big question is really why this happened, and perhaps you have some, I mean one thing that I've.
Erich Hugo:I mean I'm border borderline conspiracy theorist here now, but I actually read some articles that came out directly after it on major news websites and when I went to check those articles again, they've been. They're not there. I mean, it's they gone? So I I'm just speculating, but obviously let's let's pack it down. Something happened in the board and some people say it was Sam Altman, wasn't, wasn't truthful to the board. I mean that might be true, which is probably true, because maybe open AI was going into a specific direction, that that that the board thought was a bit risky. But remember, the board is all full of strong. You pick a board to support your vision and to have valid opinions. You know they're not. They're not. I mean, the boards that I've had in my companies have always been people that I can actually can guide me.
Henrik Göthberg:You know that. The tricky point is that the board is set up for this sort of open AI research thingy or sort of objective, and now it becomes more and more commercial so there's a tricky point here. What is the?
Erich Hugo:it's an inflection point I mean it's an inflection point.
Henrik Göthberg:I mean like, why didn't Elon Musk leave it?
Erich Hugo:I mean like they were going to go in this direction and then I was going because Elon Musk's version of freedom of expression and open source is different from the American version. You have to remember that there's different versions of that. But coming back to open AI, I believe it was an ethical decision. I think that some people, who were probably academics in the board, felt that, oh, should we do that or does this go against what we, as open AI, set out to do? And that led to a question that the board had the power to let Sam go. But then some shareholders played their card and they said, basically, we've got the money, we've got the wallets, if, if you do that, then the company. So all of a sudden we say shareholders, but you mean investors, investors, investors. So all of a sudden, we were users of chat, gpt have become beholden to a very small group of investors and what they want to happen.
Anders Arpteg:I would say that Microsoft owned 49% of open AI so they've been 19 billion investment, you know so.
Erich Hugo:So we are all living in a Microsoft world and Microsoft. Now with chat, gpt, I can say I've got a and and and that leads to what is it that we want AI to be? I mean, you don't you're talking. When you talk to chat gpt, you're talking to a Californian surfer dude, very intelligent Californian surfer dude. But all those cultural frame switching that happens between humans when they move, it happens with AI as well. A program, a programmer, determines the result of what they're programming you mean a human programmer.
Erich Hugo:This determines what the chat bots will say of course I don't actually in an indirect way. I mean embedded racism. I mean it's there, it's, it's there, it's from the data.
Erich Hugo:It's not manually coded it's from the data, but the data has corrupt I mean the UK Navy. The other day would just they or not? The UK Air Force had a massive court case against them because they've decided to to actually, in the AI recruiting tool, they were recruiting pilots but they actually put in a thing to lift the CVs of non-white people into these positions, to to bring them up, because the data just drawn those away and then choice.
Erich Hugo:Perhaps it's basically the the way the data looks like in our world today yeah, but it's not just that, it's, it's the way the culture looks like, it's not the data. I mean, culture is data and and our culture is like. For me, my wife is Swedish and my children is half Swedish, while they're more Swedish than Africans, but they look at the world with Swedish eyes and they and they pass the data, the same data that I get. They pass. Sure, that was passed it that way.
Erich Hugo:And then when they tell me about my, my kids can understand apartheid out of a economic and a social, social point of view. They cannot understand it out of a cultural view. They cannot, they, they can't compute that. But they can compute the Swedish way of looking at it economical oppression and stuff like that. But if you, if you take those glasses away, then it's about two million white people and four million white people in darkest Africa making the wrong choices. You know which was a cultural decision, not a data decision, or it was a data decision. But it's the same information. It's the same information. And a Californian guy programming open AI I, I've seen it in action.
Anders Arpteg:You know they have the power to, at least you know, filter the data in different ways and select what data to be used to, but then they do it in English, and and that also because English is English is a language of rules.
Erich Hugo:I mean this this is what made noam Chomsky so successful in the 80s and the 90s. Now he's trying to take his semiotic way of looking at things into the AI world, and it's not working. And it's not working for him because he doesn't understand this technology. He doesn't, but his rule bases are the same. I mean, language determines people, language determines people.
Anders Arpteg:People forget that's very like philosophical question. You know, does the language influence the way we think? Does it influence the our personality in some way?
Erich Hugo:of course, of course I am a product of it. If I think in africans, my mother tongue, I'm naturally more aggressive.
Anders Arpteg:I'm thinking even like the dialect of of the southern language. When I speak in Kalmaritiska, the southern east, eastern part of Sweden, I do think I act a bit differently actually than I do when I speak Stockholm, ish kind of Swedish yeah, but I guess it can be.
Henrik Göthberg:So this is. This is a very deep question, but let's go here because we are all of sudden.
Anders Arpteg:But should we just close the topic about the open AI? So if we try to understand a bit, what happened there and that there were some kind of potentially ethical discussion. What do you mean with that? Do you think it's?
Erich Hugo:more about you know if going agi or not, or what's the ethical the articles that I read and I mean, like I, it was basically about weapon development. There was questions about weapon development, using AI for that, and so on and so on. Did you see some documents around that? I don't, I mean, I just read the highlights and stuff like that. So, but there was an ethical debate, okay of which Sam at one stage was the, obviously wasn't open about the direction the company was going and telling the board that they were doing things out of the normal. Normal and my but that's not my my beef with it. My beef was more that the decision of our technology, technological future, which is AI. I believe that was made by a few few shareholders and investors.
Henrik Göthberg:They decided how the world will interact with AI, not not this, not we the people, but we the investors and I'm like, and so what you're saying is like how the thing then unfolded is ultimately steered by the shareholders or the investors by the exactly and how our lives, or or or steered by shareholders so in a sense the board was going in one direction and then in the end they couldn't sustain that direction because the core investors helped them. Sort of think, get back on track exactly get back on the program.
Erich Hugo:Well, get it. Get where we can have share all the value. What is going to make share all the value?
Anders Arpteg:for them in a position where they couldn't move anywhere.
Erich Hugo:I mean all the people employees were going to leave, so I mean the but that's why the fabric of our society, we cannot get out of the capital capitalistic spinning wheel at the moment.
Anders Arpteg:I'm not sure the investors. I mean of course the investors if we speak Microsoft that put 19 billion dollars in that. Don't want to lose it. But I think the board, you know, had really no choice because all of the employees would have left and the company would be dead in weeks.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, but that's, that's basically capitalism, that's the.
Goran Cvetanovski:That is, that's the invisible hand, then that?
Erich Hugo:that what's his name Adam Smith wrote about. In in wealth of nations, the invisible hand determines the outcome of economic decisions. So so the invisible hand.
Anders Arpteg:Things happen even if the investor let's say that Microsoft, potentially were putting a squeeze on, so to speak, on the board, saying you have to, you know, let's send, come back. Even if they didn't, even if the investor and Microsoft didn't push the board to quit, I mean, they would have no choice to do so anyway, because the company would be dead. So I think in this case it was really the shareholders. I think if they would have been forced to do so anyway. No, but I think, I think.
Henrik Göthberg:I think you're talking about the same thing on different abstraction levels, because I remember when we had this, we talked about this on the podcast and my comment was this was messed up. But then I said there was one guy who played all his card brilliantly, so, regardless where they were going, he would win, and that was Satya. Satya so basically the way he played it, like the invisible hand, I'm happy for you, but if you don't work it over there, you're welcome to me yeah that's the invisible hand, yeah card, but I mean basically he.
Henrik Göthberg:So in a way there was no other. I mean like so the way he, the way the whole game was played, there was no other choice for the board and to do what they're doing, otherwise that company would have been gone. The whole idea would not have been gone. It would be Microsoft 100% in another structure, as you said it's the fallacy of some costs.
Erich Hugo:I mean the, the sunk cost. You know the fallacy of some costs. Yes, so the fallacy of some costs, sunk cost postulates that sometimes you just go on with the idea because you've invested so much money into it and you try and save it at all costs because you've got a responsibility to your shareholders so you just keep on going, yeah exactly so.
Erich Hugo:You've spent 90 but 19 billion into open AI. You need to save it because you've spent so much on it, but that basically I wrote a blog post on it on LinkedIn about within the next two years, we need to have our first chief philosophical officers on on companies, because we need to ask America, which is like the beacon. I won't say it's the perfect capitalist country. I mean, these days, anybody that thinks that China is the is a communist country is just stupid. That's the perfect capitalist country. But America I've got has got one product. They only have one product. They don't make computers, they don't make airplanes, they don't make tanks. They don't make. Whatever they make, they make dollars. That is the only product. Apple makes computers and mobile phones to make money, to basically create shareholder value. Microsoft makes operating systems to create shareholder value, actual revenue in a company.
Anders Arpteg:So who makes the products, who makes the thanks, who makes the operating system? Who makes the iPhone.
Erich Hugo:It's people, but the end goal is to basically make the benjamins. That's it. And if a product, I don't think that the Apple Vision Pro is going to go over that, for I mean, that's just my personal opinion. It's like I don't know if you guys remember the Apple Newton in the 90s. You remember the Apple Newton?
Henrik Göthberg:I remember the Newton?
Erich Hugo:Yeah, and they pulled that product quite fast. Why? The Apple Vision Pro is a great product. It is a good product.
Anders Arpteg:Well, it costs like 35K.
Erich Hugo:Because it's not making money. So the product of Apple is dollars, which translate to shareholder value.
Anders Arpteg:You think it's wrong to have companies being driven by profit.
Erich Hugo:Well, we're seeing the state of the world right now. We're seeing this. I believe that if you become a, what should?
Henrik Göthberg:the alternative be yeah, that's always my question.
Erich Hugo:The chief philosophy officer that asks what is it that we want to do? I mean, my little sister told me the other day, it's like how many times must we look at a turtle with plastic stuck around its throat and coral reefs dying for people to realize that our way of working is not working? We have to try something else. I don't know what the alternative is.
Anders Arpteg:I think Because I don't think you believe it's communism.
Erich Hugo:No, I don't. I believe in social capitalism, I believe in responsible capitalism. I think that there is. I think I'm a responsible capitalist Because I make Mika and I have a friend that I make a point of trying to select the electronics that I buy. I mean, I research where the products get made and which companies I support. Who makes the operating system.
Erich Hugo:There's one company here in Stockholm and this is a shout out to them and if they want to take the shout out, I'm going to mention the name, but you know the company Hemphreed that does house cleaning services. Hemphreed, they do house cleaning services. So when we decided to get house cleaning services here in Stockholm which is expensive I mean, I grew up with it in apartheid, south Africa it was cheap, but here it's expensive we actually made a point of looking for a company that's got collective off-tall, you know, because that makes a difference. That makes a difference that makes sure that we can actually feel. We made a point of looking for a company where the CEO and founder of the company actually said listen, we're going to make money in this company, but I wish it's not to be like Bezos and be trillionaires. We want to have a comfortable life, but our workers need to have a great, great future as well, so they basically have a collective off-tall, and that made our choice.
Henrik Göthberg:It takes you five minutes to research online which company makes good products and that you can buy it, but people don't want to do it because the bottom line, of course, is like shiny things but it needs to be a point where, okay, capitalism in one way, whatever product you sell or service you provide, has a value and you need to have a payment for that and it needs to be a value worthwhile to do it, so to speak. So, to some degree, in the end, everybody needs to have the dollar, but it is to what cost?
Anders Arpteg:Exactly.
Henrik Göthberg:It is to what cost? In the social, in societal cost. I believe that I believe that.
Erich Hugo:I mean, I remember growing up in South Africa and we were all ABBA fans and then when we found out that ABBA actually was giving all the money that they were generating in South Africa from record sales to the freedom fighters and the struggle for the struggle against the white people, we were shocked and a lot of people stopped buying Apple ABBA products, right, so they stopped listening to ABBA. I didn't. I wanted to find out why did ABBA give them money to the ANC, to the PAC and stuff like that, and that opened my eyes. That, like the ANC's manifesto, wasn't as scary as my political beliefs, and that's the same. When people want to buy an iPhone, ask yourself a couple of questions. Do you want to be in a closed ecosystem where your data basically doesn't belong to you? If you really go and read the ULA, if it's not important to you, fine, buy an iPhone. For me it's important. That's how I feel. And what is the other thing that I want to say about that? I can't remember.
Henrik Göthberg:But let's stop here. I want to go to the next section and it's a little bit like also getting into your, in a way, summarizing. You've been in the startup world and then you run an innovation consultancy in Sweden for many years and I want to summarize it with your own words that I picked up sometimes that you call yourself a Bodger. So we leave the open AI conversation, we leave the introduction, and then now it's a little bit like what does it mean to be a Bodger?
Erich Hugo:Can you put a video on of a chap called Tom Scott and Bodger. It's on YouTube, we don't have to watch the video, but that people know this guy is the ultimate Bodger and he explains Bodging much better than there is that first video. So Bodging basically means it comes from a French word of tinkering, tinkering and some people tinker with physical things and some people tinker with ideas. I think Mika Klingvall is a tinkerer of ideas. He's a mental Bodger. This guy on this video, he's a physical Bodger. So what he's done there is he just explains why he makes an emoji keyboard. He made a keyboard out of emojis, not out of Latin alphabet characters, but out of emojis. And then you'll keep on tinkering it. And he tells a beautiful story in this when Apollo 13, remember Tom Hanks movie? That actually happened. Really, it's not just a movie. Do you guys remember the movie Airheads from the 90s? It's Brendan Fraser when he's younger and he walks into it. He sees a book called Moby Dick and he goes wow, they made a book out of that.
Erich Hugo:So Apollo 13, those guys, the oxygen was running around, there was an explosion in the spaceship and all the oxygen was basically turning into carbon monoxide because they were breathing in and out. So these guys had to sit there and figure out okay, how are we going to save ourselves? I mean, we're going to have to go around the moon, we can do that, but there's not enough air to keep us alive. So we need to figure out a way to. And these guys are engineers and pilots and stuff like that, but purely because of their inquisitive nature, they came to the conclusion that we can build our own carbon scrubbers in the Apollo 13 module and that saved them more than the trip around the moon save them and the engines. So they botched forward an idea to basically save themselves. And botching then basically means if you take an idea that you have here and you apply that in a completely different spectrum and I told you Henrik about it's also called bilateral thinking.
Henrik Göthberg:This is what we're getting to in the end more formal.
Erich Hugo:So, and I think that's one of my strengths I don't want to blow my own horn a bit, but because I'm a multicultural person, I can take ideas from one culture that isn't visible in another culture and I go, wait a minute, we can do it like that. And a great botching idea, which now Swedes love, is mobile money. I mean in Sweden, all that stuff. Where was that born? Do you guys know where the first mobile money comes from? Mobile money was born on the coast of East Africa, and this is during Nokia's days.
Erich Hugo:The boat fishermen would go out of Zanzibar and then they would catch fish and then come back. This is in the early 2000s. They would catch fish and then they would know that there's the market, there's the market, there's the market and there's the market. Where should we go and sell our fish? And then they would get SMSs saying, okay, they're offering 10 euros for 5 kilograms of this fish. And they go okay, that's a good price, how will you pay me if I not start going that way? And they say well, we'll pay you with airtime. Okay, so you would sign over airtime on your SIM card to the fisherman that's two kilometers off the coast. And that was mobile money. That was the birth of that, let's say, mobile economics, and that was an African idea that took the world by storm.
Henrik Göthberg:So, in a nutshell, what you've been doing quite a bit has been to sort of down another way. We talk about lateral thinking. There's another word for this intersectional innovation that you are combining ideas from different things and then that has led to a sort of a startup idea or something like that.
Erich Hugo:I would say I've been stealing other people's ideas. I give them part because there's some really intelligent people out there and creative people that I've been working with.
Anders Arpteg:And this is perhaps that's also one of the, you know, core strengths of creative people to find patterns from one innovation and being able to apply it to another.
Erich Hugo:You know, I think it's also a personality thing, Because some of those people take those ideas as their own and they don't give credit to other people. There's quite a few of them and they basically say I mean what I found out? Do you know a company, swedish company, called Neonode?
Henrik Göthberg:Neonode.
Erich Hugo:Yeah.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, I heard about it.
Erich Hugo:You know that they basically owned the patent of Slide to Unlock that Iphone just copied, and so the whole world is programmed to believe that Apple came up with the idea of Slide to Unlock. But it's a small Swedish company here that came up with the idea five years ahead In a court case around this right Well, I suppose I know some of the guys at Neonode very well. I mean, they're so small they don't have that much money to take.
Anders Arpteg:But if they are proven right.
Erich Hugo:it will be like a dollar per phone or something it's like an absurd amount, but I mean, apple is the ultimate bodger, the ultimate bodger. But the callousness of Apple of stealing ideas is just something that I'm shocked. Because I've got a bit of morality Not much, but I do have some. It's like give credit to credit us, do you? I mean really some people. Konrad Barstram, he had some great ideas, you know and let the world know.
Henrik Göthberg:But let's talk about a couple of cool ideas. I mean, I think there's a cool understanding of Bodging used by looking at the, what you did with the Marshall, the whole idea with it.
Erich Hugo:Well, I'm going to tell you the story secondhand, okay, because it's Konrad's story, but basically, when he so he launched this company, zon Industries, with three home let's call it of their own brands. Okay, so it was MolaMe, urban Ears and yeah, so this is Urban Ears in Stockholm.
Henrik Göthberg:We all know what Urban Ears is.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, that's Zon Industry brand. But then they needed a Marshall or Zon Industries needed a bigger brand and they started looking on that stage there was Beats, which was basically just owned the hip hop market, so you couldn't really start selling things. So I don't know who in Konrad's network actually thought of it and he had contacts with because he's been in the event industry, so he knew these people from Marshall and he said, well, listen, these guys, I've got an iconic brand and speakers. Why don't we take that brand and put it on headsets and start making a company like that? And voila, you know. So all of a sudden nobody was talking to the rock market of people that want to have headphones and stuff like that. So that's what they did and it was a great idea. Then the second bodge is, for instance, or big bodge that happened is most, I mean, mobile and sensory technology.
Erich Hugo:My little brother is an exporter of oranges out of, or was an exporter of oranges out of, south Africa and we were sending on his on his house and he got a phone call from St Petersburg that said to him that they're not accepting this container. Now you have to think, a container of oranges at mid seasons about $50,000, right, each orange takes 70, 70 liters of water to produce. Okay, that's how much water. So when a sweet takes an orange here, or a thin person in Europe and say no, I don't want it, and they just throw it away, they're not just throwing away an orange, they're throwing away an ecosystem of environmental controls and of labor, of everything. And here's a person in Europe saying to the guy in South Africa, we're not going to take the container, you know, and we're talking millions of oranges in one container, so the so, like you said earlier, 30 to 40% of all food gets thrown away. People don't realize it. It's insane.
Erich Hugo:And so, and and France, my little brother said, you know, like what about if we take a Nokia 3310 and we put some sensors on it so that I can know what happens inside, what happens inside the container? And I went, we can do that. So basically, I went to the guys, a company shout out to them and they are the former, the department inside Nokia that made all the Linux terminals for for Nokia, like the N9 and stuff like that. They spun out and sort of making their own company right now. They were leading when it comes to voice AI and they.
Erich Hugo:I said hey, I want you to take a Nokia phone, make it, give it a powerful antenna to punch through steel so that, and put some sensors on it so that we could see what's happening inside a container. And then the first product was released in 2014. And that's basically a mobile phone with sensors on to let us know what's happening inside a container. The industry itself that industry itself is the logistics industry is one third of the world's GDP. I mean, that's how big it is, so it's just a great thing.
Henrik Göthberg:And the interesting thing is, we're in 2014. And still now we're starting to talk about the cold chain with 14.
Erich Hugo:So 2020, 12, 12, 12, 12, 14, right. Yeah, we started development and the first product went on sale in 2014. 14.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, so it's not like like in the in the dark ages. Really it's like it's 10 years ago, but still, if you look at how shipment and containers and to keep track of fresh produce was done then and it's still. It's still a problem, right. And then it's quite interesting like okay, so I have background stories on how Merisk and Ericsson was trying to solve some of this stuff with very, very expensive approaches and your idea with most. I want something that looks like an ice hockey puck, that someone who has no experience one button one button can throw into the container you know on the docks, and that should work.
Erich Hugo:Yes.
Henrik Göthberg:And that that's the bodging. Then that is like, when you look under the hood, this is nothing new. No, it's like, okay, I need, I need this piece of of an old mobile Nokia phone, I need some sensors, I need an antenna.
Erich Hugo:I need a cloud cloud environment, cloud environment to collect data and I need some analytics on it. Yeah Well, not analytics yet that stage, analytics was descriptive.
Erich Hugo:This is, let's say, alarms, alarms and visualizations and and and so we built the interface in 2012. I mean, and there you know you outsource tasks to great people, so they're in the most team. There was some really great people and they built this cloud solution. And then, all of a sudden, we realized that we've got so much data. It's like whoa. And I actually got a phone call from a customer that said to me your device is not working. And I said why? And they said, well, the shipping company is reporting that the ship's on its route to Rotterdam, but your device is telling me that it's still on the Panama channel, it's starting. And I said, well, data doesn't generally lie, so let's just read the data. You know, and we read it and we actually found out.
Erich Hugo:I think data can lie, by the way it can lie, I mean, but but when it's so specifically niche, you know, and we actually went and and and realized that the the, because of the drought in the Panama channel, was too shallow for every ship. So what the ships do is they lift containers off and just put them on and the ship goes on, but the container stays behind, you know, and all of a sudden we found out that no, but the shipping company says you know, the ship's on its way, but the container wasn't on the ship anymore. You know that type of information and we need, if you think, what is the most expensive perishable that gets shipped. That's blueberries, I guess, but blueberries mostly get shipped via airplanes. But then there's avocados. One container of avocado, I mean it's a lot of money, it is a bucket load of money, and if that container gets stuck somewhere, somebody starts losing money big time, you know. And so that's the problem that we solved.
Erich Hugo:We solved, you know, and but I did it because I felt that all these we are as Westerners, we are fed by the third world and the developing world. I mean we sit here and our people, we want to be, have luxury foods in Eka and stuff like that, and we go and fetch it and stuff like that, but we never ask ourselves the question of where does this food come from? Really, okay, and who gets exploited? At the end of the day, who gets exploited? It's the producers. Eka is not going to go bankrupt, but how many farmers go bankrupt because they can't deliver on time, or Eka says we don't want this product anymore? And then it's not a big farm, then it's a local mom and pop farm that has invested to have a harvest of oranges ready because Eka ordered it. But they're only going to pay when they approve the product.
Erich Hugo:So I wanted to give these guys some data to protect themselves. That's one of the reasons why I got involved the most. You know it's like. Do you remember? Two years ago, the Evergreen got stuck in the Suez channel?
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, when they had the big problem in Suez.
Erich Hugo:Exactly and who suffered the most.
Henrik Göthberg:No, no, no, no. The farmers, the farmers in India.
Erich Hugo:The farmers in India whose stock just suddenly just spoiled and I mean if you can actually go and read the amount of suicides by Indian farmers in the world is in India is horrendous, it is. I can't believe that. They are people, they and it's, but we want our latest grapes from India, you know, and stuff like that. But the people paying the price for it are the poorest of the poor.
Henrik Göthberg:But so basically, so this is a topic now. So Bodging is leading us into sort of we can innovate and we can do fantastic things by basically rethinking stuff and connecting things bilaterally. If I do this, and with this and this, then all of a sudden I can track something that we never done in a proper way, which is not really hard. It's not really hard.
Erich Hugo:And I mean there's a democratization of technology happening right now For us to build most. That first unit, I think it was a total investment of 7 million crowns in 2013. We got our investors and that same project now will cost us less than 2 million. Less than 2 million, because this is the cost of coming up with those ideas of is really cheap, is really going down. You know, and thanks to things like AI, thanks to things like the multiple, multiple availability of technologies and so on, I mean it's great. I mean I'm waiting. There's a group on the pirate pay that basically makes all the IKEA designs available so that you can really print IKEA things at home if you are so inclined.
Anders Arpteg:You know, but I think that's a good or bad thing.
Erich Hugo:I think it will like go to jail if I say it's a good thing.
Anders Arpteg:I think so. I think it's a good thing.
Erich Hugo:I think that copyright and patents has served its purpose. Really. I think that I'm not saying that it should go away, but I think that the system that is developed in protecting ideas right now maybe worked in the 1920s when it came into power, but it's not.
Henrik Göthberg:Let's go there because this is a good segue, because now we're going from a little bit the border, the background of we are innovating with, creating new stuff.
Erich Hugo:I want to tell you guys about the new company, but we don't have an NDA, but I'll share it with you guys.
Goran Cvetanovski:Share later.
Henrik Göthberg:But let's go from here to patents.
Anders Arpteg:I mean, there are obviously pros and cons with patents and copyrights. But before we do that, but before we do that, now comes, nick.
Henrik Göthberg:I forgot to tell you about this. Eric, it's time for AI and IKEA. I completely forgot, but I'm sure you can manage. We introduced what we called AI News Last season. Everything was spinning a new announcement, a new large language model every week. We said, okay, let's see what is the gossip with the latest news for this week. Excellent, we all have one or two picks each and then we try to do it like speed Like the news. Do you want to?
Anders Arpteg:start Anders. On the same day as we had the last podcast last Thursday, a number of news stories happened. It feels like so old news now, so it's almost embarrassing.
Henrik Göthberg:I'm talking about Sora.
Anders Arpteg:Sora is one, gemini 1.5 is another, vjepa is the third. All of them on.
Henrik Göthberg:I think they're all worthy of a couple of minute snips from you. Anders, Do you want to take one of them? We want to add one. Yeah, which one?
Erich Hugo:That company in Gothenburg that has just let all their creatives go and going over to AI. So a web design company or no video game company in Gothenburg last week let everybody go or not most of their creatives and said we're going to do this with AI because it's better for shareholder value. So that's.
Goran Cvetanovski:So there's a local news that it's going to have global impact.
Henrik Göthberg:Oh that's a good one.
Anders Arpteg:That could be a follow-up, perhaps, to the impact of having these kind of developments happening in the world.
Erich Hugo:It's really happening right now.
Henrik Göthberg:Let's park that back to a deeper topic. But one of Eric's news was did you hear about the Well, for me it's basically.
Erich Hugo:I got involved more in the new Mistral release. I was very impressed with it and I'm so frustrated with them because they cannot. I mean Europeans suck at making consumer products and if you think about how Windows 95 conquered Africa, they didn't go after, they went after making consumers use them. If you want your AI to succeed, get consumers to use it. They will take it into the businesses for you, and I wish that Mistral or some European AI company will bloody make a consumer product that people will be so excited about as open.
Henrik Göthberg:So the core topic here is like it's not as easy as chart GPT to use as a new.
Erich Hugo:It's not at all. Not at all, and it's not as fun.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, but back to your stories, then Anders, which do you prefer, I think you need to make a snippet on all of them and then you can choose one a bit more, but I think they're all worthy of snippets actually.
Anders Arpteg:Yeah, even though we're speaking about the week old news, it's feeling really bad. Okay, but let's do Sora then.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, let's talk. We cannot not talk about Sora.
Erich Hugo:Have you seen it? We have played around with it.
Anders Arpteg:It's been amazing. It's not available yet.
Erich Hugo:No, no no, but the guy sent me videos from it and stuff like that.
Anders Arpteg:It was just amazing, yes, so in short, it's a new text to video model that was released by OpenAI and on the same day as Google made their big release, but it seems like they are competing here, you know, trying to make a new story happening on the same day just to out-compete the other. Anyway, it's amazingly good. It can generate videos up to like minutes with coherence, you know, to the prompt, and the quality of the video is much better than anything else, and it's really hard even to see that it is generated. It really looks like more or less photography or a proper shooting that has occurred?
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, did you hear the gossip that they think it has a lot to do with the Unreal Engine?
Anders Arpteg:that it's yeah, but they have released a technical paper and they literally state in it it is not using a physical engine.
Goran Cvetanovski:And I do believe them.
Anders Arpteg:So I don't believe it, but I do believe they use a physical engine like Unreal to produce training data for it.
Erich Hugo:It's amazing. Can I just add something? Do you guys follow the TV program known as Sveteek, called Svensk Historia? So did you see the last episode?
Henrik Göthberg:No, I didn't see the last one.
Erich Hugo:So in the last episode they actually started because they're telling the history of Sweden and because there's been such a massive evolution of tools that create moving videos. They actually created AI videos in Swenskistoria telling the story of Sweden AI videos and that quality sucked compared to SORA. But do you guys realize the impact this is going to have on the creative industry? I mean, if they can make an engine right now that does three minutes of high quality video, disney is fucked. I mean, anybody will be able to tell a story. You can take a Robert Heinlein science fiction novel, feed it to an AI and it will make you a movie. How epic is that.
Anders Arpteg:It's crazy, and it's just the start of it.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, that is the story, Exactly so you know and you can also argue they're way ahead of anyone else, or?
Anders Arpteg:Yes, but there are competitors like Runway ML, et cetera. They are behind and of course now OpenAI completely shuts down their whole business model. So they will have a hard time to compete with OpenAI going forward. But just to get a bit technical, perhaps because Jan Likkun you know he was a bit, I think, upset because they released the BJEPPA and they did it afterwards and he said the SORA approach was a complete dead end and I think this is actually the mistake of Jan Likkun. So I disagree with Jan Likkun here. She's not often.
Anders Arpteg:It's funny, you're a fanboy, I know, but in this case he said you know they are operating in pixel space and if you actually read the technical report, they are not. So they do have an encoder that moves from pixel space to an internal latent space and they do the generation of the video inside that laven space of a space time frame. So the patches that they take from the images and the video is both on the spatial grid, so to speak, x and Y, but also on the time dimension, and that is the patches they remove and the model has to train, to create and in that way, by moving and doing the inference and prediction and training inside the latent space, they are actually doing exactly what BJEPPA is doing. And I think this is really interesting and I think this is one of the true reasons for them being able to do this at a level that no one else has done before.
Henrik Göthberg:And is that the segue to?
Anders Arpteg:BJEPPA yes, if we want to do it quickly, yes.
Goran Cvetanovski:But they can do a lot of stuff.
Anders Arpteg:You know they can't only do text to video. They can also take another video and continue it. They can merge or morph between two videos. The social implications of this is massive I want to see in order to see some people doing proper videos, sorry movies using Sora.
Erich Hugo:I mean you're going to have a kid up in North Luleå making his first movie. I mean it's great, I love it, I think it's great.
Anders Arpteg:I also like that they do take it serious from an ethical point of view. So now it's not released in the total public, it's released to red teams, red teaming people that are looking into the potential ethical impacts.
Erich Hugo:It's going to be abused. It's going to be abused.
Anders Arpteg:That's just the way it is, but they try to at least minimize it. And that's a police code that they try to right.
Erich Hugo:They'll grok. It's a hand on it, maybe, maybe.
Anders Arpteg:Yeah, that would be fun. Anyway, they try to minimize the ethical consequences Because I think we all realize the potential abuse that this could have.
Erich Hugo:Well, we know it, because in chat GPT right now, when you ask the questions, I'm not allowed to or I'm not. I'm a language model and I can't answer that question. No, you're an American server boy. You don't want to answer that question?
Anders Arpteg:Yeah, well, they do try to the best at their abilities to add God rails to it and they are, you know, at least if you leave them trying to do that as good as they can.
Anders Arpteg:They won't, you know, be 100 percent, of course, but at least they're trying to be ethical here. Ok, let's. Vjeppa is basically the same story. It's a continuation of the JEPPA paper. That generally could put it out like a couple of years ago in 2022, I believe and then they had the IJEPPA for images and now a video, VJEPPA and once again they move from the peak of space into a Latin space to do the inference there, very similar to Sora, and then they can move back.
Henrik Göthberg:So what is the VJEPPA? Is it an article where they detail quite deeply how to do it, or what is the bottom line here?
Anders Arpteg:So this is META, this is Jan Likun, and they put out everything. They have a proper research paper actually explaining how it works and they even have, I believe, the source code animals. I think they are released, they will at least. So they are being much more open with the method, the science, open with the model, open with the code Brilliant.
Erich Hugo:And that is really good, even though. I don't like META, I love that.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, and we will come. This is sort of opening up, yeah.
Anders Arpteg:And they will release it under the common creative license, so free to use for whatever reason. Wonderful.
Henrik Göthberg:Can I now take the next news as a segue? Because at the same time this week, or even I think it was yesterday, Google released Gemma Gemma. Have you heard about Gemma? No, so basically, this is Gemma. This is what they then Google called introducing new state of the art open models. And now it gets tricky, Because then this is sort of Google's play to be more open, right. But now we come into the next and we can think about is this good or how will it work? For me, the news is not so much only about what Gemma can do and all that, but it's actually that actually right now they're starting to become a spectrum on what is open source versus what is called open models, which is actually not. This is not open. It's like open weights Marketing. So basically, in one way, you can fill with the weights in the model, but you don't really get to the real code or the real stuff.
Anders Arpteg:So I think the interesting stuff here is actually, but at least they're going a bit more over Compared to Gemma and I. This is more open than Gemma and I.
Erich Hugo:Yes, at least it's a good direction, it's a good direction, and I appreciate your optimism and your empathy in terms of that. The fact of the matter is that we are at an inflection point now. Now, in the next two to three years, if we don't decide the future of AI within, then, if the European Union can stop being so reactive and rather be more proactive, ai is going to go to the power of a few shareholders.
Anders Arpteg:No question. We've been speaking about the AI divide for so long and I think this acceleration between the divide of the few selected companies, the few super scalars that we have, is just continuing to accelerate, and I'm the first one to say this is not a good direction. We were the ones.
Henrik Göthberg:We actually I don't know, but they've been talking about a discussion of the digital divide, right.
Erich Hugo:But before you go there, I've got one new snippet that I want to add. We'll finish through that.
Henrik Göthberg:Oh, maybe Go ahead.
Anders Arpteg:I think Gemma or Gemma. When I say Gemma, I think about the son of Anarchy.
Henrik Göthberg:They had a mother called Gemma so anyway. Yeah, ok, I think my reflection was interesting. They go in this direction, be aware that there is a distinction between open source and open models and open weights. So it's interesting. Yeah, I didn't want to linger on that more than that.
Erich Hugo:But if you think about it, if you do a search quickly on, did you guys see what NVIDIA released yesterday? Nvidia just released a desktop LLM.
Henrik Göthberg:Oh, the desktop LLM. Yes, the Oratex thing.
Erich Hugo:Yeah.
Anders Arpteg:But that was like a week ago as well.
Erich Hugo:OK, sorry, it's going so fast. Well, I thought that this is just epic. This actually really gets so many more people playing with it. This is bringing LLMs to the masses in a way that none of the other programs are doing it.
Anders Arpteg:They're still logging it into NVIDIA shapes, but still.
Erich Hugo:True, but again I'm going to use your argument. They're trying.
Anders Arpteg:They're moving in the right direction.
Erich Hugo:potentially, but this is what I don't think that people understand. This is a commercial gamer move, not gamer as in games, but this is a commercial decision that's going to determine the future of NVIDIA, because they want people to get into this space in the year and they want to develop year. They don't want people to go to other things because they've got plans.
Anders Arpteg:Nvidia has got plans, every company's got plans and they're fighting for the users now, and they should right yes, as they are forced to.
Henrik Göthberg:So how do you see this game? What are they getting at? They want you to basically build your own LLM PC or use to your own.
Erich Hugo:They want people to botch on their computers at home, exactly the way Windows 95 was released in the world. In 95. Windows basically made an operating system ubiquitous so that all of a sudden, everybody started using that and they started building other things on it. They made, windows became available and all of a sudden, excel became the tool of choice for people to actually manage their companies. And still, after 40 years, every single CFO in the company uses Excel. This is NVIDIA's play to get people to botch on their desktop with their tools, so that in 40 years, people use NVIDIA tools to botch.
Henrik Göthberg:Now this is at our eyes. Right in front of us, we have a Windows 95 move made by NVIDIA in 2013.
Erich Hugo:Business moves don't change.
Anders Arpteg:But NVIDIA has been doing this for a very long time. The whole CUDA environment that is powering the NVIDIA shape has been always in this way. This is how they lock people into the not only hardware, but the software.
Henrik Göthberg:This is another software play to make the hardware work, but isn't it the consumer play that is interesting here?
Anders Arpteg:It's in exactly the same way. I don't think it's changing at all. It's just making sure that NVIDIA can use the hardware in an even broader way.
Erich Hugo:Do you remember? Ok, when did you get involved in the IT world? When did you start?
Henrik Göthberg:For me. Yeah, a little bit more in around the 99. Ok, so in 1980.
Erich Hugo:1980. Wow, you look so young. So I remember in the 90s when people asked you so what do you work with? And you said I work with computers.
Erich Hugo:They went, we got you. It was such an inclusive term of everything. It didn't matter if you were a programmer or if you were techy fixing anything like that. It was the biggest term of saying what you did. I work with computers. And it included the internet, included mainframe computing, which is now called cloud, and so on and so on. And why was it easy for me? It was easy for me. I mean sure I did add a bit of, let's say, windows 3.1 experience before, but Windows 95 just made it so easy and all of a sudden I could build a website. And I built the e-commerce website in 1995 in a small town, in Bloom Fountain. Because it was easy, because I had this platform to make it happen for me. And this is Nvidia's play. Now it's easy. All of a sudden you can have a budget. And another thing is Are you?
Anders Arpteg:happy for that, or do you think it's a bad move?
Erich Hugo:No, I want more people to get involved, because I believe educating people is the key to saving humanity. Educate people as much as you can and even if you have to use bad tools, sometimes like Windows 95, it got so many people. And then Sweden made a great move. When I came to Sweden they had a tax rebate for people getting a PC at home. I don't know if you guys remember that.
Erich Hugo:I didn't guess what I was MPSS and most companies that deals with Dell. But what they managed to do is that they managed to get a PC into basically every single home in Sweden. The difference that that made in Swedish society is Canning it At least Cannot be underrated.
Anders Arpteg:I was still very annoyed when I have to buy a laptop and I pay the Microsoft tax for it. Basically, I'm forced to buy the Windows operating system.
Erich Hugo:Or you never use it, but don't you buy a Linux computer?
Anders Arpteg:I do. This is a Linux computer, but I have to pay Windows license for it anyway, unless you.
Erich Hugo:Well, every iPhone that you pay for, you give some money to Nokia and to Ericsson, and so yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean there's some.
Henrik Göthberg:But let's wrap up the news section. Did we have it? That was the last second news. Go around to what I had in the news.
Goran Cvetanovski:Yes, just two of them that you missed.
Anders Arpteg:actually, that's a crazy week last week it was, but this is, this is super, super new.
Goran Cvetanovski:I don't get why it's like this, but it doesn't matter. So Google had to pause the Gemini AI image generator because, basically it started, it refused to make pictures of white people, so all the historical what is called images of white people were replaced with native Indians and the Coloury one. It went woke on them, so now they're pausing this. This is actually very fresh. It's coming out from today, so it's very good. The second thing is that that's what Hollywood does. So what's the big deal?
Erich Hugo:No, ai is so organic intelligence is allowed to do it, but artificial intelligence is not. Yes, exactly.
Anders Arpteg:We should not treat AI the same.
Goran Cvetanovski:And then this was very interesting for me, so really take a look at the video. Interesting for me. So Reddit, actually says, has come into agreement with Google to sell their data to Google so they can Google constrain their models on Reddit. This has been going on for some time now.
Erich Hugo:This is sick.
Goran Cvetanovski:Yeah, this is sick and yeah let's see how Reddit is going to do after this.
Henrik Göthberg:It's interesting. They're selling their data, which is actually our data.
Erich Hugo:Of course, and like I say that they don't care, let's let somebody. Sorry, gorham.
Goran Cvetanovski:This is the most important line for me, Right when people are talking about like well, you cannot put value on data. Well, actually, you can. So in the contract with all of its owner Google, it worth $60 million per year, according to one of the sources. That is how much the data.
Anders Arpteg:Is it good or bad?
Erich Hugo:I think you can see some positives with this as well. I am a super optimist.
Anders Arpteg:No, but otherwise in a Reddit it would be dead potentially.
Erich Hugo:I think in this way it's actually way for Reddit, but that's the invisible hand. I mean, then Reddit has to die and the new service has to come up.
Anders Arpteg:Yeah, but the new service would be Google and one of the tech giants, but they can feel dying, so that's why it's kind of dangerous unless you can actually have the kind of old content producers out there to be alive, which old content producers Reddit in this case.
Erich Hugo:OK, so all these newish content producers, but otherwise they would be dead.
Anders Arpteg:I mean because otherwise people would just be asking chatty bt or Gemini questions.
Erich Hugo:Why can't Reddit just say, ok guys, we're making money out of you, and here's a credit Credit at Reddit, and here's a store, because you've surfed.
Anders Arpteg:The credit doesn't make money. They are losing money now.
Goran Cvetanovski:They're losing users, but now they're going to make money out of this. Sorry, now they're going to make money out of this.
Anders Arpteg:So that's a good thing, right? That's what I'm saying.
Henrik Göthberg:Good, but they are ultimately making money on me.
Anders Arpteg:Of course, and the alternative to just have Googles and the superscalers of the world to make the money would be even worse.
Erich Hugo:But I think that that's how the invisible end has to work. That's why Google reacted so fast when OpenAI launched. It's because, all of a sudden, here's somebody that's eating their pie, and the nice thing about the world that we live in right now is new companies. Is not that difficult to start With a great idea. It's not that difficult to actually start eating somebody else's pie.
Anders Arpteg:I think the divide is actually increasing. I think it will be increasingly hard. So unless we can actually have some value on data and the superscalers have to pay for it, we will see a very quick death of a lot of companies, and I think this is a good and the quick birth of companies.
Anders Arpteg:I do believe that, but unless you know who can really build a Shats model of the future, it's very few companies that can. This is a big problem of the AI divide going forward, so I think that's why we will see an increased concentration to power, of power to the superscalers, unless we can find a way to spread around. I think this is actually a move that at least tries to. Why is Google?
Erich Hugo:doing this? Why are they doing this?
Anders Arpteg:Because they want to have the data.
Erich Hugo:Why do they want the data To train a model? Why do they want to train the model? No, come on.
Anders Arpteg:Follow me? Yeah, of course, to make money from their shut-offs.
Erich Hugo:Exactly, and they have got a corporate mission that says we have to dominate the global scale.
Anders Arpteg:But you can't really think that the alternative of not paying Reddit is better.
Erich Hugo:No, I'm saying that. So this is a move. What about paying Hendrik for being on Reddit?
Anders Arpteg:I mean good luck doing that, but Reddit would die even quicker, do you remember? Do you remember? Do you see?
Erich Hugo:Reddit would die even quicker than that, but then that's the invisible hand. I mean, then somebody has to come up with new ideas, somebody has to budge for a new idea to make money.
Anders Arpteg:Yeah, but unless you have the proper conditions to do so, we will see an increased concentration of power going very quickly, I think, in the Western world yes, but I think that not in the developing world, not in the global south, I don't think so.
Erich Hugo:I think already there are tools that are. Like I told you about the mobile money a bunch of Zanzibarian fishermen, basically were the first users.
Anders Arpteg:You can build a foundational model in the future.
Erich Hugo:But they didn't care about building a foundational model, because they had a function that they wanted. They wanted to basically sell their fish.
Henrik Göthberg:But let's step out of this conversation because it's really. What we are seeing is then, in one way, we are seeing a concentration of power which is dangerous, and maybe we need to fix some of this in the middle, and maybe Reddit surviving a little bit longer is good. But there's also a bigger picture here that we are really seeing two worlds. Really it's apartheid and now we can link back into the core topic of take apartate.
Goran Cvetanovski:That would look like a All right. So let's finish this with the cherry on the top. Andriy Karpati leaves the open AI for the second time and let's see he already started actually providing two hour courses of how to build infrastructure for LLM, full, just out there, so people can listen.
Anders Arpteg:I'd love to hear the backstory on this.
Goran Cvetanovski:Yeah, but he's preparing for something it's going to be announced very soon.
Anders Arpteg:So let's see. Let's see if he has got it. Either that or he has some ethical problems.
Goran Cvetanovski:But I think that would be the end of the news. Yes, let's put the wrap there.
Henrik Göthberg:Yes, but I think the end of the news is actually the segue into what was like the provocative theme for today. Yes, please. You know, I wrote when I was sort of posting on the show today. You know what are we going to talk about. I sort of posted. Have you heard about the term take apartate? Have you heard?
Erich Hugo:about it.
Henrik Göthberg:Portite. I can't say it, I don't even going to try.
Erich Hugo:You're Germanic like me, you can say it. I partied there, we go.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, but so the core topic here is then like, moving in from the conversation and the you know this discussion we are having, you know is it good or bad? You know that we are sort of ready to just making money on this and this argument yes, it is good because we are seeing a super concentration. Otherwise, more and more in the Google's, you are a little bit like well, but you're it's still not good enough, because in the end, henry should be paid.
Erich Hugo:The thing is, is capitalism at all costs is something that I'm against. I think if you reach your first billion, you get a certificate that says well done, you won the race. You're, you won the human race. Now go forth and be happy and sit on the beach. You know, read it. If the ultimate goals just increase that shareholder value, they are going to fail and they're going to have to sell their data. Ok, because their business model they are basically a discussion forum. Ok, this course is already stealing their customers away from them at a massive, rapid rate. I enjoyed this course much more than I enjoyed read it. I'm trying to test blue sky right now, but Jack Dorsey has never made anything that makes money. You know, which is a fact, Twitter has never made money. People forget that, but he's a genius. The fact of the matter is that I would have in 2001.
Erich Hugo:Right before I joined Nokia, I joined a company here with a very good friend of mine called beans be, NZcom, and these guys are a great idea. Why not pay people for their surfing habits? Because the advertisers on websites right now they make the money via advertising, so why don't we incentivize people to stay longer on websites and then pay them in a currency. You can do a search on beanscom, be, nzcom. This is so why don't we incentivize them to stay on the site and really consume the media and then we pay them in beans, which they then can spend in the store that is also run by us? Okay, so you collected your beans, be, no, not Benz, double, double, e, yep, like that.
Erich Hugo:So beans, and it's not, doesn't exist anymore. It doesn't exist. So so go digital currency there there. Yes, there we go. And it was way ahead of its time, way ahead of its time and basically said let's incentivize people. Now imagine red. It says listen, let's incentivize people to stay on. The longer they spend time on reddit, they are gonna earn some kind of it, see, and we make money on our advertising, but we're gonna put 20% in a kitty to go give back to the consumers, you know, because that that means that we Start getting their loyalty and they can spend it on our store. We will make a profit and stuff like that and up. So other things and stuff like that I Would do that.
Henrik Göthberg:I mean yeah. But so basically in the discussion or argument here is a little bit like well reddit business model is not Strong enough yet, so maybe they, you know.
Erich Hugo:So it's like what is their business model?
Henrik Göthberg:You know so so. So, instead of talking about we don't, I mean like so. There are two different problems here that we're trying to balance like. One is like we have a superpower over here, very, very concentrated, honest is objecting or thinking this is scary. I agree with on this, on this. So basically, everything else does sort of, can sort of dampen that, like like let reddit get paid and you take it.
Erich Hugo:Well, in reality, we need to dampen that, but we need to dampen it with with a Solid how do we empower reddit, not to put them in a situation where they have to sell their data for 60 million dollars? So obviously the business model, if they're not making money right now, is not working, and they've got a massive server form that's offering incredible amounts of pages to people to view, and and so that business model is not obviously not working.
Anders Arpteg:But I believe that business model is basically ads and I think they have some kind of premium membership thing that you can pay for.
Erich Hugo:Reddit gold. I mean what? What Rancous ideas.
Anders Arpteg:What would be the alternative for them?
Henrik Göthberg:Beans, beans, idea beans like they need to read, re-innovate and basically figure out another way where basically the you know you guys should interview and get on this part.
Anders Arpteg:Sorry, I'm the beans I didn't I show. Sorry, I didn't really listen for. If you were to describe it very like briefly what the beans was basically a.
Erich Hugo:Some investors put a lot of money in a kitty and they said listen. So if your website is making money on advertising, right Beans will get people to stay there, and if a person stays there for five seconds, People stay there, Well great. Good content, you know.
Erich Hugo:Beans provide content for the no no no, you, as, let's say, dog is near there, or New York Times, you write an article that's a seven minute to read article and if you actually finish the article you get a reward. Yeah, and that reward was beans. And then you can basically, and you've got your account at the beans, and this was before cryptocurrencies even entered the space and and then you get your reward, and then you could go to the bean store and buy stuff. You know that might. You know whatever. You know, they had high-fives, that CDs, they had everything like as mini-Amazon.
Henrik Göthberg:So they wanted to reward you for your surfing behavior. They wanted to reward you for being able to track your surfing behavior.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, and this was amazing. I was like, wow, you know, why don't more people get on? Obviously didn't share all this, didn't like that, you know. So the idea didn't take off. But the actual core idea was brilliant Let people be part of the solution of solving media websites Crisis, that the readers help them, otherwise it's not gonna fly. I mean, you can't make enough. Google has ruined the advertising market At infinite them. It's never gonna change back. It's never gonna change back to what it was before.
Erich Hugo:Google started, basically micro taking micro transactions for advertising a company, a traditional company like bonnier or Battlesman, or. They never Understood micro transactions. They never understood how to make money on a small thing because they the way that they sold advertising is like Big campaigns and big deals and stuff like that. And here comes Google and they just chop everything into small pieces and they make money on the process rather than at the end product. You know, so the whole process is monetized for Google. And here beans came. The beans was actually before Google and they said well, listen, we know that the media industry is struggling right now, so let's incentivize people to finish articles.
Anders Arpteg:But it it. Why didn't it work, you think?
Erich Hugo:I think it was way too far into ahead of the future. I really think so, timing wise, the moment.
Anders Arpteg:Dawkins didn't hit. It would take them as example that they need to make money somehow right. Otherwise they would don't die. Every company, basically, are forced to make money right, yeah, yeah. And if they can, they can obviously make money on ads right or some kind of subscription. Yeah that's basically the two main thing. What's have you seen? How can they make money from beans?
Erich Hugo:I mean still, I mean Well they can basically then guarantee that a person is interacting with the advertisement for seven minutes during the article.
Anders Arpteg:It's actually right there, but then it's back to ads and it's an ad format.
Erich Hugo:But then they create that and they say, okay, here is a bean for you, mr Consumer or Mrs Consumer, go to the Dawkins near to Ford slash marketplace and spend this money and You'll only get 20% of the beans that you can use to buy this new mobile phone, and the rest you can. And then they make a Profit on the mobile phone that they sell. You know the? You do. You guys get Lidl's Reclam blood. Have you seen what they sell also in Lidl's reclam? They've got partnerships with travel agencies. Do you remember Ellos? Yes, british company from Boros. Yeah, ellos sell clothes. And all of a sudden you get like in the same package. You get like an years and advertisement for a holiday in Greece and year is high-fives and years this and that and you go.
Anders Arpteg:What same people you have to you have to not say we can stop this topic, but I think it's basically the same kind of ad broker service that we do have for ads. It's basically a broker in the middle.
Erich Hugo:But but before we talk, stop it. Can you just open a website called bit refill? Have you guys seen bit refill, a Swedish FinTech company? That is Bit BIT refill and this is shout out to Sargei Kotliar, who is a genius. There we go.
Erich Hugo:This guy is cleaning it up and he's underneath the radar here in the Swedish tech tech scene. Nobody really knows him, but he started off by by actually offering Non-connected people the ability to earn Bitcoin via their mobile phones and get paid in Bitcoin. And then he created a marketplace where you could spend your bitcoins that you earn via his tools, and I don't know. You should check this company out. I mean, they are cleaning up globally, they are and it says and he's this unassuming guy that sits here you got an idea?
Erich Hugo:Wait a minute. Why don't we just pay people in bitcoins or parts of bitcoins, and then we get them to spend it at our place? Voila, and he's got a global website. It's a marketplace. It's a marketplace, but they also incentivize people to earn bitcoins, because do you guys realize that the server farms in Bangladesh or when people just sit and look at ads you know stuff like that those people get paid in Bitcoin. They don't get it and they don't have a place to. And then he sold airspace of airtime on mobile phones, so you earn a Bitcoin and then you can top up your mobile phone card, and that's how we started with the idea, and now I think he's one of the His website is probably. His service is one of the global Bitcoin genius services that is really pumping it out.
Anders Arpteg:You should see what the evaluation is right now but I wouldn't have my breath for this, but okay.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, but could we.
Henrik Göthberg:Could we then sort of segue back into one of the key themes here? It's a little bit like coming into this topic from.
Anders Arpteg:I'm trying to set it up again, should we do the open source of patent question, or which one are you thinking that's?
Henrik Göthberg:yeah, or maybe we should move there first then yeah, okay, should I try to frame it some yeah yes, please do, thinking about how.
Anders Arpteg:But okay, we can see pros and cons with patents and open source and proprietary. You know software and should we open source the Gemini and Chatty bt and not? And? And I think we can list pros and cons with each approach here. But Let me perhaps open a question to you, enrish or Irish, in a way like this, and I'm going to take a side here, even though I'm very much pro open source, I've engaged patents in general, but I'm still going to take the other side here for a minute. Yeah, yeah, so let's say that you have to develop a new corona vaccine and it costs a lot of money, like billions of dollars. They spend a lot of time Developing this and they got the vaccine out and suddenly someone else steals that vaccine and sells it for a tenth of the price, and the whole research you did to actually develop it Never gets funded back. What do you think that's a good thing?
Erich Hugo:or no, it's not a good thing.
Anders Arpteg:How should we be able to do like serious research and development work and and still get recognized for it, without having is financial recognition the only thing that is the valid currency of recognition.
Erich Hugo:Sorry, what if financial Recognition is that the only currency that we have in recognition?
Anders Arpteg:I don't know, you tell me, but how should we be able to develop vaccines and other type of Products? Requires a lot of research.
Erich Hugo:I have gotten no idea, but I, yeah, I think that we're living in a world right now where you know about abundance theory, you know Elon Musk is Usually speak about that all the time.
Anders Arpteg:Oh, so please describe it so.
Erich Hugo:Elon Musk's Favorite science fiction writer is a guy called Ian Banks, who is also my favorite science fiction writer. Is something that in common, I think, in banks was very big in in South Africa, maybe, maybe not. He created a universe called the culture and where everything is available and everything is easy to produce and stuff like that and so on and and.
Erich Hugo:Therefore there was no need for copyright because everybody can produce everything you know, and I interesting times gang is actually named after an AI in the accession, which is a book by Ian banks, and if you look at the SpaceX Starships, they've all got in banks airships names, you know.
Anders Arpteg:So I Think that we need to start thinking like an abundance theory, civilization but before an abundance in Elon Musk mind, at least the way I Think about it, is that we we have so cheap production, we have so cheap innovation, we have so cheap Energy that we will have abundance of whatever needs we have as a human. But we're not there yet. At least I think.
Erich Hugo:I think we are there, yet I I think what's happening right now is that we're being constrained because we're thinking binary about it. We're thinking in terms of there has to be something. It's either copyrighted or it's not. Whereas I don't want to play on that playing field, I don't want to say that those are the alternative.
Anders Arpteg:How should we develop a vaccine then, if we didn't have patterns?
Erich Hugo:Well, I mean I, I think that if there's Existential threat to humanity, then humans need to get the shit together and start working together to solve problems, regardless of the financial reward. I mean, this is an existential threat, corona was an existential threat, and then let's take a simple the theater ever ransomware crisis.
Anders Arpteg:Let's say a company develops Cyber security defense system that is awesome to detect the ransomware, but it takes like years and years of work to develop that software. Now a company then sells that software but are forced to open source the software so that everyone can have it. How will they ever make the money back for developing this kind of awesome cyber defense software?
Erich Hugo:Well, I think, if you look at when I created most and I told you earlier that it would took us about seven million Swedish grants to develop the company and now developing the same type of company, less than three million. So there's this. There's a. We need to basically maybe make a rule of Of saying, okay, after a certain period of time when the technology that was used to create this has matured and the prices dropped by 70%, then the patents should be opened up.
Anders Arpteg:Okay so, but it's okay to have patents. At least you know.
Erich Hugo:Well, well, if you're gonna tell me that my option is that I have to have patents, I mean the fact of the matter is, is I don't, I don't think we should have patents, but if, if it, if we live in a world where patents has to be, is like saying, listen, and when you started most, I mean we didn't patent anything on most. Because what did we have? We had a GSM Module, we had a couple of sensors and we had a web interface. I should have patented because there were quite a few things that were quite unique. But if you, after 10 years, some Judge, arbitrary judge, can, economic judge can say okay, the market is now matured to a certain extent that the patent value can go down, so maybe the value of the patent can go down incrementally, you know, in terms of you know Elon Musk and Tesla, for example.
Anders Arpteg:They are open, sourcing all their patterns wonderful right I love it. Why do you think they do that?
Erich Hugo:Because he's South African. No, but I mean seriously. I mentioned Mark shuttle with earlier. Was it on the pod before the pot? You know, with very sign he started Ubuntu. Yeah, I just South African. And so you've got these two South African billionaires who basically believe in open source. Okay, they go to different paths towards it. Mark shuttle with started Ubuntu and, and Elon Musk is open sourcing these patents like good Swedes.
Anders Arpteg:I mean Volvo giving away their three-point patent for but you really think they're doing it for altruistic reasons.
Erich Hugo:Well, I think Elon Musk is most definitely doing it for altruistic reasons, because I have another theory. He's. I think that Elon Musk actually does want to save the planet.
Erich Hugo:Yes, I actually actually think that he does want to get to Mars, and Mark shuttle, worth, growing up in South Africa, created Ubuntu. Because he said that and Mark, forgive me if you're listening, I did send him the link. He said that why? I mean the tool is the operating system. Why should it be so? We don't want people the tool to cost money because we want better educated people. So give the tools to the people to become better educated. You know so. I do think that was also quite.
Henrik Göthberg:I think you know but the tricky point is, of course, the commercial reality that everybody needs to make a living in and, like I think you said it sometimes, that you know of the two Entrepreneurs coming out of South Africa that really is a bit more than them. But that was too big as one you're, you're on, you're on the map, mark camp. I'm, I'm.
Erich Hugo:I Understand mark more. Elon is on the spectrum and I think that he is so go orientated that it bloody hurts. It's, it's.
Henrik Göthberg:He's got nothing that stands between him, yeah, but but the core topic here now. In one way it seems like also mark has altruistic Motives, but of course also has commercial motives in order to make this business.
Erich Hugo:He's made a billion. How did he make his?
Henrik Göthberg:billion. He sold his company to very site. So the core topic was that he did. They developed Ubuntu on top of mine, so how was it?
Erich Hugo:No, so. So he had a company in the 90s that made security certificates in Cape Town and his garage he was making security certificates for websites and he sold that to very sign that basic I think it was very sign for billion because everybody wanted secure websites and he made billions. He's got much less money now because he spent quite a lot of money in getting Ubuntu off the ground, you know, and he's invested. But I can understand and now, what is?
Henrik Göthberg:what is the commercial model? Now for it.
Erich Hugo:But because, even well, he's got an investment company where invest in ease. I know that he's got and this is a shout out to knife capital in South Africa where they invest actually that money that he made in good African companies that are pushing the dial, you know. But one thing that I do want to say, which is a very personal thing for me, is that we, as Westerners, we need to make critical choices in our life the whole time, and in order to make a critical choice, we need to be educated, and in order to be educated, we need tools. We can't be educated just by being In in the universe in the Western world anymore. We need tools to be educated. So if you're gonna restrict the tools to educate people, then you can have dumb consumers, and do you want to live in a society that has dumb consumers? I want as many people to be computer literate as possible, because that's the first entry point to bettering your life but but I buy it 100%.
Henrik Göthberg:I joke on an ideology basis, but ultimately I Think it's. I think it's a dangerous Retoric here, because I think there's super important to to highlight that open source is also a business play. So if you make open source like we all need to do open source, we need to buy open source and we need to do all this For the greater good, but everybody gets gonna be a ruin in the process. It's gonna be a hard sell, I think. I think it's better to then recognize how do we make money based on open source and why is that such a great model?
Erich Hugo:But that's the layer on top of open source exactly, so let's talk about that.
Henrik Göthberg:So so people see the full picture.
Erich Hugo:I mean, you've got some great open source companies out there that are really, I mean, one of my favorites is YOLA in Finland. I don't know if they still exist, but YOLA really pushed they. So the operating system that we made for the Nokia media terminal in 2001 turned into Migo, which was bought by, by Samsung, which is now powering every single Samsung Samsung Telephone, ah, television. So if you buy a Samsung television, smart TV right now, it's it's got a operating system which is based on the Nokia Migo system originally. But YOLA went and they continued creating mobile phone operating systems, open source mobile phone operating systems. But they're not that successful because what Anush mentioned earlier about the big player, google, is just forcing everybody into their services offering and Apple. So a clean operating system has got very little value because you can't have your Google Maps and you can't have your Gmail and stuff like that Until that problem is solved. And how can we get good local services on a mobile phone? But there's power.
Erich Hugo:The mines in South Africa, I mean they are using open source quite a lot. I can give you a horror. So did you see what happened in Birmingham with using Oracle, which is not open source? Did you guys see. So Birmingham city council has gone bankrupt. The second largest city in the UK has gone bankrupt because they decided to have proprietary software running their services and the people that were consulting for them implementing Oracle system. They just kept on invoicing and the city just kept on paying. But if they had a good open source solution, which was so you can, if you do a search on Google News, you'll say it. You'll find it If you do go to News.
Anders Arpteg:Up to the left or whatever.
Erich Hugo:So I mean this is what happens with a social service I mean, a city council is a social service right, and they've gone bankrupt and this is taxpayers' money because they've gone into proprietary software.
Anders Arpteg:I mean open source. Don't you think there is any reason for proprietary software to be out there?
Erich Hugo:Is there-.
Anders Arpteg:Should every piece of product be open source?
Erich Hugo:On knives and forks, proprietary software or hardware. I mean, we live in a world where software is so big as now, it's so part of our lives, now that you?
Anders Arpteg:know. I went to DeepMind once and listened and asked the question why do you publish the research, the articles that you have? That explains everything, how you do the data, the models and everything. And they said something interesting and, I think, very profound, which is basically when we publish the article, it's gone probably two years since we actually started working with this. At the time someone else reads it and starts to potentially make use of the research article or the open source software, they're probably four years behind and at four years ahead, we already have products that we make money from that are so much better than anyone else. We have nothing to lose and everything to gain by open sourcing it, because they will help us to improve our own software and we will still be ahead.
Erich Hugo:No, but our whole economic system is geared not to let open source survive. I mean, this is a-.
Anders Arpteg:But this is a good thing, I think, right. I mean, I think that's why so many people are open sourcing. I think that's why Elon Musk are doing it and it's because they know that. You know, they can't have BMW just taking their patterns and copying it, because they are so much further ahead already.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, but I think that's a great, great reference. I mean, for me it's a question of, if I come from, how much open source is actually meant for the continent of Africa in lifting people out of abject poverty, abject poverty which Windows 95 never could have done, Never could have done. Did Mark Shutterworth make money out of basically giving all the kids in Kenya an access to a laptop? I don't know. I doubt it, but at least Kenya has got a whole generation of computer literate kids now that can make critical decisions and actually push the economy further. You have to remember that one of the challenges that we have with patents is also is that we live in four month cycles. In the Western world let's share all the reports all the time. So if you don't show profit within four months with anything that's horrible Then they shut it down.
Anders Arpteg:I mean we-, not every company operates like that, it's actually a private company. No, no, not everyone for sure.
Erich Hugo:No, no, but private companies I found that are so family owned. I think longer into the future.
Anders Arpteg:And there's this company I'm an even Spotify, and I think most tech companies are not operating on a quarterly basis. They are working on like five plus year basis.
Erich Hugo:I hope so, because I've seen some horror stories of good projects.
Anders Arpteg:No one will survive if you just operate.
Henrik Göthberg:But I think this is super important to understand. And now we started from the open source angle. The other way into this was actually starting from the tech apartheid angle, and then it's moving into open source as one of the key solutions. Because I mean, like, this is a layered discussion, because at some point in time we understand that we need open source as a way to basically not as the only means to sort of keep the world not so divided. Or like, if you go, if you take the other extreme, this argument, say let's make everything proprietary, let's ban open source. Open source is dangerous With AI now it's super dangerous with open source, because then the bad guys can have a problem.
Goran Cvetanovski:But if you take that argument, and take that to extreme where does that?
Henrik Göthberg:lead us to Like if everything, if we were sort of arguing for the proprietary world 100%, that would basically mean back to more or less tech and AI apartheid, where you get to a point where a large portion of the world has no means to sort of innovate, yeah, and also they've got no doors into that world, do I don't?
Erich Hugo:I mean? Remember in the beginning of the pod I mentioned the game werewolves? The informed few will always defeat the uninformed many. So the people that and this is why I'm wearing this Because the informed few in the Republic of Rome and before Julius Caesar took over, they hoarded all the information.
Anders Arpteg:They hoarded all the information, all the tools, completely agree If we just continue that discussion. We had a lot of discussion I think let's post podcasts as well about should we open source AI models or not. Should open AI be open or should Google be completely open with Gemini and so forth, and we came to or at least one discussion is I at least believe that absolute openness is very dangerous, and if you and we had to who decides?
Anders Arpteg:I'm okay, but let me give an example. We started speaking about this. If we have a loaded gun and put it in availability to a small child, is that a good openness that we have?
Erich Hugo:Yeah, that's the argumentation Guns don't kill people, people kill people. I mean, that's such a big question that I don't know, but I do know what is more dangerous is withholding information from people.
Anders Arpteg:But there are limits to it.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, yeah, but you withhold information from people and you make it a lower class that are feeling disenfranchised. You have revolutions. That is history. Is that is so true?
Anders Arpteg:But the question is no, is not as easy as everything should be open.
Erich Hugo:No, it might not be. I mean, what about the Swedish guy that built a nuclear bomb in his kitchen a few years ago? I mean-.
Anders Arpteg:I mean you say you can argue, you can follow from that. If you do agree that you shouldn't give children loaded guns, which I think most people agree with, then the question can be okay, let's take your hand Should you have grown, give grownups loaded guns though. I don't think so either, but that's another question.
Erich Hugo:I think it's more okay than children at least.
Anders Arpteg:Then the question then becomes if you have a super powerful AI model let's think in the future of five years like more or less AGI, without any restrictions on it. You can ask it anything and it will help you to do so. It will if you ask it to how do I break into this banks encryption system and steal all the money? They will help you to do so.
Erich Hugo:Yeah, yeah.
Anders Arpteg:Is that a good thing?
Erich Hugo:No, but like I mean, if you have the laws of the land, I mean there is a criminal penalty for illegal information. I mean, do you guys remember the cookbook?
Anders Arpteg:Is that okay then? So if we just have the law of some things are illegal, should we then give all the people all the guns in the world?
Erich Hugo:Well, you can't have different laws for online life than you have offline life.
Anders Arpteg:That's not my question.
Erich Hugo:But I mean the fact of the matter is is that if you put restrictions on the open AI model not open AI the company saying, listen, you're not allowed to give information on how to construct guns to rob banks. That is a law of the land I mean I can get if I plan a robbery.
Anders Arpteg:It should be limited to that, then. So, if you have a law of the land saying you're not allowed to give information about how to build bombs or guns. Yeah, I think the law of the land is the baseline, then you should have that in the model.
Erich Hugo:That's the baseline.
Anders Arpteg:But if you do open source it, then it would be very easy to remove that.
Erich Hugo:So that's gonna happen in any case. It's going to happen in any case. So the people that are I'm not saying it's okay, but the fact of the matter is that the genie is out of the bottle and those are.
Anders Arpteg:Should it be? Even though some people may be able to fix it, shouldn't all companies have the ethical responsibility to at least make it as hard as possible?
Erich Hugo:Yes, of course Digital philosophy officers get them on board to put that question together.
Anders Arpteg:Okay, so absolute openness is not something to be strife for.
Erich Hugo:Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from responsibility. You know, that's something that people don't understand.
Anders Arpteg:I don't think that's sufficient right. I mean, if a small child or a psych you know, some person with some psychological problem are having access to guns, I think it's the person that makes that gun available's fault, potentially.
Erich Hugo:Right. The person that wants to kill another person is going to kill a person.
Anders Arpteg:I think we have more responsibility than that. I think we should not allow children, for example, to have loaded guns. But you can't simply say it was that child's fault.
Erich Hugo:You can get that guy that I mentioned, that sociologist in the 50s people follow orders. They don't think for themselves.
Anders Arpteg:But it doesn't relieve the responsibility of the parents or the society to make it hard for For a person to abuse information right.
Erich Hugo:I think people are going to abuse it in any case, but it does not. We should make it hard, we should make it hard, we should make it hard, but the benefits that we are going to get from having an educated population is going to be epic, Absolutely no question about it. And I think that open-sourcing AI to the world so that Senzu Matretua in Zululan can actually build a new radiator for his family farm to make sure that his family is fed and you have billions of those guys doing that and girls doing that that is 10 times better for me than maybe it's also what you view on humanity. I mean, I believe we're like a true detective. We're sentient meat sacks.
Henrik Göthberg:But I think I want to wrap this topic up and take the last topic into more philosophical topics, because when I sit and listen to your discussion here, it's very soon very, very little with tech and AI and we're coming into fundamentally philosophical ideologies and we're coming into a topic where basically the only way to get this right is to get the philosophy and the ideology right. And I know you actually you posted an article not so long ago. In the future, we need chief philosophy officers.
Henrik Göthberg:And literally I think the same way is just listening to this conversation about open source and how to think about that and, by the way, we are steelmanning. We're all thinking for open source, but we're wanting a good debate here.
Anders Arpteg:It's so hard, man, I'm searching for it as well. Just to make it clear yeah, it's to make it super clear.
Henrik Göthberg:Anders was steelmanning you hard right now. It's interesting because I usually hear him steelmanning on the other side. That was fun, but this becomes very, very philosophical topics big, big, big questions. So could you elaborate a little bit about both how you've been, how you come up with that sort of your view on this? It's clear you've taken that into your journey.
Erich Hugo:Well, I mean, it's become more crucial in the last 10 years Because I've been working with AgriTech so much and I'm involved and I see how our food is produced and I see what.
Henrik Göthberg:We didn't even talk about DeltaTrack yet.
Erich Hugo:No, no no, but now we're going to do it Because DeltaTrack is open. Well, not DeltaTrack, my foray into AgTech. I mean, you have to remember, I'm a web guy originally, that went to hardware, that went to the cloud and now I'm in AgTech Because it's fun, you know. But now I've actually got a purpose. A farmer in South Africa Okay, so let's explain the process of I want to IKA in Vestros decides that this is January now, and in August, the first week, they've got a thing called the commercial calendar when they basically planned the whole year ahead Because I worked in the digital retail as well when they plan quite a bit far ahead and saying that month, that week, we're going to have a sale of oranges, right, so what happens then? Well, they phone an importer in Helsingborg and say okay, we need two containers of oranges delivered to us in Vestros on the 2nd of August. Okay, this is now in January. And the importer goes great, I'll source that for you. He goes to an exporter in South Africa or in Argentina, or whatever. He says listen, in six months' time we need two containers of oranges at IKA, can you commit to that? And the farmer goes okay, I'll commit to that. Okay, oh no, the exporter says I'll commit to that.
Erich Hugo:Then the exporter drives to a farm somewhere in India, outside Delhi, and he says okay, which farmer wants to take this deal? And they put it all up there. Remember, not one cent has changed hands here, not one person has gotten paid yet. Okay, the farmer then pays for labor, so that's a cost that he has to take. The advantage that the Third World has is that labor is cheap. Okay, then the compost materials to grow these oranges, then the regulations the EU and American and Chinese regulations. It's very expensive and everything is carried basically by the farmer. You know, all that is carried by the farmer. Then in June he harvests and he puts all that stuff in the container and the exporter picks it up and puts it on the ship and six weeks later I mean most of the fruit and veg that we eat here in Sweden is about six weeks minimum old, I mean it's been in controlled environments and then gets picked up at Alsonbori, driven to Vestros and they open the container.
Erich Hugo:We don't want this, you know, and that is basically the system of where the whole topic idea comes from. So all of a sudden, this farmer in, or producer in, the developing world has been placed at risk Okay, completely placed a risk and that made me think in the last 10 years about the ethics of, not logistics, but the systems that we have in the technology systems. How are we going to make this a better system? How are we going to do that? And it made me realize that as long as you have a company where shareholder value is the key component, you're not going to fix it. You're not going to fix it because the shareholder does not care about a farmer in Africa going bankrupt. The shareholders in IKA and Vestros don't care if a farmer in Africa goes bankrupt. They want the oranges, okay. So how can we actually get IKA to care about farmers in Africa? You know, the guys who's producing is taking all this risk the whole time.
Erich Hugo:Right now, all the technology systems is usually managed by a guy called the CTO. What qualifies a CTO to make the decision of a farmer in Africa? I mean, they don't have the tools to do that. They've got a feeling, maybe, but philosophy is a science. It's a real incredible science, and most tech heads that I know laugh at me when I say that. But I've got Mika in my camp. I mean Mika Klingvall, and I don't agree. It's a full-on, full-blooded sociology. How do we get our CTOs to care about that, to care about the effect of their IT systems? You know, because we can give them the DeltaTrak device to get data about the quality of the product, to make sure that the goods are protected. But at the end of the day, we need somebody that asks the CEO of a company listen, what is your goal? What is your goal? Is it just basically to have dividend payouts every single?
Henrik Göthberg:year? Capitalism at all costs? Or is it capitalist, or is it social capitalism? And then the goal is not so clear anymore. It's more dimensions.
Erich Hugo:I think the thing is that, like I said, billionaires have a certificate that you've become a billionaire Congrats. You know you won humanity. But the fact of the matter is that your company will last longer if your employees and suppliers are happy. Okay, they will last longer. Your staff will be happier. Your supply chains. You're going to have an effect on a person on the other side of the world that you'll never meet, which is just a positive thing, but companies don't care about that, because we want our avocados, we want our oranges and we want our guavas. You know and you don't think about it, and this is now an old debate in the tech industry. I mean, the tech industry has been talking about children in China making iPhones and people being working 24 hours, but now it's coming to AgTech. How is the other thing that's shocking to me? Is that not shocking to me? But it's truly scary. Currently, the agricultural industry is probably the largest employer in the world. I mean, more people in the world work in agriculture than any other industry.
Erich Hugo:I might be wrong, but you can fact check me there. But it is huge. All of a sudden you've got a robot that can basically do the labor on a farm, you know, and an AI robot that can basically come to an orange and say, okay, this one's not ready to be picked. I'm going to go to the next one. Robots can do that today and the shareholder driven companies they are. Let's get those robots in there because we won't have to pay for people anymore. But can you imagine, when farms start becoming robotified, the social impact of having millions, billions of people suddenly lose their jobs? Not suddenly, maybe over two to three years? What do people should do about it?
Anders Arpteg:Because I guess you believe it will happen sooner or later. Right, Educate.
Erich Hugo:Educate, educate, educate. How will that help the farmers? We know it's going to happen right now. This is something that Sweden does very well. I mean, like when I came to Sweden, everybody wanted to be studied to be an engineer. Why? Why, when, in the 90s, when I came, everybody wanted to study some kind of engineering. But how does it help the farmers of India, or something? Well, the farmers of India might get their eyes opened if they're educated that there are other career opportunities.
Erich Hugo:So they will move to other avenues and have a general agenda. Or a general AI engineer or something Whatever, but to have a gentle transition to the industry. I can tell you that the agricultural industry is coming in, and usually it's when the farmers get angry that real revolutions happen.
Henrik Göthberg:This is a little bit like you're wearing your shirt today. It's like don't expect this to work, because if you don't fix this in a smart and gentle way, that is sort of more long term fixing down the line. I mean, like what you're saying is it's not like we don't think this is going to be a robotics picking oranges. That's going to happen. We know it's going to happen. Exactly it's how do we get there? In what way did we get there? How many people we did, with Trampalon in the process. That's going to either be a quite happy society or it is going to be a revolution long before we even get there Because humans revolt.
Erich Hugo:That's something that we know is going to happen. We know it's going to happen. Why did in the 1970s?
Henrik Göthberg:So, if we are, blind to how, what we are doing now as a CTO and putting in robotics, if we are blind to how that will work and what is the knock on effects, something else is going to bite us. Of course, and used to make clear. It's not about if we should do it, it's about how we should do it.
Erich Hugo:And also then giving people options. I mean, I'm thinking now coming back to this. We see Julia Caesar. I mean everybody's got their visions about who Julia Caesar was, but he was a Trump of his day and he basically managed the discontent of people. There was a mass amount of people in the Republic that were unhappy. There's a massive amount of people in Europe and in America right now that's unhappy and all we're doing is kind of like ignoring this. Why are we not asking why are they unhappy? We just get annoyed that they're going to joining right wing parties and stuff. But there's a specific reason. My theory is that it's education, because if you cut down on education and people become less critical and they believe society just needs to give to them the whole time and everything, there has to be bread in the bakery in the morning. You know that type of thing. But if you educate a person to ask why is there bread in the bakery in the morning, they're going to make more wise decisions, you know how do you make people more educated?
Erich Hugo:Give them free, open source operating systems tomorrow. Tomorrow, my older brother is really should be the one here because he's one of my biggest inspirations. I mean, he made sure in the school where his children were that there was a data room and installed by Ubuntu with Ubuntu to basically make sure that they're in the west side of Johannesburg in South Africa. All those kids got access to computer schooling. I was so surprised.
Anders Arpteg:I think the big like chatbot LM foundation model movement will also help with education. I hope so. I hope so. I mean I think it could be a really big boost.
Erich Hugo:I think it will be so amazing. I mean, my mom was an author. You can check her other books on on Amazon and I mean she's using AI so much in order to write her books, I mean, and she's also teaching things. But she's she's a linguist, so she's very much into the language of AI. But I think that education is the key thing and Sweden has been doing it right for so many years and now it's a bit shaky. There's a bit of shaky. Education should not be. It should not be restricted. It should not be restricted. You cannot basically have specific schools that have got better results than other schools. You need as many people as educated as possible. But it's sourcing education. Open sourcing education is the way to go.
Henrik Göthberg:Yeah, so open sourcing education, and now it's sort of tying it back down to let's not steal my mouth like the open source conversation here is actually about figuring out basis models where we open source, we can be inclusive with the, with the, with the full view of the AI divide, so to speak, not only the we have the divide from us versus the super tech giants, but then we have the divide to the real developing countries. So, working with business models, that allows us to open source, so we can get as inclusive as possible, and then, of course, build business models on top of all that, as we always done how Linux works, how Linux work with red and love it and all that love it.
Erich Hugo:So just I think that within the next technology or an AI is becoming such, it's becoming knives and forks for society. Nobody, everybody's got access to knives and forks, you know, and every everybody can learn to choose. Either I'm going to eat with this AI model with the pins from Asia, or I'm going to eat with a knife and fork. But the technology is available to everybody. And then they can make a choice about the technology and some people will say, well, I want a fancy fork with golden graving with that. That's fine.
Henrik Göthberg:But we're running out of time, but I can't help myself. I need to go.
Anders Arpteg:I know we continue after the after the after work.
Henrik Göthberg:But if we go down this path and we follow you in this argument of open source, open sourcing, education and seeing sort of, if we don't do that, it leads to revolution. How should we ask, how should the regulators, the politicians, the EU, the Swedish government think about investing and supporting AI?
Erich Hugo:then Well, the first thing that the Swedish government can, can do tomorrow, and the European Union government, whatever it's called raise the salaries of teachers tomorrow. That has to happen. Make education what it was 100 years ago. Make it like, wow, you know, getting educated is cool. And then you say, ok, here's your tools. You can go the open AI way, or you can use minstrel, which is an open source alternative, or blah, blah, blah, blah and stuff like that. But these are the tools. But put education and Sweden has been doing this. I don't understand why Sweden is moving away from it, because it's worked for Sweden. It has worked for Sweden. It's made this little.
Henrik Göthberg:Isn't that interesting, you see, when you come, with your eyes on South Africa, to Sweden. And you lived here now for how many years? Twenty-five years.
Erich Hugo:Twenty-five years.
Henrik Göthberg:So you have seen actually you have seen from another end of the society how Sweden was and what we've been doing. Great, and right now it's a little bit like what the fuck are you doing?
Erich Hugo:What are you doing? You have it.
Henrik Göthberg:You follow the path.
Erich Hugo:I mean, I was thinking the other day, why, in heaven's name, do you know why Sweden had so many patterns? At the end of the 19th century, the patterns that came out of Sweden was mind-blowing. I mean, it was the zip, it was the safety pin, it was matches, it was the pallet. It was just amazing. And there's a beautiful, beautiful documentary about it on YouTube called Svensk Economic Miracle Economic Miracle and I seriously recommend anybody to go and watch it, because when they made education compulsory in Sweden, one generation later those people were educated and started making really great inventions. So Albert Nobel's generation and Alim Ericsson's generation was because they invested in education. In 1842, I think, when education became compulsory here. Those guys was the product, the result, and that's what Sweden needs to do and that's what they did in the Second World War.
Henrik Göthberg:And then, of course, putting the AI spin on this is, of course, to have an AI literate, ai-ready education. We maximise, we're going to educate on this stuff that we know is the future, of course.
Erich Hugo:I am amazed that I, as an immigrant to Sweden, had to go to my children's school and start computer education and programming education, because the school didn't offer it. I was like there was no computer education at school. It's a Swedish school. There isn't computer education. I mean, maybe now there is Some of them have.
Henrik Göthberg:Some of them have For the last 20 years at least.
Erich Hugo:It is. But you know what my kids were. They were in the English school and they did.
Henrik Göthberg:I think the point is it's different, right? I think different municipalities look at this differently, and some schools have iPad and some don't.
Erich Hugo:In the 80s it's really different. In the 80s in South African schools we had a daily 30-minute class in computer management and computer usage.
Anders Arpteg:I mean, I guess I so much agree with what you are saying here as well, and I think Sweden's secret source to success in the past has been really the most important education we have been having.
Erich Hugo:Education and collaboration, those two Maybe.
Anders Arpteg:Really and I hope that we will get back to that track and really invest in people and education, because we will so much profit from that investment.
Erich Hugo:Maybe not in our generation, but our kids' generation. They will survive. It's that kid. That is that Greek. Greek word for a wise man plants a tree in whose shadow he'll never sit. I mean, that's a Greek metaphor. So let's plant the trees. That's the tree.
Henrik Göthberg:I think that's the perfect ending, eric, so thank you very much for this very interesting conversation, and I know we're going to have a great AI after work and then I promised to celebrate my birthday as well, so we'll see Congratulations. Yes, how old are you now? 49. Baby, baby, so karaoke.
Erich Hugo:Karaoke maybe Okay.
Henrik Göthberg:Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
Erich Hugo:Okay, guys.