The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, talk about Katt Williams having more hot takes, AI Intellectual Property disputes, some Marvel updates from us, and more! Go check-out the whole episode for all the latest and greatest!
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Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
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The guys, @mrbenja and @the_real_theo_harvey, talk about Katt Williams having more hot takes, AI Intellectual Property disputes, some Marvel updates from us, and more! Go check-out the whole episode for all the latest and greatest!
----------
Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.
----------
Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_business
Follow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusiness
Like us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusiness
Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured
Follow Theo on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@therealtheoharvey
Follow Mr.Benja on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BenjaminJohnsonakaMrBenja
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Theo Harvey: This is show versus business where pop culture meets pop money with your host, the real Theo Harvey and Mr. Benja. So Mr. Benja, what's going on? Oh
Mr.Benja: man, it's been a wild week. Last week was a little quiet. This week was a little more cha cha cha going on the internet. I just had to put my phone down cause I saw Kanye West decided to drop another explicit kind of Instagram, not safe for work set of pictures.
I don't know what's going on, but that's minor. We're not going to talk about it. But yeah, there's a lot going on, man. AI is doing things. Copilot's all up in your business. That's Microsoft's new name for its action. We can't call it Bing GPT anymore. We got Alex Hormozy running around doing things.
Talked about him a little bit before, but now we have some thoughts and ideas on where he's going with things. We both saw Echo, and there's news on SheHulk, so we may have some Marvel updates. And we want to know, is Echo good? Or bad things are going on in the streaming world. Amazon's doing its thing.
We've got X slash Twitter slash Elon Musk going crazy as usual. And he's bringing Mr. Beast along into his craziness. So that's why we're concerned about it. Snapchat's doing its thing. YouTube videos, sports illustrated. I don't know if we're going to get to all this, but yeah, lots been going on, man.
And the Emmys even came around. I saw a lady in a pregnant lady in a great image dress. So I was actually cool with that. I was like, Hey, look at that. It's nice image dress, but anyway, random, right? A lot of stuff.
Theo Harvey: Absolutely. Absolutely. Mr. Benja. Mr. Benja, before we get started, we always go into a little personal and about our weeks and all that.
Mr. Benja, do you do anything special? As we're recording this Martin Luther King day was on Monday. Do you do anything special for that day?
Mr.Benja: I don't do anything externally special. Like I know some people go out to events and some people sit down and, read letter to, letter from a Birmingham jail or something.
I take these moments to get a little education and jump on the internet and flame people sometimes. Not, not too hot. I don't, I don't get too spicy with people on the internet. I don't do that. But no, this year I didn't, I didn't do anything. I actually. Decided to post a podcast on Tuesday about the creativity of MLK.
But aside from that, I didn't really, I didn't really do anything.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Same here, Mr. Benji. Obviously I have kids and I want to, to know more about what happened literally in our, in our parents lifetimes. And some of, of, listeners who have parents They know they live through this experience of the civil rights movement.
But like you, man, I just listened to the I Have a Dream speech with the kids. And then I went down a rabbit hole of listening to a lot of the old MLK movies. I saw the Boycott Jeffrey Wright movie where he portrayed MLK. Great movie, man. Great movie. And it was basically about him starting his journey to become Martin Luther King when he had to go.
Do the Montgomery bus boycott, and I was fascinating just you get more insights every time you watch it, but just how he thought about negotiation and just Hey, we have to give a little, we don't, they're going to come back even harder on us. And just the insight that you glean from this, a kind of a TV show.
And it was amazing of how much insight that went into that, that, that T that TV show that movie and, and, and really insightful information I got from that. And then I fast forwarded to see Selma, which was, the big Hollywood produced movie by Ava DuVernay. And that was big at the time and played by a different Martin Luther King David yellow.
And they're very interesting. He was He was a little bit more sedated role than Jeffrey Wright, but very soulful and that's one just a little bit more weary as someone who's seen a lot, been through a lot and just seen a lot of death and it was just interesting. Now, trivia, did you know the same actress played Coretta Scott King in both versions, I
Mr.Benja: was, I was about to ask why you said it that way when you said a different actor.
And I was like, of course, it's a different actor, but okay, now I see where that's coming in. And no, that's interesting.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Man, I'm not going to say it right in a right. But Carmen and Jago, I think that's how you pronounce it. She played the young Coretta Scott King. And a very beautiful lady, but, and then also the older version of Coretta Scott King.
And it's amazing. I was like, probably because she does look like her a lot, but it was amazing that they got a movie that I think the first movie Boycott came out in 2000. And the last movie, Selma came out with 2014. I think it was a lot of great people in it too, man. You would Lakeith Stanfield is big time now.
Jeremy Strong, who is in Succession. He played a small, little pivotal role in Selma. So it's interesting to see all these guys, doing big things now, but to your point, I just educated myself and went down the rabbit hole of eyes on the prize and okay, the Montgomery bus boycott started here, but why did this happen?
And then when did it get to this? And when did the Freedom Riders start? And then how did the SNCC, then you start going as rabbit hole. And he's man, this is very thoughtful. But. It wasn't like a military battle where, you had, you had guns and all that, but they were very thoughtful in how they attack different aspects of Jim Crow in the fifties and the sixties.
And definitely it was a playbook on how you basically forced change in whatever environment you are. So all the kudos that Martin Luther King gets. I know sometimes there's some backlash somewhat against, some of the, that he was too passive and he could have done more, but when you dig into the history, I think he, man, he just pretty much for 10 years, he just gave his life to a car and he started when he was only 26.
Yeah. So that just goes to show you just like the dedication that he went into it. But yeah, so I was very yeah, like you just educated myself and was just really impressed.
Mr.Benja: Man, a lot of people see a lot of people have this, this watered down version of Dr. King, and I actually attribute a lot of that to the movies and stuff too, where they have him sitting around on a couch.
If we come together and let me come on now, this dude was putting pressure on people. You got the, the president like biting his fingernails and wondering what's going on. You got congressmen and chiefs of police and everybody just like pressure, dude was putting pressure on people and he was like, Hey, listen in fact fighting for the sanitation workers when he was go, he was going to put some more pressure on some people and they were like we're not having this.
And. Yeah, and that was the That was the end of his, his movement right there, his life, not his movement, that was the end of his life right there and not just him, his, his mother and brother, I believe. I don't know if anybody else outside of his immediate family were directly affected in, in his assassination, but.
Yeah, it was like serious dudes putting this much pressure on that much that many people and I think the way a lot of people presented it present him as this kumbaya figure and Kumbaya figures don't have people shook like that.
Theo Harvey: So he just knew he just knew media. Both Selma and boycott hinted at that It had to be a non-violent movement, right?
Because if it wasn't, if you had the Malcolm X way or even the black Panthers, obviously with the guns and forceful, number one, we're a minority you would not succumb to the, the government no matter how many guns you had. They, they all, they said in the movie, they just have more guns, brother.
You may get one or two, but they always have more guns and number two, so you couldn't win just. And number two, you had to change people's hearts. That was the only way you're going to force change. People think it's logic that changes people's minds. It's really hard. And so by having these images of people getting beat for doing nothing, just standing there and, or hoses put on them or dogs, chasing them down.
He changed the hearts. of America when they saw this on the TV screens and they said, we, this is, this, we have to do something. This is ridiculous. This is America. And so that, almost, we had that moment briefly was with George Floyd, right? We saw an image that just changed us so radically that.
You had outpouring of folks during 2020, when there was time, things were a little slowed down, people could pay attention. Then they started to change people's hearts and you saw a lot of giving to, to black causes. So unfortunately some of that got rolled back, but with the tack on DEI diversity initiatives.
But Neil is sitting in his list and say, Martin Luther King initiated that, just that, Hey, building empathy into people with love. And that's powerful thing. So to your point, he wasn't just coming by. Yeah. He's strategically using the tools of love and empathy to change people's minds and
Mr.Benja: hearts.
Definitely. Definitely. And yeah, man, shout out to the legacy of King and all I've learned from him and all he's done for the whole. The whole, the whole movement. So yeah, it's I don't like to call it, I don't like to frame it in terms of a never ending battle, but it's a, it's a constant push, for, for not just his ideals, but, cause you brought up you brought up Malcolm X, many other characters I was about to start.
A random list going off Marcus Garvey and a bunch of other people's Medgravers, et cetera. But nevertheless Martin Luther King was that figure that was out there and we see him as the main figure putting out that humanitarian aspect, just not even. And I think that that's one of the keys he was a humanitarian, not a nationalist.
And I think that's what got rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. So anyway, that's
Theo Harvey: deep. Yeah. Yeah. Good point.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. As I said, I ran a podcast on it, so I was,
Theo Harvey: I did slip at a holiday inn, right? You remember that commercial? I was very, very insightful about this.
Mr.Benja: Yeah. My insightful flames coming out.
Yeah, maybe, maybe that had something to do with calling people out that the calling people out that's been going on or why I've been thinking about it because I don't know, this week I just been going around the internet, looking at people's thoughts and everything. And we know Kat Williams, we talked about him earlier.
He started out. The year, just calling people out and going dropping fire bombs on people. And I looked around and I was like, wait a minute, the business bully on Instagram is suddenly showing up on his Instagram, just bombing on Grant Cardone and a bunch of other people. I'm like, okay, I don't know. I'm not sure if you're familiar with him, but he's one of those guys on the level of, Nehemiah Davis David Shands from Social Proof.
He's not as big as the EYL guys, but he's affiliated with them too. He's going off on people and your boy Stephen A. Smith was going off on people. In
Theo Harvey: the sports world. Yeah. In the sports world. Yep.
Mr.Benja: And it's what's going on? Are people, are people okay, man? Why is everybody doing this? You got any thoughts on that?
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Yeah. It's, I don't know, man. I think, man, it's just like always, this is the story of America, man. As we get older, just in general, there's always the big blow up and there's always the let down. And so it's kind of like, I think this is what's happening. We had this big push.
It was the rah, rah, rah. Of, the pandemic sucked, but then out of the pandemic, the explosion of gurus and marketing and people, making money, just putting YouTube videos out there and get NFTs and you have Bitcoin and you just, just Oh man, there's so much opportunity.
I'm just going, going crazy. Now people are calling that back and said, wait a minute, hold up, hold up. A lot of this was BS. And so let's, let's call what it is. And then Kat Williams, we talked about it, has opened this up and we'll talk about later about this authenticity, authentic kind of communication style that's forming on YouTube.
Now, a lot of quick edits, just people talking straight to the camera and giving the real deal Holyfield. And so I think that's what we're starting to see, man. I feel it myself too. I'm gravitating to her for stuff that's just more genuine, and not, flashy cuts and all that.
I think. I think that's, it's a backlash. The backlash always comes after the, the, the, the, the, the explosion of newness. And so I think that's what we're experiencing. What about you, Mr. Benjamin, what do you think
Mr.Benja: is happening? This takes me back to, I'm going to see if you remember this title.
This takes me back to 15 million merits. Yes, I do. Okay. You remember it. Cool. Cool. Yeah. It was an episode of Black Mirror and this whole calling people out. It's starting to get like they're starting to package it up and wrap it in a bow and yeah, I call people out. I'm authentic. That's my brand.
It's really? Did you just do that? Did you just do that? So, um, for those of you who haven't seen it, definitely go check out Black Mirror episode two. You don't need to watch them in order. Awesome episode. But that whole idea of packaging up people's emotions like this and, yeah, I don't know. It just seems like it's about to be a trend.
Maybe, maybe.
Theo Harvey: Oh, so you say that the authentic calling of people out, it's starting to get wrapped and packaged up like everything else. Is that what you're saying?
Mr.Benja: Hey man, I'm about to call some people out and just It'll just be like, all right,
Theo Harvey: whatever. I'm going to call people out no, that I'm friends with.
Damn, Mr. Benjamin, let me tell you. You talk about creative. No.
Nah, man. It's America, man. Anything that's not nailed down, they will figure a way to sell
Mr.Benja: it to you. It's not nailed down. Hey. Do you ever try to pick up something that's nailed down? That's a funny feeling. It's weird. You just run across them. It's try to pick it up. Hey, what the, Oh, I'm not supposed to touch
Theo Harvey: that.
It's called America for a reason, man. Let's not forget how this got started, man. This people want, they want that land or, and so whatever then you can sell it and someone's going to buy it. You're going to package it up. It could be a feeling. It could be a person. It doesn't matter man.
Mr.Benja: What's that? You mean that guy over there? Yeah, that's paul. Give me you know, it's like what
Theo Harvey: What's that what's that love? Yeah, I want that too How much?
Mr.Benja: Yeah speaking of selling people's love man, um We got, we got people selling stuff that's not theirs and it's happening with AI. And if you let the AI steal somebody's stuff, then it's I don't know, it wasn't me, dog. I just turned my computer on and look, there was all this information. And we talked a little bit about the New York times.
Suing the whole New York times lawsuit, trying to sue open AI and walling off all of its proprietary data. A lot of other groups, mid journey is getting attacked for stealing artists, data, a lot of mid journey and stable diffusion. And not just they're stealing the data. They're allowing technology.
It's Oh we don't have to steal the data. You go use our technology. You go steal your own data. It's I know, I know some people that have. Configurations on their computer, where it's basically just give us all your data. We'll steal it for you. That's huh? All right. But you sent me something from Puck and Baratunde.
What's going on with this?
Theo Harvey: Yeah, he's a, influencer, intellectual influencer. He's been around for a minute. Baratunde Thurston, and he had a great article, Puck, talking about what are we gonna do about this, right? This AI apocalypse approaching us where a lot of these algorithms need data to get better, to get smarter about whatever they're gonna be able to do.
But where's this data coming from, right? Actually, copyrighted material, a lot of cases, right? We talked about this, how artists are getting upset about their art being Pushed into algorithms. And so they may not hire you as an artist, but they may hire art that looks like yours. And so that's the distinction where basically you just don't get paid because they created, they don't want you, they want what you created.
And so I think the New York times is suing for, the, the rights, because they saw that some of the questions when they asked open AI kind of spit out verbatim. That words directly from New York Times articles. And so now this, they're suing them. And so now there's a big debate about, okay look, we can't stop capitalism, right?
We can't stop commercial. These AI algorithms are going to need data, but can we put some kind of economics around? What does that mean? And so obviously there's a standard way of licensing, but then what do you license? Do you license, all the written word you like license a copy of it, is that even doable because there's so much data out there and some of it may not even be useful, to anybody unless it's combined with something else that the AI will figure out and then whatever that and they call it the term they use is not Revert or anything like that, they call re regurgitate regurgitate.
So basically like you're throwing up words that, that are mixed in a mixed pod to simulate what a human would say. And so now this what it reg regurgitates, is it something that makes sense and it's something that is, is valuable? For the people who gave it the data in the first place.
And so so basically if it's valuable at the end of the, how they made the sausage so there's all the material, the raw material that made that sausage, is that valuable now too? And if it is, what is that price point? And that's the question. That's what this article is trying to.
Figure out different models of how to make that raw material that's, that's training the AI algorithms. Do you do it in some kind of license model? But then what, what data is licensable, right? That, that makes sense. That's going to create something on the other end. Do you create like an auction style?
So let's say, New York Times information is way more valuable. So you have all these algorithms vying for more and more valuable pieces of data. Yeah. So I would say this, and Reddit did this too. Remember we talked about Reddit. Reddit is throwing up their API licensing agreements, right?
They're making sure you don't get access to their their chosen data sets. And I think Twitter or X has done the same thing because they knew this is coming. Either they're going to use it themselves or someone's going to try to get access to it illegally to train their models to get smarter. So anyway, I say all that to say, I think it's an interesting kind of thing to look at.
As a company that has a lot of data around patient care, we're being careful how we use it and, making sure we keep a lot of that information because that's going to be a gold rush, man. Just access to this data is going to be so critical and people don't realize, I think people are starting to realize it.
I think, you know what, I think what happened is we saw what we saw what the internet did. You remember when a lot of the newspapers just gave Facebook free reign to get access to their articles and stuff like that for a long time. So it's the internet who cares, yeah. Let's just get, they can get us, but they never.
Got compensated for that. So they're still hurting from that. And then, and then the fact that Apple created the app store, and they're getting 30 percent off of each app developer in perpetuity. And so now we have another platform creation, these, these algorithms, now people who are building on top of these.
Platforms are getting way smarter to say, hold up, before we commit and sign up for this, we need to have some kind of fair exchange of value here. And so I think that's what this is about. People have got a lot wiser about what they're giving to these platforms because they know it could be like the Roach Motel, one way in, no way out because now you're on a platform, you're stuck with it, or you're not going to get any money coming from it.
Mr.Benja: You know what? I just had a, I just had a thought based on what you were saying with all this, and we're going to talk about this a little while later, but there's so much, there's such a proliferation of all this stuff. And it's we're going to make it, we're going to, we're going to put some guard walls up against this.
We're going to make some legislation, some laws and, intellectual property and all that. And it's you can't stop the crooks. That's it. There's just an old, that's just an old phrase. You can't stop the crooks. So with this happening, yeah, I get it, but this is, when you go, when you, when you go to a company and you ask, they're, they're trying to get something done.
A lot of times what they'll say is give me something that looks like this, sounds like this and plays out like this. And at this one company I was working for, we hired a guy and everybody's Oh, this guy is the cool guy. Everybody loves him. He's awesome. He's got a bad ass, intellectual property.
He really understands things and dude shows up and. They were like working with them and he was like holding classes. He was like, yeah, you do this and this is how you do this. And I was like, okay, man, they fired that guy. They, after they after they got his vibe, they were like, okay. They fired that guy.
And then about a month later, the company was putting out art like his better than him. And it was better than his. So what's he going to say? That's my art. It's you already looked at it. Good. It's just it was, it was done. So it's just,
Theo Harvey: so to your point, I agree, man, you can't stop the crooks.
But think about this Napster. Remember Napster. All those sites that we used to get tons of those illegal movies and TV shows. Now they still exist, but what happened? Commerce yet. Spotify made it simple. And so now we stream music. Yeah. Netflix come now. We stream movies and TV shows. So I think commerce.
Always. They're always going to be criminals. They're always going to be crooks, but there needs to be some kind of commerce on top of these platforms in order to make sure because, it's almost what's the term? What's it called? Opportunity costs. And so it's probably, you can make more money just doing it the legal way than doing the elite, unless you just have a great idea.
You just like being a crook. So you might as well do it a legal way. And so I think that's where we're at right now. To your point, I'll think. We can legislate this or regulate this. It's just, it's the Pandora box. It's open. And now you just got to put the money. You got to put the money spigot on it.
So people can get paid, man. That's what
Mr.Benja: you guys do. I need to look this up, but do you remember in, in the Napster era or right when we were leaving the Napster era and going into the post LimeWire, even era. And getting into, I, I, right when we, right when we were getting into iTunes and that era.
Ladies and gentlemen, we
Theo Harvey: are old. We've been around, so we know. All of these terms.
Mr.Benja: Livewire. Yes. Friendster. Classic knowledge. But around that time, I remember, and I want to look this up because I don't know how intentional this was on the part of media companies and the government and the media, but it seemed every other week, you'd have a news story about some random kid in, Pakivsky, Idaho, or something like this, or just some random kid somewhere, and he gets raided and all of his computers taken away because he had a bunch of stolen music.
And I was like, are they really tracking people like this? Are they really doing this? And I didn't know how true it was, but it felt like enough of a boogeyman story to be like I'll just get iTunes and I won't have to worry about that. And now it's you know what I mean? Does it make sense? Yeah,
Theo Harvey: it does.
Because I remember, they're trying to scare you. Remember what's the guy from Metallica, Lars? He was just vehemently against, people taking their music. And They just trying to scare the crap out of you, right? Scare straight. But whatever, everybody did it. I still have some music stuff.
I, I may or may not have, not going to get me on the, on the, on the top, you're not going to get me on the tab. I may or may have not have gotten by different means. But anyway, I just say that. No, yeah. There was, remember they had, you're right. They had raids. They put that stuff on TV. Is it? This 13 year old and he was coming out of handcuffs.
I saw, did you remember those? They had some kids coming out of handcuffs, coming out of their parents garage, looking crazy, head down. Like he stole like millions of dollars. Dude, they was just tripping, tripping. So yeah, man, it's yeah. AI though, man. I think so what are your thoughts on that?
You think AI, they're going to have to create this commercial. Layer on top of it sooner than later. Cause you know, it's just, this, this legislation is suing. It's going to be too slow.
Mr.Benja: It's so hard to make a general purpose AI layer. What are we talking about? For, for medical, that's obviously highly tightly controlled, but you're talking about.
Movies. Somebody puts a movie up on a website. I'm getting that movie. That's just how it's going to be. Some kid in Russia, some kid in China, Pakistan wherever, Italy, they're just going to get the movie. That's just the end of it. It's going to be really hard to stop that. So how do you start to monetize or try to control that type of media?
I'm not sure. But as I said, there's law books, there's medical records, there's images, photography. There's people's voices and people's likeness. And we've seen the deep fakes and the audio deep fakes. Musical styles and I want a song that sounds like this and it gets really hairy and I don't think that you're going to have one general solution.
I think that every industry is going to start this, fight for yourself save yourself kind of mentality about how to, how to best guard their industry. Yeah, I think that I would
Theo Harvey: agree with. With that. I do see, I, I read somewhere also that they're using AI to, to combat that ai, right? Where, so the deep fakes, they're using AI to figure out which is a deep fake or not.
And so you're gonna have these AI battles, right
Mr.Benja: in the metaverse is my computer's, my computer going so slow. Why is my computer? I can't access Facebook. Meta AI going to war against like Disney's AI trying to lock people out. And yeah, it's going to get messy. Yeah.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. Speaking of which, how do you feel?
I know that we didn't put this in the rundown, but it just came to my memory. Cause you brought it up during the week. How do you feel about? Zuckerberg has a new direction for meta. I wonder if it's going to come up a new name change, but he has mentioned that he wants to change his, the goal of Facebook is to create the first what is it called?
General use AI. Is that what they call it? It's not, it is I gotta get the term right, Mr. Benjamin, but you sent it to me. It's the Yes. Artificial general intelligence versus what we have now is gender of AI, but specific for, one use case, typically what he's trying to create is basically the AI that we all know and love from science fiction that you can ask it anything, and it would pretty much respond as if it was a human and even more what do you think about Zuck having a power of God? In his hands
Mr.Benja: for this, this is a continuation of his fight with Elon Musk. Elon Musk is building his, his prime robot. Zuck is over here. Making, making realistic faces on the metaverse and they're slowly, but surely filling in all these gaps and the artificial general intelligence, basically, by the way, it's this idea that you've just got this.
And prime the. Not Amazon prime, but the prime robot that is being worked on by, by Elon Musk and company, it's starting to get closer to that and artificial general intelligence. Just, it's just not this idea that something is, has a general form of intellect, not a very specific, like you prompt it. And then it says, Hmm, what's he trying to say?
Let me figure this out. Okay. Based on what other people have said, let me go do this. It's more Hey, let me put this robot in front of a, a puzzle. And just see how long it takes it to figure out what the puzzle is, and then to solve the puzzle. And the, the part, the first part about figuring out what this puzzle is, is the interesting part of it.
They, they had the soccer bots, which was an interesting case. You just put these two robots in a ball, and they're just like walking around, being stupid. And all of a sudden the ball goes into a goal, and one of the robots gets a point, and he's Huh? What was that? I got a point. What happened?
Wait, hold on a second. And then he just goes back and rewinds the data. Eventually he gets another point. He's Oh my God, I got two points. I think I know what I'm doing. I'm artificial and I have general intelligence. This is great. And it's this whole process of continuing to learn. And the interesting thing about this is that they're using it to teach, not teach, but Hey, here's a general problem.
I need this robot to open a door. I need this robot to cook a meal. I need this robot to, pick up somebody from the babysitter. You don't tell him really what to do. It's just hey help me out here with this. It's okay, I got you. Boom, boom, boom. So I was figuring things out. So the fact that Zuck is working on that is actually a pretty big business and it's, I don't want to say scary just yet, although it is.
But it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. And that's something I've been noticing too. People thought all these tech layoffs were just, oh, because of, the highs of the pandemic and people are, the, the big tech companies, Google, Amazon, they're just trying to right size after all that extra hiring.
But man, they're still firing folks. And I have to believe that's because of AI. Google just announced more cut, layoffs. They CEO Sundar announced that the company will continue to lay off folks. I think there's two things happening. But YouTube, starting to lay off folks.
And you thought YouTube was a growing enterprise. Price for Google, right? But they, they went off Amazon and now some layoffs recently and continue to announce it. I think two things are happening. One, after they started initial cuts and they see their stock price didn't go down. They were like, okay, we're free now.
So people are not conflating. High profits, high revenue with, more employees. So that means that we can cut, then that means that wall street is okay with that, because they know we're going for more profitability. And number two, I think automation AI is starting to take a lot of these redundant jobs away.
And the first people to start using it will be. The tech companies, right? ? Yeah. So people who are doing that back office stuff. So yeah, I've been doing invoicing for 20 years here at Google. Oh, I, I think I'm fired. Oh, sorry. I gotta go. So
Mr.Benja: my key, my key card.
Theo Harvey: So I think a lot of redundancies are coming faster than people realize, and the first people are going to start implementing have been these tech giants. So I just say that, I think there was a story we talked about over 300, 000 jobs will be affected over the next no 300 million jobs will be affected over the next five years.
Yeah. This is something that's going to be huge. And so we're starting to see, that's why this important layer is going to be important for commercialization because people are going to be looking for jobs pretty soon and maybe AI could be something they could pursue. We're going all on it.
I think I'm going all in it. I have to learn more about it because this is where it's going. This is where the puck is going. And I'm committing here, Mr. Benja and a year of our 2024 January 20th. That, I am going all in on AI, that's a bold prediction. I know. Nice.
Mr.Benja: Let's check, check this out.
If somebody wants an actual stat in October, this is from Bloomberg, I believe. Yes. As of October 2022, Twitter had about 1, 500 employees or contractors who reviewed content and complaints. In November 22, 2022, when Elon Musk took over, he got rid of a bunch of people. And the content moderation tools team was limited to about 15 people.
So that's from 1500 to about 15 people. Um, I mean, that's, and think about it. You're like wait a minute. How can you have just 15 people moderating content? If you've ever typed in anything a little spicy into Facebook or Instagram now, and then it blocks your post or says, or it gives you a little pop up message saying, Hey, Hey, buddy, watch, watch yourself.
Or if you've been kicked off threads for a little bit, like I have, then you, then you know that this stuff is actually happening. So. I mean, if you've just got AI cranking through images saying, is this good? Is this bad? Is this text good? Is this bad? Don't call people, an ass. Maybe he's talking about the animal.
Oh, I'm sorry. Carry on. It's yeah. You just don't need all these people. People should have a place. Yeah. I'm, I'm being very. Loving and kind to you, but I, these companies are massively, massively inefficient and bloated. So now it's you gotta, you gotta turn some of that back. Yeah. So like I
Theo Harvey: said, I think people need to realize that that's why we're talking about it on the AI watch every week here on show versus business.
So I'm super excited about what's coming next, Mr. Benjamin. I gotta ask you something. Go ahead. What do you think about our favorite internet guru, Alex Hermosi, and some of the things he is moving toward when it comes to his new role in the future of this internet media realm and more and more, more specifically, I'm talking about his investment in school.
What does he do? Going Mr. Benja out here in these streets. He even has a school hat on. The school type t shirt replaced. He has replaced the Acquisition. com hat with a school hat, Mr. Benja. That's unheard of for this guy. So what is going on in this guru world, man, that we're not, that we're not
Mr.Benja: seeing here?
I don't know the the biggest muscle man in the In the class has gone back to school. This is crazy. They never go back to school, but here he is. So yeah, what is, what is the play here? We mentioned this a little bit before, but we, we were talking about it off. We were talking about it off camera, off, off the record here.
And we brought up this idea that wait a minute. Alex Ramosi doesn't just go do things. He's an 80, 20 practitioner. He's in for the focus. He's I need to be in on social media. How do I do that? I'm offloading just about everything else, boom, full in on social media, and he blows up crazy. And he's okay, I'm full in on this.
And that he's really a focused guy and can really start burrowing in and nailing down on something. So yeah, like you said, when he put on that school hat, it's okay, this dude doesn't know how to dabble, and he's investing real money into this. So they
Theo Harvey: actually said he is co owner of school.
When I watched the video, I don't know if you saw that piece of it. It says, I don't know what that means. But it sounds like it was substantial enough to say he's a co
Mr.Benja: owner. Okay. I didn't, I didn't catch that part. Good little bit because Sam ovens is also a super focused guy. Oh my gosh. I didn't think about this.
You've got two super focused people in there focusing on this focused product. And it's, it's, to me, I don't know, I don't know about Sam ovens directly. But I know that it seems to me like Alex Ramosi is taking his idea of building people up. He's had this idea of let me give out this information and let me get let me get people educated.
And let me start finding out who's got a 5 million company. Who's got a 10 million company. Let me see if I can take them to 100 million company or something of that size. So he's been giving all this what I'll call entry or a small level entrepreneur, less than Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 10 million, right?
Entrepreneur and take them up into, really high levels. And he wants to see if he could do that now that he's joined up with school. I'm assuming that part of his idea for doing that is taking a lot of that, a lot of that leverage and a lot of that energy, and it's just easier to funnel through school, but you had some other ideas and adding onto that a little more, like an even bigger idea.
So how did you see it?
Theo Harvey: Yeah. And for those that don't know, school is basically this platform that anyone can create a community. Think of it as Facebook groups on steroids, right? And so it has all the bells and whistles of a Facebook group, but you can create game. You can gamify it. You can invite people.
You can charge people now to access their school project. I've been dabbling around with it. With some of the stuff I do. And so I was like, okay, I can see the benefit here, I hadn't, then I saw one of another internet gurus Dan Henry go all in on it. And and then obviously another one, Ryan Pineda went all in on it.
So they have some big communities there. So when I thought about this, when at first I was thinking like you thought it was like, okay, he's trying to, get the best practices, see what communities blow up here and, maybe invest in those companies. But I think there's a bigger play. I think he sees school as a platform play.
And for those that don't know, platform is basically the Google, right? Basically people build stuff on top of Google. Google's just get a percentage of all that Amazon's a platform, right? Everything you buy, sell on Google, Amazon, they get a piece of that Facebook, is a platform.
I think he sees communities building communities as a future of business and just authentic connections. And I think he wants to get paid on every community that's going to be built. And that's why he invested in school. And and numbers are bearing out. Even I see so I'm in Dan Henry's group and in Ryan Pineda's two gurus, the benefit of this is that they can make so much money, these gurus building the communities, but they don't have to do a lot of work.
Think about it. You have these community managers. Number one, you manage, onboarding and have a higher level conversations and setting up calls with the guru. But in that meet in that interim time, you have a bunch of mini gurus siphoning, people into their own mini branches inside the community.
So yeah, you're Ron Pineda's group, but we're Ron Pineda's group. In San Bernardino, right? And we like small houses, right? Or we're, we're in Ryan Pineda's group, but we're in Tampa, Florida, and we like mansions. So now you, your own little small guru inside the bigger community, right? And guess what?
Ryan Pineda gets paid on all that. And guess what? Mosey and Sam Evans get paid on all of that. And so it's I think that's what he's going for. The platform
Mr.Benja: play. Now, if you're talking about a platform play, and I totally rock with you there on that, if you're talking about a platform play, what could be really interesting and remember Sam Evans comes from a software background, and he's all about, making things easy to work with and simple that is wonderful for creating something like trying to think of a parallel, maybe AWS, Amazon Web Services, if you've got A community platform that does certain things underneath the hood, then maybe you could use that to say, Hey, school is one platform, but maybe we could use that technology underneath the hood and like a government could use it for organizing something else.
It may not look like school exactly, but the underlying technology that all this runs on could be very similar and very interesting for a government to, hey, we're going to onboard all of our firefighters and we're going to put them in this thing. It won't look like school. It'll look like. The Idaho, the state of Idaho, firefighters, whatever, and everybody has to go in and log into that.
Who are they paying for that? They're probably, they're paying Sam Ovens and, Alex Ramosi. Yeah, a license fee,
Theo Harvey: right? Yeah, a license fee for access to that. Running,
Mr.Benja: running the technology. And the reason I said Amazon.
Theo Harvey: Is Amazon doing you know what, you're right, because Amazon is doing that.
They created their own underlying tech technology with AWS and now they're licensing it to other folks. And so to your point, and that's a huge business for them now. It's not their only business, but it's one of the core businesses. So I, I think, but I think, I don't think that's the, the, the big play now, to your point.
Yes. It could be the play. But just it's focused, they're focused guys, like you said, I don't, they're building technology, they're focused now is building as many communities as they can, as fast as they can. And, and if you watched I signed. End up just to see what he's talking about.
He Alex is pitching it and the game, they have what they call the school games every month, pushing folks to get as many people on the platform as possible. The top three people get to go visit. And listen from the feet of the guru. Right. So, and they're going to do this every month, every month, they're going to do this.
And so that's number one, going to grow the platform. Hugely, but more importantly, he's saying, Hey, if you just, you can get started so simply, he said, look, the hardest part of starting businesses, having a way to sell it, having a, what you're going to sell and how to get started. And he said, Sign up, put some YouTube videos up, point them here, and you can license other people's product.
And he just made it so simple that anybody can start. So he's trying to get as many just randos, for lack of a better term, just on his platform. So they can just build this like community, this community of communities. And so anyway, to make your point, I think the tech underlying technology is important and they probably will evaluate that.
But I think that just like Amazon eventually got to AWS, but the first play was getting Amazon was trying to just sell more and more stuff. They went from books to, to toys to just everything. And I think likewise, I think community is about building more and more communities. And then to your point.
The next phase of that would be the technology.
Mr.Benja: Definitely. And I referenced this, but didn't exactly explicitly stated earlier on, we were talking about AI, if you're talking about community access and, if all of the information is out there and everybody's just, Hey, I'm on social media. I'm over here arguing.
I'm over here calling people out or whatever. Suddenly, the important thing becomes, can you wrangle a community together? And can you somehow I don't want to say monetize, but can you like tokenize this community in a way that it's able to do its own thing? If I just log on to my computer and get to talk to my family in my own little thing, then it's I don't, I don't know what that future looks like, but it's like, Hey, maybe I can, maybe I can share music between us and it doesn't, I don't know.
You talked about
Theo Harvey: this, like this, having your own private social media. It's you mentioned that and that's what they're trying to create like this off from the major platform, but. In theory, school will be that platform and will probably become a major platform. So it's kind of like, hmm, are you really get off of Facebook?
And then probably going to pitch it as get off of Facebook and build your own private community on our platform. And eventually they will become a new Facebook. So we'll see. It's going to be interesting play. But if he makes it happen, his path to a billion dollars. I think that that's the key.
Mr.Benja: Yeah.
Interesting note, there are other competing platforms like Circle, Podia that are trying to do this community thing. I think he wants to get ahead of all that too. Also, you remember how they used to say, hey, make sure you join the Discord or join the Telegram. Right now, people are starting to push up against the limits of that and they're looking for a better solution.
So you've got Telegram, Circle, Podia, Patreon, and those platforms are slow. Those platforms are slowly trying to add in all these features. And it seems to me like he's just taking the laser light focus and going, you know what? We can beat them all to the punch with the start of this thing called school that Sam over to us.
So at the very least, yes, I
Theo Harvey: agree that there's an opportunity to go all in on it because Sam built it because he came from that world let's, let's be, he was a guru himself, Sam Evans, right? He and his consulting. com did his whole mastermind stuff. He said, ah, I'm just shutting it all down and just went deep into the software.
I think he's been very intentional about how you built the software and now we're going to see. So we got the intentional software guy with the scale. Cool. Simplicity scale guy, right? And just bring it together. So we'll see if it can, but you know, I wouldn't bet against them to be honest with you.
It is something to see Mr. Benjamin, let's, let's talk about something else, man. I got something I want to bring up to you. Speaking of scaling, man. Is Mr. Beast scaling on X and Twitter or are we, are we calling cap on this? Like the young folks say,
Mr.Benja: Some people might call Mr. Beast a fern. Some people might call him and.
An aloe vera leaf. Some people might call him a dandelion. I'm calling him a plant. Oh, no.
Theo Harvey: Don't do it.
Mr.Benja: This Mr. Beast guy, we all know him. We know of his rise, and great dude. Really put in the work. Has the, has the work behind him. And, he's done it. He he's become a huge YouTuber, but now all of a sudden he's showing up on, on X.
So I'll just read this little bit here. Mr. Beast uploaded his first full length video directly to X in an effort to see how it's revenue sharing stacks up to other platforms. It stacks up right now because it has about 200. It's gotten up to 179 million views on, I was about to say 75 million, but that was the last time we checked right now.
It's up to about 179 million views, I think. But the thing is, if you start looking around the internet, it seems like people are being fed this video a little more often than usual. And it's almost like they're gaming the system just so they can say, Hey, look, Mr. Beast did his thing. This is totally something Elon would do.
And yeah, man, I'm calling I'm calling Kev.
Theo Harvey: Mr. Benji, I don't want to call my shot here, but I can recall one of our internal messaging. Oh,
Mr.Benja: wait, what does it
Theo Harvey: say? Earlier this week, on a Tuesday, I put on this, I put on here. I gotta believe that Elon is pushing the view count a little here.
It's in his interest that Mr. Beast gets high views. Booyah,
That was on Tuesday before this masterful
Mr.Benja: article game. I called it today. Theo called it Tuesday.
Yes, sir.
Theo Harvey: Anyway, we'll see.
Mr.Benja: A little bit. Elon, Elon, Elon, Elon,
Theo Harvey: Elon, Elon, man, that's, that's all I know about Elon, but you know what, Mr. Benji, I think this is a good point to bring up YouTube, social media influences and stuff. I do want to ask you, do you feel that YouTube is changing?
Are people? Looking for the anti Mr. Beast, right? This calm, low edit, personal conversation style YouTube videos. I want to get your opinion on that. I'm gravitating more to them and I can see this, this happening, like we talked about the backlash always comes to something that's great.
And so did the Mr. Beastification of social media. the tick tockification, quick edits, people doing this, falling down quick, all that stuff. I think that might be moving toward a different era.
Mr.Benja: What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, man. It's, it's too much. And you've heard stories of a lot of YouTubers quitting and a lot of people just getting tired of production is actually a thing that you have to stop practice, do set up, pay a lot of.
A lot of money for, for equipment. If you're going to do it at the level that it seems that YouTube was requiring and that it seems like a lot of TikTok videos were requiring, the people who use CapCut and, they're doing all these crazy effects and everything. It's hey, man, I just want to get on the camera and talk my noise and it almost seems like that's become a little bit of a style to just get on the camera and talk freely.
And no, I, I definitely think it's a, it's a thing. And you sent me some, you sent me some examples, this bodybuilder kid. That's just make, that just makes me uncomfortable, man. He's a little too naturally unnatural.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. You know what the thing that they don't want to say is though, that these people look distinct.
To let's be honest. So I think it's still visual medium, just like I think how Alex Somozy blew up, right? He doesn't look like your traditional business guru, right? He's built the Hulk. So here comes this kid who's doing genuine videos, which is fine. Not a lot of edits, just see him working out.
But dude, his arms is as big as some people's thighs, man. And so it's wait a minute. So yes, it's just who you are is still an interesting look. And so I think I think the branding is there even with this Heinz guy. I don't know if you saw some of his stuff. Very calm, mellow. He's got the, he's got the dreads and he, he just, but it's just I think that Think the look is important to in this type of style videos, but yeah, I'm there for it, man.
I did some kind of off the wall kind of videos. They did okay for me. We'll have my team repost them, see if they do better. Now I did a year ago when I first started just to play around with that style, but just off the cuff and yeah, I'm, I'm open. That's the style that kind of resonates with me obviously, cause I go to YouTube, some entertainment, but mostly to learn stuff and listen to people that I trust.
So I think that's the angle I want to go with my content, but that's probably why one of the reasons why I did want to talk about this is see what your thoughts were as, as a fellow podcaster slash creator. What are your thoughts on how you create your content? Are you gravitating toward that style and you still think there's merit for the Like edits and attention grabbing
Mr.Benja: style, you're going to have different different camps and like different ways of doing things and it's all going to be a you're going to have a variety and I think that maybe YouTube's.
Issue is that it seems like there's one way of doing things, or it just seems like there's a big overriding, Oh, everybody's doing it this way. Everybody's doing it this way. Why? Because that's what YouTube is promoting. That's what YouTube is pushing to the front. And it's I'm hopping around and I'm starting to see more people that are like, Oh, here's the calm style.
Maybe I like the calm style. And While I'm watching The Calm Style, all of a sudden there's this big bombastic quick cut guy who gets thrown in my feed and I'm like, how did this happen? And I, I don't, I don't think they have a good enough delineation between styles. And is there another platform that could come up and, take on YouTube in that respect?
And it's no. So what is YouTube to do? Or what's the, what are the people to do? I don't know exactly how that plays out. I just have no idea. Facebook video didn't play out. Instagram TV really didn't play out. None of these. Ideas really played out. So it seems like we're just getting. The YouTubification of everything and whatever YouTube is at the moment.
That's what it is.
Theo Harvey: Yeah. It's been around a long time. You the video piece of it, the YouTube piece. TikTok is fairly new, but even they are getting into the long form video. And so it'll be interesting to see where this all goes.
Mr.Benja: Real, real quick. Actually, Twitch has its own little style too.
That's the point. Yeah people sit in the hot toes playing and playing video games.
Theo Harvey: Not about that. Oh, Mr. Benji, you bring up the good stuff, man. No, but you know what, you're right. So it's like YouTube is like the granddaddy, right? Started it all. No one knew what it was, how to use it. Then you had these folks come around like Vine and then TikTok, right? And so YouTube had to pivot to like short shorts, right?
To get people interested. And then Twitch, like you put this whole react, they're basically doing reaction videos, right? They're doing a lot of, reacting to what they see on the screen. And so of course YouTube had to follow that. To your point, I think YouTube is a quick follower when it comes to a lot of this stuff.
And, but Twitch, TikTok have found their own and I guess somewhat Instagram, right? They kind of kind of started to find their own niches, but I'd be curious to see how this all going to play out long term. That's just going to draw, ultimately it's about drawing attention Mr.
Benja. And so sometimes the best way to get attention is to be the opposite of what everyone else is. And so I think that's And it's up to your point. I think this is always going to be a battle, right? Then everybody's going to start going toward the calmer videos. The next thing you know, someone's going to stand out and blow up a Prius, right?
Oh, wow. It gets a billion views. Real quick. Did you see this phenomenal about the Stanley
Mr.Benja: cup? Did you hear about that? I know about the Stanley Cups and people sitting outside Target to get their red Stanley Cup and yeah, isn't that great
Theo Harvey: offer you offer YouTube and videos and these mommy bloggers may will do a deep dive next time, but that they went from 75 million in less than three years may make over 750 million in revenue.
Based on, influencers and marketing. So I don't know, man, this is a weird world we live in right now. Before we end Mr. Benja, you got a rant or anything you want to get off the chest?
Mr.Benja: I don't, I don't care about the enemies, but I heard you watched it. Any thoughts on that? Any rants?
Theo Harvey: Man, I don't have too many rants. All I know is that TV sucks. No one's watching the Emmys. I was watching, even I don't watch it. I was watching the Tampa Bay Bucs beat up on Philadelphia Eagles. And so 7 million people watched it. That is by far the lowest numbers ever had. And they're trying to promote these shows that not people watch.
Yes, I love Succession, which one? I love Beef, which one? I love the bear, which I put you on, which one, but Mr. Benjamin, no one cares. We need to get better shows that people like to watch and be interested in. And I think we just don't have the monolithic culture anymore. So I don't know. TV's dying out and used to be exciting.
It's not as exciting anymore. When you know who the winners are going to be. That's all I got, Mr. Benja for the rant. Ding, ding, ding. Hey, back them.
Mr.Benja: That's right. Dang. Got 11 million views for an episode like Joe Rogan.
Theo Harvey: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they can't touch Joe Rogan. All right guys, thanks for listening.
Please subscribe and comment at show versus business on X, YouTube and Instagram. Listen to us at Spotify, iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts. Go check us out on our website, show us some business and go check us out next time. Mr. Benjamin, have a great one. Peace.