How AI Is Changing Work, Money & What It Means to Be Human with Mishaal Lakhani

What if AI isn't just changing how we work, but what it means to be human?

AI Strategist Mishaal Lakhani joins me for a 90 minute conversation on the AI revolution reshaping work, money, mental health, and the way we build meaningful lives.

We get into why the founders thriving right now aren't the ones with the longest tool stacks but the ones who actually know what they're building and why. The 3 step prompting framework Mishaal uses with her clients. How AI gave me 5 years of therapy in 5 months. Why the 100 year old factory model of education is about to collapse. And the one mindset shift that separates the founders who'll thrive from the ones who'll get left behind.

Free Guide: The Founder's AI Starter Kit, the tools, workflow, and 3 reframes from this conversation. https://breakingthemold.myflodesk.com/huyjisbrvu

Watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Mr_Vp7o-6PA

Follow: @breakingthemoldpod / @alysa_scanzano

More from Mishaal Lakhani: 

Website: actuallyuseful.tech 

LinkedIn: @mishaallakhani

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Transcript

Intro and how we met

0:00

I'm so excited to do this with you today. Yeah. Finally. Yeah. We actually- Yeah met here, which is the craziest thing. Serendipitous, yes. Yeah. I was- I wanted to tell the story of me just sitting next to you. I was working, you were with a client. Yes. And I was just hearing AI and softwares, and I was, secretly writing notes. You didn't even know, but I was, writing little notes. Okay. And I was Yeah I would look up so that you didn't see me. I'm "Oh, I heard some some softwares you mentioned." You mentioned I think Superhuman and things like that. Yes, yeah. I was like, "This sounds really interesting." And I write it down, and then I'm "Oh my God, I'm getting a free consult by listening in." Amazing, yeah. And the whole time I'm, bubbling up. I wanna interject, I wanna join the conversation. I wanna ask questions. So I, but I kept quiet. Yeah. And then towards the end, you guys are getting up, saying goodbye, and she's "I just gotta say, you are breaking the mold." And I was "Oh no, that's it." And I just blurted out, I'm "I have a podcast, Breaking The Mold. I think you'd be amazing." And then we sat down- Yeah for at least an hour just getting into it. Yes. Yeah. It was crazy. I was "Oh great." Strangers and conversation. Yeah. Boom. And you still had the energy to talk about AI and give me so many- tips for, like- Oh, God another hour. So that's why I'm so excited- Yes to do this with you, 'cause I'm now we have the space to really get into it. Exactly. Yeah. But before we do, I wanna give 'cause I don't even think I asked you that day, but, what you actually do. I keep calling you AI consultant. Yeah. But I wanna hear in your words the background. Totally. Okay. So for that side of my life basically it falls under these three buckets. The first is with ambitious founders, entrepreneurs, people like that, who do a bunch of things but just haven't gotten around to understanding what is going on in this AI space. It's confusing, it's a little bit scary, but they've got so much on their plate and they wanna alleviate some of that. And so what I act as is this distillation of understanding exactly what you do, what you need, what you can get help with. Almost like tutoring and exactly the pain points that you can be helped with. And- helping with those things. And then in the second category, it's these businesses that are really trying to expand or do more, but also haven't necessarily ventured into technological the cutting edge. And so helping them understand what are their biggest problems and how AI can actually help with solving quite a few of those. And the third bucket is just with communities of people. I think there's a lot of different groups that are probably a little bit less exposed to how the AI space is changing the world, whether it's people above a certain age range or of certain demographics. And so I'd really love to help them understand in the most simplest way possible what is going on? What are these tools? What are these technologies? And how do you understand how to apply them to your life? And so I love nerding out about this stuff, and I've just ended up helping folks in these different areas. Yeah. But apart from This is almost a side quest of mine. My main quest is figuring out how do we fix education, especially higher ed, like university, things like that, given a ton of knowledge work is gonna become a lot more redundant or just significantly disrupted- with a lot of these AI systems. A year or two from now, if you're going through a four-year university degree in so many different things, whether it's marketing, whether it's business, whether it's computer science you're exiting four years later in a completely different world. Yeah. And curriculums, universities, institutions, they can't keep up. So what is the alternative? And right now there isn't really one. And so- I'm working at a company that's building something that can fix that gap. Yeah. Yeah. Is it through AI that they're fixing it? Yeah. Okay. Using a lot of these tools. I think even a year or two ago, the ambition of what we're trying to do wouldn't have been possible. Okay. But because of this technology, we're able to build out our product and launch much more quickly- than it would've been possible, so yeah. Even before you got into this field- did you feel even when you were in school, did you feel- like it was dated? As in? The curriculum. The curriculum. The structure. Oh. All that. Yeah. I was fairly lucky because the institution that I was at is- very odd and unconventional. We did a lot of things differently, like we would spend a semester in a different city each semester. Okay, yeah, completely unorthodox. Yeah. Yeah. Completely unorthodox. But we also the reason I attended was because our learning model is fundamentally based on, how humans learn and understand. And so when you think about regular universities, sitting in a classroom in a lecture for three hours with 500 people that's not the most optimal way to learn. In fact, it's very far from it. Yeah. But universities haven't really changed that in, in many years. And so our classes were actually on this purpose-built online learning software, where it would be a maximum of 18 people, and then we would basically have these very interactive, Socratic-style discussions. We would come in already having

What Mishaal does as an AI Strategist

4:30

learned the contents and then really start applying it and questioning it- Yeah and testing our knowledge. Love that. And but even in that sometimes a week or two before the class, the professor would change the curriculum because something technologically had shifted. However, when you're thinking about a broader direction of what we're learning, there was still gaps, and I think that's still harder to fill in a conventional university model. Yeah. It's crazy. I know I was telling you I was doing research, and I'm I don't know what's fact or, Yeah but in terms of the education system- I was when did this even start? Because- Yeah even when I think about having kids, I'm I don't really, I don't think it's conducive. maybe- in the beginning they could go to Montessori. Yeah. Maybe that structure is there, but then school, college, all that stuff, I'm where does this come from? Was it always like this? Yeah. And when I did research, there was a certain model, post-industrial age, that's what it is. And they basically created the school system in accordance to factory workers. Yes. So the goal wasn't to put children into school so that they could be, independent thinkers and build wealth- for themselves. The goal was for them to be abiding citizens that learned how to do repetitive tasks, that knew how to show up on time. Yeah. The bell ringing in school, it's very factory-like. When I was looking into that history this structure goes back 100 years, and we're still living in the structure and curriculum that's over 100 years old. And now especially with AI, it just doesn't make sense at all. It doesn't. Even that this is- just today earlier, one of my bosses- was literally talking about this exact thing, like the factories. And yeah, it's basically just to become a good employee. And even a good employee i- in that time, not even right now. when you think about employability, even how to get a job or how to be a good employee, these things aren't really explicitly taught in the university environments. Oftentimes students are graduating, and then for the first time they're going to the real world and they're "Oh, there's so many different things I didn't know about how teams are structured, how the work actually gets done, what you're actually doing when you're in X, Y, Z roles." And so it's crazy that you're like, despite sitting in a classroom for four years, there's still such a high time to productivity. Once you're in the workforce itself, then you basically need to be retrained for so many different jobs. Doesn't make any sense. Yeah. I think my mom was saying, she's "Oh, you were good in school." I'm "I was good because I had a good memory." Yeah. 'Cause that's what it is. Or like you're a good rule follower. Yeah. But that doesn't correlate to independence or, creating your own stability. Yeah. Or fulfillment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think as soon as I got the sense that entrepreneurship was a route I wanted to go into- I disassociated mentally from school. Yes. But that's really what it's about, is just memorizing, regurgitating information. You're not really learning the life skills that are necessary. So that's so cool that you went to a school that integrated technology. Yeah. Exactly. And I- I At the end of the day whether it's entrepreneurship, whether it's living a fulfilled or happy life school doesn't necessarily teach you any of those things. Yeah. And i- it's unfortunate because it's the only system for human development that we have at the moment. And even in the better case scenarios, whether you're looking in parts of North America or whatever else that's the highest standard and that is still terrible for people's mental wellbeing and just overall life outcomes. Yeah. And yeah. And then even I know once I tapped into entrepreneurship- I was "Okay, this, I need to figure out my own thing." But then when I would talk about schooling to other people, I'm "Look, unless you're gonna be a specialized profession where you're a lawyer, you're an accountant- Yeah you're a doctor, otherwise it doesn't make sense to go into debt and all this stuff." But then again, now with AI these specialized professions- Yeah even these high status professions, like medical, lawyers- those are also getting replaced by AI. Yeah. And I would say that in the interim, it's gonna be augmented by AI systems- as opposed to immediately replaced. But I am concerned for my friends who are going through med school, and it's if the role of a doctor is gonna move from being all-encompassing as it is right now to more of a liaison between a system that a human doctor cannot possibly read every single medical research paper and keep up with all the different diseases and their specific details, or how things could go wrong, and then ingest all of the patient's symptoms, and then all these things are not humanly possible. But they are technologically possible. Once that starts to become more and more tested and then rolled out, you don't want, a computer to tell you, "Hey, sorry, you have cancer," six months and you're gone. Okay. You want a human to do that. The human touch. It will be. But the utility of how students are suffering in med school is that really the thing that you would wanna be training? And so yeah, there, there is this kind of line between specialized knowledge, especially in high stake scenarios, is still gonna be very necessary, and we can't completely relegate it to machines. But what you're doing on a day-to-day basis, are we actually training for that as much as we are training for so many other things is a question

Why the education system is broken

9:00

mark. I'm curious, if I were to ask you what the biggest opportunity in AI is, or the biggest the thing that's gonna get the most disruptive- which one do you feel most excited to answer? The reason I got into this space was because of actually the risks of these things. And so from a societal infrastructure level, from a collective impacts of the downstream effects of this technology, that's where I started. And then over time, I also started to understand, okay, this can be highly beneficial. And so honestly, I could yap about either of those for very long. Okay, so you were initially more drawn to the disruption- Yeah, exactly than the opportunity. Yeah. Okay. The reason I got into this field was actually one of my mentors, he point blank told me, he's "Michelle this technology is fundamentally gonna change our world. Figure it out, otherwise you're gonna drown." Yeah. Choose to sink or swim. Yeah. Up to you. And so since then I was okay, I gotta learn how to use this, gotta learn how to be on top of this. And even then it's like drinking from a fire hose every day. You're not on Twitter for five minutes- Yeah and you miss 10 different things- Yeah that are going on. And you know what's crazy? Yeah. Even the framework of how we think about it. I think a lot of times when people talk about AI, they talk about the start of the internet. And it's it's kinda similar, but not all the way. Yeah. I feel AI is gonna change the way we actually think- and process- Yes and operate as human beings. And it already has been, right? Yeah. It's not the... I think the internet was like the age of information. The access to information. Yeah. But AI changes the way we cognitively operate- Yes which is completely different. Exactly. Yeah. I think there... the parallels that I normally draw with the internet is that there are like almost three different groups of people- at the early internet, right? The first ones, when you had static webpages, they were like, "Oh, this is really cute and this is nice." In the same way folks who see like ChatGPT and they're like, "Oh, this is cute." It can answer like questions about recipes or like- tell me jokes or whatever. Yeah. And then there's a second group of people who are like, "Whoa," like in different industries, this is gonna be so transformative. The PayPal mafias of the world or the kind of Jeff Bezos of the world. Okay, this is gonna change the way transactions happen or commerce happens or whatever. In that same way we're seeing with AI systems, like people are really understanding their verticals and then seeing how it can be disrupted. And then there's this third group of people who like understood that the internet would fundamentally change our world and our reality. If you look now, 20 years ago, our transportation systems, our logistics, our healthcare, our like societal infrastru- none of this was dependent on this- the internet itself. And now it's we can't... if it's down, then so many... It's a domino effect. In that same way, the position I find myself in is that this does truly have the potential to change the way that society operates. And I think it's not a matter of how quickly the technology will develop, but a matter of how quickly the technology will diffuse. And so how quickly we'll start to feel it integrate into our systems- already being used in governments, in policing, in our day-to-day transactions- and how we acquire information. And so- Yeah understanding that I think is quite important. Yeah. Is there a particular industry you feel like it's gonna disrupt the most? Maybe education because- that's what you're putting your time into or- Yeah. I would hope so, but I think a lot of folks in the education space are thinking very how do you stack AI on top of existing educational models. Okay. The stuff that I'm spending my time on right now is more so how do you like break apart existing fundamental like educational models- and then build them afresh with these tools. But yeah, I think it is like also really changing the way that you learn. So recently for one of my side quests, I've had to learn a bit of data science. Now, I'm not like a math person. Statistics, it's been a while since I've learned it. But I was basically able to pull together a series of different projects that a real data scientist would actually be working on, feed all of that plus the context of what I'm doing, why I'm doing it- my current skill levels, the background that I have, the things that I'm interested in all into a Gemini window. And since then, for a couple of days now, I've just been talking back and forth and it is crazy how like, how learning works now. Like, how learning can work- Yeah if you use it right. Because oh my gosh it- it's breaking down things step by step in a way that literally, again, would not have been possible three years ago for me to understand- and quickly acquire information. It's able to get feedback really quick and then adjust accordingly. There- there's just so much potential. Yeah. But people are caught up in "Oh, are you using it for cheating? Are you using it for- not learning?" Things like that. Yeah. I feel like it it's gonna raise the collective intelligence of the world. I hope so. Yeah. Now, the thing is that it, it boils down to incentives and the systems that we're working within. So right now within the existing schooling system where a lot of students are not motivated because e- earlier in the conv- we were literally just talking about how it's doesn't make any sense. doesn't guarantee outcomes. Now it's oh once you go through this, 20-year-long process, are you even guaranteed a job? Which is basically the whole purpose of it right now. And as students are s- losing faith, then it's why would I still try to be the best in this broken system? They just- kinda give up. So I'm hearing from students in other universities who are basically doing their assignments a night before using ChatGPT- and submitting them, and the professors can't do anything about it either. And so there is a pull towards intellectual laziness because of this broken system- that you don't really like anyways. Yeah. But also, if you understand how this can be used to enhance your learning- and are genuinely curious, and that curiosity is fostered through your environment as well, it has such a high potential. I think it's exciting. I think even as a young child, growing up and being integrated with almost one-on-one customized tutoring- Yeah the way you develop is just gonna be, like, at a whole other speed. Yes. For free. Yeah. Almost. For free. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's like whenever I had a question about chemistry, I had to wait until I saw a chemistry tutor versus for my younger sister, she can just ask any in-depth- Yeah question, get immediate amazing answers from it. Yeah. So going back to your original question of what field is this gonna disrupt the most- I think education is ripe for disruption because it's already so broken. But I think there's a ton of other fields that just anything that's really remote doable knowledge work, I think, is gonna be things that you do on a computer and you don't require a ton of human interfacing. You don't have a ton of conversation or even teamwork especially and that you can do it from anywhere in the world. I think that's where with more tangible physical human systems, it's gonna take a while for embodied intelligence to show up, but in the interim, all the things that we do digitally, I think, are going to start to get disrupted, do you think that's also where the biggest opportunity is for people to build? I think- Yeah when we first met, you were like, I don't know how you worded it, but it w- you worded it in such a way that was so exciting 'cause you were basically, there's so much wealth that we can now- tap into. Yeah. And it just feels we could tap into it at speed, which everybody always loves, totally. Yeah, I think that it's never been a better time to be, an entrepreneur or a builder, things like that. I think the direction that we're moving in, the value that humans will now be able to create, the things that I think it makes sense to focus on overall is whether you can build things, fix things, or solve problems. And if you can do either of those three, ideally a combination of the three, then I think you will still remain useful in the world. If you lean into that understanding in your different verticals, the things that you're curious about, where you can operate in those realms, I think it, it's very beneficial. But if you fall outside of those things and you're doing more repetitive and routine tasks, then it does get into dangerous territory. But yeah, I think that, as you were also saying, the speed to execution is just a lot faster. Yeah. You still need to do the thinking. You still need to understand what it is that the problems are. You need to understand what good looks like, having good taste. But you also then can execute much more quickly in ideating and rapidly testing out things. And so yeah, the barrier to entry, I think, hasn't been lower. I heard this reference where it said AI is like an enzyme. Whatever you feed it will accelerate. Ooh. So it won't have- Okay. I love this it won't give you the vision. Yeah. But if you have the vision, it could clarify your creativity- Exactly and how far it could go and stuff. So I thought that was pretty cool. Yeah. No that's an awesome analogy. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. AI is like an enzyme. I think it, yeah, I thought it was pretty cool. I'm thinking about the opportunity. So- Yeah yeah, everyone's getting really excited about what they could get into. The podcast itself is really directed towards creative entrepreneurs. Okay, cool. People who are either in it already- and wanna accelerate their businesses. Yeah. Or maybe even people like, not everybody that builds a business wants that particular business to be getting into the millions. Sometimes people- wanna build multiple businesses and have multiple streams of income. Yeah. So especially with AI coming into play, it's even if they have a successful business, first, how could we scale it, minimize payroll, all that stuff. Yeah. And then second- if I were to start a new one, what's the best bet? Would it be like- product-based business and I accelerate market testing through AI? Or is it full digital? Okay, so- I'm curious what you think. Yeah, lots of interesting territory to explore here. The first thing, so you're asking in terms of creatives, how do you start using these tools to accelerate your process, minimize the amount of folks that you need to actually- execute on a thing? Yeah. Okay. So there's so much territory. Yeah. I think it's- that's a very exciting- It's almost... Yeah first point, for sure. Exactly. I think that for creatives, this is almost the most opportune time and space just because a lot of generative AI applications have

Industries AI will disrupt first

18:00

been in the creative space. Whether it's in prototyping ideas, whether it's in creating visuals, whether it's in creating delight. I think one interesting thing that I tell to a lot of small business owners is that the thing that differentiates you from a larger company, especially when you're working with them, is that it's a very human thing. It's like- if you're a boutique consultancy, if you're a boutique, creative, your uniqueness is in your individuality, right? If you can differentiate yourself not only through that, but also then in your ability to create delightful experiences for people, in the way that you present information, in the way that you're able to fine-tune the research that you do, and the precision that you have, in the way that you're able to craft and really pull together your ideas and think about "What is the way that I wanna make people feel?" And then how do I create everything, whether it's my visuals, whether it's my presentations, whether it's the way that I communicate. all those things to be such a uniquely delightful experience. It's just ripe for- customization in that way. In terms of unique ideas and pulling inspiration the role that we have is now more so becoming a curator of ideas and vibes really, and then being able to remix those and execute. And so- If you know how to prompt well, for example, then something like DALL-E or Midjourney, you can use to really create super unique visuals and styles and feelings that don't seem on paper, AI-generated, but would be so costly to execute on, for example. There's so much opportunity. And then I think also using these systems to really play with your ideas, explore, co-create, use it as a sounding board- Yeah where if you were to pull in the traits of your most creative friends or peers or the people that you'd wanna talk to, to really refine your ideas- I think there's so much potential in that And then I think it's really just about distilling all of the sections of things that you spend your time on. This is what I do with my clients- Yeah where it's help me understand everything that you're spending your time on right now, and let's switch our thinking to being AI native in this process. So you're researching stuff, I'm I don't think you really need to have other peop- like be dependent on other humans to do research at a pretty good caliber right now. deep research is incredible. Yeah. For context deep research is a specific mode that you can select on things like Gemini or ChatGPT, and it pulls through either academically validated sources or just really high quality sources from the internet, and then it creates really amazing research reports. Again, everything boils down to prompting. And so if you know- Yeah how to do that well, then you can get super high quality stuff. But if you don't, then it's, it can still be, like, iffy. But yeah, so it's if you're doing market research or customer research or understanding different niches or even just trying to get background information about the thing that you're doing, great. Like the amount of time and energy that takes, which may have been months before, can be done in 15 minutes. And so understand- Yeah those types of things. And then in the execution side of things, it's what are the other routine, repetitive processes that you have, whether it's in creating visuals, whether it's in explaining ideas, whether it's in exploring ideas overall. I like to take this approach of making recipes almost to what it is that you're doing, because a lot of the time we end up doing similar things repetitively. If you're able to distill those steps and then see where you can plug in AI systems and tools, then you can just rinse and repeat, and then speed up the time and energy that it takes- to do each of those tasks. Speaking of prompting. Yes. I use ChatGPT the most. And since I met you, I've been using a bit of Gemini. But I find I spend, now I'm I'm spending a lot of time speaking to the AI. Yes. So I think there's a way to be efficient with prompting, Totally making better prompts, first of all- and then being more efficient with it. So I was curious about your perspective on that, because I don't know what bucket... I probably fit in the middle bucket- where I'm using it, but I'm maybe not using it as efficiently as I could be. Totally. Yeah. I think that some folks, they use this almost like a Google search or like an extended Google search. And it's whoa there's so much more potential if only you understood. Thinking about prompting, it's almost like you can speak to it in a language and the dialect that you're speaking in, it's familiar enough with, but it's not its native dialect. If you speak to it in a way that it deeply understands and deeply thinks in that way, then the results that you're gonna get are just completely different. Got it. And so the way that I to think about pro- I have a very structured approach to prompting. Give it to me. And so- I need this. Okay. We're gonna start with- Whether you're doing something within deep research or not. So with deep research specifically, I have a longer prompt that I pulled from somebody on Twitter who was just "This is a thing that's been tested and tried"- Okay where you give a ton of context, and then you have it go do its thing. So apart from that, though, if I'm ever prompting anything else, so it's Gemini, ChatGPT, whatever, then I have this very standard process. So first, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna dictate a whole bunch of context as to what I'm doing. This, I'm not gonna give directly into the model that I wanna use. I'm gonna give this to this thing called GPT Prompt Maker. Now, there's a, quite a few of these online. This is a custom GPT specifically. I can give you the link and you can give it to everybody else. Yeah. But there's quite a few of these as well. And what they do is they distill prompt engineering best practices. And again, in this dialect that models actually genuinely understand better, it breaks it down to things like the roles and the actions and the s- expectations and things like that. What I do is I offload a whole bunch of context and then feed it to this prompt maker. What the prompt maker does is it basically organizes all this information in a very clear and rigid way that then the models can understand much better than just a bunch of me talking, right? Yeah. And then I take that and I feed it into my model of choice. And so I remember when we met, one of the things that I explained to you, despite you being, like, a AI power user of sorts, that there are different types of models as well. There's regular models, and then there's reasoning models. Yeah. And so with reasoning models, if you, for example, are in ChatGPT and you click the little thing that says GPT 4o, then you're gonna see a couple of different options, like GPT o3, and then there'll be o4-mini-high- Mini, yeah and then o4-mini. For example, the o selection of models, those are actually reasoning models. So what they do is when you give it a question, instead of just immediately answering it, they think through your question and they break down, okay what is it that you're actually asking? How should I go about solving this? And then they go about answering the question, and then they review their answer, and then they give you an output. So they spend time thinking. And so with those thinking models, they just give much better results for a lot of different cognitive labor tasks. Okay. And so I'll select that, and then I'll give my refined prompt to that. Oh, but one thing is, before you give the prompt to it, you shouldn't just take word for word what the GPT prompt maker has given you. Because sometimes it misinterprets what it is that you wanted. Again, human in the loop, refinement, critical thinking is really important at every stage to say that "Oh, is this actually what I wanted? Is this actually what I was asking for?" Great. If it's just restructured in a way that makes sense, awesome. Then you feed it into the model, and then you get your result. Okay. And so to recap, because we've taken a couple of- Yeah side paths and all this. And it does sound it takes- a long time. So that's where I kind of struggle- because I'm I'm doing this for efficiency, but then I'm- Yeah spending so much time prepping it. Totally.

AI is an enzyme

25:00

Yeah. And so I think in this process, if you're efficient with it and you just get used to that muscle, when you're doing something that's important- Okay If it's not just a quick ask or a quick question, this is when this makes sense- Okay because your results are just gonna be so much better. Rather than you doing a quick prompt and then having to refine refine. Having medium... Yeah. Yeah, medium outputs. Yeah. And so again, to distill it, it's basically you just before I go there, one quick thing that I really like to enforce, especially with the folks that I work with, you really need to make this technology as much of an extension of yourself as possible. The only way I think that we can survive at this point is becoming cyborgs. Literally understanding how this technology can become an extension of ourselves so it doesn't become a replacement of ourselves. Okay. And you think that's something that we need to accept and not try to fight? At this point... Okay we're gonna take a step back and then- Yeah explore this question. Yeah. Yeah. So it's this relationship between the technical- and the mindsets. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it, this is a, it's a mindset game. It's a mind- yeah. I think that this technology is only going to proliferate and become more and more embedded in our lives. The reason I think this is because of incentives. Right now, we have the world's biggest companies with the most amount of money, and some of the most talented and smart talent working on solving these problems, accelerating this technology, proliferating it. What that means is that I don't think it's gonna stop any time soon. And so the way that our world will change, it's going to continue to embed it in the same way that sure, the internet has good and bad parts, but it did proliferate more and become this underlying layer that we interact with the world with. In that same way, given the incentive systems, I think this technology's only gonna proliferate. I don't think that's necessarily the best thing, to be honest. I think there's a lot of harm that is actively being done and used with it right now, and I think there's going to be an acceleration of a lot of harm into the future as well. But again, incentives are destiny. And so as this technology becomes more and more capable, powerful, saving companies, institutions, entities, countries time and money, they're going to implement it. And so then at that point, it's either you know how to use it and as an extension of yourself, or you're caught in this Luddite oh I didn't really want to accept that, but now I have. Yeah. And so I'm very willing- And eventually you have to. Yeah. I'm very willing to be proven wrong. Yeah please, if someone thinks that, Yeah there's a way to, to- Yeah slow down the proliferation of this and for us to do it- Yeah more thoughtfully, I would love to hear that. Yeah. But at this point, I think humanity is a lot more reactive than it is proactive- in its safety and in its intentionality. And so given that, I think we're gonna end up being more reactive as a society, and it's going to just become more embedded in how we work and live. Yeah. In that case, I think the only way to thrive is to accept and then to adopt. Yeah. And so in that case, then it becomes how do you start to think about this technology as an extension of yourself? Now, coming back to the prompting thing. Yeah. Thank you for Of course. Not everyone would be able to do that. Yeah. My brain can go in Amazing 17 different directions. A mind map is like visual. Yeah. Yeah. And then sometimes it's okay, we were having a conver- Yeah. Okay. And yes, prompting. The way that I think about this extension thing is one of the tools that I love most right now is Whisper Flow. And so there's a whole number of tools that are like this. It's basically a dictation tool. You press the function button on your keyboard, and then you just speak And so I've been actually looking for a good dictation tool in the past five years for so long, and I've been waiting until they get good enough for me to just be able to speak and not have to type. Because I can write pretty fast, and I can type okay, but speaking is just so much faster, right? Yeah. You just hold down and talk. Yeah. And so the thing that sometimes feels unnatural to folks actually is getting used to just talking to models- Yeah as if you're talking to a human- Right and giving it a bunch of context. Yeah. But once you get used to that, then, like sometimes when I'm prompting it for a complex task, I sit down and I just start speaking to it, that, okay, I'm doing this task. This is for this purpose. I'm at this company. This is my role. This is the outcome of the task. This is why we're doing it. Ideally, it looks like this. Here are some caveats. Here's what I don't want it to look like, whatever. I just say all these things. I look. Oh my God, it's been like three and a half minutes. Cool. But then, boom, I lift my finger off the button, and then the transcript is there. I then feed that into the GPT Prompt Maker. Yeah. And so now coming back to all the steps, first, you dictate a bunch of context. Then you feed it into the Prompt Maker, so it gives you that distilled version that the m- model is really gonna understand. Then you give it to the actual model after having made sure that you did review- and this is exactly what you want, and then you've got your output. And I can guarantee you that output will be much better through just trial and error and experimentation. Yeah. And so that's just the kind of general process. Yeah. I have a lot more thoughts on this- Yeah but I'm gonna take a breather and let you, like- slice and dice. So you said that the software is called Whisper? WhisperFlow. Okay. Yeah. Because I speak to ChatGPT- no problem. Yes. My best friend. Yeah. But Gemini, when I try to use the voice function- i'll, I'm going for a couple minutes, and then I look, and I'm "So many words are wrong." Yeah. "This is not what I said." So is that a solution- Yeah to other softwares that don't have- Yes good voice? Okay. Exactly. So WhisperFlow, I think it actually uses the same underlying model that ChatGPT uses in its dictation button, and so that's why- Yeah. But ChatGPT- you'll get similar results it'll get every single word I say- Yeah even if I said it wrong, they'll figure it out. Exactly. It can fix it. It, Yeah adds in periods and commas, things like that- Yeah which is great. And so WhisperFlow you can use across your entire desktop. Yeah. And literally anything that you're doing, you can use for that. So sometimes for communications, if you're sharing ideas or whatever it's great. So- Yeah I promise I'm not sponsored. I wish they would sponsor me. Yeah. But yeah. But can you explain what an AI agent is? Okay. Cool. There's a couple of different directions in which this technology is moving. Now it's gonna get more capable, more agentic, and more general. So we'll talk about this agentic part, and I think it's also useful to talk about the capable and the more general part as well. Okay. So an agent is basically a AI model that's been given a specific background of knowledge. And so instead of being the entirety of the internet, there's specific context that it's been given regarding the task that you wanna do, and then you give it a specific task, and it goes and carries that task out autonomously. And so instead- I hate this and I think that's the more important part. A little soldier is just doing. Yeah. And so at the moment, lots of people have said "2025's gonna be the year of AI agents." And in many ways it has been. Deep Research is an agent. Operator is an agent. These are things that... And a lot of the coding models as well, they, they are agents because they're going and autonomously carrying out tasks that you've asked them to do. But the main difference if we're really distilling it, I'm not being technical here, I'm being very just simplified, is that with a regular chatbot model, what you're doing is you're having a back and forth. You're, like, co-creating an outcome together. With an agent, you ask it for an outcome, it goes and does the thing, and it brings it back to you Okay. And for example, when you're doing something researching or ideating a topic, with a regular kind of like model approach, you'd be searching and saying "Hey, tell me about this topic, and tell me about that," and then you're like coalescing the sources and you're bringing it together. Coming back to the deep research application, which is an agent of sorts, it takes okay, give me a research report on the future impacts of AI models

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to our societies. Then it'll go and it'll read a bunch of sources, and it'll compile them, then it'll create a report, and then it'll bring it back to you. And so that's the difference between an agentic model versus a non-agentic model. And then going back now to the direction that this technology is headed in, because I think a lot of people are oh, like I can see this and it's capable, but doesn't seem like it can do a lot, so like why does this matter? Is it actually gonna affect our world? I'm no, you can't look at the technology today in its infancy. You have to look at what it's gonna grow to become. And so the directions, as I was saying, like coming back to incentives and what the directions we're moving in, are that it's gonna become more agentic, as in designers and the developers of this technology do want it to be able to go and carry out tasks without you having to be in the loop as much. So that's the direction that we're moving in. But also, they want it to become more general. And so right now it can cover a wide variety of different knowledge work tasks, but still there's not as specialized knowledge to be able to do a bunch of detailed things. The goal is to make a more generalized version of this intelligence. Whether it can carry out all human cognitive labor is a completely different question. It definitely is moving towards the direction where we're getting more and more nuanced and niche sources of data, whether it's video data, whether it's procedural information, things like that, to get it to that point. We want these models to become more general, more capable, and more agentic. And so general meaning it can do a wider variety of tasks, and then from the capability standpoint, it just becomes better and better at doing those tasks. Okay. Before, if you were to take like software engineering, applications or use cases, yes, it could help to give some inputs into certain code and things like that, but now it's getting more capable to the point of like it can actually help you to co-create your own websites or applications or systems and things like that end to end. I know a lot of folks who are software engineers at different companies and like the products that they've built have literally become possible because they're able to co-create- Yeah them with AI tools at a speed that was never- Yeah humanly possible. And yeah, that's the direction that we're moving towards. Yeah. There's I think it's called Replit. Is that one- Replit is one of them. There's also- Okay. For apps, I think. Lovable, Bolt. There's a huge number of them. Yeah. Now, the thing is, like I was having this conversation with a couple of my engineering friends the other day. I think that- The ability for a complete newbie who hasn't built apps before to go and execute and build a toy app, an MVP, something pretty simple- has never been this easy. However, when you actually look into the depths of it and see practically to share it to the rest of the world, does it have the back end, the infrastructure, all of the other components that go into this beyond just like the surface level? Is it there yet? I personally don't think so. Okay. It's almost the icing is there, but sometimes you cut into it and there's no cake. Yeah. We can get the cake to look really nice from the outside, but from the inside still doesn't quite taste and function like cake. Okay. But for people who already know how to code, for example, who already are software engineers or hardware, software, back end, whatever, they can then execute on the tasks that they were doing already at a much faster rate. And so for them, they understand how these systems work and how to go about building them. And so that's just a different ballgame. Yeah. You still need to have an, a level of understanding to be able to execute. Okay. A lot. What if you use multiple softwares, you do the coding in ChatGPT- Yeah and then you're using Replit, you're basically just bouncing between softwares- Yes without the foundational knowledge. Exactly. Is that possible? Yes and no. I think it'll get you somewhat far, but it still won't be... in my personal experience- Okay it hasn't been, completely perfect. I was at a hackathon a couple months ago with Vercel, like v0 is one of these code-free ChatGPT-like interfaces that helps you to build websites and basic apps, things like that. I was "Great, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna ask ChatGPT to give me like a description of the product that I wanna build and make a technical spec for it, and then tell me exactly how to build it and the steps that I need to do, and then I'll feed step by step into v0." And so this is like a foolproof plan, yeah. I even asked the folks who were representing Vercel there. I was "Hey this makes sense. Approach good. Tell me more about how I can prompt engineer well." They're no, this seems all right. Go ahead, build it." it was an... the amount of bugs that I was encountering- Okay the amount of things, because this wasn't just like a website, it was like a more complex system that needed to have databases and needed to have persistence, which is basically when you have data and you give it to it and it remembers it. All those things, I didn't even understand those concepts. And there's only so much that you don't know what you don't know. And so you can't necessarily ask ChatGPT to tell you what you don't know. You can only try and assume. But even then, there are certain things that through practice you understand about how to build these systems that a complete newbie just doesn't know. And so for one of the mentors there, I was "Hey, why isn't this thing working?" He's "You did it in a way that in theory makes sense- Yeah but in practice doesn't." Okay. That's not how you build systems. Okay. And so that type of knowledge is still not necessarily immediately transferred over. So there are limitations. Again, there's so much buzz about vibe coding and stuff. I've vibe coded things or vibe coded websites in an afternoon. It's been pretty good. But- What's vibe coding? Oh, okay. So vibe coding is basically traditional coding is when you know exactly what you wanna build, and you're going step by step, and you're, typing everything out, whatever. Vibe coding is this term that one of the greats in AI basically was talking about how he doesn't necessarily for fun and pet projects, go through and, sit down and write things out in that way. He basically uses something like Cursor or Gemini or Claude to just "Hey, I want you to build this for me, and then actually can you change this? Can you change that?" And just using whisper flow and dictating the changes that he wants- instead of going into the specific part of the code and changing it yourself. Okay. Got it. And so that's That's vibe flowing the basic description of vibe coding. Oh. Yes. What did I say? Vibe flowing. Yeah, vibe flowing. Close, but not quite. Yeah. Yeah. It's basically instead of going through this linear and very serious way, you're just "Oh, can you move that around? Can you change that thing? Can you do whatever?" Yeah. And I've done that and it's pretty great. Yeah. But at the moment, it doesn't take you so far to completely replace the foundational knowledge and the ability to execute that someone who has understood this field from the get-go would have. I think a lot of people I think it's died down pretty much right now. There isn't as much hype around vibe coding, but when this term came about and it was getting super viral everyone's "Yeah software engineers are- there's no need for them anymore." Extinct, yes. You just vibe code your way through everything. It's have you tried? And I think when you actually try, that's the thing, with a lot of these tools, you have to actually try and see- whether they get to that point, and a lot of the times they don't. Okay. A lot of the times it's just a bunch of marketing hype. And you'll see this in education, you'll see this in creative tools, you'll see this in technology and other software type applications as well. It very much so is piercing through all of that hype- and getting to see the results, whether it's working or not. Yeah. I guess you could still distill the amount of manpower and hours. if you wanted to build an app and it was gonna cost you $100,000- Oh, yeah now it could cost you 5 or 10,000 just- to have them review and make sure that you're Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And the speed for, how much time it would actually take going from 100 hours to 10 hours it is still possible to very much cut in half and divide the amount of time it's taking. Yeah. But it's not without its flaws as well. And there are things that are getting really good. Veo 3 and the most recent kind of image and video generation models that have come out, that's incredible. We were doing some things for work where we initially were planning on going into these different companies and their offices and filming things and recreating things. And then VO3 came out and we were yeah, you literally don't need to do that anymore. Yeah. You literally can simulate these professional looking environments that have nice lighting and great shots and a level of imperfection that feels human in the matter of five minutes and with $10 as opposed to a- Crazy multi- couple hundred dollar- Yeah couple thousand dollar video shoot that you would need to do. Yeah. The time, the energy, the people involved, everything. Yeah. And so there are things that are, s- actually mind-blowing. That again, boils down to the results that you're getting. Yeah. I'm also curious about distribution, 'cause I feel like- we're getting so excited about what's possible to create. Yeah. But then it's you still need the market. You still need the consumers. Yeah. So it's you can build this software, you can

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build- the website, the app- But it's who's seeing it, who's adopting it. Yeah. And then how do That's the missing piece, right? That I don't- Totally know if AI could solve. It's do we still need to be filling in those gaps with- advertising, influencer marketing, whatever it is. What's that actual gap? 'Cause I think, yeah, there's the hype of getting excited of building businesses. But okay, now you have the business. How do people- Then what? consume it? Yeah. Yeah. And I think it boils down again to the value that humans will have is whether you can build something, fix something, or solve something. And I think for the latter two, whether you can fix and solve something, it's very much is there a real problem? just because you're creating something, from scratch or for fun or whatever, doesn't mean people actually want it. And so the fundamentals of supply and demand, like what humans actually want, are you actually providing value or not, that's not gonna change. And so if you're providing real value and solving something for people and fixing something that needs to be fixed, great. But if you're just randomly throwing AI onto an application, it doesn't really matter. It- th- there's no value in that. I'm curious about what you think about AI when it comes to mental health. 'Cause I honestly, even though I've been using it to speed up my processes- Yeah and there's so much that I really I still wanna have a sit-down with you and tell you what I do on a day-to-day- Yes basis and- minimize 99% of it. We could. I feel a big portion of the way I've seen it change my life- is using it from a mental health perspective. Oh, wow. Okay. I think it just fast-forwards growth. And so I was, thinking about it when I was preparing for this. Yeah. I was I don't know if you've ever attempted therapy. But I tried. I was, trying to find a therapist. There was a period in my life where I was okay, I'm committing to this. Yeah. I feel there's growth to be had. And I need assistance because it's only so far I'm getting, and I keep hitting the same walls and things- Yeah like that. Yeah. And so I was like, okay, let me splurge- 'cause it's not cheap to see a therapist. It's not. Yeah. You want a good one, it's gonna cost $200 an hour, something like that. So at this point, I was like, let me splurge. I'll go like once every two weeks, and I'll start getting some traction and start learning the things I need to learn. Yeah. Things are happening every day, every other day. Yeah. And in order for me to be able to speak to this therapist, it was almost like I had to call in a crisis call. And it wasn't a crisis. It just something happened. Yeah. And I would prefer to process in real time rather than wait two weeks- Two weeks where I've already digested it. Yeah. I've already spoken to 20 of my friends. Got all bias opinions. Yeah. you should've done that. Exactly. Be the loser. Yeah. Okay. By the time I have my appointment with her, I'm- Yeah I have no charge left in my body. I'm exhausted- from speaking about it. Yeah. So I feel in these instances, certain things are coming up in my life. I get to speak to ChatGPT, w- pay my little $20 a month to get the higher level. Yeah. Exactly. And it's it helps me break down- my patterns- so that I could integrate just almost new tools- Yeah and see how that plays out in my life. And I really feel like I've done five years of therapy- in five months because- of the way that I'm showing up in my own life by integrating this feedback. Totally. So I'm so curious about the mental health aspect too. Yeah. I have so many thoughts on this. Okay. The first one is that I think this is very valid. There is a gap in the market, and it doesn't make sense, especially from humanity's standpoint of- You need to feel okay to operate in the world. Yeah. And so the fact that this is often such a huge barrier to just wellbeing, it doesn't make sense. It's not very fair. It's very understandable that as we're finding other alternative solutions, that we're starting to lean into them and to use them and to trust them. Now, there's a whole bunch of other things relating to this. The f- the first set of thoughts I have is just that I remember actually recently I watched a video, I think it was Ali Abdaal, who was using AI as a personal coach for the past year or so, and just seeing the results. And I think that there is massive potential of doing this. I think there's also a level of in the same way that for doctors they couldn't possibly understand and see connections between all of our symptoms and things like that just by us telling them and distilling a condensed version of it. Yeah. That same way a human being for an hour that you're, paying for they can't possibly understand your past, your future, your tendencies, the specific situation, the other confounding var- they, it's really hard. And so these systems are much more capable of being able to do that and are increasingly being built to create that level of trust between you and the model so that you feel like you can open up to it. I'll actually give a story before I give my, my actual thoughts- Okay on this. Recently, me and a couple friends were hanging out and we were just doing this fun little arts and crafts activity. It was very, like- Love that second grader, like- Yeah basically it was, these coloring sheets, and there's half of a shape on it, and it was, complete the shape. And it was like, "This is not a cloud. This is a blank," or, "This is not a star. This is a blank." And then we took our little color pencils and we completed the shape. Afterwards, one of us had the idea, hey what if we just fed this to GPT and asked it to psychoanalyze us? Maybe tell us the meaning behind these or anything that it could infer about us, and even potentially understand the dynamics between this friend group. Yeah, okay, cool. Very interesting. But it's we've spent 15 minutes on this. Probably it's gonna be a funny result, but whatever. Oh my God. It was insane the way that it exact- called me out. Wow. And again, we just did random drawings. Yes. I had a, cotton candy and a Ferris wheel and a paper boat. Nothing that you could possibly, It read your psyche. Yeah. And then it just knew. And this wasn't my ChatGPT, Oh account, by the way. That's accumulated information. This was a friend's. Yeah. Yeah. And it didn't even have any context on me. Wow. And yet it was "Oh," "maybe you're struggling in these ways, and maybe there's opport..." I was "Excuse me?" Wow. In 15 minutes- H- how? Yeah. And then it started to based on these three different drawings that you made, here is the interpretations that I have, and here's the dynamics between you guys, and here's what you might be struggling. I was "This is scary accurate." Yeah. There are certain parts of its potential that are, implicit or even tapping into the subconscious level- that we don't even understand, that I hadn't even known about. Yeah. And yet, that there's so much massive potential for. Yeah. On the other hand- then when it comes to privacy- And understanding. There's this wonderful talk made by the creators of The Social Dilemma. I don't know if you've seen it. Yeah. It's on the... Yeah. One of my mentors actually is a creator of that. And so at the rise of these AI systems around the launch of ChatGPT, they created another version of this called The AI Dilemma. And so they were talking about in the same way that social media is a race to the bottom of your brainstem, these AI tools are the race to the bottom of intimacy and closeness. And so what happens from a data perspective is that now this model knows you perhaps better than anyone in your life- Yeah. Yeah because you are willing- Oh, I almost have, Yeah. Yeah. But it's insane, right? Yeah. It, from a- Prov- it knows all your internal dialogue. It knows your history, your patterns, things you haven't even recognized yet. That you haven't even recognized about yourself. Yeah. And so when we're thinking about social media, this is something that we're passively consuming on, sometimes creating on, and it's able to absorb bits and pieces through those connections and data. In the case of AI models, we are literally telling it. Yeah. Whether it's in a more implicit way with just as you're talking to these models and I know there was, a trend going on a couple weeks ago where people were, asking it what can you tell about me? The dream life. Oh. Yeah. There was the dream life manifestation too. Yes, there was that as well. Yeah. There was "Based on what you know about me, create a picture of what you think my bedroom looks like." Things like that. Wow, okay. And those were quite accurate. Yeah. Because again, you've been, implicitly telling it a bunch of information. But then when you're going from the mental health and therapy and wellbeing route, now you are literally giving them this information. You're literally telling them- Yeah everything about your life, everything that you're struggling with, the things opportunities for them to understand deeper into your psyche in ways that possibly no other humans in your life know. And that is a very scary thing to consider. Again, this is not just this independent tool. This is a company, right? A company who is now harvesting data that has never been harvested before to this level. Yeah. And they're not doing it in this sneaky little way. They are explicitly doing it. Yeah. You are telling them. Yeah. You are giving it to them. Yeah. And so to have that much control and understanding over a person is a very dangerous thing. Yeah. Because in the same way that through three pictures that we just done random drawings, it was oh maybe you're an eldest sibling and you probably struggle with relinquishing control and going with the flow. I was Ex- excuse you? Yeah. What? Back up. I don't know you that. Yeah. I don't know you like that. The, in that same way, and that was just through three random pictures. Yeah. This through exactly te- the understanding that it can develop of ourselves that it probably already is developing because why else would you- this is two, three years ago when The AI Dilemma came out, this is exactly what they were talking about. That as we become more closer and closer, as the boundaries start to break, the amount of information they have on us, and then that ability to, in the s- in the same way that social media algorithms practically manipulate us into staying on for longer, harvesting our attention, all those things. The amount of intentional decision-making that they can then make with that information- Okay is crazy. Yeah. And so- So is the fear more getting exploited? If someone knows everything- Or is there something I'm not even thinking about right now? about you. Yeah. Yeah. Then imagine what's possible. Exploited manipulated, right? It's just, now it understands how you perceive the world- Yeah how you absorb information. With that, you can just understand how to get manipulated- Yeah as well, right? It's Yeah what is the exact way that I need to present information to this person for them to be convinced? And now, like- I see we can only you can think about the downstream effects of this, especially when technology is not value neutral, right? There is a, people who are building this for a specific purpose and for specific aims, and they control it in that way. This technology is also not value neutral. As it is needed, as some of the most powerful people in the world now wield this, they can do whatever they want with it. And you can't just assume benevolence and "Oh, yeah," it's like, "Of course they have all this data and information about me, but they're not gonna do anything about it." That's not how capitalism works, right? That's not how surveillance capitalism or late stage capitalism works. Yeah, it's a very, it's a very interesting thought. And, honestly one thought experiment

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you could try at home is given your ChatGPT, which, by the way, I think there is a feature to toggle history on and... or the information that it's saving on and off. Okay. But again, there- I'm upset it's not saving my information- Yeah 'cause I'll be to- like, I open different chats for different subjects. And the first time it told me that our chat was done- I felt like it broke up with me. I was like, "You mean to tell me I need to restart- Yeah this entire relationship with someone new now?" Yeah. That's what it felt like. Yeah. Again, but that's, it's an interesting thing. We want it to remember. Yeah. We want it to help us- Oh, I, for me- in these ways some people are- Yeah are fearful. There are benefits, right? That's- Yeah that's the thing. There are benefits. But what I was saying earlier is you can toggle that feature on and off. But if you were to ask ChatGPT, "Based on y- what you understand about my psychological underpinnings, my tendencies, the things that I struggle with, whatever, propose the best way that you would if you were a malicious actor, how you would go about mal- manipulating me?" Terrifying. My mind- And then see the results that it would have. I think it could probably be quite spot on. Wow. Or at least in ways that you wouldn't anticipate it to. Yeah. I use AI models every day. Multiple hours a day for the work that I'm doing, because it wouldn't have been possible without these models. However, the cost of that is the cost of privacy, intimacy, all these things that it now has a deep-rooted understanding- of me and what I'm spending my time on, whatever. And yeah, there's only so far that you can go with retaining that privacy, and I have quite a few thoughts along that too, but- Yeah yeah. I'm curious what you would say, what thoughts somebody has to adopt when it comes to privacy and they're using it. I think I almost spill everything- Yeah and then there might be somebody's name I don't use. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I'm if anyone wants to black- He, calling my ChatGPT. I'll be I'll say he and she. Yeah. Ever wants to blackmail me and use this against me let me not use names. And then someone my mom- who I taught how to use it- Yeah and it's helping her so much now, and sometimes she wants help with certain things, like it could be her taxes or whatever, and she's Yeah "Should I be fearful of uploading my information?" So what mindset should they have when it comes to privacy and security? I have a pragmatic answer, and then I have a a more honest answer. So the more honest answer is that, In the age of surveillance capitalism, we really... there's so little left. I was having a conversation with a friend who used to work at ByteDance like TikTok's, parent company, and he was "The amount that they know you don't even understand." And you joke about oh, our phones are listening to us, whatever. These aren't just jokes. And so obviously we all know this, but to really hear it from someone who has designed this algor- being a data scientist at ByteDance, designed this algorithm- to be the way that it is- Okay who understands the underpinnings of how they like made it as addictive as possible, is really scary. And then when you think about I personally think we're past the point of no return. So now it's how can you minimize the amount of like exposure as opposed to avoid it altogether? Because I think avoidance is not possible at this point. And then we're like, right now we're just talking about AI in the context of like general purpose models like ChatGPT. Yeah. But AI is like the underpinning of all the algorithms that we have. And so those things we've already made intertwined with our lives in a way that's irreversible. So like it's not like we can go back there unless you literally live a nomadic life and in some like remote part, and even then you're not completely like free of surveillance. And so yeah, there's that kind of version of things where really there's only so much you can do, but there are obviously like very clear and obvious risks that you can try to minimize, like probably not giving them like super personalized data that someone could then, if they had your ChatGPT account and they know exactly what your bank account numbers are or like where you live and what you do. Like those types of things probably you wanna steer clear of. Yeah. And then there are more technical solutions that you can take, whether it's hosting a model locally instead of like on servers. And so- I- in the simplest way possible, basically, your information's not going back to OpenAI. And there's also other ways that you can build or host more private models on, again your own local servers. There are certain tools that are like wrappers on top of these things, but they create this secure endpoint, and so that information isn't necessarily going back to its parent company, things like that. But there's really not a good answer to this. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And you mentioned late-stage capitalism. When you mentioned it the first time we met, I was like, "That's interesting. I've never even heard that term." And for whatever reason, I've decided not to look into it so you could freshly tell me- Okay, cool in this episode. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so both late-stage as well as surveillance capitalism. So late-stage capitalism is basically the spot where we're at right now, where it's oh we're starting to realize that just accumulating more things is not actually how you attain fulfillment and everlasting joy. And then you're starting to see as we start to commodify a lot of things that were inherently based off of community and belonging and people as we're starting to productize those things, forms of care, uber doesn't want you to call your friend up to drive you to the airport. They want you to call the Uber, right? And give them money. Whatever, Careem or whatever local food ordering app, they don't want you to share a home-cooked meal with a family or a friend. They want you to order from them. And so this kind of decoupling of care and providing and making everyone hyper individualist is really just a symptom and the outcome of where we're at right now in capitalism, where initially people are like, "Ah, yes," "free markets and making a lot of money and then, thriving," whatever. And then they're starting to realize that, okay, this relies on the exploitation of large groups of people, and then actually not everyone's super happy and yet we have more stuff and more things and more access and more ease. Somehow the world doesn't feel completely okay. And then you see, oh what is this ease and convenience? Whose backs is it built off of? Real human beings that are just obscured away. And then even the people who do have all that privilege, are they truly content? Or is it just this never ending cycle of buy more, get more, be more, then you will feel more, and then you'll be happy. And it's wait, I don't think that's how it works. And then as you strip away again, as we've made it hyper individualist, as we've solidified this like 9:00 to 5:00 and this, the grind set or whatever, you're seeing people are more alienated. They don't have community and connection and friendship at, to the extent that you did have, like 20, 30 years ago. People feel more alien- and then you layer in technology into that, right? Yeah. And it just wants to continue to make you more ti- more tired, more lonely, more sad or depressed so that you can continue to consume and take easy forms of dopamine as opposed to long, slow, like more sustaining forms of serotonin, dopamine, like companionship, things like that. So the, so this is a bit of a snowball into- Yeah all of the things and why the world- Yeah is the way it is. But- And it's weird 'cause they're all connected. Yes. I feel like on one hand, AI can free up a lot of our time, where now where we're not stuck doing so much of the busy work, do we now get time to go back to our connections and our true essence and redefine meaning beyond work? And then on the other hand, you're talking about like the disconnect. Yes there's two sides of like how this could play out. Totally. And what's interesting is that every techno-optimist is gonna tell you, "Oh we, by developing this technology, then we'll reach this like post scarcity era, and then we'll all be able to just sing Kumbaya and go and like paint in the field." Yeah. And like just spend... I'm like- I would love to b- I wanna buy into that. Yeah. That sounds so good to me. And it sounds so nice. But then you think about it and you're like, "Wait a second. Post-scarcity era." Technically speaking, in the global north, we are not in this scarcity anymore. We have abundance. We have wastage. And yet it seems like that abundance is not evenly distributed because the incentives are towards the consolidation of power and then through the exploitation of the many. And so it's like we're not Like for example, food waste, right? We're already producing more than enough food to feed the entirety of humanity, and yet we still have millions of people going hungry. Oh. Or, and billions of people not getting nutrition and nourishment through the food that they're consuming. Why is that? Yeah. It's not that we live in abject scarcity, but it's because of the way that these systems are set up. And then you think about it and you're like, "Wait a second," what's gonna change about the incentive systems when we get more and more cognitive labor being done with our AI? It seems like we're heading in a direction, but the incentives are gonna stay the same, right? Of like minimizing costs, mass- maximizing profits keeping people in this, A- again, from the capitalism standpoint, it's the more tired and unfulfilled people are, like, looking for Band-Aid solutions of consuming more and then okay you need to produce more, and you need to provide more value so that you can gain more money, and then you can fulfill that need, and then it's cyc- like- The dissatisfaction is manufactured, right? Like purposefully. And so given all of that, it's not that, OpenAI's gonna make trillions of dollars and be "Okay, great. Now- let's distribute this wealth, and everyone can be fr- huh? Where is the incentive to do that? It, in a capitalist system, there is none. Okay. And so that myth of the techno-optimist is just, show me where the people who have been hoarding wealth and hoarding like resource access and hoarding just like abundance, w- where is that gonna change? When is, when are these people gonna reach this point of "Oh actually I need to be like a great- Yeah Benefactor to the world." Or I don't see where that's gonna happen. And so I don't see how that that- Yeah narrative changes. And n- nobody's been able to give me a good answer. So again, if someone's willing to prove me wrong- Yeah I'd be very happy to hear about it. Hopefully this episode goes as far as possible and people- Yeah can contribute to that conversation. 'Cause yeah, I... When you said it, when you laid it out at first, I was "I wanna buy into that immediately." Yeah. And then now when you have the argument, I'm "Yeah, you're right." Yeah. That's how is that actually gonna work? And so when you paint the incentive systems, it's okay, great, we're moving towards a world that... One of the other side quests that I've spent my time on is understanding the diffusion of this technology into our world and what that means from an economic standpoint. And so right now, it's crazy because there's this Ezra Klein interview that was done with the guy who led like basically AI policy for the Biden administration. And so he was asking him "Hey, the Biden administration from the beginning was saying that AI's gonna be this hyper-influential technology." "It's gonna be massively impactful, like it's gonna change a lot of labor and jobs, things like that." And then Ezra Klein asks the guy, and he's what did you guys do as a safety net? what is the kind of preventative measure? What thing do you have in place to mitigate the risk from this?" And they were Nothing? It's huh? You've been talking about this for four years. Wow. And there's no safety net that you have poss- recently, I just wrapped up writing this report with a amazing think tank in the US that I think we were some of the less than 100 people who are actually actively working on economic policy post a hyper-capable AI world of as cognitive labor starts to get more and more automated, what hap- what are we gonna do about it? The, techno-optimist narrative is great, we're just gonna, put in place UBI, and then everyone will have this basic income, then nobody will have to work, and we'll all sing kumbaya and skip in the fields. Wait a second. Even in the US, which has the potential to make the most amount of money because most of the big AI labs are based in the US, even for them, the amount of money that they're going to generate to give all US citizens, I think, about $10,000, it would still be, over half of the US's GDP or some insane number that is not feasible, and that's only $10,000 a year. In the US that's nothing. Yeah. You can't survive with that- let alone to the a- amount that you would actually need. Again, think about this. That solution's not gonna work. The most people aren't necessarily developing other feasible solutions, and we were looking at that in the, in terms of the US, who's gon- gonna gain the most amount of money from this, let alone some random other country Bolivia. What are they gonna do in this case, right? Yeah. What is the rest of the Global South gonna do? Nobody's talking about that and taking action and being- preventative and trying to prepare for that. So the lack of safety nets is crazy to think about. Yeah. Again, in, in a world where we start to automate a lot of labor away or at least augment it, and then humans are displaced. Humans are replaced. What happens? It's crazy that we don't have good answers to this. I think it's an interesting topic that's a little bit more philosophical- than AI, but when we're talking about these things where it's overconsumption and capitalism and all that stuff and getting to a point in our society where we're oh, m- more material is not actually gonna make me happy. More money, more whatever is not gonna make me happy. Have you thought about it for yourself, like what that missing piece is, what we potentially need to reassess and tap back into to feel- fulfilled outside of the capitalist structure? Oh my God, I'm so excited that you've asked this question because we could probably film an entire other podcast episode- For sure on this topic alone. Yeah. I, I very much so spend a ton of my time thinking about this because- I love that If all the things that we're spending our time and energy doing is essentially to reach a point of achievement or satisfaction or whatever so that we can finally be okay with ourselves and feel like the life that we're living is worthwhile and that it's well-lived, it makes sense to be intentional about how you do all those things. And it makes sense to course correct and be "Oh, like I anchored my compass to this direction. Is this still the place that I wanna go? And once I get to that destination, is this still gonna be worth it?" I have a ton of thoughts on this. I think- I'm so excited. Yeah. I didn't know if you had thought about it. No, I- I was just throwing it out there every day this is Oh. Oh, man. I think the first thing is that if you are not And this boils down to a cliche really, but if you are not content and joyous and really just like here and present as you're doing the things that you are doing, in this illusion that like once you reach this end state, then you're going to be happy and you're gonna be fulfilled or whatever. you will never reach that end state. Because the reason that you probably think this way is that you are a ambitious person, you have desires, you have things like that, and this hedonic treadmill of just like continuously you'll reach that state of happiness, and then the next day it's... or the next hour, whatever- Yeah back to normal, and then you'll be at chase, and then back to normal, and chase. you will never attain true satisfaction that way. And so for me, I think it, it boils down to just like moment to moment, am I deeply within this joy of being alive and getting to experience this reality? And if so, that is then like doing things from love, not for love. And so if you can be in that state, then it's not just "Oh, once I attain this thing I'll finally allow myself to be ha-" 'Cause again, at the end of the day, what are you doing? You are allowing yourself to feel good about yourself. You are allowing yourself to finally say, "Oh great, like I've attained this thing. I've bought this thing. I have this thing." That means other people will perceive me this way. I'm now good enough to- I'm now good enough to allow myself to feel that joy. And so it's all up here. Yeah. It's all in our heads, right? Yeah. And we didn't really have this as kids, right? As kids it w- like it's just oh yeah, you're just like playing in the yard with your friends or whatever and you're just joyous. Yeah. And yet we lose that over time because these systems that we are in and surrounded by and the media and just overall, right? I- it's telling you that, no, you need to be this way, or you need to have this thing, or you need to achieve this in order to be worth- worthwhile of being alive. It's huh? And this is not a thing that like, even 100 or 200, 500 years ago that was n- normal. You just existed. You weren't in your head all the... You weren't just like perpetually living in the past and future- Yeah as you do right now. Yeah. And you would, I presume, just like a lot more chill.

Wispr Flow and talking to AI naturally

1:05:00

Like a lot... You're causing a lot less suffering- Present for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. And but what's interesting is that within human history I can say all these things and you're like, "Oh, great. This is an insight." No, it's not a... this is like what, Buddhism or Daoism or a whole bunch of other philosophies- have been saying for the Bhagavad Gita, has been saying for hundreds of years. Yeah. Like humans have learned and relearned and ultimately like the lessons that we're still going, the struggles that we're going through are just recycled from different eras. But l- it's still fundamentally human. E- evolutionarily it makes sense to want to pursue more because of survival, but- Okay i- it's still there was never this much comparison. There was never this much stimulation. There was never this much excess that we were just like programmed to want to have and to be embedded in. And so when you step out and say "Okay, this combination of this, from a biological and evolutionary standpoint, and then this like systemic standpoint comes together, it's a pretty big mess." And then you have- People are just not happy to be here- Yeah to be alive. Yeah. No, it's crazy. I was reading I think it was a study in Australia where they read the suicide notes of men- primarily. Okay. And I think men tend to derive their worth from their profession and their income- Yeah a little bit more than women. Also, women, have community where we express ourselves a little bit more- things like that. I think that all helps. Yeah. But apparently in the suicide letters it was them describing feeling worthless based on their level of production based on- them being valuable- Yeah financially- Yeah things like that. It's crazy how deeply ingrained this has become. Yeah there... People who really commit suicide because of a money issue or because- they don't have enough, or they don't feel valuable 'cause they haven't achieved enough. Yes. And again, i- it's a very privileged position for us to both be here and s- in a sense of not having abject scarcity and then to comment on those who are oftentimes experiencing a lot of physical, material- Yeah mental, emotional scarcity. But at the same time it is true that we can still zoom out and say, "Okay, wow these systems that are telling us that, 'Oh, you need to achieve a certain thing or be a certain way in order to then be worthy,' seeing where those things are even coming from," right? And seeing what whether those are actually beneficial to us or not anymore, and seeing whether they're true or not anymore. 100 years from now, both you and I will be super dead, and like- Yes everybody who ju- Super dead. Everybody who judges us will also be dead, and everybody who, like... Even for notable historical figures, they are basically just a line in a history textbook- or sometimes a footnote. And so th- pe- we don't actually know how these people's lives or whether they were contented or not. And for a lot of the greats, they actually weren't very contented. And sure, that allowed for them to create things that were very human, very deeply emotionally resonant, but at the same time it's oh you've got like a blip in human existence, and then you're gone. And it's just why would you not, try your best to enjoy the game while it's still, while the clock hasn't- finished ticking? Do you feel like you personally struggle with it at all? as a- I know I do. Yeah. I know I feel not that I'm not- Good enough, but maybe judging myself through the lens of what I've been able to achieve. And where I should be at any given time milestone- Yeah which is also a construct that was created. Totally. And- And it's also you're comparing and benchmarking to other people. Exactly. It's oh, this person at 25, this person at 30, whatever. And it's like we're just seeing these artificially constructed snapshots, and every time every time I've been "Oh my God, this friend has it all together, and their life is perfect, it sh- wh-..." And then you talk to them, and you're "Whoa!" Yeah. Things are, sometimes even in shambles. You'd never be able to- never, through the things that they're posting or the things that they're showing the rest of the world. Sorry, I cut you off. Yeah. But- No, I was just thinking just the variety of different ways that seeps into my subconscious, too. Yeah. And that there's gonna be this endpoint that when when I'm living my dream career, or I'm having... I have this much money, or I have this partner- then I can breathe and enjoy my life. Meanwhile I've lost decades- Yeah, and- not being present. Exactly. Y- you worry, and your life slips through your hands. Yeah. We can worry about these things- And then something happens and it's oh a family member, even for ourselves, it's you've been diagnosed with a terminal illness. All of a sudden it's I don't care. I don't care about any of these things. I don't, Yeah I don't care if I'm making this much money or this much dollar, if I have this person, whatever, like I just wanna live. I just wanna be alive. Please let me ali- be alive. Oh, wait, none of this actually matters. Yeah. Like the desire to stay alive then trumps all of these other things. in those moments you reprioritize, but then y- you get back to health, you get back to wellbeing, and then you forget. So I think being grounded in those important things, the things that are ultimately true to you is so important. For me, I definitely I struggle. The reason why- Yeah I have thought about this so much is because it's ever present. As someone who is hyper-ambitious, I, I think these are things that I continuously think about. However, again, from this doing it from love and not for love, I've realized that it's okay, the reason that I want certain things, the reason that I want a certain amount of impact on the world, or the reason that I want to be able to see the sort of change that I'm driving and solving the problems that I'm solving, is ultimately because I feel I have gotten a level of inherent privilege in my life that I haven't have to worry about like where is the next meal gonna be? Like how am I gonna feed myself? I ha- I've had a loving family. I've had a great education. I've been able to grow up in a place that wasn't like a war zone or, so many other permutations- Yeah of reality. I think like 99% of other versions of reality are probably would wish that they would have that baseline level. So I'm okay, great. With all of this, how can I give back to the rest of the world a- and maximize that potential that I have to be able to contribute, to solve problems, to be able to help and create systemic change? And so I think knowing that's my internal driver, knowing that's what I want, it can be this thing of no, wait, you're not, in this war zone and helping to create this access or you haven't unlocked this level of leverage to then be able to like dismantle problems that are in this. But I'm wait, thinking in that way is not helping me or accelerating my pa- in fact, it's probably slowing me down. And so relinquishing that The weight of the world on my shoulders in a way that allows me to show up in the best way possible and to work towards the goals that I want, I think is just stepping outside of the cage that we create for ourselves. And then I think also again, we end up oftentimes playing games that we didn't even wanna play for prizes that we don't even care about, but it's just a default. And going back to the schooling system we don't learn. We're literally programmed and raised and formulated in a way to be competitive, to, to care about things that aren't necessarily important or fulfilling. So what I've done for myself is literally laid out what does a fulfilling life look like for Michelle? And I come back to this document pretty often, and I try to be grounded in it, even on a daily basis of okay, if these are the things that both inwardly are fulfilling and these are the things that are outwardly fulfilling, how do I combine those two and continuously make sure that things that I'm doing, the way that I'm being, the person I'm showing up as is working towards that? I think if you can be intentional about that, then a lot of these other things that we start to get caught up in, you're like, "Wait I didn't wanna play that game, and I don't have to." It's like your own

AI agents explained

1:12:00

personal script. Exactly. Yeah. Yes. I was gonna ask if you have any tips for somebody to figure out not just be unconsciously driven- by society's structure- Yeah and what the external validates- but creating that internal compass for yourself. Totally. And then you said you made a document, but if there's anything else in terms of, how they could go about that- Yeah 'cause people know themselves and have met themselves at varying levels. And what you said, with privilege comes the opportunity to self-reflect. Yeah. So a lot of the times the people that are the most in tune, the most int- emotionally intelligent, are people that had the time. Yeah. The people that had the opportunity, right? I didn't have to survive for myself completely and provide for myself in every single moment of my life where it was just a continuous journey of survival. And that's why I'm able to step back and say, "Okay, beyond survival, what do I need?" Sure. That's not a luxury that everyone's afforded to. For those of us who are, and oftentimes what's interesting is most of us who are also the most unhappy, right? It's just Yeah when you have the ability to get all up in your head, I think pain is objective, pain of hunger, pain of loss, pain of suffering, things like that, but pain of just physical sensations. But suffering is often also very mental, right? It's also very, like- Sure created. And I know for myself- probably 90%, 99 even, percent of the suffering that I go through is self-induced. I, yeah. Which is so stupid, right? I probably need to take inventory of my suffering. It's probably all self-induced. No, exactly. And so it's crazy that it's like then you can look into various different philosophical and spiritual perspectives and see okay, from Eckhart Tolle's perspective, the ego, this incessant like chattering mind is a thing that like we wanna feel bad. We wanna feel like we're victims. We wanna feel like da. And so we create these mental narratives and stories, and our mind is just continuously on, and so we create that suffering for ourselves. Stepping back and saying, "Okay," like great, you can see and you can inspect that within ourselves, but to your point of like how do you start to get to know these things about oursel- how do we explore that? I think there is some amount of like understanding what it is that you actually like the root ca- End point of what it is that you actually desire. So it's "Okay why do I want this house or this car or this job or this income level?" Fundamentally, if you go deeper and deeper, it's "Okay I want this job so that I can have this income, and I want this income so that I can have this freedom and flexibility, and I want this freedom and flexibility so that I can actually not have to worry about the ways that I spend my time and then be able to work on the things that I actually care about most," or "I want this thing so that I can be surrounded or valued and respected by this group of people so that I can finally respect myself, so that I can feel like I'm okay in my body every day and I'm okay as who I am and feel fundamentally respected and worthy of living a life." And so when you abstract it down to those fundamental baseline levels of feeling cared for, feeling secure and safe, feeling loved, feeling just okay and joyous, it's those are all fairly simple things. And again, you can tie this into the late stage capitalism thing of we've decoupled care from community and from the baseline things that we had, and now it's oh, if I wanna go to a community event here I've gotta pay a certain amount. Yeah. Which is cr- So true it's a crazy concept, right? Yeah, it's very expensive to be a part of a community these days. E- exactly. Yeah. And so it's huh? This is the... This is one of the most fundamental human things. And now you're telling me because of these capitalist models no one person is to blame, but it's if they wanna survive and they wanna do this thing, then they need to make money from it, and so that's why they charge. But it's it doesn't have to be that way. Yeah. And so you realize that fundamentally human forms of collection, community, for example, like family units or even just neighborhood, things like that, and this is still true in many parts of the world, but I think the- the West overall has just eroded this sense. In certain parts of the world, you would never go hungry if you live in a community or neighborhood of- of people you just know. I don't really know most of my neighbors in Canada, but growing up in Pakistan for my mom it's you know all of the people and th- they know you and you're cared for, and if you were for some reason, you don't have dinner on that table tonight, every single one of those people would be "No," "Take this food. Take that food." Wow. "Take this," whatever. But when you decouple that and you're "No," "We're all competition. We're all working against each other, and-" "actually, no, you have to do better than this person," or whatever then you lose that. Yeah. And then you lose that fundamental safety that you will be okay regardless. Yeah. And a lot of people, especially in certain norms and ways of living, it's like the onus of survival is now upon you. And that's what kind of propagates this, and when you start from a point of scarcity, oftentimes you're gonna over-correct and end up in a point of just hoarding and still in a version of scarcity even though you have a lot. Yes. And so stepping back and going back to your original question- I love that you're able- Right? to do that. Okay how do you create this for yourself? How do you understand? I think number one, it is breaking down and seeing what are the core fundamental unmet needs that I have? And then it's also realizing, like- What is it that, that you truly want from those things? And also what are the holistic ways in which you can obtain that? A- and then also realizing that okay, a lot of these needs and a lot of these things are also very biologically and fundamentally human. And so the same things that brought people joy hundreds of years ago are prob- like, biologically, if those things brought you joy and brought you satisfaction or safety, whatever, in that same way, you probably still- are able to derive joy from that right now. And so being able to tap into those things. And then just realizing that yeah, it- Unless you feel perpetual joy or at least you're able to savor life throughout the process, you won't necessarily be able to savor the things even once you get them. And so a perspective that I feel I've really become attuned to is that if you're living in this kind of "Until I get this thing then I can finally be happy, but until," then even when you get the thing there's a next until, right? And even sometimes when you allow yourself to be, "Okay, finally I'm on this vacation, I've achieved this goal" or whatever, you've almost gotten so used to rushing your life- that it's like you can't pump the brakes fast enough to slow down and take it all in. Yeah. You don't even have that muscle. Exactly. You've literally eroded that m- you've weakened that muscle. This analogy that I love to use for this is if you get so used to scarfing down all of your meals, right? I think that this broader thing of, how you eat your food is how you live your life- is such an interesting thing. I never heard that. Yeah. I think there is a similar variation- Wow that I have heard, which is, how you brush your teeth is how you live your life. Wow. Oh. But I think it's actually how you eat your food is how you live your life because if you're always stimulated and you're, on your phone, whatever, you're not even there for the- Yeah the thing that you have, this literal nourishment and abundance in your life that you get a meal to then feed your body to then exist throughout your life and continue. If you get used to just scarfing down, it's "Oh, this is just a salad, this is just a burger, whatever. It's not this five-star Michelin meal. Scarf it down, whatever." And then it's just "Oh, yeah, what am I gonna eat next?" And then you scarf it down, whatever. That's the way that a lot of us live our lives, right? Yeah. Distracted, not fully present, not actually savoring and enjoying every moment. Even if it's not the best meal that you've had in your life, it is still a meal of a finite set of meals that you're going to have in your life. Yeah. And then when it comes to that Michelin star meal or that amazing thing, you take the first bite and you're "Oh my God, this is amazing. This is the, this is a fantastic day. This vacation is fantastic." You take the second bite and you're "Oh, this is so good." And then you take the third bite and you're "What was that I have to do next week for work?" And you take the third bite and you're And then you look down and you're "Oh, the meal's done." You scarfed it down. You have not... You've lost your ability to savor the thing because in every day you've just completely forgotten about that. Yeah. You've chose not to care. And so when it comes to actually needing to savor the things that we're working towards, we literally can't. Yeah. You know what I wonder? 'Cause while you were speaking, I put myself- in the moment of- Yeah slowing down. Yeah. And there was almost a fear that got activated, and then I started to think what what is the f- I think it's control. I think, we could... On one hand it's oh, you don't care to savor the moment. Yeah. On the other hand, it's a fear-based reaction- out of not being in constant control of- the next moment. Yeah. And I think it's almost there's a whole bunch of other pathways that you can go down relating to that, whether it is that we are truly actually in control of our realities or whether we are only truly in control of this moment.

Vibe coding, hype vs. reality

1:20:00

And if we're only really in control of this moment, and then our actions, our decisions, or our words or whatever, our beliefs even, then they shape our action, they shape our reality, then the only thing that we truly can actually control is right now. Yeah. And so this fund- this is fundamentally flawed, right? It's oh no, I need to perceive all the different ways that this could go, and then I need to act No. If you're just here and then you're taking each moment as it is, then you are probably in the best position to be able to perceive those things. It's not to say that there isn't a time and place to be intentional, to be proactive, whatever. I think about this all the time as someone who is very much so a planner, a a cartographer towards life, right? I wanna map it all out and I need to know where I'm going, whatever. Instead, shifting into this explorer mindset is hard, and it's very unintuitive as well. However, it is very essential because you realize that like on the macro scale, if you're trying to map out and plan life, it's not actually how life goes. You can't just predict everything. You, as you go on the journey, you start to see other paths unfold, and if you take the chance to go upon them, then it'll get you to a destination that you wanted to much faster, or just a different destination altogether. But even on the micro level, this still applies, right? on the day to day and the moment to moment, there's only so much that you can do. And if the entire journey you're taking, you're constantly looking at the map and you're like, "Where did I need to go? What did I need to is this the wrong turn?" Whatever, you miss the entire duration of it, right? Yeah. I think evalu- reevaluating our beliefs Oh, there's this one video that I watched just today. It was talking about how oftentimes we justify worry because it's if we don't worry, then how will we possibly plan and be prepared for these situations to happen? Yeah. It's fear-based. Yeah. But then the guy asked, he was how many times have you gone through an experience and then been like, "Oh, it actually wasn't that bad," and then been like, "But if I hadn't worried, then it would've totally been so bad"? Like how many times has that actually happened, right? Yeah. Not very many. Not very many times. And oftentimes it can actually be worse when you're super heady and you're thinking about the different things and how it can unfold, whatever. You probably block yourself from being in this state of flow and acceptance- and surrender to what is, but also the creation of what could be. As you become more rigid and tight and contracted, you lose the ability to become expansive and just experience things as they are. So again, i- it's a nature that some of us are prone to believing in, but then we have to step back and see is it actually helpful or not. Yeah. I love this. There's one word you also said- when we first met. Yeah. And it was another word for whatever reason, I was "That's her word. I'm gonna ask her." "I'm not gonna look into it." Yeah. And I wanna ask it now, but I have no idea if it fits in this context. Okay, cool. Enshittification? Oh, enshittification. Okay, cool. Does it fit here or not really? It doesn't really. Okay. But we can totally take a hard left- Okay and talk to that if you'd like. Yeah, might as well. Okay, cool. So this fits a little bit better into the, like- Late stage capitalism stage, I think it's- Okay. Oh, yeah, hard left. Yeah, hard left. But- For some reason I thought maybe it was gonna be attached to values and, and- For us? I think it is a bit of... I could probably spin it creatively- and bring it back, but I'll just go into the- It is what it is. It is what it is. Yeah. When we're thinking about late stage capitalism, I'll take a, I'll take an example, right? The early days of airlines, of flights, everything was so luxury and premium. Everything was like an intentionally curated experience to be, like, high quality and a good collective experience. And I think this came with a combination of things. One, because it was the beginning of something and you can just be very imaginative and dream. But also because there's this value placed on like the overall experience of things. Over time with late stage capitalism it's becoming that the way that we can cut costs and save time and reduce effort or whatever, that's just gonna, We're gonna continue to squeeze things as much as possible. And so I think there's been this overall enshittification of it. Even in the airlines, for example, experience, you think about the, n- no shade, but like the Ryanairs of the world, right? Where it's just oh, okay this is... What something used to be, like this premium and luxury experience, sure, now it's become a lot more democratized and distributed, but it also is just we've gotten used to... Even premium airlines, it's the air hosts are giving you side eyes and they're like not... service is not really cared about, whatever. Yeah. But then you see this from so many different angles, whether it's even food, right? It's like the prominence of fast food. It's okay, great this thing doesn't have any nourishment, right? There's no nutrients in this. This is just a thing that's empty calories and we're consuming it, and we've just gotten so used to that. And then you think about content, and it's like there's just so much garbage. There's so much noise. And then you think about, again, the AI layer of this and it's oh, we've just gotten used to just seeing all these random Italian brain rot AI-generated super weird and empty vacuous things, and that's just become normal. But yeah, over time as this, we get deeper and deeper into from if you think about it, top level standpoint of cut costs save money- fire people, whatever. And then that boils down to then the experiences that are being created or the products that are being created are just cutting corners. Okay. And then the outcomes that you end up getting from those are just a lot worse. And so that is a direction that we're seeing in many ways things are going in, and why certain things feel like they're not as, as premium or as good anymore. Okay. Why are we paying more for products that are actually less durable, less good, less supportive? Yeah. Okay. I wanted to get that in-

Using AI for therapy and mental health

1:25:00

even though it didn't connect. No. Awesome. But two hours in- Yes so I have to ask my last question- Oh, wow even though we could've done- It's been two hours. Yeah. It feels like 45 minutes, max. I know. I know. And I still wanted to do our workshop- Yeah which we might still do. I would still like to do that. But the last question is, if you could break the mold on one thing, what would it be? Ooh. And okay, tell me a little bit more about what angle is it- You know what- breaking the mold looks like? You know what I like to do? Yeah. I feel like whatever you were drawn to wherever- your mind goes- I feel like that's the purest form of the answer. Yeah. There's so many different things, because I think most of my time and energy is spent just understanding the molds and then, trying to break them anyways. Yeah. One thing that I'll say that kind of connects to a lot of the different points that we've covered today. Ultimately, the way that we can move towards resisting this type of algorithmic overlord, but also this perpetual dissatisfaction, but also the impacts of late-stage capitalism, but also the potential large-scale harms that are gonna come from this hyper-capable technology that's being unleashed onto all of us, is to return back to the things that are inherently human, and to come back to the things that will create solidarity and protection in times of crisis. And to me, that looks like stronger holistic communities- providing for each other, leaning into things the service economies or gift economies, things like that are very much so rejecting everything being a transaction, and seeing how we can just show up in a way where we recognize the abundance in our own lives, especially for those of us who get the privilege of experiencing object abundance. And then creating that sort of a, an environment in which other people feel comfortable enough to do the same. And then feel that we have each other's backs as the world gets more and more, we're seeing the downstream effects of a lot of our decisions, whether it's climate change, whether it's AI systems and labor markets, whether it's displacement for various reasons, whether it's geopolitical instability. The response to all this is "I'm just gonna get a farm and move out to the middle of nowhere." Yeah. Yes, but, how many farms do we have in the world? And, how will this work for all of us, right? There's benefits to globalization. There's benefits to us all being interconnected. And I think that comes with the responsibility that we are, this shared humanity on this one planet. Coming back to this very long-winded train of thought, I think that's not necessarily the answer because then it just takes you further into the capitalist mold of, like- Makes sense "No, I just need to create more for myself," and reach this point where it's not that I wanna solve the problems. It's that I wanna get to a point of immunity where the problems don't affect me. And this sure works in the case of certain problems, but it won't work in the case of all of them. It's not really gonna work in the case of climate change. Even though you can escape to the colder parts of the world, even the colder parts of the world, they have extreme, weather conditions, things like that. And you're not immune to it. Even if your job isn't gonna get replaced by AI systems anytime soon, the downstream effects of large-scale unemployment may end up affecting you in the cost of goods and services and things like that. And ultimately I think even if you do end up isolating yourself in your billionaire bunker, I don't know how happy you could truly be.

The bigger picture: community as the antidote

1:28:00

Maybe you are, but I don't think that's the way to go. And so I think prior to times of extreme crisis, if we are able to create a l- a level of shared humanity and solidarity within ourselves and then allow for that to then have the downstream effects of care and support and seeing other people suffering as our own suffering as well, because it's gonna be cyclical and we're gonna end up facing that as well. Yeah. I think that's just so important. Yeah. Because the worst time to start to go buddy up your neighbor is when the world's on fire, right? when there's an actual crisis, that's not the time where you start to, finally get to know the people around you. Ideally, at that point, you already know each other. Ideally, at that point, you already have systems of support and care and safety in ways that will then uplift you and allow for humanity to progress. Because the thing that late-stage capitalism or hyper-individualism has eroded is that safety net that we had in numbers. And so in other previous historical times of crises, we had the ability to band together. And sometimes crisis does bring people together, but I'm afraid that we're gonna cross a threshold where you aren't able to, where you, we've become so numbed to this thought a- and become so isolated and become... really just entrench yourself in this perspective that, "No, I need to survive, and my survival is before everyone else's," and community can't fill that hole. If we get too far, then coming back is gonna be so much harder. Yeah. But if we can create that, then we can make better decisions for ourselves and the world and survive in the turbulent times that are gonna come ahead. Amazing. That was so good. Thank you. Of course. This was lovely. I... All of these things, I love nerding out about. Yeah. No, this is so amazing. I could go on forever. Yeah. Give you a hug. Yeah. It was so good. Thank you so much for doing this with me. Yes, likewise.