Calculus of IT - Season 3 Episode 10 - Training Our Elders (and Ourselves)

The new episode is live, and special guest Kevin Dushney joined us to ask the question nobody wants to answer: at what point do people just stop learning technology, and what the hell do we do about it?

We set out to explore whether IT should hire someone with 10 years of experience or someone who learned everything in the last two years via YouTube and GenAI, which spiraled into a debate about aptitude versus historical context, and whether we're designing systems for people we have or people we wish we had. The uncomfortable truth: we're in a race to train everyone as fast as possible, but the second we finish, everything changes and we have to start over, which means the only winning move might be to stop caring entirely and just tell retirement-age folks to click "yes" on everything (we're kidding, mostly). We also realized that nobody outside a tiny fraction of nerds gives a shit about token optimization or Opus pricing, that reviews written by AI are the corporate equivalent of outsourcing your soul, and that Nate once testified in court about a Nest cam recording of a drunk driver who tried to flee the scene with a tow truck. The breakthrough moment: maybe the elders aren't screwed - maybe they're the only ones who figured it out by refusing to engage with this madness at all. We also continued building out our IT Department of the future with our new roles including the Token Optimization Engineer (TOE), Pre-Prompt Engineer (PPE), all reporting to the omnipotent Chief Truth Officer, who reports to the Department of Generative AI Truth. Next week we're tackling Shadow AI vs Shadow IT, aka "the sequel is worse."

Listen at thecalculusofit.com • Join our Slack board at thecoit.us • Leave five stars • Change your parents' router password from the default • Don't eat Whoppers while driving.

—Nate, Mike & Kevin

Transcript

Season 3 - Episode 10 - Final - Audio Only
===

Trance Bot: [00:00:00] The calculus of it,

season three,

verifying this identity.

Sometimes you just have to take it.

Sometimes you just have to take it

because it's season three

divided autonomy,

verifying identity,

the calculus of.[00:01:00] 

Nate McBride: We are now recording to the cloud. 

Mike Crispin: Love it. 

Nate McBride: Do we have no storage in the cloud for this recording? Did you pay the storage for the cloud? 

Mike Crispin: I have not paid the, the invoices? No, nothing. We are running on fumes right now. 

Nate McBride: I hope we have enough space. 

Mike Crispin: I think we have like two megs left.

Nate McBride: We, uh, I really, I'm at a floppy disk. I checked my at one point fours, I mu out unless I [00:02:00] wanna overwrite Dark Castle

and Wolfenstein, which I don't wanna 

Mike Crispin: do. Oh man. Yeah, you don't wanna overwrite Wolfenstein. What was that like? One Meg 

Nate McBride: isn't uh, I think it was Wolfenstein. I feel like I just made a huge old man faux pa there. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, I don't know. 

Nate McBride: Wolfenstein, 

Mike Crispin: I have no idea. I can't remember. I just know it was Wolf 3D xe. I think that was the binary 

Nate McBride: Yes.

Mike Crispin: That used to have to run. 

Nate McBride: I remember when I used to run my hotline server and one of the requirements was you could upload a game to get access for one day. Everyone upload that game. I had hundreds of copies of Wolf 3D EXC on the hotline server. I'm like, Hmm, I think I got that one already. Um, before I forget, welcome to all our new subscribers.[00:03:00] 

Your minds are gonna be blown, welcome, blown apart. This is the calculus of it. Podcast Season three, episode 10. The tenor. We're almost a quarter of the way through the season. 

Mike Crispin: Yes, we are 

Nate McBride: Nothing, nothing but sheer brilliance. Um, 

Mike Crispin: amazing. 

Nate McBride: I know we have, we have a sponsor tonight. Ring is our sponsor Tonight Ring wants us to know that they were just kidding.

None of the settings matter in your ring, in your ring settings. Um, 

Mike Crispin: it was Turn it all off. 

Nate McBride: Turn it all off. They're still gonna keep all your shit anyway. So 

Mike Crispin: it was a, it was a Nest cam. It was Google. It was 

Nate McBride: a nest cam. Yep. It 

Mike Crispin: was. They keep calling it a ring cam on the news and stuff. It's like, no, it is a nest cam.

Nate McBride: Oh my God. 

Mike Crispin: It says ne it says Nest on the video. 

Nate McBride: I know. 

Mike Crispin: It's like, uh, and just 

Nate McBride: the conspiracy theorists and 

Mike Crispin: it's 

Nate McBride: [00:04:00] so funny, the dog commercial and all the things. It's just, it's, it's, uh, the world has lost collective fucking mind. 

Mike Crispin: It, it's unbelievable. So when you get a Nest camera, if you choose not to pay the, the whatever it is, the $180 a year.

It still saves the video for a few days so you can go back and look at it. 

Nate McBride: It's part of the free 

Mike Crispin: service. It's all built, it's all built in. There's no, I know there's no conspiracy. 

Nate McBride: We, we have, we have Nest cans. I mean we have, I know, I know how to check the boxes off. Um, 

Mike Crispin: and it just goes to show you like how much, like The Verge and all these websites wanna stir the shit storm and get people nervous about all this stuff.

It's like, it's, they know it's built in, but they write an article to get everyone freaked out. Oh, you, how do you, the surveillance tool and Yeah, I know you, but that's just, it is the, all the stories with this exception of [00:05:00] probably a lot of the people who are on Substack, I mean, they're trying to sell subscriptions, not ads.

Um, but yeah, I guess it's all the same. It's, yeah, you're trying to make a buck, right? So why not sensationalize a little bit? It makes total sense. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I, uh, I really have, I mean, I love Substack, don't get me wrong, and not just, 'cause we're on it by the way. Um, yeah, focus of it substack.com. We, uh, like a lot of the stuff that's now being put out there, I mean, I still have people that I love to read, but there, there's some encroachment of absolute.

Alarmist reactive shit that's coming out and it seems to be growing. Um, versus it's everywhere bad. The people that are doing actual journalism on Substack versus the people that are just like, uh, and then 4 0 4 does a good job at Des Sensationalizing a lot of the media and then stories that they pick though sometimes, yeah, a little bit [00:06:00] questionable.

The, the one that came out yesterday or today about, um, the how much people are using grok to notify people they don't like and put 'em up on various, various platforms. I mean, it's not news, it's just gone around many, many times. The only, the only news update, if you read through the entire article, the only news update is now the EU is suing.

Well, grock among others. Uh, and we'll get nowhere with it, but it's more about setting a precedent. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, 

Nate McBride: that shit's just terrible. I mean, also because it's still, it's, it's, it's terrible. Not only because, you know, victims are just being pulled out of the ether and made into, uh, these, these examples, these terrible examples, but that, um, that people are still doing it.

Yeah, I guess that's this point. Like, okay, initially it [00:07:00] was, it was terrible and you proved your point, but. Like, let's, you know, let's move on a little bit. 

Mike Crispin: Um, it is bad. It's bad. It, you know, it seemed like it was going to be just a, you know, like something that flash in the pan type thing, you know? 

Nate McBride: Yeah, exactly.

Well, 

Mike Crispin: you double 

Nate McBride: down, you on double down on nudity. So did Alt Men. They're like, let's just fucking do it. So only way we're gonna make money anyway, so whatcha you gonna do? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. I mean, look at Pornhub's Traffic is, uh, an only fan. It's like at the top of the list under YouTube. It's freaking hilarious. Um, but yeah, I think, I thought the article, I, I was just looking at 4 0 4 now, and it's like, with Ring America consumers have built a surveillance dragnet.

It's like, yeah, it's been that way for decades. Well, it's 

Nate McBride: that, that article in our research is more along the lines of how, uh, ring has partnered with Flock [00:08:00] again. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. To catch for dogs 

Nate McBride: and Yeah. And this time with absolutely no compunction. I mean, they're basically just like, yeah, we partner with Flock and we're helping America.

We're helping Americans. So another, just another Palantir Land grab, fuck those guys. Um, I cannot believe, I cannot believe this is like, it, it's in soling, these companies into their vortex of turds. But yeah, ring is now in there and. Ah, yeah. So you saved a dog. I don't give a shit. Um, I love dogs, but how much money do they spend on that commercial?

Probably AI generated anyway. Did you watch the whole Yeah, I 

Mike Crispin: think 

Nate McBride: it's, I I didn't watch it. I was watching the Olympics, but 

Mike Crispin: I did watch it. I did watch it. Yep. 

Nate McBride: From what I understand, from the sort of lunchroom hubbub, there were a lot of co commercials about ai. 

Mike Crispin: Oh. There were just a few, like, maybe one third of them were AI [00:09:00] related

and they all, they all got a piece of it. I mean, they were all, all the big companies had a piece. And then there were a number of companies I never heard of before that were just looking to get their name out there. So they're coming on full force. 

Nate McBride: Mm-hmm. 

Mike Crispin: That's, uh, it's here to stay good 

Nate McBride: too, because I, I felt like there weren't enough.

I'm glad that there's more.

Mike Crispin: Exactly. There's, there's, there's too, too many as it is.

But 

Nate McBride: I was, I was talking to somebody today about the Opus four six release and um, I was like, you know, I think the problem is that the idea of deep research and complex research has sort of lost its way. I mean, think about, think about Claude has exte extended thinking. Yeah. Um, research and Opus and they're [00:10:00] all, they're all to a degree, the same thing with slightly different labels and they sort of, obviously if you were to rank them in terms of length of time it takes to end a result, it goes extended thinking and research and then, sorry, Opus and then research.

But 

Kevin Dushney: yeah, 

Nate McBride: I don't know. I don't know if you're gonna get wildly different results if you ran all three against the same query if you wrote your prompts correctly. So I wonder if it, the Opus four six release, the ultimate end game is to just consolidate into one research product, like deep research for Google.

Um, yeah, 

Mike Crispin: I don't think, uh, Opus is for research. I don't think that's what it's designed for. I mean, you should be using sonnet with deep research, but, or even haiku with deep research. But, um, 

Nate McBride: well, to 

Mike Crispin: be clear, it not Opus 

Nate McBride: Research. It's called, it's called research. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. What research when it creates that, the big report and goes against 300 plus sources.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I think that's, you don't need something that the, you probably don't need sonnet to do that, to pull together all that stuff. [00:11:00] 

Nate McBride: Well, it depends what you ask Sonnet son to provide you. I mean, it's against the guardrails and constraints, but ultimately I think that we're getting to, I mean, I.

Honestly, people that sit down for the first time and try to use research or deep research in Gemini, they're like, what the fuck is it taking so long for? That's right. Hold 

Kevin Dushney: up. 

Nate McBride: Yeah, it's gotta do a lot of lifting. It's, it's going to the whole sort of research LLM functionality. So go get a cup of coffee or do something else in new tab with Opus four five though, I think my, my impression is that they're, and if you read the description about four six of Opus, they're getting into very, very extended analytical thinking.

Yes. So it reads to me like a narrowing of the scope from extended thinking Opus and research into maybe a single product. Go head to head with deep research because right now cause kind of all over the place. Yeah. That, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. I don't, I don't think deep research is where philanthropic is. [00:12:00] That's a nice to have, that's a side product for them, I think.

I don't think, think perplexity and others that are out there and even just all that's doing is gonna against a bunch of websites and putting into a report. And I don't think that's, I think that's just gonna be, but have you, have, you, 

Nate McBride: have, you head to head compared extended thinking versus research versus Opus?

Mike Crispin: I asked them, op I I, I don't use Opus to do research. That wouldn't be what I would use it for. It'd be to create artifacts or it'd be the right code, or it'd be to, you 

Nate McBride: can, there's the thing though, is the enablement of Opus to go do web searching for you with, with one simple line turns it into research.

Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. But, but why would you use Opus and waste all those tokens to look up websites? That's just doesn't, that's not what it's for. I don't think. I, 

Nate McBride: I don't think 

Mike Crispin: so. It's 25. I 

Nate McBride: don't think so either. I'm just saying I think 

Mike Crispin: there's 

Nate McBride: a conver I think there's a convergence coming. 

Mike Crispin: I, I, I highly doubt. I I don't, I don't think research is even on there.

I I don't, I [00:13:00] don't think you'll ever need Opus to run a research report inside of, uh, inside a Claude. I, I think they could use a lightweight model to do mainly what the output is. And, and Google does as well. Um, they're, I mean, they, you can use Pro or Fast, but they actually recommend you use Fast for research.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Um, but just because it takes, like you said, it takes so long, but all it's doing is compounding a, a, a bunch of data into a report. Um, it's not, it's not, there's no other output, but that, like the MD file or the, the big long document, like a Canvas document that gets created in Google. So I, I think that, uh, Opus is their moneymaker and I think they're gonna point it towards all that agentic stuff.

Like what we were talking about with, uh, Claude Bot and all that weird, crazy stuff is because every time. An agent does some work, it's gonna be $25 for them. So they're, I think they're gonna largely drive it and sit in that direction. And [00:14:00] they may have a research product, but I think it's, and maybe they do combine it.

They perplexity just had came up with a, um, an excellent research product. You need to have the ME subscription to do it. But what it does is it goes out and does a research like report similar to what, uh, Claude 

Nate McBride: mm-hmm. 

Mike Crispin: And Google do, but it does it across all four engines. All four different engines.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: And then it comes back and it puts it together into one report. It takes a while, but it, it works surprisingly well. But it's, it's largely a research. And that's, that's what's great about perplexity. There's very little danger there. Uh, yeah. Because you can't, you can't get yourself into too much trouble.

And we even, were talking about using it because we just basically wouldn't have to train anyone and be like, yeah, just do your little AI stuff and perplexity and it'll be good enough. And you, you'll be in your own little sandbox and you can, oh, you wanna use cha BT, you know, you can use, you can do a search with it, and that's it.[00:15:00] 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Uh, 

Nate McBride: if you've got, if you've got no ethical standards, then yes, that's a, that's one direction 

Mike Crispin: you can go. What's, what's the problem with perplexity? Ethical standards against, against philanthropic and others? Just curious. 

Nate McBride: Well, perplexity, CEO has got a few opinions about the world, but more importantly, it's less about perplexity and more about what's happening with open AI and what you're able to use.

I mean, got it. Basically contributing to the pockets of people that are aligned with certain forces, I think is an ethical decision that, you know, no judgment people can make or not make. Oh my God. Kevin's here. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, sure. 

Nate McBride: But, 

Mike Crispin: oh, this is Kevin. 

Nate McBride: But, um, 

Mike Crispin: yeah, 

Kevin Dushney: yeah. No man. 

Nate McBride: You, you have to kind of, Hey, hey. 

Mike Crispin: Hello man.

Hey. 

Kevin Dushney: How are we doing? 

Mike Crispin: Looking good. Look at that backdrop. Looking good. 

Kevin Dushney: Very plain. 

Mike Crispin: You in the sky? Are you on, are you on top of an airplane? 

Kevin Dushney: I'm in the cloud. I'm pivoting from the cloud. Oh, you are in the 

Mike Crispin: cloud. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Do, do you see our recording out [00:16:00] there? We're recording to the cloud right now. 

Kevin Dushney: We could just make that flowing.

Flowing by and cloud book. 

Nate McBride: It's so, it's so interesting that you joined us, considering you just started a job. I guess you, you'd not liking it. If you wanna lose it so fast. 

Kevin Dushney: I like to tempt fate, Nate, as you know, push boundaries, push buttons, you know, all the things. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Well we were just talking about some, some ethical decision making, uh, around picking platforms for generative ai.

Kevin Dushney: Yes. 

Nate McBride: Um, I think largely we're gonna see what happens with the American AI action plan going into full force this spring, which vendors decide to whitewash their LLMs and which, which ones don't, and what everybody, how everybody reacts to that. It'll be interesting to see. Do do people like sort of pounce back and create, start creating their own LLMs internally?

Maybe. Do they say, ah, it's okay, everyone's corrupt? I don't know. We'll see. 

Kevin Dushney: [00:17:00] Have you guys touched on the topic of ads appearing? Is that was, you know, the source of 

Nate McBride: Oh, I haven't gotten to 

Kevin Dushney: ads yet. You, during the Super Bowl, if you watched it or not? It was, 

Nate McBride: oh yeah, we did talk about that. I didn't watch 

Kevin Dushney: fun.

Okay. 

Nate McBride: Mike did, but, um, apparently there was quite a number of 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, 

Nate McBride: yeah. It's a 

Mike Crispin: good one. 

Kevin Dushney: Like what plan do you need to be on to opt out of ads? Like, are you undercharging? Is that or you just don't know how to run your business efficiently such that you're hemorrhaging cash 

Mike Crispin: $8 a month for ads. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah.

Nate McBride: Really? Is that, is that true? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. They're taking the eight, supposedly taking the $8 a month plan on open ai and they're gonna put sponsored boxes in the right hand corner of the, of the screen. But Anthropic took, it has an advantage to them to say that they would be baked into the responses, which was genius is really, it's a, it was a great ad.

The two ads they showed, it's fantastic. Even, I think even Altman was like, yeah, those are funny, but they're not [00:18:00] right and you weren't this big long thing is they all lost their minds. It's kind of funny. 

Nate McBride: Was he, was he, was he, was he crying? Did he have his whiny baby voice on or, 

Mike Crispin: I don't think he was happy about it.

He was trying to make light at first, and then I think he was pretty, he was pretty frustrated with it. 

Nate McBride: Well, I mean, he we're just, he's just waiting for his porn plan to come to full fruition and then they won't have to worry about ads anymore. I mean, basically I think all things generative AI will ultimately end up becoming porn machines anyway.

Somehow. And there'll just be like a, a little corporate side version you can use. 

Kevin Dushney: I mean, if you track the, you know, the, the inception and use of the internet plot that against porn and ai. Hmm. Let make for an interesting 

Nate McBride: drop. We can make a, we can make a webpage with HTML. Perfect. They got the perfect use case for this.

What was the first [00:19:00] porn website? I wonder like, who was the, who was the pioneer 

Kevin Dushney: to hit the way back machine? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Boy, I do not remember. It's probably Larry Flint. 

Nate McBride: I'm sure that's, is Larry Flint. 

Kevin Dushney: Larry Flint. One of the in innovators. I'm, I wonder It's a, a classically print publication that now that's, that would be too.

Nate McBride: So some, some publisher had to have 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Had like some savvy young person on their staff who's like, there's this internet thing. Yeah. I don't know. Probably won't go anywhere, but we should maybe try it. 

Mike Crispin: It wouldn't surprise me at all if it was Larry Flint. 

Nate McBride: Was he still alive? 

Mike Crispin: I think so. Or someone that was plugged in there.

'cause didn't they always try all the, all the new mediums, weren't they first on video and everything else? Not that I know, not that I remember. I 

Kevin Dushney: dunno, you're, you're speculating, right? 

Nate McBride: Was the first porn website on the[00:20:00] 

Danny's Hard Drive launched in 1995 by Danny Ash. Is Wally recognized as one of the first and most prominent pornographic websites, 

Kevin Dushney: what year? 85. 

Nate McBride: 1995. Well, sex.com was registered on May 9th, 94 4. And so it's, it's considered the earliest pornographic site in terms of, um, registration. 

Kevin Dushney: Wow. 

Nate McBride: But Danny's, her drive apparently is the first website to contain content.

Old go figure. So cheers to Danny Ash for 31st anniversary. Um,

didn't 

Kevin Dushney: a Super Bowl ad for that 

Nate McBride: skull? Um, that would've been a pretty interesting ad last year if they had done that. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. [00:21:00] 

Nate McBride: You know, are you 29 years old? Guess what? You didn't even know this existed back then. You were still not even born.

So well, Kevin, thanks for joining us tonight. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, 

Nate McBride: I'm good to sell Ul your reputation too much. 

Kevin Dushney: Try not to. 

Nate McBride: Oh, my little timer went off. This is the Calculus of it podcast. Uh, we have a substack thing, uh, pa Is it a page or something? Um, and you can get to it by going to the Coit us. Um, the name of the Substack page is really long.

The calculus of it substack.com. You can go there too, um, and preemptively. Just before you even listen to the whole rest of this episode, give us all the stars just in case you die in a fiery fireball of a crash getting home from work. 

We 

Mike Crispin: don't want that. We didn't 

Kevin Dushney: want that you to buy me a beer before that, 

Nate McBride: or you get shot by a hunter in the woods or something of a terrible [00:22:00] event.

Befalls, you just Oh my. Give us the stars now. Oh, I'm just, you know, I'm, I'm optimistic. I'm not pessimistic. Why does this keep showing off? 

Kevin Dushney: We weren't doing dystopia tonight. 

Nate McBride: Oh, man. I 

Mike Crispin: know. Let's let, we're going all in on dystopia. 

Nate McBride: Listen, listen. We're talking on Zoom. We're already, we're already there.

We're already there. 

Mike Crispin: Did you hear that Zoom is now a surveillance tool? Yeah, we're on video right now. 

Nate McBride: Is Deep State right here? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, we're being watched. Probably are, but probably. 

Nate McBride: Are 

Mike Crispin: we being watched? 

Nate McBride: Block. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck there. I just triggered anyone than 

Kevin Dushney: the three us. 

Mike Crispin: Hey Kev, Kevin, did you know that Nest Cams record video?

Kevin Dushney: I was 

Mike Crispin: aware of that, 

Kevin Dushney: yes. 

Mike Crispin: And they save them to the cloud 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Mike Crispin: For a few days. So that if you want to go back and look and see what happened, you can do that. 

Kevin Dushney: Turns 

Mike Crispin: out that even if they're disconnected, 

Kevin Dushney: that's someone adjacent to [00:23:00] the attended use of the device. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. So when you just unplug it out of the wall, all the data doesn't get deleted if you don't sign up for it.

So 

Kevin Dushney: yeah, 

Nate McBride: here's 

Mike Crispin: an interesting 

Nate McBride: story. Uh, and anecdotally speaking, 

Kevin Dushney: not local in the camera. 

Nate McBride: No. And, uh, 

Mike Crispin: you watch the press, you would think, so 

Nate McBride: 2019, maybe 21 of those two years, there was a big snowstorm, a big to-do in, uh, the winter of that year. And I used to get up early in the mornings on Saturday and Sunday, uh, at that time and go out to Mount Massachusetts and run a bunch of loops up there.

And, uh, it was, I think a Saturday morning. I got up at four 30 and this guy on my street, who lives a little bit further down the street, would always come out to the mountain with me. So we'd drive out and we'd run there. So comes to my house and he is like, did you hear that crash last night? I'm like, no.

He's like, yeah, a car basically went down the road and ran into a [00:24:00] giant tree and almost hit a house. And I'm like right outside my house. He's like, yeah. So I got back from the mountain a couple hours later, go inside, open up my nest cam. And sure enough, there's this car. We, we only, it's only our street's.

A horseshoe. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And it's, it's not that you know it, it's not that long. 

Kevin Dushney: No. 

Nate McBride: So on the nest cam, you can hear this car up gearing. So turns the corner way down, second gear, third gear, fourth gear. And it's like accelerating rapidly. And then I guess this car didn't realize there was like a left turn in their horseshoe and all of a sudden you hear this loud crash sound.

Uh, and just like in a movie, after all the sounds done, you hear a dog barking in the distance. Right? But anyway, this isn't the best part. The best part is the guy got outta the car and meanwhile an s cam, you can see him. He is like looking at the car. The car is totaled. [00:25:00] He is looking at the car, gets back in the car and for like the next 10 minutes, tries to start it and turn it over to get it outta the front yard.

Can't get it turned over. So what happens next? Like, like on the camera? He is walking around. He is standing around, he's on the cell phone. About 15 minutes later, tow truck shows up. He'd called his buddy. So his buddy pulls the tow truck up and tries to get the car outta the wedged outta this tree. Ends up tearing the whole back of the car off of the tow truck.

Oh. The tow truck takes off all of a sudden because the cops come down the road. Oh. So boy, the tow truck driver must have heard her on the radio. Cops come down the road, tow truck driver's gone. And this kid's standing out there, there's car dismantled all over this driveway. Right. So anyway, um, 

Kevin Dushney: please tell me you saved this clip.

Nate McBride: I do have the clip. I'll, I'll, I'll share. Oh, nice. I'll share it to both of you. It is fantastic. So, any, anyway, um, I'm the only one on the street at that time that had a camera on the front porch and my [00:26:00] neighbors knew about it. I told 'em, I was like, listen, I'm not recording you. This is just for packages and stuff on the front porch if you're uncomfortable with it, just ffy.

I like, here's the perspective, here's what you can see. Yeah. So they all knew. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: So one of my neighbors, um, knew this and I guess didn't submit me to the cops, but had indicated the cops that I may have evidence, I wasn't necessarily gonna be forthcoming about it. And, um, they called me and asked me if I could send the clip.

So I sent it to 'em. I ended up going to Concord District Court to testify. So I had to testify about the video, like what device were you using and what was the make and milestone number? I'm like, oh my God, none of this is relevant, but okay. So I'm giving them all the information and, uh, did you 

Kevin Dushney: calibrate it before you started recording?

Nate McBride: All, all those questions were asked. Then the guy who was the defense attorney was like, were you aware of the weather that night? I was like, Nope. I was sleeping well. Did you know that the street was sandy? And I was like, yep. Uh, maybe I presume it was 'cause they sand the streets pretty [00:27:00] well. And he is like, well, what else do you know?

I was like, well, what I do know is that I heard the car shift up to fourth gear, about 200 yards. Um, and like, no more, no more questions. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, I heard the That's not what we asked you sir, 

Nate McBride: guy's, like, uh, no more questions, your Honor. So, and this guy, this guy did, uh, I think two years of, of, of service or something?

No, it didn't go to jail. But anyway, long and short of it was, this was saved and for all time. And now of course I've downloaded the clips, so I have it. 

Kevin Dushney: What a waste of resources. Like you're an idiot, you crashed into a tree and now we're here in court wasting everyone's time to review 

Nate McBride: nonsense. I know it was a pretty o open and shut case in my opinion, but I guess in Massachusetts you're allowed to have your day.

Uh, but that isn't the best part of all the cameras. The cameras besides capturing, you know, live animals and stuff. My wife will kill me for saying this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. We [00:28:00] have all these clips saved every time my wife encounters a snake in the yard somewhere. 

Mike Crispin: Oh no, 

Nate McBride: it's full. You know, just full out scream.

We have, we have all of, in a montage.

It's, uh, it's a, it's a family classic of the holidays. Oh. Bring up a family 

Mike Crispin: classic. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. No, we gotta, anyway, no, the, the cameras are good, but honestly we, I had to turn everything off. I didn't like the facial recognition stuff. I keep getting prompted to let Gemini do my analysis. Like, no, no, no. Asking.

That's the 

Kevin Dushney: newest thing 

Nate McBride: turned 

Kevin Dushney: on Gemini for all of it. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Eventually 

Kevin Dushney: we had it running out. Just 'cause we're on this topic. My wife is, is five feet tall and there's one in the, in the entranceway and it'll, Gemini was summarizing and it's like a smile. [00:29:00] Child climbs over a game. Wait, why is it calling me a smile child?

Some of the, just to turn it on to see what it, what it interprets it as. It's hilarious. Something. We, we promptly disabled it, but it was an interesting experiment for a day. 

Nate McBride: No, we, uh, even eventually, I feel like they're just gonna make it not opt out of all. Yeah. At which point in time we'll have 

Mike Crispin: to be, 

Nate McBride: consider our 

Kevin Dushney: options.

It's just part of the product. 

Mike Crispin: I I think it's gonna be one of the main selling points of the HomeKit emergence this year. Apple's two new products, they're gonna play against that a hundred percent. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: There's no AI scanning your, 

Nate McBride: yeah. 

Mike Crispin: All your stuff. 

Nate McBride: What do you think about Apple's new, um, what's it called?

The little lapel, not a lapel mic, but it's a little button or something. Or a pendant or something. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Yeah. The rumor that they're gonna have a, I don't know. I don't know. I think I, I kind of, I kind of doubt it. I mean, I think they [00:30:00] might have some early, I really doubt it. I actually don't think they'll have anything.

I think they're gonna release some, some HomeKit stuff this year in their list of the foldable phone will be their big thing this year. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. Foldable phones, some new chips, some air tags. Like most of it sort 

Nate McBride: of. Mike, are you gonna get the new Apple VR headset when it comes out this year? 

Mike Crispin: Absolutely. Oh yeah.

Ping 

Kevin Dushney: the poking the bear date. 

Mike Crispin: Absolutely. No question about it. 100%. 

Nate McBride: Okay. Well, if you do get it, I wanna do a side by side compare. We have to have a live episode of you unboxing the new one, then trying against the old one. 

Mike Crispin: Absolutely. I am, I'm totally in. 

Nate McBride: Okay. And by the way, I'm, the podcast is not, is not subsidizing your purchase of another $4,000 Apple VR headset.

Mike Crispin: Oh, did you, did you subsidize it last time? 

Nate McBride: Nope. And we're gonna continue with that streak. [00:31:00] We, 

Kevin Dushney: we got 4,000 

Mike Crispin: worth 

Kevin Dushney: the comedy out of it, but that's about it. 

Mike Crispin: Good, good financial advice. 

Nate McBride: Yes, 

Mike Crispin: it's a good way to manage the budget. No Vision Pros for Crispin. 

Nate McBride: That that's ba it wasn't approved by the CFO, so it's not happening unfortunately.

Um, but what is happening is a podcast episode tonight and we are going to be just tickling just a little tickle. 

Mike Crispin: Ooh. 

Nate McBride: Yep. 

Mike Crispin: Okay. 

Nate McBride: Tick tickle of, um, taking care of the elders mm-hmm. And ourselves. So remember, Mike, when you and I sat down and we talked about this topic, it was very pretty brief at the time, but the question that we had asked was, where is it?

Would you rather hire someone with 10 years of experience or someone who were in their current stack in the last [00:32:00] two years? And that's what precipitated this conversation when we, when we were sitting down and then we got into the whole plumber conversation. Remember that one? 

Mike Crispin: Yes. 

Nate McBride: Which we, which we've already revisited once.

I mean, for Kevin's and our audience's sake. Basically, we had asked the question, is a plumber still a plumber? If they show up to your house to fix your sink, spend 20 minutes watching a YouTube video to learn how to fix it. They fix it, then they walk away. Are they still a plumber or is there something else that gives them credentials to watch the YouTube video to fix your sink that makes them more of a plumber.

And then that was, well that was a separate competition, but in this particular case it was, would you rather hire someone with 10 years of experience or someone who owned their current stack in the last two years? Because we had been talking about the, I wouldn't call it the far the varsity, but the, uh, the silliness that is a, uh, experience requirements in resumes or job descriptions.

Yeah. And then it boiled into, well, [00:33:00] we have people, we hire people all the time that are experts who don't know anything about technology, but because they have depth of experience in the medical field and their respective biotech fields, we're willing to overlook that, which is all great in finding in a biotech community.

And that's what keeps it departments, uh, salaried. Um, but at the same time, it actually has a significantly de deleterious effect on all their operations, which is really unseen and undiscussed. And then of course, you apply the same idea to people that are not in your company, eg. Family. Mm-hmm. Um, people who.

Who, um, don't necessarily understand basic things like where your trash is and how to send an email, and then who are of course, watching the Super Bowl ads saying, I don't understand any of this. Can someone explain it to me? And Mike, if it was a third of the ads, then holy shit. [00:34:00] 

Mike Crispin: There's a lot of them. I mean, it's at least one in every, I'd say every commercial break.

Kevin, would you agree? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: So at least 

Nate McBride: one, I mean, yeah. I mean, tra training the elders, as we called it, it sounds super ageist, but it's not. It's about continuous learning. And there's a point in time when people, and this is I think generational, but just stop learning about technology. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Um, 

Kevin Dushney: I have a great example right from this weekend.

I mean, my, my father who's, you know, a, um, a mechanical engineer, you know, sharp guy is, calls me and says, uh, yeah, there's, there's my cursors moving around. And somebody created a spreadsheet of all my contacts on my desktop. I'm like, unplugged the computer. Yeah. Like, what do I do? I'm like, and then I said, you need to, you need to keep that off the internet and didn't, didn't quite grasp this and had a doctor's appointment, plugged it back into the internet.

To go do something with my mother. I called him in the car. I'm [00:35:00] like, well, where's the computer? He is. He is like, it's at home. I said, is it still off the internet? He's like, no. I said, 

Trance Bot: oh, 

Mike Crispin: no. 

Kevin Dushney: Like every time it's connected, you're, you're leaving open to be controlled and make this problem worse. And just that, that it didn't click, that connection, connection to the internet or connectivity to the internet meant command and control from whoever this bad actor is and has already shown that they've, you know, they're manipulating your desktop.

So they have full control of each. 

Nate McBride: And as we're seeing, I mean, we, we have some pretty high bounties on people in our organization to try and get them in Phish. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: But we also, um, we go after 'em pretty aggressively. And it's remarkable how, until people know that this is happening around them, they're not, I mean, they're cognizant of the fact that there's bad actors, but they don't really know until they, until they hit and they're hit hard.[00:36:00] 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. And then you learn the lesson the hard way, which is cliche, but it is also very true in this instance. 

Nate McBride: So I'll ask both of you. Would you hire someone with 10 years of experience, even if it was slightly dated, or someone who just learned, who like knows everything that you're going to do as a company, but learned it through gen AI or some other mechanism in just a more recent period?

Kevin Dushney: Hmm. 

Nate McBride: Where are you more likely to land and, 

Kevin Dushney: well, I, I'll 

Nate McBride: say my answer after you two. Go 

Kevin Dushney: for me, I think it's, I would want to see over the 10 years, what did you do more specifically in the last two or three. So can you show me that you've been applying what was available to you at each point along the way, and you've learned, or are you showing that you're a server hugger and you're resistant to, to changing and adapting to new ways of working and new technologies?

Um, and if it's the [00:37:00] latter, I would gravitate towards the person that has less experience applying, but has a great understanding and then I can train how to, you know, train that person up to how to, how to leverage these capabilities in the business. That's how I think about it. 

Nate McBride: Mike, what do you, what do you stand on that?

Mike Crispin: Yeah, I think someone that's got sort of a 10 year background similar to Kevin, I think to some extent thinking about it as. Are you, are you into learning? Are you into working through this stuff? 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: First of all, why are you here? Why, why do you want this position? What are you interested in? In getting a feel for who they are personally and if they're a fit, more so for the team and if they're willing to learn or uh, if they have ideas, you know, things that none of us have thought of.

Um, always open to that. It's, it really depends on the person. For me, it's so much more about how will this person fit with the team? [00:38:00] Are they willing to, do they want to grow? Do they have goals? They have career goals. Yeah. I think it's the biggest thing for me. It depends on person to person. I, I think less and less it's about, it's less about the CV and the resume and your LinkedIn profile and more about that conversation you have.

Yeah. And, but getting in the door and past, you know, the screening process and stuff is, you know, you still need that stuff. I guess so. But, um, unless, unless you know the person obviously. 

Nate McBride: Right. I mean, I don't think you're talking about I even 10 years, which sounds like a long time. You're still not talking about boomers anymore.

Mike Crispin: No. 

Nate McBride: You're talking about millennials. You're talking about Gen Z. 

Mike Crispin: Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: Plus, and, and that's time scope and Gen Z plus 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Is a lot better with the latest tools, but has very limited historical context, which can actually matter a lot. So yeah. You can say. Yeah. And I, I, I always consider aptitude to [00:39:00] be one of the highest traits of hiring.

Um, you know, if somebody doesn't have that skill yet, but they've demonstrated, uh, a great capacity for learning new things 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Then that person's going to win nearly every time. But that historical part, I'm not asking people to go down a trip down memory lane, but if somebody doesn't know how to put RAM in a laptop and okay, it's back to the plumber question.

Kevin Dushney: What, what if it's an X one? Nate, 

Nate McBride: I,

you know, there are vid, there are take down video, there are take down videos for Carbon X ones about replacing ram that you can do it. It just requires a shit ton of chisels. 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Um, but between those three groups, boomers, millennials and Gen Z, no one's got time to keep up with everything anymore. So when it comes time to think about [00:40:00] training people 

Mike Crispin: mm-hmm.

Nate McBride: Not training, we'll get to training in a bit. Not, not training more like, um, keeping people that aren't catching up or, or staying caught up, caught up. Think about, um,

and I, I was trying to try to noodle on this today, but how the hell would I train somebody to be current? And this came up recently. There's a show on, I think it's on Netflix or HBO. It's this, it's this prison experiment show. Mm-hmm. Where they, they take people, they take a cell block and they let them run themselves for a couple weeks.

And, um, I'm reminded of, you know, this recidivism effect and how do you get these guys who have not been technologically kept up to date, put 'em back out on the street. They are so cut off the legs in terms of what they can do. How would you, so, so I think I was thinking about this, [00:41:00] like, if someone came up to me and said, Hey, um, we're gonna rehabilitate this group of people that have never touched computers in the last 10 years, where would you start?

And I was thinking about that, like, where would I start? You know, with some, with some basics, obviously turning it on what Windows or Mac was or whatever, but where do you go from there? 

Mike Crispin: Like, yeah, it's tough. 

Nate McBride: Here's Danny ash.com, 

Mike Crispin: start here. Some of it, I don't know how you, how you measure this, but people who are able to be willing to fix things themselves, like take the initiative to figure things out, to be a problem solver, I guess.

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Is, is a big part of it. Not to be. Nate will do that for me. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Nate will help me with that and I'll never have to learn it 'cause Nate will, Nate will do it for me. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Like just being, wanting to be self kinda independent almost. And work independently. I mean, that's in every job description I guess to some extent.

But [00:42:00] yeah, that's really important is that hey, you take this problem and you solve it and you want to solve the next one and the next one and the next one. And you, those people very rarely come back and you need to repeat things over and over to them. 

Kevin Dushney: Show initiative 

Mike Crispin: if 

Kevin Dushney: they an aptitude, right. 

Mike Crispin: Exactly.

Aptitude. Yeah. Like you said, Nate, that's absolutely, 

Kevin Dushney: because I don't, I don't want you to wait for me to tell you what That's right. Do 

Mike Crispin: take 

Kevin Dushney: action because then I, then I have to carry that on my mental slate, whereas I'd like to see you. 

Mike Crispin: Yes. 

Kevin Dushney: So I thought, I thought about ask, ask for help or guidance, but don't sit nothing.

Nate McBride: I thought about this exactly for, for a while too. So let's take the, um, let's take two particular perspectives. One is the person's too busy to learn a new skill 'cause they're too busy doing their job. 

Kevin Dushney: Okay. 

Nate McBride: Understandable. They have their way, let's put it that way. They have their method, so don't fuck with it.

Uh mm-hmm. I'm a CO 25 years of experience. Got my way. Don't [00:43:00] fuck with it. It's worked. Still working. The industry allows it to work. That's one, that's one phenotype. 

Mike Crispin: Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: The other one is. So the people who just don't have the time. The second is people who are so far behind, they cannot learn because no one's going to teach them all the things to catch between those two points.

If you were to assess, 

Kevin Dushney: yeah. 

Nate McBride: Uh, somebody who's behind, you'd probably start with some basic questions like, do you know how to turn a computer on? Do you know how to use your start menu? You know, some, I don't know, whatever the questions would be. At some point in time, you, you know, you're gonna quickly find that there's a giant gap and it's all about what do you teach them next?

If you start from the, from the current and work backwards, you'd have to, that wouldn't work. You can't start explaining generative AI until you explain a whole bunch of other things like, what's a browser? What's a prompt? What's a fucking [00:44:00] cursor? 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: You have to, somewhere, somewhere in all that is the training.

So those are the two things that I think about in terms of the, uh, we have, we, we, we all work in an industry where age is critical, because the more experience you have, the more you know about every possible nuance that can occur in the lifecycle of a drug. Therefore, you become quite important. Your knowledge is extraordinarily valuable.

Mike Crispin: Yes. 

Nate McBride: But the trade off is maybe you haven't been keeping up with technology, and this isn't anyone in my company, but there are people I've encountered in my, my career that. Can barely send an email, but they're genius, they're geniuses when it comes to the FDA. Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: true, true. And that's, um, yeah. Yep. There are plenty of people who start in a company and they don't even know really how to use their [00:45:00] laptop, how to turn it on, how to, 

Kevin Dushney: yep.

That's a 

Mike Crispin: question. The difference between a maximized window and a minimized window, 

Kevin Dushney: if you think about a team dynamic in a broad sense is like, well, is what you're good at enough to offset the fact that you can't send an email? Right. Do you, do you bring that special factor to the team or company in this case that makes you that valuable?

Uh, and, and maybe, you know, psychologically, you know that and just say, you know what, I don't lean to learn all that shit because I'm here for just this and I, that can get me by. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. You could, you could take advantage of that too if you, if you know what you have is scarce. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Skilled obsolescence or obsolescence of skills.

I think from a, from a, from a lot of things rank way lower than expertise. Yeah. In one particular area. Um, and I think it, it skews [00:46:00] towards. Groups that are focused more on the second half of a drug's lifecycle than those that are focused on that first half along with the supporting cast. You really can't be, um, archaic anymore.

Say for instance, on the GNA side, it's just moving too fast. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And it's hard, it's hard to be archaic on the drug discovery and development side because again, the industry is forcing everyone's hand. So it's, it's, you know, it's innovate or die basically, but on the second half of the drug's lifecycle, the grinding halt phase, um, yeah.

And so when you think about external the company, it's the same exact parallel You have the, uh, the current generation alpha, whatever. [00:47:00] Um, they're like the GNA function. They're operationally extraordinarily efficient. They know generally what exactly is the right tool. They don't care about how it works.

Kevin Dushney: No, 

Nate McBride: I mean, they couldn't tell you 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Fucking anything about how it works. But they know what takes to be efficient to do what they're doing down to the, to the very calculus of shorthand they use to message each other. But then you talk about the people that are retire retirement age. They're so good at being retired and doing their retirement thing, that they don't need to learn anything new.

Mike Crispin: Sure. 

Nate McBride: So it's the same parallel. And then of course, then you have the middle, where the middle people, I think, are probably the most in danger of having to stay consistently current.

So I don't know. It [00:48:00] almost becomes a connecting the dots between, um, those three points. If there's a certain group that no longer wants to learn, a certain group that doesn't need to be trained, and then a group in the middle that needs to be trained constantly, then is it more worthwhile to say, okay, we're not gonna worry about the two ends of the spectrum and just focus on the middle.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of our thesis for tonight, which was we need to take, we need to train, we the top, top shelf group, the elders, so to speak. Mm-hmm. Or else they're going to, I mean, it's what, 78 million people were retirement age in 2025 or No, 2024. 

Kevin Dushney: Wow. 

Nate McBride: From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 78 million people became retirement age 65 plus.

And whether they retired or not, I don't know, but just sitting around. I'm not saying that they all don't know what generative AI is and how it's gonna impact their [00:49:00] lives, but it's impacting their lives. Mm-hmm. 

Mike Crispin: And do you think that being at that kinda retirement com part of their career, that they, they just don't care.

They're probably there as specialists anyway. They're supposed to get a, something very important done and that's it, and that, you know, it will take care of all their problems. So 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: no, no need to interview them based on that. Right. 

Nate McBride: Pretty much, pretty much. And this goes, 

Mike Crispin: yep. 

Nate McBride: This, there's parallels with this to our previous discussions last season about why everyone gets editor capabilities or creation capabilities and they come into a company.

I'm not kidding if I have an expert, if I hire the person who is literally the goat when it comes to, I don't know, something in the clinical side, shouldn't it be like their opinion and expertise that matters most? Because I'm not, I don't, I can't [00:50:00] conceive of a and a, a model where I'm hiring them for their ability to create PowerPoints.

Kevin Dushney: No, 

Nate McBride: I'm hiring them because they're a fricking genius when it comes to clinical trial development or something along those lines. Why give them a computer at all? And then in that same vein, why give, it's not like we're giving, but is there a point in time when. This is gonna come out really wrong, but you just don't need a computer anymore.

You just use a phone. That's it. You got a phone. 

Mike Crispin: I think there are a lot of more exec, executive level level people who just use their phone. 

Nate McBride: Yes. 

Mike Crispin: More and more. Right? Especially outward facing CFOs and CEOs. That 90 if person even, I'd say, I'd say even salespeople for the most part, at least in our, you know, field forces with our, a lot of our commercial companies, 

Kevin Dushney: yeah.

Mike Crispin: 90% of their work was on the iPhone. 

Nate McBride: I think once you hit that, hit that [00:51:00] level. No one's want, no one wants you to create content. They want you to be at the end of the reviewing line of content that use the content to make boatloads of money. Um, but you know, and we all know this, in small pharma, that's not always the case in small pharma.

It's all hands on deck. Everyone's gotta create stuff. But you get to the bigger companies, um, 

Kevin Dushney: yeah, 

Nate McBride: yeah. It should be that There's less and less creators as you go up the pipeline and more and more just people who only need to read it. Look at a screen, click, click a single button, look at a screen, read the thing, send somebody a note, 

Kevin Dushney: review it, provide feedback.

Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And the same, the same thing applies. I mean, let's be honest, like in all truth, how complicated is the internet if you are managing a 401k and some retirement savings and you gotta pick a flight? I mean, it's not like [00:52:00] people outside of companies are doing any complicated stuff either necessarily.

And I'm just applying a broad, probably incorrect judgment, but from what I know and experience I have directly with, um, in-laws and my parents and other folks, there's not a lot that needs to be done at this point. There's email, there's looking at ki you know, a grandchild's Instagram and there's paying a bill.

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: They're not, they're not doing any heavy lifting. But even still, if any one of those parts breaks, then you understand the true depth of the gap. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. You're getting a phone call. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. You're getting a phone call. My wife 

Mike Crispin: always told. Yeah. And usually that's when you get on the machine and you're like, what are you doing?

You've got a Excel spreadsheet called passwords, you know?[00:53:00] 

Nate McBride: Yeah. But I use 

Mike Crispin: the estimation 

Nate McBride: point. 

Mike Crispin: You've got an icon on the desktop that's in wing ding font. Oh, wonder what that is. 

Nate McBride: So I 

Mike Crispin: delete that. 

Nate McBride: Are we at a point now where there's a technology division? I mean, forget the Ray Wang industry 5.0 Apocalypse Vision. Let's just, I mean, forget the information for a moment.

Let's just talk about the technology. We're at a point now maybe where the divide will be stark. It'll be very, very high contrast. There will be people that understand this. A small percentage I believe, and people that don't. There'll be the majority and they, it just won't matter because the Sam Altman's of the world, the, uh, Musks of the world, they're not trying to sell generative AI to your parents.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Nate McBride: And corporations have already [00:54:00] made their decisions. So who the fuck are they selling it to? Who's left? Is there somebody sitting out there right now who doesn't work in a company at all saying, I don't know which one to pick. I gotta pick one. No, I don't think that's happening. And I also mentioned anecdotally speaking, 'cause I'm full of anecdotes tonight, that having two kids in their twenties, and Kevin, maybe you can relate, they use it as like a, a tool to get some work done.

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: They don't even, they don't regard it as something awesome. 

Kevin Dushney: No, 

Nate McBride: my, both my kids look at it and say, no, I'll just use Gemini real quick. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: The same way they would say, I'll just, uh, send a video or do a thing. There's no awe or excitement or amazement in their eyes and there never was. 

Mike Crispin: That's right. 

Nate McBride: So who are they selling 

Mike Crispin: it to?

To, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a consumer product, so to speak, which is [00:55:00] why OpenAI is in a little bit of trouble. 'cause they thought it would be. 

Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: It's definitely not a consumer, it's a, it's, it's a machine. It's a machinery product. It's a automation product. And I don't think that's ever been attractive to consumers.

I don't think, uh, 

Nate McBride: yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Automating and making things faster and processes more efficient have ever been now productized as a device or productized as something, uh, attractive and fun to touch and use is different. That's where Apple comes in or the device manufacturers. Sure. And they'll bake AI into all of that stuff.

And they won't call it ai, but that's what it will be because Sam Altman and, you know, Google and others are gonna be selling, I mean they just did that deal with Apple. Google just did that deal with Apple. 

Nate McBride: Yep. 

Mike Crispin: That's what they're after. They're just, they're just investing in each other. Yeah. Until it creates this massive bubble, which is already there.

Nate McBride: But they need corporations to buy. And of course there's finite corporations and 

Mike Crispin: so [00:56:00] 

Nate McBride: like who the, what fucking person is ever gonna walk? Wake up one day. Be like, I need to create an artifact today. Or I should, I know I should create a Claude project to handle my, 

Kevin Dushney: our new skill, 

Nate McBride: my, uh, home, home cooking. No, they're gonna use the same, don't be, they're not gonna use, 

Mike Crispin: don't be a robot that does that for you.

Nate McBride: Yeah. I just 

Mike Crispin: don't The ai, so here's the thing. The AI for in the consumer market is not attractive until it becomes a physical product. That's when it be, moves in the consumer space and gets exciting. I think that's, oh my God. And we won't, again, we won't think of it. I don't think people will think of it as ai.

They'll think of it as, you know, 

Kevin Dushney: a product 

Mike Crispin: BF or 3000, you know, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever we want to call it. Right. 

Kevin Dushney: I 

Mike Crispin: always call mine the 

Kevin Dushney: rabbit, the rabbit. R one, 

Mike Crispin: the rabbit R one. When the rabbit R two comes out, that's when AI is gonna take off. Start. I'm buying. I'm, 

Nate McBride: I'm there, dude. 

Kevin Dushney: I'm buying that.

AI is just encapsulated in the features [00:57:00] though, right? It's not, 

Mike Crispin: it's, it's just software. Yeah, 

Kevin Dushney: yeah, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. It's just software. And that's, 

Kevin Dushney: here's what it does. Who cares? Which means we haven't point who cares how it does it, 

Mike Crispin: which 

Nate McBride: is the only down the field though. Not we, but the industry hasn't moved the ball down the field since, since for the last, I don't know, eight years.

Maybe you can say, Hey, Google, make a shopping list for me and it will do it. It's got the NLP and the machine learning down. So what's the new function? 

Mike Crispin: All the slop, man, come on. That's what, that's what everyone cared about a week, two weeks ago. No, I, I agree. I think what, what is, what is the, what is the output?

And I, you know, the consumer side, this is the only ones who really seem to be pushing hard on consumers is open ai. Yeah. They're gonna come out with a device this year. Who knows what that's gonna be? Just some leaked photos and all this stuff. But will people really care about that? That's what's gonna be interesting is, I don't know, I think more people would be happy if their [00:58:00] iPhone could do basic stuff than, uh, 

Kevin Dushney: just becomes a tool.

Right. So, you know, you're, you're kind of in awe, like if you can plan out an entire vacation to Europe and it suggests all the restaurants, the cities, the attractions, and have it lay it all out for you, like, you'd have to do a ton of work before AI to make all that happen. 

Mike Crispin: That's right. 

Kevin Dushney: So now it's just, well, yeah, you just do it Like you're, you're, it's whenever, like, so what?

I'm just gonna put together an itinerary and here's where I'm going. I'm going for seven days. Map me out some options. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, it's automatic. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. My, my son's 10 and he's like, oh, wait, you know, AI is ai, like, it's just a normal thing. Like it makes funny pictures. I can use it to search for stuff every once in a while.

And he's, I mean, he doesn't have access to it directly, but we've used it for a few things and they talk about it at school and everything else. So, I mean, it gets talked about, but I think it's as each. As each like, nice thing or [00:59:00] automation that helps you in your life. Like you said Kevin, like a booking out a trip.

Yeah. Or maybe it goes even farther to, you know, cleaning up your house or, you know, booking you on, uh, dates and being your digital twin on Tinder or whatever. Each one of these things becomes a product in itself and is sold separately as a, as a, as a service. 

Kevin Dushney: Mm-hmm. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. It won't be about like, oh wow. Ai.

It'll be like, wow, who built that? This cool app or this cool service that now I don't have to pay for all this stuff that I had to pay for before. I just pay $5 a month and I 

Nate McBride: Digital twins 

Mike Crispin: service. 

Nate McBride: Just 

Mike Crispin: get this thing assistance. The 

Nate McBride: problem is, 

Mike Crispin: the problem is Digital Point is a service. Exactly. 

Nate McBride: Do 

Mike Crispin: you see this 

Nate McBride: happening, looking, looking at what's happening in the media right now and how, how basically there is a counter revolution almost a, a Luddite, a pro Luddite revolution against technology in the house.

Mm-hmm. On the home, on the body. How do you see a bo like a robot being sold without anybody [01:00:00] being like, fuck that I'm not letting a robot in my house recording my life. I mean, there's, there's gonna be Oh, absolutely. Yeah. There's going to be so, so for all the coolness of the technology, um, and maybe there's a small percentage of people that are like, I don't care.

Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: There's gonna, there's gonna be a pushback. But I think it's always a pendulum in all these things back and forth. I don't think, 

Nate McBride: yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. If, if, if PE people like convenience, it, it doesn't matter what the, what's behind it to many, many people, it's like, look, if I can get something that's gonna save me money and save me time, um, I'm gonna do 

Kevin Dushney: it.

Yes. Convenience. So I think you've hit on the right word. 

Mike Crispin: It doesn't matter. 

Kevin Dushney: People are willing and history proves that people are willing to trade data their own privacy. Yeah. In the name of convenience. Like 

Mike Crispin: Exactly. Oh, 

Kevin Dushney: we know we've through this one. Yeah. Multiple 

Mike Crispin: times for sure. I, i, hundred percent it's inevitable.

Yeah. I think it's, especially if things are, and this is where, you know, [01:01:00] chatt, PTs trying to go, I don't think they're good at it, which is why they're gonna fail. I think it's more likely that meta is the one who steps up as hated as they are, and ends up providing a bunch of services for free, stealing all your data.

You have 60% of the world that uses it, even though they hate the guy. You know, you take all the stuff online, that's all about how horrible everything is. They're all on Instagram, they're all on threads. 

Nate McBride: I know, 

Kevin Dushney: I, I was astonished to see talking about how, how many, 

Mike Crispin: how awful it is, 

Kevin Dushney: how many posts per day, and how competitive it is with Twitter, I'm like, I didn't even know anybody used threads.

Exactly. They, they do. Yeah. A lot. 

Nate McBride: Who are, who are these people? Like, I 

Kevin Dushney: don't know them personally. I don't know. I don't know anyone that uses it, but, you know, if you believe the data in order metrics are showing, 

Mike Crispin: but if you, if you want to make money. You're on there. So for all of the Yeah, true. You know, the news that's out there, the boards are seeing, and I'm, I'm bigger than that.

And these people are all bad. [01:02:00] They're all on there and they're all using it because they have to, because the product is useful and it's good and it works. And I think that's why, you know, someone creates this a free, you know, a, a very affordable robot, a black mirror esque robot. People are gonna let it in.

If 

Mike Crispin: they can afford it. I mean, 

Nate McBride: beside 

Mike Crispin: it, they'll make it, they will make it affordable. It'll be like, 

Kevin Dushney: will watch 

Mike Crispin: everything you do. 

Kevin Dushney: You can only go so far before you're out of range and you need to upgrade to the next tier, and then eventually you can't afford it 

Mike Crispin: anymore. Okay. 

Kevin Dushney: Remember that one, 

Mike Crispin: huh?

Exactly. Yes. The, the tiering level that Yeah, absolutely. But take, take the amount what the data of, and the invasion of privacy that one of those things. You, you just said this Nate, a minute ago. Once that's in your home and people let it in the home, the data like Accu really accurate [01:03:00] census information, that'll, that will emerge, you know?

Oh yeah, yeah. All sorts of private information around what people have in their home. You know, what, what the situation from air quality perspective is, all of that stuff. Stuff all fed back, tons of data worth trillions of dollars. And you'll get it for, you'll get it for a buck a month, you know, and it'll be like, oh, well that, that on top of your subscription for $6 a month.

I mean, that's right. Like you'll be fed a steady total ation 

Nate McBride: of slop and bullshit. 

Mike Crispin: It is the Wally alarm Nate, like we talked about in the first season. That's exactly where it's going. I know by and large right. The by and large company. And that's, it's a great prediction. Uh, you know, but I think, so are we moving the wall?

The wally def the Wally 

Nate McBride: Defcon meter up now? I mean, 

Mike Crispin: should we be at the question is whether or not there isn't a major disaster with this stuff before them? 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Like, uh, we were, I think all signaling or texting this [01:04:00] morning is up last night thinking about all this stuff is like you, with all the agentic computing, all the data that we do have today, uh, in terms of data integrity will be moot if all of this stuff is automated working on behalf of people.

So you won't even know who actually did what and why, because of all these agents running around automating everything. And your audit trails are built for humans, not for agents. 

Kevin Dushney: Right. 

Mike Crispin: And, uh, you know, what if someone, basically, someone type picks up someone's phone and uses the microphone to dictate something and has it delete your whole, all your critical data in your company.

And oh, by the way, it's gonna write six copies of the versions so that you can't restore it automatically. So it backs up six copies into the past, like denial of service. There's all sorts of horror stories I could think of, which all comes [01:05:00] back to whether or not they'll have to be guardians of ai. And if we get really crazy and get very risk, risk averse, like, like I think what I was thinking about this morning, and I totally don't think it's smart or agreeable, is that if someone needs to run an AI query, they're gonna have to give it to someone else to run it almost to segment, almost to segment the, the access and control and for it to be totally monitored.

Kevin Dushney: Segregation of duties around. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Yeah. So you've gotta create an account for each query so that there's a service account that's recorded in the audit trail. That's a nightmare. No one will ever do that. It's like, well, but, but that's, that's what I, it awake thinking about like, someone sits down at a prompt, they've got access to all this data.

But then I woke, I, later on today, I thought about it a little differently and I thought [01:06:00] about like, well, if I hired a contractor and I gave them rights to my data and they went in and screwed up and deleted all the data, or, or, or, you know, sabotaged something, it's still my fault. How is it any different?

Right. Well it's just the speed at which, the speed at which can happen Mike and without That's right. True 

Nate McBride: lack of chain of custody on that point. True intent. 

Kevin Dushney: You know, the just negligence 

Mike Crispin: covering your tracks. 

Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: yeah, 

Kevin Dushney: yeah. 

Nate McBride: Think about 

Mike Crispin: how hard 

Nate McBride: it's, right now if someone was trying to delete a whole directory out of like your box system, I mean, they might do it.

Yeah. But you have it backed up and then you would immediately get alerted. So 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. Then mass 

Nate McBride: deletion, I mean, I think you have to be either be off your meds or on quadruple meds to let AI run uncontrolled. Unsupervised. Yeah. Any data environment. I mean, I, 

Kevin Dushney: I think people are fascinat think with flirting with the disaster of this though the 

Nate McBride: co like look at it.

Just the copilot [01:07:00] existence in a domain. Yeah. Baffles me why someone would enable copilot. Um, 

Kevin Dushney: now it's turned on by default. The free version. 

Nate McBride: I know, I it's not by fault and then just, oh my God, it's baffling 

Kevin Dushney: and then people start using it 'cause the icon shows up 'cause it's auto published to the, the Windows 11 desktop and now you're using a free tool.

And where is that data going? Mike? 

Nate McBride: Mike, to your point about. If you want to have like a little nightmare. I mean, if you're a, if you're, um, a copilot company and you really want to fuck with them on your way out, just use something cla or somebody else to generate hundreds and hundreds of PowerPoints, I think we've talked about this that are all bad.

They're all slightly off, and then just put them into your storage environment. People would be like, oh, he's not, he's not downloading data on his way out. He's actually giving us data back. This is great. 

Kevin Dushney: This is 

Nate McBride: all the stuff is uploading into our environment. 

Kevin Dushney: Oh, wait, it, it isn't, it's polluting [01:08:00] the copilot ecosystem and just 

Nate McBride: one, 

Mike Crispin: yeah, 

Nate McBride: one, one fell swoop poison, everything.

Mike Crispin: One of my concerns is that you take JSON, for example, JSO files, if you embed certain JSON into a, into a document or you remember certain documents as JSON and pick it up in a prompt to execute commands is another potential risk in terms of flooding a directory. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: With, with with MD files that potentially 

Kevin Dushney: you don't even need execute anymore.

Right. That it can all be that set of instructions and markdowns. Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Correct. 

Kevin Dushney: Plain text. 

Mike Crispin: Crazy. 

Kevin Dushney: No compiler needed, no coding necessary. 

Nate McBride: It's okay though, because I'm sure anthropic spent months, if not years, testing their co-work for Windows product, which came out yesterday. Today 

Kevin Dushney: or yesterday. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I'm sure the, I'm sure the development cycles were intense and long and.

Thorough and they didn't just spontaneously release it because Why not? 

Mike Crispin: And I think it's running, [01:09:00] uh, in the, in the Windows shell, which is basically, it's a Linux subsystem. 

Kevin Dushney: It is 

Mike Crispin: on Windows. Yep. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, because we were, we were talking about that yesterday on a, in the context of cyber is could you use the Windows Linux subsystem to run an instance of Cloud bot Yep.

Open whatever you wanna call it, right? 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Kevin Dushney: Or fire up a docker, like how many, because like it doesn't run natively on windows, doesn't mean you can't run it. And someone clever 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Kevin Dushney: With admin rights, easy. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. I think 

Nate McBride: who would enable a cowork, I gotta talk to this person for their 

Mike Crispin: actual cowork is pretty, pretty hobbled right now, but it's, it's cool.

Yeah, no, it's, it's totally in, in research preview too. It's very early days. Oh 

no, 

Nate McBride: I, I mean I've, now I've had the chance to play with it using external Google domain. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. And 

Nate McBride: in, in Safe 

Mike Crispin: Place. I get it. Right. Cloud code is a way, way, cloud code is infinitely more dangerous right now. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Without, [01:10:00] without question.

But, but you can, and Claude Enterprise have a settings do json that is mandatory, that will block half the stuff. So if you have developers, you're doing cloud 

Nate McBride: teams too. Not just 

Mike Crispin: enterprise, 

Nate McBride: but Quad teams as well. 

Mike Crispin: Teams. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: You could, you could put the, uh, I was actually impressed 

Kevin Dushney: that what. Um, OpenAI does not give you in chat, GBT for teams.

Philanthropic does even like SSO mm-hmm. Whitelisting connectors. Um, so I was, and they 

Mike Crispin: didn't before 

Kevin Dushney: I, I know I was impressed because like we have, like, we bought five seats for a pilot, you know, of, of philanthropic, you know, cloud teams and it comes with all these controls. I'm like, you know, good on you guys for enabling this for smaller organizations because it's important.

And 

Mike Crispin: Enterprise not has switched. Enterprise has switched to token only spend. 

Kevin Dushney: Oh, 

Mike Crispin: really? So you pay, you pay, you pay a $10 per month, I think, or something like that. I don't know, whatever's 10, $20 a month. And now you [01:11:00] confused on top of that. You pay per, you pay per token. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: They introduced it in teams too.

So now you can add in a a 

Mike Crispin: oh, they do it in teams. Awesome. 

Nate McBride: Okay, good. You add in a side fund into team, into your teams account is 

Kevin Dushney: overage 

Nate McBride: and then then assign certain people with that into that overage amount. So Yeah. And you can give them infinite, which is my favorite part. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: You can assign someone infinite tokens and it just keeps going and charging and charging and charging and charging.

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: So I created three presentations with Opus 4.5 before 4.6 came out out and I had, I think I had, they were basically for training on SOPs. There were two, two SOPs. And, um, I think there were just a handful of maybe other files, PDFs that were there. Guess how much it cost me to create three PowerPoints that pulled in the, the company template in a day?

How much did it cost? Or three presentations in dollars. [01:12:00] 

Nate McBride: Did she You wanna be saying this in public? No, no. More than a hundred dollars. 

Mike Crispin: No. 

Nate McBride: 20 bucks, 

Mike Crispin: half that. A little, uh, a third of that. I still thought it was a lot. 

Nate McBride: That 

Mike Crispin: is a, I read it's, 

Nate McBride: it is. That is a lot. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: But I thought about it like, okay, if someone else created that presentation, how long would it have taken and what would I have paid them to do it?

I'm 

Kevin Dushney: sure that's how they're thinking about it too, is in man hours, a consultant for 

Mike Crispin: $300 an hour. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah.

Mike Crispin: But yeah, I was like, oh boy, that could get us into trouble. Right. You know, you're running these things. Yeah. They're, I think the output is, I mean, it's no secret. I mean, the op opus is very expensive. 

Kevin Dushney: It is. 

Mike Crispin: So if you, so if you use sonnet, you're right in line with everyone else. But Opus is much more expensive than anything else.

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: So 

Mike Crispin: it's like, holy moly, 

Nate McBride: everything that we just talked about you realize is reserved. Not reserved, [01:13:00] but it is understandable by. A fraction of a fraction of 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. It's fairly esoteric. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Um, of the world and 

Kevin Dushney: totally esoteric. 

Nate McBride: And we kind of come back to the same point, which is forget the elders, even the people in the middle or the people on the bottom of the spectrum who gives a shit about this.

And so it's so specific to a very niche group. Everything we're talking about now, I don't think that that will ever become a mainstream discussion. My, my, my son's never gonna come to me and say, dad, I'm having token consumption problems with Opus. 

Kevin Dushney: Can I get an allowance? 

Nate McBride: I'd be, I'd be like, that's pretty cool.

Go mow the lawn 

Kevin Dushney: and I'll give you X 

Nate McBride: token. I'll give you 10,000 more tokens if you can do this tour Token economy, watch out. 

Mike Crispin: It's already here, guys. It's called Robuck. 

Nate McBride: I know. 

Mike Crispin: I'm, I'm telling you man, like that I, that's, [01:14:00] that's a place, that's a spot to watch because that is becoming what the Metaverse was supposed, I guess, was the, the, uh, dumpster fire that the Metaverse was supposed to be.

It's happening in Roblox. 

Kevin Dushney: Hmm. 

Mike Crispin: Is your, it's getting I road. He's on Roblox, but he's, but he's, I will say this, the parental controls over the last year, they got that shit buttoned up. Yeah. I wasn't, I was gonna say it is way better. That 

Kevin Dushney: was the wasteland a couple of years ago 

with 

Nate McBride: all, okay. I time you out for a second.

Just time out. Sure. On, on that one thought, which is that, uh, I've been watching a lot of Olympics 'cause I love winter sports, but 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, 

Nate McBride: I've heard now and I, it's always in the background. I can't catch it 'cause I'm doing something else. This TikTok commercial. Yeah. About how the new TikTok has all these parental controls that you can turn on.

And there's TikTok dad who's talking about how he is, he uses the TikTok parental controls for TikTok, all this stuff. Is it like a year ago, if I'm not [01:15:00] mistaken, TikTok was the arch enemy of the world. 

Kevin Dushney: Yes. 

Nate McBride: Or, or the, the western world. And now TikTok has got commercials running on Super on the Olympics.

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: About how it's so safe and you can put on all these controls in and limit screen time and these things like that. Like, is that where we are at right now? Did I, am I misunderstanding 

Mike Crispin: this? Yes. It's 'cause it's 'cause Larry Ellison bought it, so it's, it's it's Americanized now. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Must be safe. 

Nate McBride: He's private island in the Caribbean.

Mike Crispin: Epstein 

Kevin Dushney: the slap the logo on the, on the yacht next to Oracle. 

Mike Crispin: But man, it's, uh, the whole, the, you can. Made a lot of improvements to to, to Roblox in terms of the code base. So you can download a ROBLOX builder and you can build applications in there now, and it's totally howman is 

Nate McBride: recreating office. 

Mike Crispin: I don't know, I'm [01:16:00] sure there's, there's all sorts of personas in there that, um, yeah, it's like, wow, this, this is kind of what, this is what a lot of kids are using, you know, to connect.

And even discord is, uh, now that they're doing the facial recognition, all that crap, there are a bunch of people running from that. So that's, 

Kevin Dushney: Hmm. 

Mike Crispin: People are jumping on that ship too. Kind of this younger generation. That's where they're plugged in Snapchat and, uh, that's kind of the, 

Nate McBride: all right, well, so two questions.

Very simple ones. One. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. Um, 

Nate McBride: how do we train everybody? Very simple question to answer. How to get everybody, you know, sort of up to speed. And secondly, um, I guess maybe the first question should be why do we care? Why is it, I was gonna, I was gonna guess your first 

Kevin Dushney: question. Who cares? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: I, I'll, I'll, I'll, this is like a 

Mike Crispin: Seinfeld [01:17:00] episode.

Nate McBride: Well, this in the context of we all have, we're career, we're career IT people who still have plenty to go in our career. Yeah. The problem for us isn't going away. If anything, it will become amplified, I think, and I'm in a race right now to get everybody in my company as trained as fast as I can on everything I can get them trained on, to at least try and keep them above water.

Um, not only for the, or not only for Alio, but for whatever company they go to next. Like I am, I'm, I'm actually invested in that. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. I think that's a great thing. 

Nate McBride: But I turn the corner and it's another quarter or something, and now I gotta redo all my training or I gotta train people over again and over again and over again.

But I feel like it's valuable that now on the outside of my company, I don't find value in it. It just do. I think it's, we're at do or die at this point. Like you either learn it or you don't if you don't learn it well. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Nice knowing you. Good luck. [01:18:00] 

Mike Crispin: And it almost has to be in, called the Geek Squad.

Short, short, short, short increments. Like these little videos. Little, 

Nate McBride: yeah. 

Mike Crispin: Things that apply to your everyday life. If there's any interest in learning them, 

Nate McBride: well think 

Mike Crispin: about how learning videos are on 

Nate McBride: YouTube about everything 

Mike Crispin: and who watches them. Yeah. Mean, again, it's small. That's, I mean, people, I, I think it's, uh, well, I think a lot of people use YouTube.

They just don't use it to, at least, I, I, that's not fair. I don't think a lot of people who are in the, the specific groups that we're talking about will use YouTube to learn to train. They just don't think of it as that type of a tool. 

Kevin Dushney: I 

Mike Crispin: mean, I would replace, uh, you know, Coursera and LinkedIn learning with YouTube.

Like create a Google Doc with a bunch of YouTube videos, 

Kevin Dushney: LM and 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, that's it. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, 

Mike Crispin: exactly. And it's just like, that's better than now. Maybe that's not fair. Coursera. You get tests and you're gonna, you're gonna measure how well you're doing and that makes, that's a very [01:19:00] valuable piece. But if you're just looking to quickly gain some knowledge in how to do something, solve a problem, there's no place better.

Yeah. And, uh, if it's all there for you to consume and to use, and if you don't choose to do it, I think Nate, to your point, like, Hey, you missed the boat. That's have of some self, kinda self accountability and responsibility to, uh, wanna learn it. If you don't, I mean, Jesus, there's so much, there's so much fear out there and so much, you know, everyone's gonna, and, and it's very possible a lot of people are gonna lose their jobs.

I'm not saying that, but there's a lot of press and there's a lot of noise about things that are gonna go badly here with this stuff. Idea 

Nate McBride: is being manifest, being manifested by the press and by these 

Mike Crispin: companies 

Nate McBride: that you lose your job. No, no. You wont lose your job. Shock. Make capable of replacing you.

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Yep. 

Nate McBride: Self. 

Kevin Dushney: So it's easy to sensationalize so, right. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. [01:20:00] And especially when it's spin in. Hundreds of sci-fi movies. Like we've, we've already, we've seen all this stuff coming. Right. 

Kevin Dushney: True. 

Mike Crispin: It's easy to put it together. Back 

Nate McBride: to that. Well, let's be honest, we, we were trained on it with Star Wars. I mean, we were trained on this idea.

Yep. Um, it wasn't super fantastical back then. You would have droids that were able to respond and do work for you. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Guess what? They still had to go out and fight the bad guys. You know, there was still bullshit going on. There were still empires doing terrible things. Um, 

Mike Crispin: and, and then like we talked about Wali, it's like supposedly utopia, but you've just been put on a spaceship and you've been in Prisoned even though you think it's the best thing in the world.

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: You know, and it's like, it's all, uh, I guess, 

Nate McBride: all right, well let's, let's put aside the, let's put aside the question of our moment about why we care, and let's just for one quick second talk about how we do it. So in two minute videos, sending 'em to YouTube, constantly [01:21:00] going after them to get 'em trained, trying to get into their development goals, trying to make all these inroads, 

Mike Crispin: best efforts, best efforts, 

Nate McBride: best 

Mike Crispin: efforts.

Everyone learns differently. Whatever you can try and do, uh, it makes sense. The more that I think there's a catalog or shows that, that you've tried, made some effort to organize. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: But I think they, to, to your point, and I think some of what we're talking about with the verification economy episode is I largely believe that proactivity is.

Dying and reactivity is thriving. And the more that you're able to have quick wins and responses to the world, the way things are changing as it turned to try and guess and plan for them is, um, is what we need to get better at is always told, oh, we're so reflexive, responsive to everything. We're never prepared.

We're always reacting. We're reactive. Let's get better at that because things are changing too fast. And when [01:22:00] people need to learn these new things, we're not even gonna know how they work. Well, it's consumer sustainable. No, because we can't keep up. 

Kevin Dushney: The people who are training can't keep up, not be reactive like you.

What you, we 

Mike Crispin: have to be reactive. 

Kevin Dushney: What you trained on last week could be different next week, like 

Mike Crispin: Right. 

Kevin Dushney: Um, and that is one of, one of the things I was gonna say, Nate, is like, you're, you have a, I would argue a summit unique situation and you can get the company to commit the time to learn this stuff, but Yeah.

How is that going in other organizations where you can get people to stop what they're doing? 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: To set aside time to learn this stuff and willingly do it to the point where it's actually useful and productive and not, I'm just doing this because I'm being forced to. 

Nate McBride: Right, 

Kevin Dushney: right. Um. 

Nate McBride: There's a, there's a question that comes with that too, Kevin, which is, what's the interval, I mean mm-hmm.

Ultimately, let's say, so we have a course [01:23:00] that a group of people in our company are taking that's gonna take them six months. It's once a month, six months. Yeah. I feel that by the end of that course, I may have to start it over 

Mike Crispin: Exactly. 

Nate McBride: But at the same time, what's like, is it quarterly training too much?

Yeah. Most people would probably tell you. Yes. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: I think that other part is that there's so many, I mean, certainly as I'm putting trains together for, we're just about to roll out, um, a couple models. And I think that, uh, thinking about it, of all the things that they need to be careful of or that they can't do or they should think about before they do this, and what type of data is there and what data can you put in and what's the use case?

It's, I mean, people just can go, fuck this, you know, I'm just gonna use Chachi bt at home. Like, it's why we, we gotta be careful, like not to put all these, and we almost have to 'cause of the industry we're in, right. But it's like there's, what if I [01:24:00] can't put this data in there and use it and manipulate it and use the, the AI to do that?

Why even use it at all? 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, they're gonna 

Mike Crispin: say, you're, you know, 

Kevin Dushney: you're giving it, so why would I 

Mike Crispin: use this? What's the point of putting anything in there if I can't do that? Or, or if you have to be careful or I'm walking on eggshells. Can I, can I actually put this document in here? I'm not, I'm just not even gonna bother.

And Yeah, 

Nate McBride: I, there's two parts right to that training as well. We're, we're glossing over the fact that we teach you the how, not the why more often than not, when I'm teaching a class on generative ai, I'm not explaining how generative AI works. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: I'm not explaining how LLM was constructed or how the, how the, uh, agent knows how to query.

I'm just saying just type in the box. Yeah. And magic stuff comes out where I'm not sure there was ever a time, and I can't recall one where I taught a class and I was like, this is how it works. It was always about this is how it's, it operates for you, 

Kevin Dushney: how to use it, 

Nate McBride: how to use it, sort of the utility of the thing.[01:25:00] 

Kevin Dushney: Yes. 

Nate McBride: And, um, and when it comes, I think to training, if you could just keep telling someone over and over again, here's how you can use it and here's how you can't use it. With the ladder being kind of important. Like, to your point, I'm like, people going home and the company, you're like, okay, here's this great tool.

Here's Gen ai, you can use this and here's the three things you can do. You can't do anything else. Don't even fucking try it. Yep. But here's this tool, right? People are like, well, uh, that's kind of pointless because I can just go home and I can do 15 things with it. Um, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. 

Nate McBride: And so, yeah, I That's 

Mike Crispin: there's 

a 

Kevin Dushney: whole 

Nate McBride: Yeah, go ahead.

Kevin Dushney: But what are you telling me? No, I'm sorry, Dr. Other than, you know, let's say connectors, especially ones written by third parties. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: If you're saying, Hey, we, we sign up with an enterprise agreement that our data does not train your model, are you telling them down to the, with with specificity you can and cannot put these types of [01:26:00] data or documents in?

Nate McBride: We are, we are primarily from a trust per trust perspective. Like it's no, like right now, if you were to say, and again, we've talked about this in the past too. Why do I trust Box or Slack more than I trust, uh, uh, generative ai? I, I couldn't definitively answer the question for you as to why that is other than there's something insidious that I feel about generative AI and the way that these executives and these companies that own it operate versus say, a box or a slack, that while they might just be as insidious and they might be just as much of an asshole group of executives, they've built a product that meets or exceeds what I would consider to be applicable criteria for use.

I can't do that same level of assessment even objectively right now with generative AI platforms. And so when I say you can't use [01:27:00] PAI in a prompt, you can't use employee data. You can't make employee end of year reviews using a prompt. And here's why. I'm backing that up with Yeah, well, with I think what I consider to be good reasons, 

Mike Crispin: I think basically I, and similar to what Nate said, Kevin, I, I, there's, it's a few things and it's mostly PII related and the reasons why are 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah.

Mike Crispin: That when someone creates something inevitably through the system that might include PII, the chances of it being reproduced for people who shouldn't see it, guilt goes up. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: So it's that, that's the, the main, the main And, and then like social security numbers and those type of things. Yeah. Which we would tell people not to put into certain systems or to get classified in the spec some sort of way other things would put PII and a Slack.

That's right. So, but it's a, it's a, it's a small amount of stuff. Largely what I'm hearing is more, well, how do you know our stuff's not gonna get up? [01:28:00] How do you know? Well, doesn't it train Dan? No. It doesn't train on the data. It doesn't, here's the enterprise 

Kevin Dushney: debunk in my 

Mike Crispin: training is, it's, it's, that's what I'm hearing.

Exactly. Seeing 

Nate McBride: the L lm Wait a second. The 

Mike Crispin: second, that's right. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: And, but technically, if we look at what Claude and what, um, what's chat, BTS fricking, they have this, they've had it for a while where it launches the VM and it, it runs stuff in the vm. Um. Open AI has Oh, the commander or interpreter or whatever it was called.

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: You would, you would have it build a presentation or something and it would spin up a VM somewhere and build it. Yeah. It's essentially what Claude does now. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, exactly. 

Mike Crispin: Because it spins up. That's what spins up a J That's right. Spins up a, it's Claude code, it builds, spins up a jailed directory 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah.

Mike Crispin: On their servers with all your data in it. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: So if they're using a third party processor, like you were just talking about, um, um, skills and, uh, CPS we talked about in the past as well, right? Is that we don't know the third or [01:29:00] fourth party risk there, but what I'd say to that is we have data processors and third party risk in every application that we have.

Sure. So it's not that much, it's no different. Right. Um, but it's, but I think some of that is just translating in the first training, Nate, as you stated, like, look, these are the myths, you know, and you put stuff in here, it's no different than you putting it in Outlook. 

Nate McBride: Right. 

Mike Crispin: You know, or So it's, it's the same type of thing.

But I think there do, there has to be some rules just in the, in the respect of how data gets reproduced. Especially if we're using connectors with existing, uh, data storage so that the output of the data, which is a, discoverable and b potentially shared to people who shouldn't have access just in human, human error, is why it's like, oh, let's be careful what we put in here.

Less about. The backend leakage. Well, but more about, yeah, maybe data being exposed internally. 

Nate McBride: You can solve the PII, [01:30:00] uh, employee information problem further upstream. That's not a gen AI problem. That's an access 

Mike Crispin: problem, but it's internal access and Yeah. 

Nate McBride: And where it gets saved. E even still, like we had a debate on our Skynet team, which is our, our gen AI governance team.

We had a debate on love that about whether or not we would allow managers to use past reviews to write year end reviews for 25. And the Skynet team ultimately decided, yes, we would allow this, but with very, very specific caveats. We then took that, uh, opinion as we do with all the Skynet opinions to the executive team, which was, and it was like, absolutely not.

Um, but we will come back to this in 26. And a lot of the thinking was around, and I, I agree with this. I mean, I'm, I'm an ombudsman for the Skynet team, so I don't really vote. I just kind of like guide. Um, I'm totally opposed to using Gen AI to write reviews though, and I brought it back to the executive team, and lo and behold, they came to the same conclusions I did, which is that being a manager is a privilege and you should take as much time as [01:31:00] necessary to thoughtfully and thoroughly write a review.

No shortcuts allowed technically. Yeah. Um, but it was also a discussion about employee data. If I take Kevin Dini's resume, or sorry, review, and I put Kevin Dini's review with Kevin Dini's name into a generative AI without Kevin Dini's acknowledgement, approval or allowance of that. What am I basically saying about Kevin's data and Kevin?

Um, and so that was part of the debate too. Yeah. And why ultimately also didn't really get all the votes from the Skynet team, but it will come back in 26. We'll have the discussion again. And I think it's worthwhile to continuously reframe this one as, um, I mean, if you change the way you do reviews, you make it more sort of qualitative.

Yep. Sorry, quantitative then. Well, yeah, you can just, you're just number crunching. And Jenny and I can probably be better at that than, than most 

Kevin Dushney: things. I think part of the challenge too is people, there's so much [01:32:00] variability in how people write reviews and so people are good at it and some people are simply not, and they think they're giving feedback and like, check using AI to check it for tone, right?

So, hey, is this too harsh? Here's the message I'm trying to deliver, 

Nate McBride: right? 

Kevin Dushney: Is this, you know, help me like, help help me, like digital twin here help me soften or maybe even sharpen some of the wording. So I'm getting my key points across, but I've written, right, the base, the foundation of the review is my work product and I'm using AI to refine it.

So I think maybe there's maybe some subtleties where I don't just throw a bunch of stuff in and say, create a review, copy, paste, done. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Like I, yes, uh, hey Claude, I have an employee. I like to mo write the most vindictive review possible. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Can you take, can you take my review and change the tone, do vindictive, um, [01:33:00] and go nuclear accusatory.

Accusatory. 

Kevin Dushney: Exactly. 

Nate McBride: And uh, just, uh, just felt of lies and bullshit. Um, oh, great. Thank you very much. Yeah, 

Kevin Dushney: this 

Nate McBride: is perfect. Or, or Hey Claude, I'm gonna give this employee a one out of five. Can you just review it and cause like Yes, I removed superb stupendous. Amazing. Awesome. All these 

Kevin Dushney: And those are not align with one out of five.

Nate McBride: Yes. Yeah, exactly. 

Kevin Dushney: Thank you. 

Nate McBride: Um, no, and in those cases, and so you know what you start talking about speeding up G and a. Well, you wanna speed up hr? Well, don't make HR read 78 written reviews. Um, come up with a new way to do your review process. Yeah. Does that mean you need to go to ai? No, 

Kevin Dushney: no. 

Nate McBride: You can change your review process to fully quantitative and HR can just be like 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3.

Okay. Adds up. Perfect. Great. Next. 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Um, give Nate the opportunity to write a review and Nate will hand you back a 10 page review. So 

Mike Crispin: yeah, 

Nate McBride: that's no fun for anybody. Even the [01:34:00] employees are like, oh, come on. So 

Kevin Dushney: I'd rather have AI do it. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. Nate's like, so on Jan, on January, on January 3rd, you said this really nice thing to this person.

I noticed it on January 6th you said. And they're just like, oh my God. Um. So, alright, controversial state, 

Mike Crispin: this review, this review looks just like my self-assessment.

Nate McBride: Hey, Claude, take my employee's self-assessment and just change it from, um, first person to third person. 

Kevin Dushney: Exactly. Submit, 

Nate McBride: done.

Kevin Dushney: I've given you co-browsing access to go ahead and upload it into the system for me. 

Nate McBride: No CFO I've ever had before Alio would've ever done that. So I, I always got thoughtful, well-written, pensive, constructive reviews from all my former bosses. Right? 

Mike Crispin: Nate, really happy with your [01:35:00] performance this year. Have a great summer, 

Nate McBride: Frank, Nate, Nate, not, not sure, not sure exactly what you're doing,

but it seems from people that you're generally liked. 

Kevin Dushney: PS so glad you took everyone's phone away.

Mike Crispin: Don't ever change. 

Nate McBride: PS thanks for getting, consolidating our 12 printers down to two. Um, really, I really like walking the 30 feet to the printer. 

Mike Crispin: It's good. Thank you for selling all those iPads on the black market.

Nate McBride: Thanks for putting us on Google Workspace. It really transformed the way I use Outlook.

I've never, I've never realized that I could be so productive. I wanna go back to the out Outlook calendar, though. [01:36:00] You should do that for $3 million next year. These are the, these, and done, these are some of the sample reviews I might have gotten in my career. 

Kevin Dushney: For example, 

Nate McBride: for example, 

Kevin Dushney: uh, 

Nate McBride: um, just this guy.

I know he got 'em. Okay. So, yeah, controversial take question was, um, is there a point when people should just simply stop using computers? And I think we answered this to a degree, but, or stop getting trained. Let's put it that way. Is there a point in time Josh, use your 

Mike Crispin: iPhone. 

Nate McBride: When somebody comes into your company and they're an expert and such and such, and you're just like, Hmm, no, here's your login.

Don't ever ask for anything. Here's a login. Here's a computer, here's a Chromebook, there's a browser button we put for you. Let's go to one [01:37:00] webpage. 

Kevin Dushney: It's it's island. It goes to one site. 

Nate McBride: Wouldn't that be kind of, do you think we'd get in trouble for that? If we created, if you took a machine and you stripped everything down to its most bare parts, 'cause you knew you were getting like a, um, a veteran coming in, like, you know, just somebody who was like upgrade, but they had already, it was already well established that they didn't know how to use technology.

And they would come in on day one and they're like, oh, welcome to the company and here's your new laptop. And they open it up. Like, what do I do? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Oh, nothing. You just push that button. 

Mike Crispin: Here's my idea. You go, you go out when the new MacBook, the $699 MacBook comes out, you go and you get a few of those and you load parallels with Windows 11 boot set to the full screen parallels with one icon on the task bar.

Nate McBride: Yeah. Power point. 

Mike Crispin: The, the, the Windows. The Windows [01:38:00] Explorer. Yeah, the Windows Explorer. And when you open it, it opens up a folder with a bunch of launchers in it. So they can still use the, the Windows Explorer file manager. Yeah. All their icons are in there. They double click, it opens PowerPoint. They can't even, they can't even open anything else with the Windows Explorer because they can see their hard drive.

Where's my hard drive? There it is right there. Your hard drives right there. 

Kevin Dushney: Oh, this, this is employee experience. 

Mike Crispin: Exactly. And Tanya. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: And then, and then when, when it breaks, you reset the parallels vm No, you just reset the parallels VM and it brings it right back to day one. Boop. Done. 

Kevin Dushney: How'd you do that?

Mike Crispin: Magical. How'd 

Kevin Dushney: bring back? Citrix? 

Mike Crispin: Citrix. Oh, the year of the vm. 

Kevin Dushney: The 

Nate McBride: NEX. 

Mike Crispin: 2026. 2020 virtual edge. The problem with your, your, I came up with this new idea, it's called VDI. [01:39:00] It's amazing. 

Kevin Dushney: It's really gonna take off this year. 

Mike Crispin: This is it, 2026 vdi, IVDI. Uh, hello. Yes. My name is, uh, is Nate McBride. I'm here tonight to learn about how VMware can help enable my business.

Kevin Dushney: Oh God. I That's so, 

Mike Crispin: that so funny that I always trying, and the guy next to, to me was, the guy next to was pissed. Was that dinner, Kevin? When 

Kevin Dushney: that was not, I, I would've burst out laughing if I was there. 

Mike Crispin: The guy next to me was pissed at you. And then he was mad at me because I told him that AWS was gonna be the future for all servers and he was ready to kill me.

Nate McBride: Well then I think it was either me or you the asked about quantum computing. They were like, I 

Mike Crispin: think that 

Nate McBride: one, so what, what are you most concerned about in, in the next year or two? And I was like, well, quantum computing, like, how do I get it? 

Mike Crispin: When will we have it in our pocket? 

Nate McBride: It was like, um, well, it's still a few years out.[01:40:00] 

So should I plan forward my, my budget this year or next year? 

Mike Crispin: Wait, that was 10 years ago. 

Nate McBride: I know. 

Mike Crispin: It was like 2015. We went to that thing. 

Nate McBride: We had some good times then. Wow. This is back when I was off the leash. Um, 

Mike Crispin: did I thought you were always off. 

Nate McBride: Well, it appears that way. Is this every now and then I go too far, like choke back.

Uh, so, but there was one flaw with your design, Mike. I wanna mention that. Which is the command key. See, this is the problem. Yes. With apples for the rest of time, not only do the command key. Yeah. It's the return versus enter key. Um, yep. And what, what Apple will never do, of course, is get rid of the command key and put a CTL key there.

But, um, 

Mike Crispin: here, here's what I'm gonna do. I've got some masking tape. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna put the masking tape over it. 

Nate McBride: No, just do a key mapping like, you 

Mike Crispin: know, just, yeah, you can, you can [01:41:00] get, you can get stickers on Amazon. That will change the command key to the alt key. 

Nate McBride: I'm not surprised. 

Mike Crispin: I, I'm telling you.

Let's do it. I'm, I'm not, you actually using, you 

Nate McBride: actually using the alt key anyway. 

Kevin Dushney: I don't know. 

Mike Crispin: That's, isn't that the option? Isn't that, no. What is command. 

Kevin Dushney: Well, you command is, you've got control, option and command. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. On 

Mike Crispin: the, but on, on a p on a pc, it's, uh, control apple and alt right. Those are alt, uh, control windows.

Control windows and yeah. Windows key in the alt key. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. 

Mike Crispin: See, change the, where's the 

Kevin Dushney: co-pilot? 

Nate McBride: Where's the co-pilot button go? 

Mike Crispin: Um, 

Nate McBride: it's, it's the big button underneath the space bar. It just says cope. Hit here for answers, 

Mike Crispin: stickers for Mac keyboard.

Nate McBride: All right. So what did, let's see. What did we, what did we, what did we, uh, resolve? We resolve that. Um, 

Kevin Dushney: nothing. 

Nate McBride: We [01:42:00] resolve that we resolve some things. We resolve that, um, uh, that people that are retirement plus age are screwed. 

Mike Crispin: Or they should, are they? Why should they worry? Like they, they 

Nate McBride: all 

Mike Crispin: said they're 

Nate McBride: done.

Yeah. It shouldn't even worry. Just stop worrying. You're not screwed. Sorry. It's a big deal back. You're, you're, you're actually perfect. Don't do anything. It just 

Mike Crispin: don't, it doesn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't, 

Nate McBride: don't, don't buy any laptops. Yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: Is a need, is there a need for anxiety there, I guess is the question.

Maybe 

Nate McBride: when your L-L-G-T-V says you need six different forms of authentication to log, to update HBO Max, it's all good. Just. Follow the machine. Don't, don't question it. Um, when your Keurig won't work anymore, because it requires wifi, don't just shut it 

Kevin Dushney: off. I know why I need the Google tv, and yet why is it making me press yes on the YouTube app on my phone?

Like, 

Nate McBride: yeah, 

Kevin Dushney: why do I have to 

Nate McBride: That's okay. Just, just click it and may, [01:43:00] maybe that's the prescription. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Just plug 

Kevin Dushney: for, 

Nate McBride: for technology. Yeah. That's, that's how we solve the gap. Kevin, you just nailed it. Here's your training. Whatever the prompt says, click the affirmative. Just always click yes. 

Kevin Dushney: We're gonna go against every phishing training we've ever sent you 

Nate McBride: that Remember that, that Jim Carrey movie that came out?

Yes. Man. There, there should be a movie about a guy who just clicks yes to all things. And then see how, we'll see how far, if you can make it through a full day. We go in the morning and just start clicking Yes. To every single thing you get, every email, every alert on your phone, just yes, 

Kevin Dushney: yes, yes, yes, yes.

Nate McBride: Except all cookies. All over and over and over again. Yes. I want every to win every banner ad. It'd pretty funny, right? If you're willing to, it's like the guy who ate the hamburgers from McDonald's for 30 days, 

Kevin Dushney: right. 

Nate McBride: And then died a year later from n Didn't work N Out. So 

Kevin Dushney: well, [01:44:00] 

Nate McBride: NGO 

Mike Crispin: Blow up. Who's the guy?

The guy who Dr. Ate a Big Mac every day. Uh, that's the guy. He's still alive. The guy who's still alive. Alive because still alive. He doesn't have fries with it. No, he still not, not, not the guy who did supersize me, the guy he interviewed on supersize me. There's a guy on in, in the movie who eats a Big Mac every day, but, and he's in, he's not, he's not a big guy and it's because he doesn't eat, have any soda and he doesn't have any fries, but he has a Big Mac every day.

Nate McBride: Don Gorsky ate his, yep. 15. That's the guy. Yeah, he hold on 72 years old as of last year, is a Wisconsin man who holds against world record for the most Big Mac eating in a lifetime, surpassing 35,000 in 2025, starting May 17th, 1972. Heats one to two daily, rarely eats fries and maintains good health with low cholesterol, claiming they've got 99 5% of [01:45:00] his solid food intake.

So Gorsky Gorsky consumes two big Macs a day for lunch and dinner, skipping fries and drinks. 

Mike Crispin: The interesting thing about the Big Mac is that it's actually pretty small compared to the other, like to the quarter pounders. So it's the two tiny patties, right? Like they're those little tiny hockey puck things.

Yeah, and the lettuce and cheese and bread and some thousand islands dressing, I think. Yeah. Is that what it is? A Russian dressing? 

Nate McBride: Two. All beef, two. All beef patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickle, pickles, onions on a sheet bun. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Oh man. 

Nate McBride: Um, I had a Big Mac not too long ago. I was driving north to Maine and I was dying.

I actually, it wasn't a Big Mac, it was the Burger King version. What's that one called? 

Mike Crispin: The Whopper 

Nate McBride: Whopper. I had a Whopper. The Whopper. And here's my, here's my experience with the Whopper. I just ordered the Whopper and I got the large fry because you cannot get, not [01:46:00] get fries. Yeah. I still had about an hour and a half to go on my drive.

So I, I'm driving up, up 95 and I spread out, you know, like the, the wrapper that it comes in. Yeah. On the lap. And I put the, the paper bag underneath that just in case I hold this into my mouth and I go bite out of it and squirts all to my fucking arm. All to my leg. This big giant mass of white, red ply stuff squirts everywhere.

Of course. What do I do? That 

Kevin Dushney: sounds great. 

Nate McBride: I keep eating right. Gotta eat. Finish the burger. 

Kevin Dushney: You get a power 

Nate McBride: down. It's like dripping off my elbow all over my console. So I got the next, I got to the next, uh, station at, at, uh, gray, which is about 20 exits Later I pulled off. I was covered in special sauce in the goop.

So lesson learned while it was tasty and my car smelled really nice for several days. [01:47:00] Um, don't eat a Big Mac if you are driving and eat it over a garbage can. Yeah, it's not intended, not intended to be eaten any other way. It's 

Mike Crispin: messy. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. So 

Mike Crispin: you don't want to get, get squirted on. 

Nate McBride: When I was in high school, and this is now going back about 10 years, uh, we would finish soccer practice and lacrosse practice.

And right down the street from our, our campus was, um, McDonald's and they used to have two, I forget what it was, quarter pounders or something for 99 cents. And it was like during certain times of the day, and this was right after practice. And so the whole team would drive over and we would, we would all order like three or $4 worth.

We'd have stacks of them, and it was contests all the time, eating these things. Um, and they would come with like half a pickle, this gnarly ass lettuce. But this is not relevant at all, [01:48:00] actually to the whole topic of tonight's episode. But just thinking about it now, um, I am a little bit hungry. Are, 

Mike Crispin: are you getting hungry?

Are you gonna go to you, you gonna to Burger King or McDonald's? 

Nate McBride: The Big Mac. 

Mike Crispin: Oh, the Big Mac, okay. 

Nate McBride: Got it. Um, all right, so what else did we, what, what else did we, uh, close up on here? We, um, gen K, we determined 

Mike Crispin: we need to get stickers for the, for the Mac. So 

Nate McBride: stickers. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: That's a good, that's a good action item.

Kevin Dushney: We need to train 

Mike Crispin: people. A Windows logo, keyboard sticker. 

Nate McBride: We need to train people. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, 

Nate McBride: we need to do technical assessments. Of new people that are coming in. Um, we have to basically fire everybody. That doesn't, doesn't fall in line with our rules. We, we didn't, we didn't actually say that. I'm just adding, I'm adding that on right 

now.

Kevin Dushney: I'm 

Nate McBride: adding on now. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. Yeah. 

Nate McBride: That we, we would hire, we would hire people [01:49:00] more for, um, their ability to, their, their after two, their ability to learn versus their what they already know. If it was more recent, I mean, you just can't see this is, this is how you get outta jail when it comes to job descriptions.

As you write some, a completely obsequious number of years, like 10 years experience when you really, what you're trying to say is, I want someone who's young or, but you can't say that. Right. So people write in these fictitious numbers of years of experience. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. But I want 30 years of experience. I've never seen a JD with that.

Nate McBride: I don't think you'll ever see a JD that says, must have 35 years of experience with windows. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: You, you, that's my favorite. This person shows up like, okay, I'm, I'm here for the job interview. Uh, you have 35 years of windows. Well, actually I brought my MCSC certificate with me. 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. Yeah. Let's do some, uh, no, but I have proficiency exams.

Let's, here's my [01:50:00] 3.1 emulator. 

Mike Crispin: I have 15 years of chat. GT experience. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. That's gonna be my favorite when the after Jenny and i's been out for a couple years. People's resume skills chat. GPT. Well, 

Kevin Dushney: 15 years of experience. 

Mike Crispin: 15 years of experience. 

Nate McBride: What skill do you have in chat? GPT. Yep. Chat, GPT. 

Kevin Dushney: Here's 

Nate McBride: chat gt.

Kevin Dushney: I 

Mike Crispin: know about 

Kevin Dushney: ai. Here's my markdown attached to my resume for your review. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. You think markdowns 

Kevin Dushney: literal set. 

Mike Crispin: It's just a shared link to a chat. GPT Chat. Check this out. This is my resume. It's link to GBTI 

Kevin Dushney: have distilled my skills into a flat file. Here it is. I feel like I almost have to hire that person just because, just to have them 

Mike Crispin: around that.

That's what you do it on your cv, like right into your name. Just have a link to the [01:51:00] chat GBT thread. Like instead your LinkedIn. It should be a link to the chat BT thread that created your cv. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. Or have it all in markdown. Say just ingest this into Quad and it'll tell you Exactly. Yeah. I don't know how, I don't know how to, 

Nate McBride: I don't know how to read this.

No, no. It's, you. Copy and paste it into 

Kevin Dushney: Claude 

Mike Crispin: and 

Kevin Dushney: have it just engineer for, you'll tell you exactly what, 

Mike Crispin: it'll spit it out for you. Yeah. As you know, it's. It's not about the cv, it's about the prompt. It's a good prompt. 

Nate McBride: Right. See, I've got 20 years experience in the industry, but that doesn't really matter.

But have you seen me prompt? 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. On the side, I'm a hell of a prompt engineer. I, that's just, that's what I do. Uh, that's, that's is my day job, but that's 

Kevin Dushney: what 

Mike Crispin: I do when I'm 

Kevin Dushney: prompting. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: I don't know if you know this, but I, I get called in when people want to know how to conserve tokens. They, they generally call me.

Mike Crispin: I 

Nate McBride: am shepherd. I shorten can 

Kevin Dushney: consolidate [01:52:00] conversations like nobody's business. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. See, I wouldn't even use the word duh. Well, you just said there, I've already shortened that in my mind. I've taken out all the pronouns in the conjunctions. 

Kevin Dushney: Look how many tokens I just saved you. 

Nate McBride: So like, when, when do I start?

Token 

Kevin Dushney: optimization engineer. 

Nate McBride: Oh my God. This goes in line with Crispin's other role that we're gonna, we're gonna have to hire, let me see, I have to go through my notes. 

Mike Crispin: Chief Truth Officer. 

Nate McBride: The chief truth officer of the dream stream. That, that, that person would oversee the, what'd you call it? The token optimization?

Officer. Architect, 

Mike Crispin: yeah. 

Nate McBride: Kevin. 

Mike Crispin: Sheriff. Sheriff of all tokens. 

Kevin Dushney: Uh, token optimization. Engineer 

Nate McBride: token. Yes. That's the tow. 

Kevin Dushney: Tow. 

Nate McBride: Tow. Yep. 

Mike Crispin: That's the tell man. 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Because they're, they're already hiring people for [01:53:00] front frontline Frontier. Frontier ai. What do you do? Well, I do the ai, but, but out there, so before you do the ai, I'm already doing, I've already done the ai.

Oh, so do I need to do the AI still? Yeah, you still need to do it, but I'm doing it in front of you. 

Kevin Dushney: Wait, a frontier model or Frontier as in I'm just out in front of you. 

Nate McBride: It's just 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah, 

Nate McBride: if you have to ask. I mean, you don't, you, you can't afford it. I mean, ultimately yeah, a frontier engineer is out in the frontier.

They, in front of you doing the engineering, you don't even know that they're there. They're so far out in front of you. You're just like, wow, this, this prompt just worked. And then every now and then they come back and they're like, uh, is your prompt working? Yes. Okay. 'cause I, I'm out there. 

Kevin Dushney: I'm out in front pretexting, so you don't have to worry about all this.

Nate McBride: Yeah. I'm with the working with the toes. It's the toes [01:54:00] and the frontier people we're just doing the prompting in advance of your prompting. That's what you need. You along with on your Chief, chief Truth officer, you need the, the token optimization engineer. You also need the pre-pro engineer. Hey, I need to 

Kevin Dushney: write A pro is like the ship and the Arctic breaking the ice so all the other ships can come.

Nate McBride: Exactly. The pre-pro engineer has already written your prompt for you. You start typing and it automatically fills out your prompt that you were gonna write. 

Mike Crispin: Automated, automated, prompt generation.

There it is. 

Nate McBride: That's, that's all it is. Mike. 

Kevin Dushney: That's the, 

Mike Crispin: I can, I can automate prompts 

Kevin Dushney: there. There's a second button you can, you can add to the vm. 

Mike Crispin: You wanna generate that prompt? All you have to do is type [01:55:00] in a long paragraph, a, a big, long question, you know, 5, 6, 7 sentences and I'll spit out the prompt for you.

Nate McBride: Yep. 

Mike Crispin: It'll be awesome. And it does it, what it does, it does a, a search of, uh, synonyms and it just replaces all the words, spits it out. 

Nate McBride: You know, honestly, I think you got something there because you could hire somebody and they sit there at their desk all day and everybody wants to write a prompt, but they don't.

What they do is they send their prompt to the PPE who's working with the TOE on the frontier. 

Kevin Dushney: Yes. 

Nate McBride: And then they send your request back to you after having tested it on the frontier. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Verifying its verification and then sending it back to you for execution. 

Mike Crispin: Well, the, the chief, the chief truth officer has to verify it.

Nate McBride: Are we gonna have people submitting 

Kevin Dushney: prompt requests into fresh in the near future? 

Nate McBride: That [01:56:00] would be awesome if you, dude, Kevin, honestly, if you're gonna implement fresh, create a category, please. That is generative ai, prompt generation, and then there's like dropdowns. 

Kevin Dushney: That'd be 

Nate McBride: so great. What kind of prompt do you need?

Pick your tone. I need a prompt that, oh my God, that will generate a deck for me, but with a really nasty tone. It's just spiteful and hateful tone. I'm doing a review of my employee. I need a spiteful, hateful, generative AI prompt to write my review. 

Mike Crispin: Oh boy. 

Kevin Dushney: I want this as caustic as possible. And 

Nate McBride: yes, can you make it so that there is just months of anxiety and anger about this individual place in the organization?

Kevin Dushney: All lightning bolted into one review, 

Nate McBride: and I wanna be able to constantly revisit it over time. So make sure that there are stark direct bullet points about my, [01:57:00] my ability to do this by myself. Blindfolded, 

Kevin Dushney: I want you to hyper index on recency bias.

Nate McBride: Yep. Yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: The rest of the year's work is, is moot. Let's focus on incident. So 

Nate McBride: the truth officer, the CTO oversees the Department of Generative AI truth in which the PPE, the TOE, the PGE all work together. 

Kevin Dushney: This is great. Now 

Mike Crispin: I'm sold. 

Kevin Dushney: How can we create bots to create this entire set of personas and test 

Nate McBride: this?

Yeah. Well, we need, well we need to create bots that hire people to do jobs. So like why are we hiring people, using people? You have bots hire people then, [01:58:00] and they won't get it wrong. They'll hire the best people. So if you just have bots, hire people, imagine that. Imagine that company. Hey, you look like you're 13 years old and you're the ceo.

Yes, that's right. Uh, I was Instagrammed by a bot that said I had a job waiting for me. And so I managed to get out of, um, phys ed today to come over and do the job. So yeah, I'm the CEO 

Kevin Dushney: Mechanical Turk with ai. 

Nate McBride: Ah.

I'm sure just by, as like Vir virtually saying it right now, it's been manifested somewhere halfway around the world into an actual app. Like right now, there's an app that's being 

Kevin Dushney: through, through Zoom. It's already being 

Nate McBride: built. iOS store. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: To auto generate jobs for a fake company. That's gonna be the ultimate, [01:59:00] the ultimate test of all this shitty cleverness will be when you hear about a company that was generated from scratch.

It hired people, it got an office building, it made no product, and everyone was there, worked there for at least a year.

It's just gonna be a company that made outta scratch. Imagine that. 

Mike Crispin: Imagine 

Nate McBride: it could happen. You could literally do this. Right now I'm making a company 

Mike Crispin: Start it up, man. 

Nate McBride: On, I'm making on, I'm making a company on 

Kevin Dushney: this 

Nate McBride: cla I'm making a comment. I need you to hire everybody, rent the office space, do all the things, uh, don't value me with the questions, just do it and let me know after it's been running and had three quarters of revenue.

And then I'll come in for the last quarter and of the year and clean up.

Wonder what do we do?[02:00:00] 

All right. Well, yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: Hmm. 

Nate McBride: Another partially successful podcast. Once again, we, we, we set the bar high. We, we aimed low. We came right in. Then I always like bumped our 

Mike Crispin: heads on the bar 

Nate McBride: right in the meaty part. Bump our heads on the bar. Got started, got a little bit of a nose, got a little bit of a nosebleed.

Uh, but I'm okay now. 

Mike Crispin: Whopper sauce. 

Nate McBride: We'll go the gentleman seat. Hey, next week, next week, Mike, we highlighted this one in green because I guess it's special. I'm not sure why we highlighted it in green, because shadow AI versus shadow it. 

Mike Crispin: Oh yeah. 

Nate McBride: Ooh. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. That's be fun. 

Nate McBride: The sequel, the sequel is worse is what we called it.

Mike Crispin: It's much worse 

Nate McBride: Shadow AI versus shadow it. I didn't even know that Shadow [02:01:00] still existed and people still do shadow it 'cause Oh 

Mike Crispin: yeah. Doesn't 

Nate McBride: really call that anymore. 

Mike Crispin: Oh yeah. 

Nate McBride: What, how would you 

Mike Crispin: say so I think it's,

you install Windows NT on your laptop, 

Nate McBride: but it would care. I mean, honestly, if someone was like, oh, all shit, I installed my laptop, it'd be like, good for you. Still working 

Mike Crispin: if the release to work. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I mean. Are you able to do your job? I don't really give a shit. Put whatever you want in there. Shadow 

Mike Crispin: up, got my, uh, my bit torrent running and 

Nate McBride: wouldn't care.

Mike Crispin: I got a, got a blockchain going using mines 

Nate McBride: on the fence. We had light, light path drop. So the reason Kevin, if you have any fiber at that, at that building is because of us. We had light path drop fiber into that hill when I got there. We got a five gig circuit. We, we, we give it like a little, little nail [02:02:00] scratch as how much bandwidth we use 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah.

Nate McBride: From our circuit. And I pay nothing. I pay like 1100 a month for that circuit. Our backup is a two gig. Um, we don't even close. So we could BitTorrent, we could stream the NFL games out of our building and probably do just fine. Actually, that's probably a bigger pipe, but,

all right. So maybe Kevin, you'll be back next week for the shadow. Yeah. Back 

Kevin Dushney: Kevin 

Nate McBride: versus undefined as yet. Fine shadow, but the following. So episodes 12 and 13 we're talk about the engine and CWP. It's a two-parter. I don't know why we put two parts down. I think because we were, uh, pessimistic about the length, but um, we're talk about workflow platforms and how basically they're all identical.

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Just a different, [02:03:00] just a different ui. 

Kevin Dushney: It's right for consolidation that space. 

Nate McBride: Yeah. I mean, collaboration's done anyway. Who collaborates anymore? People just create, create. Here you go. I'm, I can't talk. I'm creating something else. Oh, I'm creating that. I'm done now. I'm, I'm creating something else now.

I don't do comments and feedback. I just created it for you. 

Kevin Dushney: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Your problem now, 

Kevin Dushney: like a platform that can wrangle the slop is really where, 

Nate McBride: yeah. 

Kevin Dushney: Where 

Nate McBride: we have some new, some new people coming on the calculus of it. Slack board. By the way, if you did listen to this podcast, you made it all the way through and you haven't yet given us all the stars.

You can go to the Coit Us to catch all of our podcast episodes. You can also get them on all the, all the things. Give us all the stars. Yep. Um, you can subscribe for free. Substack does a little tiny, um, thingy where you subscribe, where it looks like you have to pay, but you don't have to pay for our substack feed because we are like operating totally in the red on this [02:04:00] podcast.

Um, thousands of dollars to be quite honest, in the red. So we just wanna keep this streak alive. Don't pay us, don't buy us beers. Don't buy our merchandise. We, I like, I mean, the debt's good. Debt's healthy. It reminds you, you still have a purpose in this world. Put, put, put them on brave. Actually do yourself.

You know what, 

Kevin Dushney: yeah. Put 

Nate McBride: yourself brave. Be nice to old people and put them on brave. 

Mike Crispin: Yep. That's what I did. My, my family's all on brave. 

Kevin Dushney: Lock it 

down. 

Kevin Dushney: Give them brave. How do you need the onion browser, Mike? 

Mike Crispin: No, they do not use to.

Kevin Dushney: Why is it so slow? It's secure. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah. 

Nate McBride: Change. 

Change 

Nate McBride: their default wi their wifi router password from the default, please. 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: And disable the wifi that comes with their router. And give them a separate wifi route wifi gateway so they don't need to use the default Comcast one. All right. 

Mike Crispin: All 

Nate McBride: right. Next week, 

Mike Crispin: Don, 

Nate McBride: shout out.

Don't 

Mike Crispin: steal my camera. 

Nate McBride: Shout it. [02:05:00] Yeah. Don't steal mic camera. All right, guys. Kevin, great to see you. Drinks next Tuesday. 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Ruth, Chris. Mike, join. 

Mike Crispin: Yeah, that'd be awesome. Let's do up Jim 

Nate McBride: some Ruth rc. Tuesday, five o'clock. 

Kevin Dushney: Yep. 

Nate McBride: Amen. All right's a 

Kevin Dushney: date 

Mike Crispin: party on boys. 

Kevin Dushney: All right, gentlemen. All later. See ya All right.

Later guys. Yourself.

Trance Bot: The calculus of it,

season three,

verifying this identity.

Sometimes you just have to take it.

Sometimes you just have to take it[02:06:00] 

because it's season three divided Autonomy,

verifying identity,

the calculus of it.