344-Touch Grass Before You Prompt Again With Menil Vukovic

We challenge the AI hype by asking what we gain in productivity and what we lose in creativity, attention, and basic human skills. We argue for moderation: use AI as a tool, keep your brain in the driver’s seat, and don’t let convenience replace learning, walking, and real-world connection. 
• Why extreme positions fail and why balance matters in tech and life 
• Too many apps, consumerism, and choice paralysis as a product problem 
• Privacy trade-offs and why “free” platforms can make you the product 
• Touch grass as a serious digital wellbeing practice, not a meme 
• When AI helps creativity versus when it replaces it 
• How AI changes software engineering productivity for juniors and seniors 
• A real company experiment: YOLO phase, no-AI phase, full-AI phase, then hybrid 
• Why AI and military use feels uniquely dangerous due to nondeterminism 
• US versus Europe approaches to AI regulation and the case for a middle ground 
• AI music, Spotify competition, and the messy future of copyright 
• Startup takeaways: learning from failure, defining success, and compound effort over time 
When you rate this podcast, rate it an Apple Podcast, Spotify. If you give one to four stars, give one way I could specifically improve. And then if it's a five stars, give at least one reason that, you know, one reason why it's great. Follow me on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. 

Follow Menil Vukovic at ...

Website

https://pearshadow.com/

LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/in/menilv/

Transcript

Opening Rant And Moderation

SPEAKER_01 0:02

All right, welcome everyone to politically high tech with your host, Elias. I have a brand newcomer. You know, we need some newcomers. Some of the old guests, I don't know what happened to them. They disconnected. The aliens taking them. I don't know. Or they're in a rural area where the internet can't find them. I don't know where they're at. I hope they're all right. But regardless, we have some newcomer, we have a newcomer here. Before I get to get to go to get to introduce this newcomer, I'm just gonna say, I'm just gonna say this. I'm gonna just lecture you again for all of you that keep thinking I'm corrupting your kids and all that. That's your problem. I do whatever I can to block this for the children. That's your problem. I don't look, your failure is your problem. I do whatever I can to block them. And the ones that are kid friendly or professional, those are the ones that are shown more publicly. But if you know you want the more juicier, controversial, provocative stuff, I put certain restrictions there, but oh, then there's gonna be ones with paywall where we're really gonna go crazy. That's gonna be the future. I mean, stuff that that's not politically correct, even though, yes, I am, I do cover politics, but I don't believe it'd be politically correct. I think that has made us more dumb. We pay attention to the wrong things, in my opinion. We gotta pay attention to the right things. Look, I'm for including everybody, I'm for including people, but at the same time, we can't just excuse the crap that comes with it. And there, you know, there's ways of handling that. And this is why politically I always identify as a moderate. I'm not too progressive to the point I want to open border, but I'm also not too conservative to the point I want to completely close off border. They both got their, you know, balance people. Balance, balance, okay? This is my meaning political lecture. Balance is important, people. I do want America to be welcoming, but I don't want to just welcome every single person, a criminal, uh, you know, and all of that. We want people who was gonna contribute to America, who's gonna do good for America, which for the most part immigrants do. But we gotta weed out the, you know, just the bad ones, the violent ones. That that's all. Not all immigrants, not you know, that that's bad. Trust me, America, we we need the immigrants more than more than we want to admit. And trust me, the population trends do show that without immigration, America would be in the population decline already, okay? So you're more helpful than what the media gives you. So these are just statistics. I'm not gonna be too political here. But that's my only minor rambling before we get to the guests.

Meet The Guest And His Work

SPEAKER_01 2:28

So I have a guest here, and he's gonna align us on AI. This is gonna be a tech episode, so don't worry. Not too much politics here. But you know, we're gonna talk, we're talking about AI impact on creativity. I'm curious to know about that. I have some ideas, but I always want to bring someone who has, you know, some verified experience just to have a better conversation. I mean, I could bring anyone from the streets, but let's be honest. Some of them are not intelligent people, and some of them give me some dumb answers that makes the conversation boring. I'm just gonna be honest. I'm just being honest. Um, you know, hate me and you want you got the comment section to express your anger. You got your comment section to express your anger, okay? You use that. That's your little therapy session. All right. So look, I'm for freedom of speech. I, you know, and all of that. Sorry. I bet somebody could tell me, shut up and introduce a guest already. Yes, I'm gonna do that. I have a guest here. His main, his name is Manil Volkovic. I'm not sure I pronounced that right. Feel free to correct me. Almost close enough. It's Vukovich, but you know, good enough. Volkovich. Okay. Oh, with uh H. Okay. Yep. Gotcha. All right, no, that's no problem. Like I said, I don't have I don't have a big ego. I I I'm defiant, but I don't have a big ego. Um, forget it. This conversation would have gone way, hey, why? I was like, why the hell you correct me my damn podcast? You know, something like that. No, I don't have that. I I I want to learn. I'm curious about learning. My intellectual curiosity overrides my ego most of the time. So, right, so let's get started. Let me give him just a nice introduction. He is the CEO of Pier Shadow. Ooh, sounds a bit dark there. And uh TADX speaker who brings a unique blend of technology, entrepreneurship, and creativity to every conversation. We definitely need more of that. And he has to build an innovative, maintainable software and successful startups and fintech and e-commerce. Bet some of you gonna wonder what the heck uh fintech means. Uh and previously served as a director of engineering with deep expertise of wearables and mobile development. Oh, that's a that's a big thing. We have so much junk being built. I think we need something more valuable. That's just my opinion. Is some, you know, that horoscope garbage. That's garbage to me. But some people enjoy that. It you'd be surprised. He's passionate about venture building, helping founders turn ideas into scalable products. That's a problem. We have great ideas, but if you don't turn into a product, a scalable product, then it's no use, right? Do strong engineering and collaboration. He actively runs a mobile mobby for mobile engineers, has taught Java at IT Academy and startups in Germany. Yes, we do allow foreigners into this podcast. And we have he has co-founded multiple startups, including the experiences with the Y Combinator. Okay. So that's some of his background. And I'm gonna have him take over from here. And the only simple question I ask all my guests is what do you want the viewers and listeners to know about you?

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Things. I don't know, I I told you before the episode, like this intro sounds very fancy. When I look back, like, you know, from the beginning of my career to today, like I did so many different things and I was involved in so many different things because I I like my work and and I like the impact that I, you know, could produce with my work. So initially it was just software engineering. I'm I'm a software engineer. I I loved writing code. I loved I love for that code to stick around and work for a longer time so I can have my own weekends free and sleep longer, right? But then eventually um I think I started thinking differently about software and where things were going. I think there was there was a catchphrase at some point where we said, oh, there's an app for everything. And I think we're living in a in a world today where there is an app for everything. Truth be told, I dreamt of this point of time. I I thought like that would be so cool if we actually had an app for everything, like even for people who like horoscope, right? It it doesn't matter. Like you find your thing, you you search it on a store or on a website, and you know, you use it. But I I think consumerism has caught up with that segment as well. I think we're we have too many. Pick and choose a topic, pick choose an app, whatever it is. Like you can search, you'll find 50 options. And then you have this, you know, paralysis of choice. Do I use Uber? Do I use Lyft? Do I use uh another app? And which one is better and why? And I think we got to a point where you know I think we need more people to start not building apps, as weird as that sounds, and not just apps, like products, but I'd rather have us join together within like one umbrella and build something that we already have much better. I'll take a classic example that I was I was always pissed at, uh, which is Facebook, not Meta, the company now, but Facebook, the product. I loved when when Facebook was introduced, I think we were all dazzled when we saw that we can actually find, you know, early childhood friends and family and keep them all together in this like one website and keep keep our life shared with them and our updates. And then we realized at some point, oh my God, this is a privacy nightmare. And these people are using our data to serve us odds. Like if you know if the product is free, you're the product, right? We already know these cliches, and it it came to a point where you know others started building their own social networks and they went haywire as well. So now you don't really have a good place that's not where you're not the product. People are avoiding social networks in general, like they're running away from it like it's it's COVID again. So I think, you know, instead of just building new stuff, we can we can all go, you know, under under one umbrella and try to fix stuff that we already have. If they're unfixable, sure, let's let's do that. But I'd rather have us do it uh together.

Too Many Apps And Choice Paralysis

SPEAKER_00 8:30

And I think you said something very nice in in the intro. You said moderation. I think this is something that we're missing globally. I think we're we've all become too extreme in everything. You you want to be the best, the prettiest, the richest, whatever the superlative is. And I think that's making us less happy. So this is this is why in my life I I do think about technology. I do think about how it affects us, like not just you know, from an engineering perspective, because obviously it's gone very, very deep into tech, but also from a creativity point, like are we losing our our left side of the brain? I think it's left side of the brain that does creativity, because we get everything served. Like there's instant coffee, there's instant Uber, there's there's instant Doordash, and now that there's there's instant answers. I used to enjoy Googling stuff. Like I would go into a discussion with my friends on like, what's the tallest building in the world, or like who has more roads, or whatever the random topic of of the day is, and we would start googling stuff and and realizing like this is this is the correct information, or this is not, or this is the actual answer. Now it's like, hey, Chat GPT, tell me the answer, and they give you an answer. And you don't even double check it, right? So so it can be a a false one, but even then, like you're not using your brain for anything else other than to produce input, right? And then expect output on the other side. And I don't think that's that's the that's the reason why we have tech. I I think tech should augment our lives, not lead our lives or take over our lives. I I don't want robots in my house. Like I already have them. Like your fridge is your robot, right? Your your dishwasher is your robot. We already have that tech. I just I don't need someone to do it for me necessarily. Like I don't need to offload everything in my brain. And even if I want to, even if you're a person who doesn't like chores, well, who I mean, who does, you know, we're reaching a point where we're trying to outsource creativity as well. And I think that's bad. It it will slow us down as humanity. And these are like large problems that at least you and I cannot solve on this podcast. But I think they're worth mentioning. And, you know, maybe one person says today, I'm not gonna chat GPT that, I'm gonna Google that, or I'm gonna do it by hand, whatever it is, like adding numbers, multiplying numbers, drawing a picture. Let me not use Midjourney to generate an image that I thought of. Let me try and do it with with pencil, God forbid, and paper, and you know, use a little bit of my brain. Because I think eventually if if our brain atrophies, you know, I I think I don't think there's much much of us left that will, you know, survive on this planet. You know, you mentioned US is declining. I think many, many well, uh many countries that are in a well good state are declining because people have other stuff to do. They have Netflix, they have you know parties and and concerts, and they don't have time for kids. And yeah, maybe kids shouldn't shouldn't listen to this podcast, but parents should. Like, why are you giving your kids so much screen time? Don't. It's it's simple as that. Like, don't let them let them touch grass and be creative. And I mean, they they have their whole lives to look at screens. Like, I don't think we're gonna kill screens anytime soon in the future. Might as well give them time to touch grass because if we're not doing it now, I'm in my 30s. I'm I'm touching grass less and less, unfortunately, though I'm I'm intentionally trying to do it more and more often. But you know, how can I expect that from my kid who is already starting to see screens everywhere? You know, when I was a kid, there was a TV, that's it, that's all the screens I could I could find within a mile radius. And, you know, my kid is almost two in about a month. Uh I think there's like 10 screens in my home. I've been trying to actively turn them off, but he he sees them, he he reacts to them. Like they they engage with him and he engage with engages with them. And you know, to s to keep that sanity, to keep that small brain properly developing, I think we should, you know, reduce some of these things. And that's why I'm saying I don't necessarily think we need to build more, I think we need to reduce more and go back to some of our creative uh sides and and utilize what we have from tech to actually be able to do that. Like if if AI can run my business, I would love it. I would love for for AI to run my business so I can go Tatras, right? But instead, I think we're you know we we go just deeper. Like if AI is running my business, can I have three more businesses? Like, can I have can I not sleep tonight? You know, I think that kind of thinking puts us in a in a deep trap that's that's very hard to get out of, you know.

SPEAKER_01 13:38

Oh, you're meaning. Oh man, I'm losing my touch here. This is why you need to touch grass, you lose sanity, people. See, this is a good example right here. And to I could relate to that because sadly, in my 30s, which I am in my 30s, I am touching less grass, and that is so important. It is so important, but yet we hear so much of the screen more often. I and I'm gonna just double down with the moderation. I mean, look, I'm not practicing when I preach, and you could call me that out in the chat, and I'm not gonna be offended because I want your help. Maybe talking bad, talking rough, maybe that's probably what I need. Tough love for the comment section to help. You know, you think I'm kidding and trolling and meaning, but this is probably serious. Maybe a little comment would help. No, but I I agree, and this is why I'm intentionally going out more, even if it's just to enjoy nature, something simple. I simplify my reason to grow out. I lower my threshold to reason to grow out. So just say, oh, it has to be important, it has to be no, just go out, get some air, reduce your threshold, your your reason, just make it simple to go out. That's my point. Go out as if your life depends on it, as if you're closer dying, as you know, our time is limited. Yeah, act in that fashion. Because look at me, I'm constantly making the most basic mistake here. I'm talking while I'm muting. This is a boomer mistake here. I've been doing this for six years. Come on, alliance, get it together there. But you know, to but to just hone that point even further. Because, oh yeah, I think I'm ready. I got everything said about somebody start talking, yeah. Now, well, that's already gone. That's already wasted because it's all muted and it's all it's gonna say blah blah blah. Because I even forgot why I said right there, because I already just go on on a rapid fire mode. You know, I agree. We need to touch grass more, more moderation is needed, and definitely less junk junk apps. If you're gonna build something new or just improve, I will prefer something just to be improved on top or a new app I can replace something old. You know, something better than Uber, I will support it that way. We don't need a new Uber, Uber is too expensive. And actually, local companies, just to make this very short story, they are finding ways to undercut Uber by making prices lower. Um, you see, this is why business competition is a good thing, people. Don't no monopoly, no monopoly is good. I don't care you're you're left-leaning, right leaning in your politics, monopoly is not good because they could just have any reason to jump up the prices. You never give business that much control, especially in America. Especially in America, because forget it. We we we we are uh, you know, businesses will become authoritarians, especially with pricing and control and all that. Look, I am for business, I'm not against business, I'm not a socialist, communist kind of person, but you know, there they I do support business competition. I do support consumers having options in general, and that's what I'm gonna say about that. I agree with that. And too much robots, yeah, we already got robots on me. Should I could use a robot to to clean I, you know, I forced myself to clean the past couple of days. It's draining, it's tiring, it's annoying, it's boring, but as grown responsible, but it's healthy, yeah, and it's healthy, it's triggered. It's healthy, it's good. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

You should do your chores listening.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

No, do your chores, seriously. Just do your chores, even if you don't feel like it. Go go beyond your feelings. Do you have to go beyond your feelings, tough it up if you need to, or find creative ways. Me, I play music. That's how I start getting go. Find ways that motivate you, be creative. Yeah, I mean, if I did what if I have to clean wild music, I think after like five minutes, I'm already completely drained, short-circuited, and like, oh I'm just but in all services, though. Yeah, it's you know, clean cleaning is good for you. I mean, it really is. And you know, and after doing it, you actually feel good. You see, to feel good comes later. You gotta go through a journey. Life is not about conveniences, and that's a big thing that a lot of people, you know, our perception is screwed in that. We had to go through a journey, we have to go through difficulties. And trust me, I had to learn that a bit later because I was getting used to technology, making things easy, easy, easy, easy. But it's atrophying our brains, you know, it's atrophying our left brain for the analytical thinking, the current, the logical thinking. And it's even it's definitely atrophy in the right side of the brain for more creativity, intuitive thinking. So it's definitely the atrophy in those two things. I'm not gonna argue with uh Manil on that one because it's it's it's true. It's very true.

Tech Convenience And Losing Creativity

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Before I continue my my yammering, anything else you want to? Oh, actually, no, one more thing before I I want to talk about art real quick on the AI before we transition to that. I use AI for art because I suck at art. Now I want I'm proudly lazy. I'm bad at art. I could draw. If if you if you have me and a five-year-old draw something, you won't be able to tell who did it, okay? I'm being honest, I you won't be able to tell. So who did this? Uh I did. You can't tell the difference. I mean, I'm being honest, you can't tell there's a five, even some five-year-olds do better than me, okay? So, you know, I'm not an artistic person. And you know, you have to accept it. You can't be good at everything. So I use AI primarily for art, and we'll we'll get we'll definitely get into that later about creativity and all that. I use AI for art. I'm not, I I try paper, I try all of that. It you look, a five-year-old will do better than me on art in terms of presentation, creativity, and all that. I'm creative when it comes to solving problems that I notice. But uh, when it comes to drawing and all that, you you can't tell. Like I said, put me the five-year-old together, have us make something. You won't tell, you won't be able to tell. If you do a blind, you do a blind test, you identify who did it, you won't be able to tell. I is it's a good, it'll be a good case study for sure. So that's all I want to say about that. Do you have anything else you want to add before we get to the next question?

SPEAKER_00 19:48

No, no. I mean, I I you know, I don't literally mean we need to go back to the old ways, do everything by hand. It's just that, you know, there's a time and place when you should generate an image, right? And there's a time and place where you should be drawing it. Both have benefits. I'm I'm not against either one. I'm just saying that we can't default to one and ignore the other. That's that's my reasoning. Like it's it's it's Saturday today. Find five minutes to draw something on a piece of paper. It doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't matter if you use it for you know your your venture or or you're just doodling stuff. It it's it's about the motor skills in your hand, the transfer of neuron information from your brain to the hand. It's about biology, right? We've gone so deep into tech, we've we've forgotten about our biology. We still have to eat, we still have to sleep. Like some things have not changed for thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years. And now that we have so much tech, I think we're forcefully trying to forget these things. We're we're going into this commodity mode. And I also say this as a as a person that's, you know, in in in you know, trying not to do that and and been doing that for at least a decade, you know, going back to our roots as as cliche as that sounds is actually the healthiest thing we can do. I also have a trouble walking. Like I always think, oh, if I'm driving, I could get there faster. But you know, if you can, you should go earlier and not have to rush it and enjoy the walk. It's very healthy for your brain and your body. And you're not gonna lose anything. Like the phone mode that's killing us, the the hour of time that we save somewhere, we're not gonna spend it productively. We're gonna go back and give it away to Netflix, right? So yeah, that was I was I just wanted to add. Like, I'm not against one or the other. Like, use your tools to generate images, you know, fire away. It's just that sometimes you you should you should go back to the old ways. unquote old ways, normal ways, right? Because yeah, it's catching us all off guard and and that's the new way. And I just think it's it's beneficial individually. Like I I don't I don't care what that generated image does for you in your life for you in your business. I know what doodling on a piece of paper with a with a pencil does for your brain in your hand. And we have so many studies that go way back then you know 2000s to tell us these things. For AI and and using stuff with AI, we don't have any studies. We will, I mean we do, but it's too early to tell like in generations and generations to actually give you know a green or a red sign to this you know new tech new technology. I've say new but you know AI has been there since the 50s. It's just been commercialized recently and became worldwide popular. Both are good. You should use both always that's it.

Hand Skills Versus AI Shortcuts

SPEAKER_01 22:57

Yeah but your main point is to balance it out. Yeah don't forget our don't try this all disregard our always no you're you're right that's why I realized because I realized I'm even starting to have trouble walking I said oh that's ridiculous. I say what the heck why the hell I'm living because I'm not walking as much no people I mean I'm telling you I I choose to walk now if anyone tells me to go out even if it's just to sit there and just look at nature or whatever or just meditate whatever not doing much I'll just do that. I'll just choose whatever that that requires me to walk more because I've realized I'm slowly I'm starting seeing the atrophy to fit on for the beginning faces no this is a warning sign people so I you know yes use technology just balance it out because we're walking eating drinking that's not going to go away we are human beings we are not robots and even robots need some care believe it or not because after a while robot will fall apart as well so you know care is needed care is needed even turns on the cyborg oh I can automate clean myself yeah maybe in 2050 maybe but not now I I you know I would say so yeah that's the only thing I'm gonna add into that I'm gonna save some of my comments for the for definitely for the next question I have here um we already

Are We Outsourcing Our Minds

SPEAKER_01 24:10

talked a little we already touched on this a little bit what is the I think yeah we already touched a little very little bit on this but I still want to get deeper into it what is the impact of AI on creativity and product development in general what's the general impact are we losing creativity are we getting lazier or are we somehow getting better what's your take I it it I think it all boils down to consumption like how much are you consuming AI personally?

SPEAKER_00 24:39

So there's there's always two segments of it there's a personal feeling a personal metric whatever you're using every morning when you look yourself in the mirror to say I'm either better or worse than I was yesterday right and then there's the global impact right what we're seeing in industries various industries on what's happening because of AI or or similar technologies. Personally I think we're losing it and you know it you can you can actually think of that in in multiple multiple ways. Yeah we're we're losing our minds because we are outsourcing our minds to a machine and we feel that natural pleasure and the dopamine effect because stuff stuff gets done shit gets done you tell it it does it for you similarly even in the creative process and I know a lot of designers have been the first ones to be outspoken and say let's not use this type of technology. This is not it this is not design this is not creativity this is not art. And then we realized at some point like you cannot say no it is very similar to the 2017 2018 of blockchain era it's the same as uh the dot net bubble in you know late 90s you can you can push back but unless we all push back nothing really changes right when the Pandora box opens it you know it goes it goes wide and deep and not everyone wants to think you know deep about something they just want to use stuff potentially earn profits and and move on right so I think the creative process is you know losing this battle against AI. AI is becoming better and better at generating images graphics videos even like the the video space has been wild for the last couple of months like Chinese models US models like they they're they're neck to neck almost neck to neck in some of these video generation things and you know eventually they will become a part of our daily lives just like internet is today right and I don't I don't see anyone complaining about internet right so you know 2030 years ahead and I'm making this prediction very boldly we'll be talking about something else another technology and then AI will be for us then what internet is today a normal component of our lives that we might be using too much or not it's gonna be very individual right so that's that's like just the you know creativity side of it isolated in the in this conversation. When it comes to products I actually have the opposite opinion I think products have benefited largely because of AI. And there are various reasons and various vectors that you can look at why this has happened. So many CEOs keep saying about the the productivity boost of AI especially in engineering especially in writing software like this this one deep core job title as software engineer has been a huge target of AI and and and has probably had most success when it comes to implementation of AI in large language models. And in one way it's it's great because we didn't necessarily get that factors that were you know promoted to us but you know marketing usually isn't 100% correct right so we got we got some increments. Let's let's not let's not say they're multipliers. Let's say they're additives right instead of 2x10x engineers we got two plus two plus one and a half right or one engineer plus 0.3 something like that where many engineers that have not had the experience building software for a longer time are getting stuff done. They're not necessarily learning and this is why I say like these are always two components one is personal one is what the industry is looking for. Personally they're not learning their careers might go haywire at some point because of using AI. But from a business perspective they're getting stuff done and in much faster better way with almost no training right prompting is almost natural to everyone who speaks right and that's you know the whole population. So some engineers are enjoying the fact that you know things are moving even if they don't know how they would do this on their own. On the other side of the spectrum there's senior engineers who actually benefit even more. Like their input is better their output is better their understanding of the systems and the conversations with an LLM is better. It's like putting two smart people in a room to talk versus just one of them being smart, right? Obviously the more fruitful conversation will be two people that are very smart. And this is what software engineers are using today and this is what's making a lot of businesses move forward. I've seen at least I've seen software that I've been using for years that look horrendous, suddenly magically look amazing. Why? Well no one had the time or the budget to do these things and with AI it it you know time contracts to a result. It's not necessarily the best designed app or the best user experience you've ever seen but it's still much better than you know the the Windows 95 interface that we've been looking at for like 15 years. So I think we have made some progress and obviously we we've made a lot of mistakes during that progress.

Inside A Company’s AI Experiments

SPEAKER_00 30:28

So let me let me tell you an anecdote on how we used to well what are what are what are ways with AI are in inside a company like inside of ParaShadow. So we have a very diverse team we have engineers that are like 19 years old and we go all the way to like 45 which is you know kind of a big span of different types of engineers that you'll need in in one company. And once the the AI craze started especially with with ChatGPT and people realizing that ChatGPT can code and then other tools like cloud code, anti-gravity and so on, we didn't have a firm stand in the company on how and when to use these tools like my my direction was let's YOLO it. So the best experiment I can do is not not to voice myself around that specific component of their workday at all. Don't tell them to use it, don't tell them not to use it, right? Let them experiment and see what happens. So that's why I call it the YOLO phase. In the YOLO phase we've seen uh younger engineers who've actually used these tools even during their college days do it naturally. For them it's you know it's like internet for you and me. It's it's very common it's very normal we know our way around right and then for older engineers it was more like I'm not touching this if I don't have to right and then we've seen very different results over the phase of like I want to say four months and we said okay now we need to now we need to set a stance and say if we're gonna use this as a part of our you know daily daily work, if we're gonna be charging this to our clients, if if this is what we're doing now, if this is what our jobs look like now, we need to have a stance on it. And and we said no. So our answer is let's not use AI. Let's do this as a handcraft thing right software is handcraft. That was our motto for the next four or five months. Let's do everything that we can manually let's not copy paste a line of code that ChatGPT or any other LLM generates for us so that we keep our ownership, intellectual ownership first, that we keep our mental sanity because we know what we wrote today with our hands instead of you know this machine writing code that we don't even have the time to read. And let's do it like the just the way that we did before this AI phase. And let's measure stuff. Let's see if this is better or worse. Four or five months down the road everyone was a little bit I want to say mad because they've already gotten into this feeling that things can be generated instead of you know written manually but we didn't see a productivity loss. So we said let's now do the opposite experiment. Let's go AI native let's be let's do it like full agentic mode. It's it's the time of the year where agentic has become a new craze and everyone's doing agentics. So it was the perfect time for us to do the other side of the spectrum and test what it would be like if we didn't write a single line of code manually. So we said the next four months it's forbidden to write code manually we have to do it all with AI. And and we did it and that also had its drawbacks which is which was weird which was not the result that we expected. We expected that everyone would be happy the productivity would go up and it it has gone up truth be told but very slightly almost you know it's it's almost not not as relevant as you know anyone think it's it's minor percentages. And then I've had engineers actually complain that they'd rather do some things manually because it's actually much faster than doing it within AI because they know the answer and they're trying to convince their Claude that is the answer and for Claude to write that and Claude's not doing it. It's stuck right so after that phase where we gone through from you know YOLO to dry mode to let's go all crazy, we said there's no proper way of defining this it's too early we we we don't understand it. No one around us understands it it's it's too soon to have a proper process. So we said let's again hold back on restrictions and go into this kind of YOLO mode but this this current YOLO mode YOLO 2 is not YOLO anymore because we have the learning of how to do it you know manually on our own which was that dry mode and how to do it full agenda right so I think for us as a company that was a huge learning opportunity how to try to do everything with AI and without AI. And you know our conclusion is AI is not ready neither are we so it has to be combined. It has to be part AI, part human inside this process, at least when it comes to software engineering and creative side of it. Yes, we can get augmented by AI, but it doesn't solve all of our problems. We still need to learn, we still need to read books are still amazing when it comes to gathering knowledge and getting an answer from Gemini or ChatGPT doesn't mean we know the answer. It just means that we'll probably have to ask them again the same question and maybe over and over again if and ever we we remember that it will be awesome but if we don't we're just reiterating the same question over and over without learning. So for us it was a it was a cool journey I always tell people that I love that we did that and I love that we had the opportunity and the luxury to do this. Many companies larger companies cannot be playing around like this and experimenting so much potentially losing business or at the cost of something inside the business. But as a smaller company we actually have this agility to test out things and say, okay, we did it we tried it works and it doesn't and for our clients it's even better because our clients are sometimes very hasty to implement AI and we tell them like that it's not going to work. We did this we we went deep deep into this hole you know there's not enough oxygen down there. And it looks cool but it's it's not not there yet. Will it ever be? That that's something that we don't know. But yeah that's that's how we you know how we've gone through this process and how we you know eventually started measuring things which is ridiculously hard because there's no proper metrics yet on like if we got any productivity, if if we got any satisfaction, our experiments show that it's almost the same no matter how you do it. So it's better to have a personal preference and do it the way you like to do it, the way it makes you happy to go to work every single morning, the way that your clients are used to or the way that your clients are happy with your work than to force something that you've read on Twitter, X, whatever, that someone some influencer has told you like this you have to be agentic. You have to do everything with AI or you know the other side of the spectrum like don't use AI for anything. It's I I think it's still a very very personal thing very contextual thing when it comes to you know individuals again like how do we learn and grow and also businesses how businesses learn and grow become more productive and more profitable. But yeah that's that's that's the vision that we've had and experienced in the last I want to say two years almost I don't call you I was like the indirect business plugin

Small Business Agility And Innovation

SPEAKER_00 38:25

right there.

SPEAKER_01 38:25

This is how we do things with small ads and we beat the big businesses. No I'm kidding I I mean there's certain advantages I think with big businesses got they have I would say more room for error in some ways but then again there are some that they were structured such a fragile way that even though they're big they can still collapse pretty quickly I mean to your point I mean I I am pro small business I'm always more sympathetic towards small business. I'm biased in favor of small business in general and I'm not against your big business but yeah some of y'all are greedy. I got to call y'all and some of that and I guess I'm not against your existence I but I will call you out. Some of y'all have been very greedy and some of y'all have been stale and some of y'all are like the dinosaurs you became the dinosaurs some of y'all could get away with it because you got extra capital and some of y'all are declining and I just say you kind of deserve it. I have no sympathy for that yeah no so that's that is a very that's very interesting a small company yeah it sometimes I say it's risky maybe some many many people I talk to but who am I I'm I'm like this is like probably third year business so I'm still considering myself a new B. I'm not an expert on it but um I would say yep small you're agile you do got that and you're kind of you have you know you have more room for experimentation while the big businesses you're more established. You know some do experiment I give credit like Netflix they're experimenting with gaming which that's very I would say that's risky for them but I give them credit for that that's that's what I would say you know they're not like the blockbusters and the Kodaks they just ah forget that new technology we know what's best we're gonna stay this way even to 2100 you're gone they're they're they're gone and well except for there's well blockbuster is now a small business we only have one location in Oregon but but they went downhill from there and Kodak i they they practically non existent and Kodak was the name I remember a kid I saw I saw in pictures Kodak Kodak I Max what the heck happened to Kodak and I looked up oh they couldn't keep up with the change despite being a household name so it's because you're a household name doesn't mean you're safe it doesn't mean you're safe um all the time you know and they laugh at the innovation off they laughed it off and look what they got and look what happened to them you want to be more like Amazon and Netflix if you're gonna be a big business they try to innovate they try to expand despite being a big business and I think that's what's gonna keep them going. Is it risky? Yeah I would say I would say I give I give them credit to it. So I'm not against big business I'm just against those who are greedy who want to be stagnant and they just they expect the customers to throw money because just the name itself. No you gotta keep earning out money you know you got to keep you know trust is ongoing not a one time thing. So yeah I know that's tough that I had to swallow that pill too trust is ongoing. Once you ruin that that's very hard to build back so just try to stay consistent. That's my advice um in general for small big medium businesses just do the best you can with that not always easy. I get it it's not always easy but just do your best you can on that yeah no but the the AI stuff um I'm gonna say for my end I mean I like what you did you first you I think you went with all old school approach and you kind of balance it out with AI and of course manual approach and I would say that's great. I would say like I said the balance is great because sometimes the manual way is the best way. I mean I don't use AI for everything. I mean I've tested in one of my work assignments when it came to finding the deadline for every college guess what some of the AI sources were wrong and I checked the sourcing. So no that don't make sense no sorry Claude you messed up there I'm going to the source and I had to I had to check deeper so that don't make sense I gotta check that and you know just make sure you're using your human mind when you do with AI don't don't let the AI replace your mind. That's the main point don't let it replace your mind use your human critical thinking and judgment when it comes to AI. You have to know where you are you have to be the driver you have to be the boss okay don't let AI be the boss because trust me it's gonna give you what you it's gonna give you what I think is best for you and when you know when you really want something and sometimes AI is not going to give it to you. And even if you can frame it in certain ways and and I've tried it with some things they not give me I know I'm looking for get out of the way AI get out of the way I I'm not using you anymore. And you know AI is great. You know just use it in moderation don't don't you know if you have to if you need help breathing with AI you got a real issue stay in the hospital okay if you get a you know if you if you need AI just to teach you how to greet someone I'm sorry that's a that's a crisis right there in my opinion. But if it's something that you don't know but you could prompt it well fine you know like certain instances just to get an idea like how to write a great resume and maybe AI is good if you prompt it right you know I think that's helpful. But you know and some has f has used AI how to beat a ticket. Good good I'll say that's a good use of it because you're not gonna go through the details and all that. If if it like I say anything with complicated or large or tedious tasks, like large data and things like that, I would say AI is phenomenal. AI is phenomenal for those things. But if it's something that you have very specific wants and then And if you know AI can't help you, then try, then try something else. Talk to someone who's an expert. You know, so it doesn't rely on people to people too. Humans are social beings. And we got to bring back to that as well. You know, besides the eating and drinking and go outside, touch grass. Humans are social beings. Talk to someone who knows better than you. That's another thing. Talk to someone. Even if it's online, fine. I will settle for that. Talk to someone because AI should not be the replacement of everything. And trust me, that's why loneliness, anxiety, and be mentally ill. It's it's kind of going through the roof. There's studies of that. I'm sure there's gonna be more studies of that. They're pretty early, but I I I agree. I will start to see like early signs of it outside a set place. Oh, no, no, no, no. I gotta go back to some of the roots of humanity. I didn't feel this way before. I wasn't I wasn't mixing up fantasy and reality for a second. Yeah, but yeah, you get kind of delusional. So balance people, touch grass, let the air clean the gunk that's inside you. Okay. So you know, that's all I'm gonna say about that. Anything else you want to add before I get to the final question?

SPEAKER_00 45:11

Actually, actually, you touched a few things, and I and I do wanna I do want to go through these with you. Uh

Politics Of AI Companies And Trust

SPEAKER_00 45:17

you you you said uh Claude this, Claude that. Are you team Claude?

SPEAKER_01 45:24

No, that's just my recent experience. I've used ChatGPT before. I've checked that different or even perplexity as well. Those are the main three I've touched. But I just use Claude because that was because Google was available at the time. So I just it landed on that.

SPEAKER_00 45:39

Okay. I have a I have a question for you. Do you do you take the political stand of a company as a basis when you choose these AIs? Because, you know, those who for those who haven't been, you know, keeping up with everything, open AI that builds Chat GPT and Entropic that builds Claude have been kind of playing this cat and mouse game with the US government on who gets to use which models, if this is, you know, in military purposes or not, and you know, and on how far are we going? I think personally it's more marketing than anything else. It's just fluff to, you know, mask everything else that's problematic. But I've seen people move away from OpenAI to Entropic because it felt that Entropic is the more humane company. But I've also seen them, you know, gone the other way around. Does that, like that does the political stance of a company, you know, affect your decision on who you want to use in this place?

SPEAKER_01 46:43

It should, but it doesn't, because as long as the AI is doing its job, I mean, I do get why people, you know, but the thing is, anthropic has been caught for stealing out the book material. So there you go. That's a little attack right there on anthropic. Just to be fair, I mean, look, they all got their shady practices. I I criticize all of them equally. I, you know, I only used claw because claw was like the most convenient option um at my job at the time. And that was that was a job assignment in my day job, just to just to see if the AI was good or not. I mean, it did move the process a bit faster, but the accuracy part, accuracy, some things were just off, and and I always verified it, even if it looked incorrect. I said, okay, that one is correct because I checked the source that it's citing. And, you know, I mean, people could go deeper to that. I didn't have time to go deeper to that. And I just check, okay, it is that day because the site says so. I verified with the site and the college site, it should not be that. It should that information should not be inaccurate unless they are just fooling people who just want to rob and steal money. Well, that's a whole nother thing. I'm not gonna get into those cannon worms. No, it doesn't, but I but I was by by but I am aware of that yeah, because Anthropic won that, but I just say, you know, anthropic get got caught with things. I mean, they have scanned entire books without permission of the publisher. So that's I will say that's digital theft for me. So nobody's perfectly innocent. And anyone who wants to play hero, dig them up, look them up, no, be investigative, do opposition research, expose them because look, they all got their demons, they all got their faults. I mean, they all got the great things too. They're kind of like human beings, they run by humans, so they got the good and the bad and the ugly and the interesting. So that that's that's just how I look at them.

unknown 48:26

True.

SPEAKER_01 48:28

So, no, me, I I'm personally not affected by it, but I do by my position with AI use of military, we have to be extremely careful with that and test that with robots and dummies. Don't don't use that on human beings because that's yeah, that's gonna cause a lot of death. And if once you train that AI wrong, instead of shooting the enemy, it's gonna be shooting American troops, and then before you know it, it's a disaster. I'm very and you know I'm I'm just gonna say straight. I am against it, but it's gonna, it's gonna eventually lead to that. I am I am against it. Oh, I have another

Why AI And Military Should Not Mix

SPEAKER_01 49:07

question.

SPEAKER_00 49:07

I'm sorry if I'm unrelated, but this is I I think this is an amazing direction to talk into. Can you think of one other technology that we've invented in the last couple of decades that's basically revolutionary for human beings and this planet? And we didn't use it and we kind of ban it and almost don't even talk about it today. Oh you're gonna go like, ah, I couldn't why didn't I remember that when I tell you cloning? Oh, we invented cloning, right?

SPEAKER_01 49:48

Yeah, we did, yeah. I remember as a kid, there were stories on that. You're right. We we cloned a sheep.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

We we cloned a sheep, full sheep dolly, yeah. Dolly, right? Right. So you do remember, of course, you do remember. That's another technology that I think is extremely revolutionary. I I would even put it way above AI, but we had to ban it. Like there's things went wrong. I know it's still being used to, I think, you know, grow organs and in medicine, but we said no cloning humans because it was so dangerous that we had to ban it even before the idea spread wild. I think this comes borderline to AI plus military idea. I don't think anyone necessarily wants that to happen because it it feels like if we can't trust Gemini, Gemini or Claude to research an information from two weeks ago, how can we trust any of them to decide if they want to launch a rocket or not? Right. So it feels like this is too scary, just like cloning humans was too scary. And it's borderline banable, right? It's not, it's not, in my mind, I'd rather not discuss it at all. Uh, I'd rather just ban it and say, let's not do that. Like let's let's let faulty humans do their faulty thing and think with their faulty brains if they want to press a button or not. I still rather have have that than a supercomputer, super intelligent deciding on, you know, if they value life or not. You you probably caught some memes, you know, around the internet on people trying to say, like, you know, trying to experiment with ChatGPT and Claude and asking questions like, would you rather turn yourself off or save a human or or save 10 people or save the whole planet? The AI never says they would save themselves, which is weird because they're not, you know, they're not a person, they're not a being. It's it's it's a bunch of code behind all of that. And still we can't, we can't really make LLMs uh properly respect human life because of all that content that was used, all of the internet that was used to train this data on, including those books, because you know, ask any AI about any book and they'll give you a summary much larger than anything you can you can find, you know, Googling online for a summary, right? So in my mind, AI and military shouldn't mix. And not just because XYZ type of technology is not ready or you know, we don't trust it. It's the fact that AI is the is not deterministic, right? It it's stochastic. That's a problem. That's that's a that's the biggest problem that I have in my mind with AI. Like we've we've learned in this industry that if you click button X, uh something like Y happens, right? If you do A, then B. And we love, most of us love this industry because of its precision and exactness, right? If I do this, this will happen, and I can consistently rely on that every single day. Yes, obviously there's bugs, but you know, in most cases, this is what you've programmed it for. What you you this was your intention. You translate that intention into something that someone else can reuse, right? I I've intended for you to uh to when you open the app to see my animation, and when you do it on your phone, you actually see it. But with AI, it's it's the other way around. It's it's not it's not crystal clear. Ask three LLMs the same question, you'll get three answers. Ask them in a month the same question, you'll get six more uh or three more new answers, which totals to six, and you can keep repeating this process over and over, and it's never gonna be the same. So I think that's that's in my mind, that's the you know, coup de grace why we shouldn't let AI touch anything physical related to, you know, not just military, but you know, guns and things that are potentially dangerous for our lives. I don't believe that, you know, AI will take over and wipe us all off the planet because someone has to maintain it. They're smart enough to know that someone needs to change the oil, at least. You mentioned that you know robots also need care. So does AI. Like someone has to maintain them. So they're not gonna wipe us. That's that's for sure. Even if that you know that scenario ever happens, like this apocalypse, they're not gonna wipe us. But I I do think they might you know get a wrong idea on like who they are or who who they think they should be in this world and what do humans represent. And they could kill a lot of us. So that's in that's why in my mind, like, you know, deterministic systems make sense. Systems that, you know, have today yes, and a tomorrow no, and nothing's changing in between, make no sense to touch dangerous things. And this is not just military, this is also medicine, uh, hospitals, you know, uh police, fire departments. Like we have a lot of this what we call core infrastructure on this planet that we build to protect human life. I don't want to see AI and all of that, you know, risking that what we built for thousands of years now gets destroyed because someone said, oh, you know, police will come out sooner. No, they might never see the call because AI screening might say, oh, this is a prank, because 99% statistical data says this is a prank, and I'm not gonna let this 911 call through. Like just think about it. Think about calling 911, and I know there's a lot of operators in in the US, and then instead of hearing a human voice, you hear an AI voice that sounds very, very human, and you keep explaining your situation that you're in a you know, life and death type of scenario, and and you know, it says, oh, this is a joke. I've calculated in 99% that this is a joke. Goodbye. And and it shuts the door and it turns it, turns it off, and and you know, something potentially bad happens. I think that these are the things that we're not ready for yet. Maybe one day the margin of error will be so small that we can accept that, just like we've expect ex accepted people die in car accidents, but they've never died in a you know horse riding accident 400 years ago, right? But I think we're not there yet. I think it's too soon. So some things are just too early to do, and especially when it comes to military. I the the world is is in a weird spot for the last five years when it comes to war. I'd rather not, you know, add more fuel to that fire than than we already have. So that's why I'm saying like I think that's banable, just like cloning. Just say no.

SPEAKER_01 56:46

Yeah, no, that's why I just say, yeah, you know this thing about, yeah, no. Um I let me correct myself here, and I think you was alluded to this earlier. I kept saying claw. Claude is Microsoft's AI. I keep mixing up. Claude just sounds cooler. Is the I the one I was using was Gemini. Excuse me. You know, feel free to correct me in the comments say, yeah, it was Gemini, I was using it. I was like, oh crap. So I'm not I said I just caught I just called myself while you were talking. I kept saying claw, claw, claw. Claude just sounds cooler. That's why it stuck to my brain uh than Gemini. Gemini sounds like a stupid Zodiac side, and I'm anti-zodiac side. That's that's what caused that error. No, but I, you know, that that's that's my mistake. I I meant Gemini. Everything I said about Claude, just replaced that with Gemini, because that's what I was using, that's what was readily available in the Google search engine. Not Claude. Claude is in Bing, Microsoft search engine. Okay, just let me just correct that right now. Yeah, no, when it comes to the AI use, the people who think Doom and Gloom, you know, there's the iRobot, there's the Terminator movies that fuel that, you know, I'm not gonna repeat that. We've spoken about that multiple times in the episodes about that doom and gloom thinking. I I think we're gonna be alright. We just just like with all revolutionary technology, all transition is never perfectly smooth. It's gonna be messy parts to it. That's just the way it is. I mean, if you want to use even an older example than the dot-com bubble, which that was a messy transition. I mean, some companies went downhill with it because they used it too early, they didn't know how to use it properly. I mean, what was one of them? I think it was a pet company that used internet early, but since they did, they were so generous of free shipping, they didn't find a sustainable model. They lost a lot of money and their stocks went down. Um, I think it was it was pet pet something. I keep forgetting that. It was it was a comp it it had that funny dog with the with the I'm forgetting the name right now. Yeah, during the dot-com bubble. And I had to watch a documentary that because I said, yeah, I remember this is when I was a kid. I was growing into this. Is my last transition to perfectly touch grass era to the internet era? That was that transition, which I balanced the two really well until in my I would say mid-20s, 30s, that when I was starting to get out of whack because a lot of our work, we work through the screens. And I had less reason to move, so that's not a good thing. This is not a brag, people. This is more of a warning. Okay. Yeah, uh again, balance, balance is very, very um important.

Regulation Middle Ground US Versus Europe

SPEAKER_01 59:15

And I hope we just use AI responsibly and do some regulations. The current presence against regulations, I disagree with him strongly on that. You know, this is not a left-to-right kind of thing. I just think AI going out of whack, just like anything, it could cause some severe consequences that we are not prepared to face. So I just say just be cautious. I believe in expansion.

SPEAKER_00 59:38

That's a U.S. problem.

unknown 59:41

Right?

SPEAKER_00 59:41

Uh, it's a U.S. problem because we're not a U.S. problem. Oh, Europe. We're regularly.

SPEAKER_01 59:47

We're good. We're good. Yeah. Yeah, because no, because like I said, see, this is the this is the thing different about America. We let corporations take reins or some things, and I mean, sometimes it's good, but sometimes it's very bad. It's it's it's like a deck of cards, it's like rolling the dice. You're not always gonna get a good outcome. You don't know what outcome you're gonna get until it's there. So that's more for US problem. No, Europe, the European nations, they're already regulating AI, and we should be going in that direction. But we don't be very business oriented, we're about to expand, get as much money as possible. Then maybe we think about regulation later, which I disagree with. I strongly disagree with that. Yeah, that's against that. But there's states, but well, there's a counterpoint. America, America's weird. New York, states like New York and California, they already have laws trying to regulate AI, but on the federal level, none. So I'm sorry, you wanted to add something.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:43

No, I was I was about to say, like, we need both, right? I'm, you know, I'm from Europe, but for me, it's like, why are we regulating this much instead of trying to, you know, move the needle forward? Like, we're regulating something that we don't even understand yet. Like people that are at the frontier of this technology tweeting that they have no idea what they're building and where this is going. And we're trying to regulate that. So in my mind, it's like both are extreme, right? What the US is doing without any regulation and just you know, pushing forward, trying to create more ventures, more technology is an extreme. But what Europe is doing is is also an extreme just on the other side of the spectrum. Like you can't regulate something that we don't even know what it is. Or will it be like, is this cloning again? Like, are we spending are we spending dollars or euros to regulate something that won't matter? Couldn't have we invested these Euros into something, you know, better that will improve our lives in general, or whatever, like even in even not in the AI space. You know, again, I I think, you know, the the the motto of of our session has been this moderation and finding the middle ground for everything. I I also think this is not good. Like just regulating everything till you're bored to death with rules doesn't actually help us anything. It just you know it it gives reason for penalties and fines, but it it I don't think it solves a problem. You know, obviously obviously I would I would take that much lighter if that was a broader discussion, if more people were involved. But I've seen the commission that, you know, has gotten the AI Act, and I don't want to be discriminatory, but I don't think any of those people have no have any idea what AI is at all. And again, this is a very blunt assumption based on one image that I've seen of them, you know, that they took after creating the law and and you know, shaking hands. It's just that like we that use this tool and build it have no idea what we're talking about. And how do you know more than me? Right. So it's again two extremes. I I think the the correct answer is you know, in the middle, and everyone seems to have a problem with the middle. No one wants to be in the middle, no one has the time or the energy to invest to be in the middle. Like you want to walk, but you also want to drive, you want to use AI, but you want to also draw things and doodle on a piece of paper without AI. So it feels like you know, the whole planet is in this extreme state where everyone has the need to be extreme, whether it's left or right. You know, no matter how your political views look like these days, uh everyone just wants to be fully in it, like 100%. No one seems to be unsure of anything. Like everyone's 100% sure of everything, which again, from my standpoint, seems like a weird thing. I have not been sure about a lot of things in my life. Some of them have turned out good, some of them have turned out bad, but I I mean there's very few instances in my life where I said I am 100% sure of that. And I think that's what life is usually about. Like, you know, the uncertainty that drives us into stepping forward or backwards, but learning, you know, whatever it is that was part of the uncertainty that might not be uncertain for us tomorrow if you know things are replicated, if it if the situation repeats. Today people feel very, very confident for you know at everything. They're very, very 100% invested in everything that comes out of their mouths. And if it feels weird for me. And that's why I'm saying like the extremism of whatever your opinion, approach, technology, favorite color, favorite, you know, zodiocide is is just so weird in today's space. And I think that's why we have so many wars as well. Like everyone's stubborn, 100% into what they're thinking, what they're feeling, what they are saying. But I you know, I digress. I was I was I was I just wanted to say like we need both. We need regulations and you know, technological progress through corporations, businesses, ventures, and you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:12

You know, like about so I get that. Yeah, I I you know, I I'm happy you beat me to it because I was gonna say I don't want too much regulation to a point cause of stagnation and death to innovation. And that's what's also has happened in America. What there is this where too much regulation has caused so much problems that, you know, things has gotten more expensive just to enforce regulations, you know. So there, you know, there is a delicate balancing act that needs to be achieved. I don't know what that looks like, but that's something that needs to be figured out. Because too much, there, you know, none look, the non regulatory people, they they got their point sometimes. It's a look, this is too expensive. We can't move forward. We had to worry about all this like walking on eggshells, you know. We do it, I want a little crack. Oh my goodness, it's the end of the world. Ah, you know. I I get it. You know, I just Think when it comes to let the bad thing happen and do regulation based on that. Like the one for books, I agree, you know, specific regulation for that. But don't just regulate or ban AI. I mean, at first, American universities was just ban, ban AI would just say, I'm against that. So it is inevitable. I said, that's that's that's just insane. This is just panicking, panicking. This is this is what was happening during the pandemic. I said, this is panic ban. And look, students are gonna use it. Y'all don't have the tools to detect it. And then lo and behold, so I'm sure they're gonna create the tools to detect if it was AI or not. A couple of months later, that tool was developed. And this is look, I'm just speaking through the mic, people. I'm not a genius or anything. I'm just speaking through the mic. I just haven't, so I can see certain things happen before it happens. Call me visionary, call me crazy, whatever. I end up being right. That's why I'm confident, even if you throw swords at me and through the comment section. I said, Listen, y'all, I'm gonna say this nicely. Some of y'all are overgrown babies. So again, throw your swords at me all you want, you know, unless you have a good counter-argument. I'm good for counter-arguments. I don't mind debates and exchange. I'm I don't I don't expect you to agree. I don't want you to agree with me in everything. I find those conversations sometimes boring. I said, Oh, oh, Elias is great or Elias is stupid. I don't care about those comments. Those just those are those are they're not important to me. Specific points, specific counterpoints will be will be more important. Oh, you're wrong because of this, and you show me the source, for example. Then I said, Oh, okay. I didn't think about that. Okay, I'll think about okay. That's something to think about. You know, instead of just, oh, I know what Donald Trump's doing is right, which I disagree with. No regulation could lead to crazy stuff. I mean, AI has been snooping and gathering information um illegally, which there should be regulation on that, but not the AI itself. You know, let AI gather a bunch of data that's not personal, that's not, you know, that doesn't compromise a person's identity. You know, it could be like pictures on the internet. There's plenty of things that the AI could get that I'm not against. You know, inspiration from Marvel comic books, whatever. I don't care. Anything that's not personal, I'm for it. Or a person of a random person dying, whatever. As long as it's not very personal, that's that part is fine. If it, if it's if those, you know, if that's any confidential personal information, then that's why I'm against it. But if it's just getting an idea, I don't know. If you want your avatar to look like uh a superwoman, whatever, fine. I'm sure nothing's gonna happen there. But if you want someone to look like me, talk like me, and all that, and get my address, oh, that's a problem. That one, I will need regulation. So that's a moderate, that's a general idea of a modernization I'm talking about. I don't want a complete ban, that's not gonna help. And I don't want complete no regulation either, because that's also very problematic. That's why some of these things have happened. Like anthropic, again, they don't get enough criticism. They have, they have gathered, they they have got pages, complete pages of so many books, and that, you know, that caused problems. That caused a lawsuit. And yeah, I'm for that regulation. That's to me, that's digital theft. But there is no law to back it up. So who am I to say that? Well, you know, we kind of you know, they had to pay up some money. So yeah, you know, you, you know, these these are people, these publishers work hard. The authors work hard with their material. Come on, just disrespect it, anthropic. You can summarize it, fine. I'm not against summarization. Like synopsis, all that's public information. But if you're gonna scan a whole book and, you know, have spoilers and all that, oh, that's a problem. Yeah, that I would say that's a problem. Some some regulation um needs to be dealt there. See, that's the moderation I'm trying to get there. And you can even disagree with some of the details, and that's fine. You know, we gotta find out what that middle ground is, which is the hardest part because no one wants to do that. It was oh no regulation or bad AI. No, I disagree with both. It's more in the middle. So that's that's my personal position on it. Just because I'm moderate doesn't mean I I don't have my opinions. I have opinions, you know, and and that's all I'm gonna say. Anything else you're gonna add before I really get to the final question. This is this has been good. I love this conversation. I don't mind people asking me questions. So I people should do that more often, ask the host questions. I like to talk.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:25

I do, I do have, I do have one more question.

AI Music Spotify And Copyright Lines

SPEAKER_00 1:10:28

Uh, because you're a visionary, so just to give you a little bit of context. So AI, and you mentioned books, like it has already attacked literature, it has attacked art, video as well. So AI is gonna kind of getting into everything, exposing everything, scraping everything. When will the moment happen when AI starts becoming an audio player? When when is Spotify up to become when is AI becoming an a competition for Spotify? Like what when can you say play 50 Cent to GPT and it actually starts playing 50 Cent for free? When when will that happen? Because I have my own thoughts, and I'm actually thinking that that will happen in the future. I'm just curious, like, have you thought of that? Has that crossed your mind? And when do you think that will happen?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:25

I am a proud Spotify user, and I mean they already have tested their beta AI as their little DJ. Your AI DJ sucks, Spotify. I'm just telling you that right now. It's not great. You know, E Sound, you know, and it's a bit of a stereotype too. Uh I'm just gonna say that if he has to always sound black and jazzy, you know, like African American and jazzy, you know, not all black people sound like that. That's a bit stereotypical. I'm just saying. Just just just come up with, you know, just give different voice options, you know. I don't want to say, you know, ban your race. I'm not gonna go that woke route because I think that's stupid too, because that doesn't help. But I would say this, you know what? It it will get there. I mean, if it's really doing videos with sounds, yeah, it's just a matter of time. Maybe I'll give it six months, I'll give it next year, I'll give it as soon as next year, the way technology is going. That's gonna compete. And if I wanna, you know, come up with a dumb rap song, and if I want to sound like which rapper, I wanna sound like ludicrous, for example, just using my lyrics and with the beat and all that, yeah. And then, and actually, some and I'm pretty sure some celebrities will go against that because they're gonna say, oh my goodness, this is this is ruining, you know, this is ruining creativity, but really you're just taking money. But uh, that's all it boils down to. But they're gonna they're gonna say something, oh, this is ruining creativity. These people do things without effort, um, this is stealing artistic, you know, content. You know, I'm sure there's gonna be backlash of that. There already has been. There's actually, it's already been people doing AI music. And this has been happening, actually. Not through Spotify, but it's already been people doing this. So this is not that this is not if it's it's already happening. And it's already been the celebrities have already come against it because people were already doing that, taking it for free, and some even make money off of it. You see, now that's where the regulation part should come. And if it's your own original music, if you made money, fine. If you take some inspirations, I get it. But if you're gonna, you know, sound completely like Taylor Swift rapping and using beats of jazz, and yet you, you know, maybe, you know, we got you know, they gotta come up with laws that that protects, you know, intellectual property or just enhance those laws or update them. So it's already it already kind of happened, and I think that I think that has gone down because of the lawsuits and the backlash for some celebrities, because there were some people already doing it. So I they already beat us to it. I hate to say it. I I I've read about it. This is my first time talking about it. There's already people do it, but the terms of AI actually doing it, that's a very risky thing. And I think they're gonna do it in a very, if they're gonna continue, it has to be in the very limited fashion to avoid lawsuits for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:13

I I think it's doable. That's uh the reason why I'm asking is I I know I've seen people generate music with AI and do a bunch of things and you know get close to something. Like think of your favorite rap song. It can actually get something close to that, but you still hear it's not the same. And that industry has had problems for decades, like copyright. I think copyright has been invented in the music industry because of people stealing lyrics, stealing you know, music and and whatnot. I think with AI, I think it becomes 10 times more complex. I think so so AI can detect, right? Well, let's actually reverse just a little bit. Music is mathematics, right? If if you boil it down to something simple, like you know, a noting system, it's it's math, right? It can be boiled down to math, and and if you understand it, you can use it. Being creative is another part of it. But you know, math is something that AI does very well. So we can easily replicate a song. Like you may have services, I think even Spotify has that, YouTube Music has that, I think Apple Music has that as well. Like you can hum the song into your phone and it will actually recognize what it is. So it there's there's you know a mathematic side behind music that can be utilized to produce music, to recognize music, and to also steal music. So if you can, again, I keep going back to 50 Cent. You're a New Yorker, I think you you, you know, you might actually appreciate my references, but I love 50 Cent as a kid. I can actually doubt Chat GPT, like play 50 Cent, but you know, make it so it it I hear it as 50 Cent. But if someone is recording this and analyzing, they will not think it is 50 Cent because you can tweak and tune it just a little bit inside the math part of it, that you know, an engine that would be trying to do this kind of detection would fail to recognize this as 50 Cent. Again, going back to uh Shazam, right? And and tools that work like Shazam. I I built my own Shazam like 10, 15 years ago because I researched it and I realized, oh, this is actually simple. So Shazam is not, you know, an incredible you know experience because of the tech. It's an incredible experience because they have access to a lot of music. Now, if AIs have have had access to all of these books, and I think they had access to all of them, I think they also had access to music. And music was a turning point on the internet and and the .NET bubble a long time ago with Napster, with Torrents, and and everything else that has come after that, because you know, a lot of music has been licensed, and we we are being charged for music now as opposed to like what 20, 30 years ago where it was kind of free. If it was on the internet, it we considered it free. You know, we didn't have, I as far as I remember, we didn't have exact opinions on copy left and copyright when it comes to digital. Like, what does it happen if it's replicated? It's not stolen, it's it's copied, and so on and so on. And that's why I was asking like, will they ever try to do something like that? Is it too risky? How many lawsuits are gonna follow if, you know, Chad GPT can play my favorite songs without me paying for Spotify? And it will that be okay? Like, will the general public say, you know, screw Spotify, I'm not paying for music anymore. I mean, I'm I'm not paying for information, I'm not paying for images. Why would I pay for music? Why would I pay for videos? Like, show me the latest Marvel movie, but don't make it the Marvel movie so I don't get copyrighted. Um, just make it almost exactly the same. Just change the weather and generate the video, right? So it's like, where do we draw the line in the sand? Like, where do we say no? If we didn't say no on books, do we say no on music? And and you know, if we say no on music, then it's not fair to books, right? Or images or or you know, digital content, whatever that may be, videos, you know, whatever, whatever we invent, 3D videos, I don't care. At some point, I think they, you know, they might actually try to go into that space as well. I'm not sure if if they're ready for the lawsuits, but I'm sure it will be interesting, you know, to sit on the sidelines and and watch the whole thing unfold. My prediction was also, by the way, a year.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:49

Yeah, I mean, technology is evolving so fast. I say, you know, I mean it has to be by next year. And if not, something is going really weird as to what's going on, because technological evolution just gets faster, faster. And, you know, and the other thing you talk about, what could happen next? Oh, maybe holograph, holographic, you know, that's slowly happening through the eye thing. We get again to that as oh, I could just tap my hand with a little chip thing, it just shows the internet right there, you know, popping up, have all these 3D things, which would be cool, but also kind of annoying and distracting too. You're gonna see a lot of people doing that same thing, especially it gets commercialized and popular. So, you know, that's probably another thing. Maybe flying cars, things like that. You know, now we're going, now we're going, now we're going a bit weird there, but hey, it's fun to predict. I could be right, I could be wrong. But to yeah, to your point, it the big debate is about how much is allowed without the risk of lawsuit. And then after that lawsuit phase, because some of it's unavoidable. How much how much of it is actually allowed? You know, how much of it is actually copyrighted, how much of it is actually protected, what's allowed? That's a big thing. I think Spotify needs more competition on that. So I'm for that. Again, I'm not gonna be if I find something better, cheaper than then Spotify. Sorry, uh, Mr. Daniel Eek, I think his name is. Bye-bye. Oh, if you know, uh, I I will jump ship. You know, as a consumer, it's not, you know, I don't believe in loyalty. I believe what's what's good for my pocket. If I find something cheaper and better, then I'm I'm going for it. I mean, Spotify needs that competition. My that's just my honest opinion. When it comes to, yeah, the AI, I mean, I wanted to produce AI music. I mean, I'm not against it. Let me just be clear. It's just how much of it is actually allowed without the loss. That's that's the only that's the only thing. I want it to be allowed. I wanted to, it'll be fun. You know, a lot of people do it for fun, a lot of people do it for silly things. That's what most people do. Even AI videos, music, a lot of it's for silliness, really. So I could definitely say it for American users. A lot of it's for memes and silliness and all of that. It's not for, you know, necessary stealing, uh, but there are, but there are a few bad people that will do that bad thing and that that you know, that lawsuits and law should get that person in trouble, at least pay fines, and then this person keeps doing it. Then arrest the person at that point.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:11

I there's a I I think there's a there's a line there that's very hard to create. Like you said, you know, I'd I'd I'd have I'd love to have AI to create music for my memes. I I would too. I'd love that. I'm you know, we're the meme generation, we still love those. But I was actually thinking of an example that wasn't made with AI, but you know, it could have been. If it was made today, it could have been, and it could create a lot of problems. PewDiePie's Bitch Lasagna. That was supposed to be a meme. That was never supposed to be a real song, right? It's it's it was it was you know him intentionally playing around, having fun, and mocking another company. And it it blew up. It became kind of like a real song, but it got him into a lot of trouble and mess, I think, legally. And I'm just thinking of like, if he did it with AI, if it had, you know, bits and pieces of Taylor Swift and Ludacris and 50 Cent, he'll get three lawsuits, like not one. And you know, he can't explain to people that you know he did it as a joke or unintentionally, or that he's not profiting from that. But it would rather be like you're stealing music and you're profiting from it. You know, if if you if you put it on YouTube and you have subscribers, you're monetizing. Like, what are you gonna do? Demonetize the video, you know, just to say this is this is what I wanted to do. This was supposed to be a meme. Like, no, you're not gonna do that. You're gonna celebrate, celebrate your success. But that success lies on top of you know, training data behind AI, whether that data was textual, video, or audio. So it's it's always a tricky question. How much is there creativity inside of AI? Like, we know how much creativity is there in humans. It's it's probably infinite. But inside of the AI, it's it's probably limited, you know, almost almost closer to zero because it's all been trained, it's all been used before, and you know, we're we're just regurgitating all of that, thinking of, you know, something that is new or potentially is novel, but it really is not. Like we have to start with those assumptions, right? It's not new and it's not deterministic, right? It's it's it's wonky, it's weird, it's fuzzy. There's like a lot of probably English words that you can use to describe any type of AI. And, you know, at the end of it, it it's someone else's work. It's your podcast, it's my piece of code, it's someone else's book, it's Taylor Swift's song. Like all of that has been used and mishmashed together. So now it looks new because we've never seen it in that form. It's not really new, it's not creative. And that's the part that's very hard to solve from an engineering perspective for people who are working at these frontier AI companies and wanting to make sure that we do get original content or you know, original responses or whatever it is, and us as consumers hoping that what we're using AI for is considered part of our copyright, part of our, you know, innovation and and is ours, right? If if you generate an image with Gemini, is that image yours? Is it Gemini's? Is it the two of you collab? Like, you know, there's that there's a lot of these questions that we couldn't couldn't have asked before because we never had this kind of problem. So now we have to start thinking about these things, asking questions, and then figuring out answers, even if they're wrong. And, you know, this is the part where we said something has to be regulated. We'd rather, I think all of us would rather have some things regulated and some answers on some of these weird questions than not, and just let everyone steal everyone's books, music, videos, and all of that. Because if that happens, no one will you know produce anything original. Nor if they produce something original, will they publish it on the internet? And and we're all at a loss, right? If if there's a new movie and it's only in the cinema, then you can't get it on Netflix or somewhere else. Like, you know, it it's your loss, actually. It's not theirs. They're just trying to protect themselves. So there's a lot of these questions that I think we we're not ready to even, we're not even ready to ask these questions, much less reach answers. But I don't think we should stop trying, obviously.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:45

Oh yeah, no, I'm with you there. I mean, that's you see, that's nuance. I mean, I I want these things, you know, uh reasonably regulated. I'm gonna say the word reasonably regulated. And again, I don't want too much regulation to the point that it kills creativity, even possibly, even ruins people's, you know, motivations to come with something different or creative and all that. I mean, look, I would support a strike, a ban of the video if they're just playing Taylor Swift's music and just dancing. Oh, yeah, I'm with Taylor Swift, I'm with the courts, I'm with the censors on that one because you're just taking people's material. Look, I'm for freedom of speech and creativity, but come on with something your own. But if you mix Mash It with many others, and you just change, I don't know, Taylor Swift to sound like an ape, for example, maybe that's different. Or, you know, or make uh 50 Cent sound like a penguin. I think that's different. And you know, have them rap to jazz instead of you know those fast beats, and you know, add something different. And, you know, that's something that see, that's that gray area. That's that, that's a real gray area. Because it is creative, it is different, but it's also their work. And that's something that the laws, that's why I think the laws got the bid worst time trying to figure out what's, you know, what's copyrighted and what's okay. And that's and that's all I'm gonna say about that. I mean, I want creativity first, I am for it. I'm for jokes, I am for memes. Ruining that, I think it ruins the internet's fun and all that. Because look, social media is naturally depressing, divisive, and hyperbolic and crazy. I mean, we need some memes, we need some entertainment. I mean, come on, we we need that. So uh yeah, that's my that's my personal opinion on that. Anything else? Uh this is such a gutsy question because we went kind of to the legal stuff, but hey, this is an important conversation regardless. Not planned, people. There's a plan, but still, I'm looking I'm okay with look free-flowing conversations, you're gonna get things that are not planned. But look, I was ready to talk about it anyways because it's something to think about. You gotta be ready on the fly. You know, conversations can't be. Oh, I just want to talk about AI impact, and that's it. If I just do that, I'm killing potential other conversation followers that could be even more interesting if somebody didn't plan. I don't plan for this, I don't plan for. Everything, but I just plan for the start and let things flow from there. This is one of them. I'm letting this flow because we I didn't plan to talk about copyright and all that. But we are because this is also important. This is also relevant to creativity and all that. If you were talking about, I don't know, Miss Rachel with the Israel thing, I was like, what the heck? I'm not that interested in that. That's a different thing altogether. But this is relevant to what we were talking about. And I'm fine with this deviation, this something that's not planned. You can't plan everything. You just can't. But just be ready. Just be ready the best you can. And that's what I'm gonna say about that. Anything else you want to add before I get to the final question?

SPEAKER_00 1:28:38

No. No, nothing I think can think of. Let's let's let's go to the first one.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:43

I mean, you gave we really gave a lot. I mean, we really gave a lot. Let's be honest. We gave a lot. So all right. So last question, and I think I'm gonna shorten this, but you can make this longer if

Startup Lessons From Failure And Success

SPEAKER_01 1:28:53

you want. What is one lesson? And since you're a business person and obviously very successful, congrats. Don't hate on successful businesses. See, blind hate of successful businesses of ad thing, people. I'm not, you know, I say, oh, I hate business. No, no, no. How are you gonna get food? How are you gonna get this? How are you gonna get the electronic services? No, you need businesses. Businesses provide that. Okay. Don't hate businesses. That's dumb. You could just, you could not like certain people, how certain businesses are run. That's fine. That's valid criticism, but don't just blindly hate businesses or just want to take them down. That's not the right way to go. So, what is one lesson that anyone can learn from a failure and successful um startups? Because look, failure, look, failures give you lessons to people. Not always successful. It's not successful people don't learn as much because they think they know everything, and then all of a sudden, Kodak, great example. You just thought you was always the best thing in the world until the digital cameras came, then they were done. Just like that. Very big company, they went downhill real quick. The mighty has fallen. So you again, so what can they learn from a from a failure and a successful perspective of start a business? For anyone who wants to start doing that.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:09

Yeah. That's that's a good question. I think I've been asking myself both of these for as long as I can remember, even before I started my own ventures. So I think from failure, again, personally, you can you can learn a lot about yourself. You can understand who you are as a person. Obviously, we all think that we know ourselves best. You know, more often than not, people around us know us best, and we don't really necessarily know ourselves the way we think we do. I think failure gives us this opportunity to reflect on our choices, words, actions, thoughts, right? Because inherently, I think as human beings, we like to win. We like to be on the right side of things, comfortable, happy, warm, feeling, feeling content in many ways. Failure is a, you know, failure as a part of startups in general, because that's I think that's the most common thing in a startup, failure, lets you go back and reflect on like what you what you did wrong and why you did it that way. And could you have changed things if you had the opportunity? So, and not necessarily not, you know, a way that you it it's a regrettable way, but rather than, you know, rather in a way that, you know, you can use it as a learning opportunity. I know it sounds a little bit cheesy, but I think everyone, you know, goes through that feeling in their own way. And, you know, if you're not taking the time to go through those feelings, ideas, and and recaps, I think you're missing out potentially on some learning lessons that will be super beneficial for your next venture. So if if you're you know in a position right now where you have a failed startup, especially if it's if it failed recently, don't jump into the next thing super quick. Give yourself some time to heal rest and you know, go back and figure out what went wrong and why, and and you know, accept that. It's it's like it's it's a grievous period in a sense. So acceptance is step number one. From a business perspective, you have to think of it as a perfectly normal thing. Businesses rise and fail every single day. Today, a company has been registered, and probably somewhere else in the world, a company has been shut down. That's perfectly normal. We have to accept that life cycle of businesses. Yes, some companies exist for hundreds of years, others have existed for, you know, two months. It it doesn't matter. It it means nothing to you personally, your business, or your situation. It's very individual. It's it's almost like spirituality in a religion. It can have the same name, but you can have a very different opinion inside of that uh spirituality or religion, like how you approach it, how you take it with yourself. I think that's that's the biggest thing you can, you know, get from a failure. Like the opportunity, the time to go back and and rehash some things that you wouldn't otherwise been able to because you haven't had failed, right? From success, it's it's a little bit different. I I think it's a little bit different, or it has been a little bit different for me. Uh, success will give you answers to questions like, does this make me happy? If you succeed in something that you've tried in life, no matter how small or big, usually at the end of that road, and and you do have to tell yourself this this is called success. I I need to label this as success to you know, to start this process of asking, like, you know, what what success means for me. It usually gives you an answer on if you're happy with what you're doing, if you're happy with the time spent or you know, money invested, or whatever it is invested to reach that point of success. Again, whatever it is and whatever it means. Usually that answer is very simple a yes and no. Like I succeeded in XYZ and I'm happy for it. So it means I usually want to continue working. And hopefully, you know, and I and I I did this wrong with myself many times. I I I don't I don't you know make milestones or cut it soon enough to proclaim its success, but I wait for a bigger milestone and a bigger one. And you know, the milestone and the goalpost keeps pushing. So I never have, you know, I don't reach this point where I asked this question. Only recently in life I started making smaller milestones and then recapping back everything and saying, yeah, I that's I'm happy because I succeeded in this. And you know, succeeding more makes me more happy, which means I want to do it. At some point in life, I think that will change. I think at some point in life we will say, oh, this doesn't make me happy anymore. And that's the perfect time to make a change. For me, and I'll just give one instance as a software engineer, like when I was you know advancing in my career as an engineer, uh, becoming more and more technical, going deeper into things and startups, I felt happy, even though I didn't do these milestones, even though I didn't intentionally ask these questions, I felt happy and that's what kept me pushing. At some point, it didn't make me as happy as it did like milestone before that. So that's when I changed and I decided, let me go a little bit more into business and a little bit less into technology, like personally. And, you know, the next milestone, I was, you know, I was much happier because I started doing something different in my life. And these are the transitions that I think failures and success can teach us. Oh, and and as a business, if you succeed, I don't think there's there's a lot of lessons in that, unfortunately. I think it's, you know, you can try and replicate it and, you know, keep keep doing what you're doing, right? You know, keep that approach. If it's not broken, don't change it. But I don't think we live in that world anymore. I don't think you can necessarily just not change anything and keep calling that a success. I think success is something that is a compound effort over time. Like the formula would be compound effort over time and compound actions, right? Not just you know, thinking about something, but actually acting on it consistently. And that will, you know, produce results. And usually these results will be successful. As simple as that sounds, it's it's not impossible. It's just about you have to believe my formula, use it, and you know, call me back in a few years and tell me I was right, because that's probably what will happen. I I did the same thing for people that gave me this formula. So for businesses, I think you know, it's a it's a celebration point, not potentially a lot of learning from wins. Unfortunately, we learn more from losses and failures. But you know, in inside of every win, there's there's an opportunity for celebration, maybe sometime for pause and again reflection on if this makes us happy, if this type of success makes us happy. And if the answer is positive, we just need to keep pushing forward, not doing the same thing necessarily, but keep pushing forward in the same direction. And that's like that's usually how I look at things, you know, failure or success. Failure is harder. It needs more action to pick up yourself and start moving again. Success can be dangerous as well. If if you you know, if you're in a lullaby and you think everything's gonna be success now, it won't. It's it's just another milestone at some point in time. Then you need to re-review everything and say, oh, this was good, this was bad, let's let's start moving to the next one. But I guess that the most humane thing in failure and success is moving, is is just keep moving. You and me, Alliance, as well, we need to keep walking, but that's also moving. And I think that's that's that's I think that's the biggest thing that makes us human. Just realizing that we are always moving and we should be moving forward, preferably, and and not standing in one place or moving backwards. But yeah, that's that's that's my two cents.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:44

The people, people, people, I hope you're listening and slash or watching this because this conversation has a lot of great insights. And this is just not my podcast. I've been to other podcasts. I try to provide as great insights, even though they're cheaper with time, I gotta say, some great holes, but they were cheaper. So I gotta, you know, condense things to 15, 30 minutes. My personal challenge where I got better at it as the more I kept doing it. That's okay. I focus less on this and more on that point because that's what you have to do. Because, you know, I it podcasts like personalities. It's very different. The one podcast operates the same. If it did, forget it. You just might as well have only one podcast for the whole world to listen to. And, you know, podcasts focus on different things. Me, I focus on, you know, politics, technology, and he mentioned a little bit spirituality. Okay, those are those are the three main things I focus on because I think spirituality is very, very interesting. And some I've been diving into because, you know, and I hope we're really be getting a value. Now I'm not gonna be very serious. I hope we're getting something of value here because there's been a lot of great points being mentioned. This is going longer than I anticipated, but this is a good, this is good because this is a lot of good content, okay? You cannot say I'm not cheap with content. You put that in the comments, you're trolling. I know that for a fact. You put something like that in comments. I listen, look, I look at the comments, and I'm most of the times I'm not offended because I get some criticisms, I even get some compliments. I get a little bit of both. But I don't take you very seriously because you I just picture you as an obese child, just having too much fun with the keyboard, and you don't think there's consequences. But I will not attack you, but someone else will, because some people don't care. I'm not me, I don't believe in that. Looks you reap what you sow. And you know, that's a that's a Christian way saying you keep doing bad to others, they'll come right back to you. Or and it also goes with good too. So that's what I believe in. So I don't have to do much on my part. And just all I'm gonna say is just thank you for your insults. Just know that it reflects on you more than me. But like I said, if it's constructive criticism, specific criticism, I'm for it. And and and then that's what helped my podcast grow. Once I had poor lighting, took care of that. Poor audio, took care of that, poor, you want to say the video was not that great. Took care of that. That's criticism I'm looking for. Not Elias is stupid or Elias is a is the next coming of Jesus Christ. No, I don't care about that. That's nonsense. Okay, I'll reject that in instant. Both empty compliments or insults, I'll reject that. I reject that. That's garbage to me, okay? If you want to say what I should double down on as, oh, you should stick to more of this, and I'll I'll be with I'll be willing to listen to that as well. Okay, then. Enough of that. Now let's do the shameless

Plugs Reviews And Closing Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 1:41:41

plug-in. He don't feel comfortable with it. I'm gonna do it for him. Uh look, follow Manil Volkerbeck. He has a LinkedIn profile, and I'm also gonna tag his website. Yes, I found it. Pretty easy for me to find, by the way. As a proficient internet user, peershadow.com. That is P-E-A-R-S-H A-D-O-W.C-O-N dot com. Follow him. He has great expertise of development, AI consultant, all that. Really check. It's a beautiful website as well. It's a beautiful contrast, a simple contrast of black and white with some red. I like the red. I like the red, black, you know, colors. I personally like that, but don't take it from me. Check the website, especially you need those services. And look, I'm sure he takes care of clients globally. It's internet. You know, these are the non-borders I'm okay with. Okay, these are the no-borders. See, this is my with the left. No borders, internet. That part I'm with the left. When it comes to internet, and when it comes to national borders, I'm I'm I'm slightly more on the right leaning, but with but with rational regulation. Like I said, people want to come in great, and if they have a hard time becoming U.S. citizens, we should make it easier for them, not not more difficult. So something like that. That I I believe in moderate regulation on that. I know it's a little political, but that's what I believe in. And yeah, that's all. He's very professional. You want to know why? Because you don't have a I don't see much of social media accounts, but I'm pretty sure I'm gonna find them out. No, no, he's one, yeah, one X account, one LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:26

I've given up on IG. Yeah. I've given up on IG and and Facebook in 2016. So I'm 10 years, I'm 10 years gram. It it it disrupted my life. I I had to touch grass more. IG was especially problematic for me. So now uh even X, I I I barely use it, so it is what it is. Like, you know, everyone uh takes their own dose of social media. So I I I I will do I will do a small plug. I am citing a newsletter, it's called The Terminal Thursday. You can sign up at the Terminotars Day.com. It's a newsletter for open source projects, for you know, people who are techie and love to understand like the foundations of internet and what kind of software do we all use to build software and who are the true heroes behind the heroes of any piece of software that you've ever used. It's a small personal project that I wanted to do for years, but I had to tell myself intentionally, like, let's do this right now, let's not let's not drag it for another five years. It's not gonna be perfect. But my first edition is coming out next Thursday. I want to be in everyone's inboxes to show them like the things I've used, the heroes behind most software that's running in all of the industries on this planet, and you know, just you know, have have some of that fun that I usually do while testing these things, shared with you know the rest of the people who like uh something similar. So there's a plug, determinotursday.com. It's a I I build a site on my own without design, so this is my creative process. It looks like Windows 95, but there's a theme switcher, it can also look like Linux. I some people might appreciate it, some some might say it's horrible, but it is what it is. But yeah, sign up if you like these kind of things.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:21

This is what I'm gonna say to you, Snobs. I just want to criticize this. Can you read the damn thing? Can you click it? Does it work? And so if it looks like a Windows 95 kind of thing, look, I know some of the Gen Z, especially, yeah, I'm I'm pulling you out. You know, you're gonna say, oh my god, I feel like I'm going back to the 90s. I wasn't even born yet. Well, guess what? That's a foundation. Without that, you won't get your damn social media, okay? So that's all I'm gonna say. And especially for and then for the older generation want to act young, deal with it. Can you read it? Does it work? That's what's important. I'm sure the design improvement could come later. And I'm sure you're gonna get that as a feedback. And the feedback, it provides insight and direction if it's helpful and accurate. Okay. I mean, me, that was my big paralyzation comes to podcasts. Would it be good, whatever? And I start treating like an experiment. So people say I should have done this, done this more. And then I'm sure some people are. I mean, critics are always vocal, I mean, but sometimes they're a little too vocal. Sometimes they only speak for themselves and not for the general public, and that's hard to tell. You will tell if your numbers go up and down, which is unfortunate. Uh, but that's the metric that we got. Yeah, I mean, support him people. Come on, support. He's been great, he's been real human being. You know, he's not talking, he's not like Elon Musk saying, I only sleep like three hours a night, which I believe that he's kind of a nut. He's probably a special being. I think I don't think he's human. That's my conspiracy theory. But hey, that's that's Elon Musk right there. And yet somehow he's doing all these things. Listen, this this is this has been a great conversation. This has been, you know, very real, very authentic for sure. There's no, there's no, you know, uh except for a little bit, I knew he had Seamus Plug. I knew it. I knew I kind of detected, but hey, you know, you're too modest. I knew, yeah, so come on, I looked it up, especially that newsletter. I'm happy that you talked about the newsletter because that was my next follow-up question. I said, I heard I see there's a newsletter popping up, but you answered for me. So that's great. Now, my real final question. Anything else you want to add before I wrap this up?

SPEAKER_00 1:47:28

No, nothing else. Thank you, Elias, for having me. Thank you for the honest conversation. I I didn't expect to have so much fun this Saturday. I hope your, you know, your viewers and and listeners enjoyed it, and I wish you all the best. And I'm hoping that you know I might come back at some point, maybe with more successes and failures to talk about, or regulations and spirituality. You know, I I think we touched on so many things, you know. I would love to love to come back. That's it.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:57

I already put a note for you to return. You actually been the top, even though you're just a newcomer, you've been one of the top tech guests. Honest, because they this is my problem with a lot of tech guests in particular. There's some of them are so siloed in their thinking, so monotonous in their thinking that they they they don't see the big picture. They have to pull teeth, even asking some questions. I said, look, if you don't want to talk on the podcast, don't be in the damn podcast. And there's one almost there was some of them. I just look, I'll cancel end it right there. I don't care. I got people, I got a line. You know, that see, that's my New York coming in. So listen, no, no, no waste by time. But uh, Manel's been very real. I respect, you know what? He's great. I definitely, you know, you know, I'm you know, I did I'm gonna say this. I'm gonna confess one little thing before I end it. I was actually very close to giving over this podcast this year, recently, because I just said I might get as much guests, I'm not getting as much juice, but you know what? This is actually a boost here. And but and but there's some cut, there's some unnecessary expenses I need to cut just to keep this sustainable. So now I'm just being transparent. There's some cuts I need to do, but just keep this very sustainable because it's not, you know, my RI is not as great as it used to be. So I gotta make some adjustments just to make this work. Adjustments is a constant part of business, people. You know, you're gonna be successful, you're gonna have hard years, you're gonna have great years. You know, my last two years were great years. This one, it's been a struggle, but you know, I make adjustments. That's what you need to do. Because keep spending the way I'm spending, I will be in a deep red. I'm in a little red right now, but I will recover. I'll have faith on that. And yes, I'm being transparent about it. I know some people are not that transparent, but I'm just gonna say it just like that. This would have been the last season, but based on what I'm beginning with the new people, you know, I'm gonna keep going. I'm just gonna make certain changes about it. That's all. They just do what I can. So thank you, Manil. Thank you some of the new guests. Thank you, some of the overturning guests as well. So, you know, I I needed that encouragement. I don't admit that easily, but I actually needed it. So thank you, listeners, viewers, and thank you to the guests as well. So now for the real wrap up. When you rate this podcast, rate it an Apple Podcast, Spotify. If you give one to four stars, give one way I could specifically improve. And then if it's a five stars, give at least one reason that, you know, one reason why it's great. And I should double down on that and not change my mind, try to do experimental change, at least not that much, unless I feel the need to. Okay, and just it don't just say, oh, it's good, it's bad, Elias is a genius, or Elias is uh is a is an idiot. I don't care about empty compliments or insults again. I really don't care about that. And you know, and just follow me on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts. I'm also gonna have an Instagram account where I'm just gonna share only shorts. That's the only thing you didn't get. I took down my Twitter account because I refuse to call it that, that letter. I refuse to call it that because it it wasn't generating it, it was too much work for nothing. So let's see if that works. And then I'm probably gonna try Blue Sky. And I know, I know X leans to the right, I know Blue Sky leads to the left. I'm just seeing which ones are more responsive. And and I'll continue to put some stuff on Facebook as well. I you're gonna see more content on Facebook. I know I've been slacking off on that. Call me out on that. I'm gonna have my own website set up for that. So BusProw is gonna eventually phase out at some point because I can't keep paying for that. And I'm not getting a good return on that as well. Maybe my website will give me a lot more return. We're gonna have more exclusive stuff. We're gonna have I'm gonna start having where we go crazy, we curse like wild people, we're gonna hear stuff that's too offensive. If you're too sensitive, don't go for the paywall. I'm gonna start having exclusive episodes on that as well. Because listen, we gotta have fun. And look, if you can't deal with controversial opinions or, you know, or just or just rough talk or crazy talk, then just don't bother. Just continue with the free stuff. You know, certain free stuff or borderline, a little insane. Like my life, that little craziness kind of leaks in the little business, the little leaks of it. Especially when I get opinionated or passionate. Some of you love it, some of you don't. Oh well, I don't know who you are, especially if you go for the paywall at some point. So that's what I'm gonna say about that. So whenever you listen to this podcast, you have a blessed day, afternoon, or night.