The Truth About AI: Beyond the Fear and Hype

In this episode, we dive headfirst into the world of artificial intelligence—cutting through the noise, the hype, and the fear. Joined by engineer Trent Foster, who works hands-on with AI in the field, we explore what AI actually is (and what it isn't), how it’s already shaping our everyday lives, and where it’s headed next.

Trent brings a grounded, real-world perspective to the conversation, helping unpack some of the biggest concerns people have—from job displacement to ethical questions—and offering clarity around what's realistic versus what's been exaggerated. We also talk about how AI can be used as a tool for empowerment, creativity, and problem-solving when approached with awareness and intention.

Whether you're curious, cautious, or somewhere in between, this episode offers an honest, accessible look at AI—so you can better understand it, work with it, and feel a little less overwhelmed by it.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:04

All right, welcome everyone to No One Is Perfect. Um, I'm very excited with our guest today and what we're talking about. Um, AI. There's so much controversy around it and so many things that can be good about it. And thank you, Trent, for being with us to do this. And um just I think it's a great topic. Um, I have a daughter who sent in a lot of stuff that she's concerned about. And um, it's good to talk about you know, both sides and kind of get find out where we're at. So, Trent, welcome. Thank you. Happy to have you guys.

SPEAKER_00 0:41

Great to be here. Yeah, great to be here. A little departure from maybe what you guys normally have the foster.

SPEAKER_03 0:47

Yeah, the foster's experience. Let me just say so people are aware, Trent is my husband. Yeah, and has been in the world of engineering. That's his life. And last night we were having a discussion about AI and the different fears and the loves that I have for it and trying to understand it and learn it more. And um, so I'm really appreciative that you're here, Trent, because it's nice to have a conversation with someone who's in it, like in that world every day versus making conclusions about what I think it is, what people are afraid of. And so to bring a little um solid information and education about it, I think helps people who are afraid. There's many ways people can be afraid of AI. So we're gonna leave it to you. Welcome.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Great. Well, thank you. Yeah, so 30 plus years in applications engineering. Um and in my crew, I've been very, very lucky to work on some incredibly uh interesting uh cutting-edge things. Um done some government contracting, um, worked on stuff that you know never saw the light of day for 10 to 20 years. So I really have been lucky. Um I've actually done work in your backyard, Marty, and and you know where that probably is. Uh so space level stuff. Um, yeah, anyway, I've spent my entire life really at the center of technology, and for the last 20 plus years, I've worked for uh one of the largest tech companies on the planet, and we really get to do and see a whole lot of interesting stuff. Um we touch all the electric car market, we do a lot of things for Tesla and Nithon and things like that. We do a lot of stuff for government uh agencies, we do a lot of stuff in the medical world. So uh yeah, I've been very fortunate and I get to see a lot of cool stuff. Um, of course, now AI is taking over our lives. So, you know, let's let's alleviate some fears. Um, I think maybe is is the goal for today. Um it is new, it is the new industrial revolution, and we can talk a little bit about that as well. But um, yeah, that's a little bit about me.

SPEAKER_04 3:12

Yeah, I love it. Well, I would say in like simplest terms to all of us lay people, how can you explain what AI is?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

Yeah, sure. Um, I think the the use way to think about it is it's a it's a pattern recognition machine, okay? So imagine the internet. Um, in case we haven't ever thought about it, because we just take the internet for granted nowadays, right? But it's really all the information in our entire planetary history is the internet. And everything that's ever been done, said, written, thought of every result of anything is now in the internet. It's just out there. Um, and so AI is this incredibly uh powerful algorithm that's been developed and is currently being developed and is changing every day to go out to that large library of data and information and look at patterns and look for patterns. So now if you think about it as a pattern recognition machine, okay, when I ask it to do something like, hey, I'm looking for a recipe for dinner tonight, and I want to make a stew and I have these ingredients. Well, it's not really thinking about what your recipe is. It's gonna go out there and look at the tens of millions of things that are out there to make a stew with these ingredients, and it's gonna come back and give you a list of things and a bunch of instructions about what it thinks would work. All right, it's what it thinks would work. It's not maybe 100% correct, it's maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but that's AI in a nutshell. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_04 4:53

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

I think I think we get caught up in this um feeling that it's uh it's it's this ultimate computing machine and it doesn't make mistakes and it's you know running our lives and all this, and that's it couldn't be further from the truth right now. So we are in the age of what's called um generative AI. That means it's just generating responses to your questions. Um, what is quickly coming down the pipe, and what I've already seen examples of is agentic AI. And a lot of our large corporations are now using agentic AI. That's an agent. Okay, so that's like having a personal assistant. And at my company, we use all of the Microsoft tools. So we use Word and Outlook and all these other, you know, XL spreadsheets and things like that. And each one of those tools now has a little AI button up at the top right that's an agent. And I can say, hey, see these emails, please summarize those for me, and I'll come, you know, I'll come back to you later. So you can send it off to do tasks and it'll come back while you're going off and doing something else. So it raises your efficiency, right? You're doing more with the time you have available to work in a day.

SPEAKER_04 6:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

That's just one example. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:13

Yeah, that makes sense. What do you say to people? Like, there's, I mean, I I've heard a number of people talk about the fears like it's gonna take over the world, and you know, it's gonna command everything, and we're not gonna have a say anymore. It'll set off nuclear bombs, it's stealing artwork. I mean, all there's so many fears out there. What do you have to say? What's your experience with that?

SPEAKER_00 6:38

Well, we've certainly made enough movies since the early or late 60s to validate that very thought. Have we not? Have we not? And and there's been books written, some of the most famous books in history were written about these kinds of things, right?

SPEAKER_04 6:54

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:55

Well, was the one 2000 and something? I'm like, that was the same in the world.

SPEAKER_00 7:00

Yeah, right, right. Yeah. So, so I think part of that is um subconsciously, it's already in the back of our minds. Because we've been hearing these stories and reading these books and watching these movies since, you know, like I say, going back into the 60s, you know, they were making spaceman movies and things like that. Um, so I think it's already a fear that's kind of baked in, um, but doesn't have the capability to do those kinds of things. Um, if we take a huge step forward from where we are today, the answer is uh maybe. Okay, so it's not really that capable doing those kinds of things. Um, the agentic AI that I see is coming. Pretty soon you'll have a personal assistant and you'll say, Hey, I need to plan a vacation for October. Go book my flights. I want to stay at this hotel, I want to travel at these times, and it'll just go do it. It'll go right, fill your credit card and just be done. So that virtual assistant AI, that's what's coming. Um, I've already seen a little bit of it uh in the real world, in the professional world. I can tell you that uh almost all of the Fortune 500 companies today are using some form of agencies AI. So it's already in the corporations, um, hasn't really made it to mainstream yet, but that's what we're looking at next. Um, can I tell it to go, you know, start a war in some country somewhere? No, can't do that. Um, it is being used in military um exercises or equipment to do data reconnaissance, um, to do analytics. Um, it's mostly being used to keep war fighters out of danger. I mean, that's what we're doing, right? Uh, I spend a lot of my time uh working with drone companies, and we all know drones is a big thing right now, and it's you know, that's the really the technology of war right now is is drones. And the biggest advantage of that is we're keeping people out of harm's way as much as possible. Yeah, so that's probably how AI is mostly being used in that aspect. Um, but I also tell you there is a level of security, personal security.

SPEAKER_03 9:11

That was my next question.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

Do not put anything in an AI um agent that you're using that you wouldn't tell a stranger at the bus stop. Okay, that that's just a simple rule. And and that's the rule of anything, right? So, yeah, you can give it your banking information, or um I have um I have a book that I'm writing, and all of my notes, and I've got a couple of years of research. I just threw all of my notes in there, and I said, put this in a book. And I didn't know what it was gonna look like. And it came back with 29 chapters, and I mean it's a mess, it's it's a massive amount of information, and even that was my reaction. I'm like, holy crap, what have I been doing for the last two years? You know, it was so much information, but the book sucks. The book, the book's not my language, it's like you know, I sent it to one of my friends uh who's also in the tech space. So I said, Hey, read this, just give me some give me some inputs, and he knew where it came from. And he came back and said, This will be great if it was in your language. Okay, so that's AI. That's AI right there. So I used it to, I used it to organize, I used it to create the chapters, create the subtitles, create the sections. But man, I still gotta go in there and put my flavor on it, right? That's that's just one use of of how AI is. It's it's not a thinking being machine, it just reacts to whatever you give it.

SPEAKER_04 10:45

What about like people that use it for therapy? You know what I mean? There's people that I know that use it for therapy, and they get some people tell me, I get perspective. So it gives me a it gives me a non-emotional perspective, which is really helpful to me. And then I had heard, uh, which I think I sent you, Trent, like sometimes there's there's some track, I have no idea what the truth of this is, that that it's been tracked that some uh teens and that have actually committed suicide due to conversations that they've had with AI.

SPEAKER_00 11:21

Probably I can tell you, I can tell you the teens side thing is real. It has and that has been um that has been discussed and presented back to the creators of AI. Um, those companies are they're very well-known companies. Um, OpenAI is the creator and maintainer of Chat GPT. Um, Gemini is run by the Google organization. Those are the two most popular platforms on the planet, and they are very serious about exactly what you talked about. We cannot have this, you know, impacting people's lives like that. And part of what happens is uh you start taking those answers as 100% truth, fact, or gospel in in some cases, right? And it's not, it's just trying to look at the library of information, create a pattern, and respond back to what you're asking it. So, in the terms of therapy, if it asks a question about, hey, I'm I'm depressed, and you know, I just broke up with my partner, and you know, this is how I feel, and it starts asking you questions that a therapist would ask you because it knows how to do that, because all that stuff's free information, right? And then you answer the questions, and then it starts talking back to you only in how you think or how it thinks it wants to respond. But it doesn't have it doesn't have empathy, it doesn't have feelings, no, it doesn't know that it's talking to a human, it's just talking to another keyboard on the other side of the screen, right?

SPEAKER_03 13:02

Interesting, but yeah, because it comes across as that, like what people are doing that for, and is well, I just feel so much better because it it does give me perspective. And I think the the risky part there is it gives you perspective based on your perspective, exactly, and not the responsibility of the other relationship piece, right? Yeah, yeah, and it makes you feel like you're right when you might not be right.

SPEAKER_04 13:33

No, that that, yeah, absolutely. I could totally see that that point of it, right? That someone because I I have a friend that's like it's like her pal, and she's used it to like talk about stuff that's going on in her life and said, Yeah, I just I get a per, you know, an objective perspective. There's a young guy, I'm trying to think of his name. I've seen him on YouTube. Is that is that Claude? I've heard this they call it Claude. Is that ChatGPT or no?

SPEAKER_00 14:03

It isn't it's a similar platform. It's a different company. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:07

Yeah. So they're talking about Claude, and he's asking it all these like spiritual, philosophical like questions and and getting these kind of like answers back that kind of blow his mind. And I when I listen to him, I'm like, God dang, some of that sounds like the harshness that um the answers come back with. So I could see that I don't consider this young man vulnerable. I mean, he's just, but I was like, wow, that's I could see someone that's dealing with some mental illness issues that being problematic for them. Because when this guy, like when he reads back, I'm like, oh my God, like it, it's it's yeah, you talk about completely lacking, which of course it's gonna lack empathy, but I I can see that point where someone is just in has such trauma that they've not dealt with that it's like, yeah. It's it's kind of like going and asking a like, let's I'm gonna use friend and air quotes. I mean, I know people that do this. They go and ask someone. I I used to do this a lot. You ask someone that you're like, you know, to help you with something. You're like, is that the person I really want to get this information from? Like, that's the person I'm gonna use a barometer as emotional fitness to like help me with this. That's kind of how I could see that could go with that.

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Yeah. Yeah. I can tell you we are headed in the right direction. Um, because those companies are taking these types of issues very, very serious. Um, even as near as like 90 days ago, uh, you could go ask it things, nefarious types of things, like, uh, what's the best way to poison my neighbor's dogs? What's the best way to ruin their swimming pool? What's the best way to build a bomb? And things like that, right? And and a few months back it would tell you. Now you ask it those things, and it comes back and says, I'm not allowed to talk about that. Yeah. Wow. We're already moving toward guardrails and safety. Um, and some of them are better than others. I I hear from uh I have two sons that are in college. So they're of that age, right? They're right in the pocket, they're right in there. And one of them complains, he goes, Yeah, grok will tell me anything I want, and chat won't. And it's true. Chat chat GPT has taken it serious and they have guardrails.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

And the others are following suit. So it's coming, it's getting better. It's probably never going to be foolproof, but these issues are they're real issues and and they really need to be addressed.

SPEAKER_04 16:55

No, that's good to know. I mean, that's good to know because you know, my daughters talked about that too, and and the whole like had read up on the like suicide piece. Oh, and this is so I was like, it's just good to know because it does seem like there's yeah, guardrails are necessary. What about the thought? Like, it uses a ton of water, fresh water, and then the water it doesn't recycle the water or regentrify the water, it comes that water is just toxic waste. Is there any truth to that?

SPEAKER_00 17:23

So uh yes and no. They do use a lot of water, and you're talking about the data centers, right? So the the AI engines are are sitting in these large buildings called data centers, and really all it is is a is a big building full of computers and full of massive amounts of data storage, and that's really the key is that how much memory is required to do these kinds of projects, right? So, because we have so many computers running in a building, uh cooling is the major issue. So water is used just as a radiator, just as a like your car radiator, whatever. It's just run through pipes and it goes over fans and it's just used to cool the equipment. It's not used to treat the equipment, it's not used to um create any chemical processes or anything like that. It's just used as a coolant. So the water in and of itself doesn't get contaminated, nothing happens to it, it just evaporates over time.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

I got it.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

So you constantly you constantly need to add water. Um, but that brings up the the why, where do we put data center questions, right? And for the most part, they're trying to put those in locations in northern states so that climate helps with the cooling.

SPEAKER_04 18:44

Uh interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Yeah, you're not going to see a data center get put into southern Arizona. It's it will never work. It's way too expensive, right? Because it's 140 degrees in the summer. You've got to cool it. There's you know, water. I mean, that's a problem. We are seeing data centers being put. There's one being built right now in the middle of Wyoming, and literally in the middle of nowhere. Perfect place for it.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Wyoming is cold, it's high elevation. They have lots of power generation, lots of resources available, and they're not putting it next to a big city. They're not, you know, eating up the city's, you know, electrical grid or anything like that. So these things, you know, you have to be smart about where they're going. Um, and that's that's what's happening. So if there is a water issue, and then there's a power issue.

SPEAKER_04 19:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

These are these are real concerns, they are.

SPEAKER_04 19:36

Yeah. So they're probably not, are there any New Mexico? Just curious.

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Um, you know, I don't know of any New Mexico, but I wouldn't be surprised because they've actually been around for for a very long time.

SPEAKER_04 19:48

Yeah, I just think of like water issues here. I mean, northern, I mean, even where I live is considered northern New Mexico, north of Albuquerque, but yeah, and I mean we have so many military things. We have a we have bomb bomb plant going in eight miles from here. So what's it?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

Yeah, well, I know that area.

SPEAKER_03 20:07

Yeah, don't they recycle the water that they have? Yeah, they use that.

SPEAKER_00 20:12

They do. Oh, they do recycling. Okay, yeah, yeah. They they capture the water um so that they don't have to keep um, you know, what goes in goes out, type of thing, right? You're gonna you're gonna have a finite amount of water that's used and that does evaporate due to the cooling process, and so you're gonna have to add to it, but yes, they they do reclaim, recycle, and and reuse the the water. There's no question.

SPEAKER_04 20:37

Oh, okay. Yeah, awesome. What's like uh Christian, you jump in here too, but like what are some of the you know, the virtual assistant, what are some of the biggest benefits you see, especially in your world for AI?

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Are you asking me or Trent? Sorry, Trent. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Oh yeah, I've um so for my professional career as an engineer, um I use it every single day um to offload tasks. So at the end of the day, I I can really amplify my output of work. So they take and and I would tell this to anybody that if you you know trying to think about a way to use it. Well, what tasks during your day are the are the monotonous ones that you don't like that have to get done, the little boxes that need to get checked, right? Like uh I need to build a presentation because I gotta do this talk in two days. Well, just give it all the information and go tell it to build a presentation. While it's doing that, you go do something else, right? So you you multiply yourself, and and that's how I use it. Um and it's been wonderful. I've been able to generate some very complex um Product designs that would take myself and an engineering team, you know, several weeks to do. And I've been able to do those in a few hours. So I mean the amount of efficiencies that you can get are really, really incredible.

SPEAKER_04 22:15

You use it, Chrissy, don't you too in your work?

SPEAKER_03 22:17

I pretty much use it every day. Especially what I love about it is when I'm creating slides or I'm teaching, I can put in the content that I want it to create and tell it how. The prompts that you give AI, from what I've learned, are probably the most important piece.

SPEAKER_04 22:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 22:38

To be very specific, but it has saved me hours on so many things. And I love creating an email if I need to, and then having it rewrite it to make it sound better because it does. And um, I don't have it answer my emails. That is one I'm looking forward to. I don't quite trust that yet in my email system, but it doesn't mean that it's not safe. I just for me, I like it to get a little bit more developed before I give it more of my private work. But it's it's a game changer when it comes to teaching. And I think a really important piece is though, and in writing, it still needs to be the essence of you. It's a tool to use, not a be-all end-all, because we can see when someone writes an AI post, for example, and you're like, there's no feeling in that. Like we're intelligent enough to be aware of, yeah, I don't feel them. Right. And to use AI as a tool, which is how I like to use it, and then adding my essence to it, adding my flavor to it, like Trent said, it saves me hours. I love it. Yeah, and I've used it many times to say, what do you think about this? Because I if I'm having a challenge with someone, I love perspective that has doesn't care what I think. Yeah, yeah, I could totally use it. Right. Because it thinks it thinks because of the content it has, it's aware of other aspects that I would never be aware of. Right.

SPEAKER_04 24:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

I love it. I use it often.

SPEAKER_00 24:21

Yeah. Chrissy's a great um Chrissy's a great test case. She doesn't come from that world. And you know, she's she's talked for a long, long time, a couple of years, like, man, I really need an assistant, but I really don't need a full-time assistant. Yeah, I don't know what I could. I don't want to pay for a body, and I don't want to not pay for a body. And you know, it's it's been a constant thing, and she uh she adopted her AI tools probably more than a year or year ago, probably 15 months ago, and it has been a game changer. I mean, she's created so much content, it's just unbelievable.

SPEAKER_04 24:59

Yeah, no, that I mean we use it here, Christy, on the podcast. Just pop our stuff in and just rewrite it. It happens fast, it just that makes it easy. And I still feel like it it has the essence, you know, because you're inputting the data and that, you know, rewrite this and make it sound better. So in that way, I you know, I like it. Um and yeah, just maybe not maybe not so much advice giving to somebody. I don't know, it just kind of depends. But what's your thoughts on all that?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

I I would say, you know, hopefully somebody listens to this that maybe isn't using it or is dipping their toe in the pool or something, right? So come up with some fun project and treat it as a fun tool. It's like what can AI really do for me? And I have a couple personal ones. Uh I like to grow a garden, and the last couple of years my garden struggled, and it's been super hot here, and you know, I don't know, I was just grasping at straws. And last spring I used AI and I created a project around my garden, and I had the best garden year ever. Yeah, and that was just a that's just a dumb, it's a dumb, fun uh example. But you know, hey, think outside the box and say, man, I you know, how can I how can I grow better tomatoes and peppers? And oh my gosh, it was amazing. It was absolutely amazing. And if here's the beautiful thing, I would have a time during the year when one of the plants was looking a little raggedy or whatever. You can take your phone, turn on your AI, take a picture, and it told me exactly what was wrong with that plan, just based on the images.

SPEAKER_04 26:43

Oh, yeah. I have an app you know, it's awesome. That's awesome. That's funny. I use it for my sourdough baking. I'll be like, hey, check out my duh starter, how's this look?

SPEAKER_00 26:53

And then it'll be the same.

SPEAKER_04 26:56

Yeah, like that to me is this sort of innocuous thing, and it's been it's worked out great for that.

SPEAKER_00 27:02

I love it for sourdough, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's easier than putting it in Google, yeah, or looking on Instagram, yeah. Because it's it starts to tailor it for you.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

Yeah, and then you take the photo and they're like, oh, it's right there at Peak and blah, blah, blah. So that's great. And I was thinking about my friend that uses it uh like really like as a buddy, and she definitely uses chat. So there obviously there are guardrails in place there. And um, she's the one that has said, I I mean, I do get an objective perspective. And she's saying it's not tell it's it's basically saying here, if it's especially if it's something she's doing with another human, it's actually giving her both sides. It's not, I mean, it'll it'll affirm her, but it doesn't, and it's funny. She tells me it always says, I'm gently going to say this. I mean, I think about me, I'd be like, don't say it to me gently, just tell it to me straight. I love it. That's the guardrail. That's the guardrail, just in case you don't like what it says, yeah, which makes sense because yeah, that I didn't, and I I'm obviously I know enough about this to truly be dangerous.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

So the other one that's called Clawed, is that you said that's Gemini, which no, uh, it claws its own thing, it is just a it's another AI engine, different company.

SPEAKER_04 28:29

And that's the one that hasn't had the best guardrails, probably.

SPEAKER_00 28:32

Yeah, and it and and uh they each kind of have their own um specialty or or market that they're going after. Gotcha. Claw Claude is is really going after uh the software code generators, it'll write software, it'll do code, and it does heavy, heavy uh data analysis. So yeah, you could use it for everyday stuff, um, but it's really, really good at those things. So you see it being used in those industries much more uh because that's where it's pointed.

SPEAKER_04 29:07

Yeah. Well, I love your idea, Trent, too, because that's what works for me. It's like when I sourdough bread and you know, my spelt starter and blah, blah, blah. Like, make it a just play with it for something that's, you know, the the it's not, you know, a high risk, you know what I mean? No, it isn't. And I do like what you said. Like, don't say anything to it that you wouldn't want, like, I'll say it this way, splashed across the front page of a newspaper, you know. I mean, well, the obviously if people are doing that, what are they gathering that data? What do they do if someone is using it as their like prospective therapist?

SPEAKER_00 29:46

I mean it's just the wrong use, right? It's dangerous. Um, we can't be taking advice from a computer program, and that's all it is. It has access to it to all the data in the history of the world, and all it's saying is, oh, you asked me about you know how to paint a house. Here's 900 ways to do that. It's not thinking, it's just responding with data. Yeah, that's now that brings up another point, and and the term that they use is is sentient, right?

SPEAKER_04 30:20

And what's it called?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Christy sentient.

SPEAKER_04 30:22

Sentient has heard this, right?

SPEAKER_00 30:25

And and people are saying, well, it's sentient, it's now sentient, it's going to be sentient. And what does that even mean?

SPEAKER_04 30:33

You know, I don't have a dog or a cat a sentient bean, like right.

SPEAKER_00 30:38

So, what it really means if we're going to define the term sentient, it's to be self-aware. Okay, so at what point, at what point does the AI AI become self-aware? We're a long ways from that, yeah. But but the way it responds to things and to people, it would be easy to say, man, that thing is sentient. It knows me inside and out.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

Yeah. Yeah, like you said, I mean, I think it's just, and that is good to talk about on this podcast too. Just like you said, it's data, it's data that's going in there. And I could see how someone who's lonely or is not that, oh, this is my pal, you know, like that kind of thing. So I can see with you know, someone using it that way where it could be quite problematic. If you don't have enough emotional intelligence, and I'm not saying that to be, or fitness to be like, hey, this is a data center, and you know, I like what it's you know giving to me here, and um, but it's not like advice about my life.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

Yeah, unfortunately, we kind of swung, we swung way far that way, right? And now we're trying to reel it back in. But but it's coming, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 31:54

Yeah, interesting. That's interesting.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

What are some other so we have just we have Gemini, we have Claude, um, we have Grok, Chat GPT. There's four. What other ones are there that are out there? Meta AI and Meta AI is Facebook, Instagram. Oh, right.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yeah. Um, yeah, here I I gathered some demographic info before we got on this call. I didn't memorize it, so I'll have to look down and no, that's cool.

SPEAKER_04 32:27

Look it up.

SPEAKER_00 32:27

Um, here's like the top six. Okay, so chat GPT, 900 million weekly users. These no these numbers are gonna blow your mind. These numbers, and that's why it's advancing so quickly because it's learning from every one of us that puts data in there. Oh gosh. So, and they're the largest. And they launched in November of 2022, so it's barely three years old, and it already has 900 million weekly users. Now, Google's Gemini. Um, it's only been out this version of Gemini since uh middle of last year, I think. 750 million weekly users. Okay. I mean, it's the the numbers are just staggered. Gemini is the fastest growing AI engine out there.

SPEAKER_04 33:23

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_00 33:25

And and it's my favorite. I love it. I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_04 33:29

What do you love about it?

SPEAKER_00 33:30

If you think about why with Gemini as being part of the Google ecosystem, why would it be better? So OpenAI is the company that launched Chat GPT. We just use the term chat GPT by default, but the company is called OpenAI. Well, they're a standalone company, and they have to they have to ask for permission to access certain files on the internet. And you know, if if the stock market says no, we don't allow you to use that information, then it can't ask answer questions about stock market things. Google being the largest bunch of data in the universe, obviously gives its tool, Gemini, ultimate access. So that's one way that it's better. The other way that I think it's better is it's super fast. And it does things for me. Like I do a lot of stock market research every day. I give it tons of data and have it do data analytics and things. And because YouTube is part of Google, it'll often send me a YouTube video and say, hey, here's a video that gets talking about exactly what you're asking me. And if I don't have time to watch the video, I go, okay, go watch the video for me and give me back the 10 points that I need. And it and it does it, it'll do it. And chat GPT can't do that because it doesn't have access to YouTube.

SPEAKER_04 34:55

Ah, okay. Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 34:57

So there's this playing field right now. We got this playing field of AI engines. So those are the top two. Um meta AI, that's Facebook, Instagram. There's they have a lot of users just because they have a lot of subscribers to their socials, um, but their AI is not very good. Okay. Um and then perplexity is number four. And and it's just a smaller, you know, it's more um perplexity is focused on academics and research mostly. Um then you have Microsoft Profiling in number the number five spot, and it's big only because there's so many Microsoft users out there, right? I mean, um of all the computers in the world, five percent run Apple and 95% run Microsoft. I mean, it's just it's a huge thing. But their AI is is not good. Um I use it uh in my professional career. It's part of the you know, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint. It's built into all those things now, and it is just kind of it's kind of clunky. Um, so I'm not a big fan. And then the sixth largest one is Claude that you asked about earlier, and and Claude is mostly science, technology, engineering-centric, uh, writing deep software, things like that. Yeah. So those are the topics. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:29

Just from what I've heard. I mean, I don't know it. Well, it's very different from chat. I've used it because I'm so used to chat, it's very difficult for me to get into another. I it's like I have to get to know it. Interesting. The nuances of how to ask the right questions um to get it to create something for me. It's a very different AI. Yeah. I have lots of people who only use Claude because they love it. And I also think that's because they know it. Yeah, sure, that makes sense. I don't know Gemini really well. I use it, but not nearly how I use chat because I don't know it well enough.

SPEAKER_04 37:09

Yeah, yeah. It's funny as I thought was listening to that guy that I told you about. If I could remember his name, I'd say it, but he uses Claude and just I was like, yeah, there's I could see where that could be, like I said, not so great for somebody who's quite vulnerable.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Correct. Yeah. Because it's not for the generic users.

SPEAKER_03 37:31

No, it isn't.

SPEAKER_00 37:32

It's not what it's it's not targeted at, but it can it still does those things. Um, but you know, really chat GPT and Gemini. This that's probably where I would steer most everybody to.

SPEAKER_02 37:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Um I have uh written an in a ton, like thousands and thousands of lines of code using chat GPT. So it's it can do it, it can do it too. You know, it just depends on how complex things are, but um, yeah, that's that's that's the way of the land in the in the AI world for now.

SPEAKER_04 38:03

So yeah, well, I mean, that's really helpful. Is there any uh Chris do you have anything else? I was thinking any thoughts to takeaways that you want people to garner?

SPEAKER_03 38:14

I I often hear people say to me, I'm scared that there's like a I want to say, and this ages me for sure, Skynet from Terminator, right? That it's the machines are gonna take over. And I hear that more often than than the love of AI.

SPEAKER_01 38:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:34

It's not going anywhere, first and foremost. It's going to continue to grow. And part of the reason why I wanted Trent come on is to create some education around it. Because I think when we become educated, is fear.

SPEAKER_04 38:48

Oh, absolutely. I think it's awesome.

SPEAKER_03 38:50

And if we understand that how it's created, what it puts out, like Trent said, it's data, it's it's content that's put in and then it spits it out. It's not scenting, it's not feeling into your soul and giving you information back. Like there's some really funny things happening right now with AI that um people thinking that it understands more than it does because it can't right now, it's a computer program.

SPEAKER_04 39:22

Oh, and I love, I mean, Trent, like that's so great, Christine. To your point, Trent, it's like it's data. Yeah, it's data. So um, and it was funny, I was gonna date myself 2001, a space odyssey, and that came out in 1968. I was born in 1962. I was still too young to really watch it, but I was like, that was like the future, we're screwed, you know, and yeah, here we are again. I I do have this kind of interesting thought sometimes. Like, I mean, it's let's just say this is maybe oddly spiritual. If if anybody has this belief, and I'm not suggesting everybody should, like, if if everything is part of spirit universe, God, red flintstone, the dinosaurs, whatever you want to call it, this is too.

SPEAKER_03 40:10

Yes, I would agree with that. There's something in, yeah. What I agree, I think it's a reflection because it has all the information that's been created by humans. Yeah, I do think it's a little bit of a reflection of our intelligence. Yeah. Like, I don't think I think the word artificial in my brain doesn't fit that because all the data that's gone in are from really intelligent human beings.

SPEAKER_04 40:38

That's I never thought about it that way.

SPEAKER_03 40:40

That's really true. I mean, we get access, like I think I'm thinking of I started a dream folder, and I love putting both into one in chat and one in Gemini because I love Carl Young, and I can ask it to give me specific information through the lens of Carl Young because the content's in there, right? It's brilliant. I love that.

SPEAKER_04 41:04

It does it, yeah. Yeah, they're amazing. I mean, I think, yeah, like that. That's to me like the proper use of it, you know. And again, it's um it's like anything. I mean, somebody can overeat carrots, you know what I'm saying? It's like, so I just think there's a lot to do with the user and then the user's personality and their mental well-being as well. I think there's um, I mean, I think that's fair, you know, to say that as well.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

So I think too, Marty, to go back to your point about, you know, we're all connected to some higher thing, right? Whatever your belief systems are. Um we all have intuitive thoughts and think whether we want to admit to it or not. They're there. And any AI has no intuition. It's it is exactly what Christy said, it merely is reflecting the information of our entire history of existence. That's it. Yeah, it does not, it does not have any feelings or intuition or any of that. That's still a human thing, right? That's that's absolutely not going away.

SPEAKER_04 42:20

Yeah, yeah, but I think, yeah, that makes and I think it's people can't be reminded of that enough. But I do like that thought, like it's a collection of all the human consciousness, you know, that's out there and thoughts and all that stuff, right or wrong, good or bad, you know, whatever you want to call it. So take that into account too. Like I said, do I really want to get advice from that person? Probably not. Yeah, probably not. So well, Trent, this was like illuminating. I mean, I really uh appreciate you doing it. It's I love how it just worked out today. Yeah. Well, I think it's helpful. There again, education is power. It is, it is, because you know, and there's so like you know, if it's on Facebook, it's gotta be true. If it's on Instagram, it's gotta be true, instead of like, yeah, doing you know, the fact checks. And I mean, who better than someone that's dealing with it and uses it?

SPEAKER_00 43:22

I and I think the socials have never been more misinforming than they are right now.

SPEAKER_04 43:27

Oh god, I it is so insane.

SPEAKER_00 43:30

I I it's funny because I get I get messages from uh like Christy's mom or my mom, right? And they're on their Facebook pages and they'll send me something, and they believe this video. This person made this video and said these things, um, and it's not true. I can tell by looking at the video, it's completely AI check.

SPEAKER_04 43:51

I fact check everything. I mean, because I'm there's just so much misinformation, and even like the good stuff, like you know, me. Christy, animal rescues. I can totally tell when they're AI, but I still go, that's still sweet. You do. We laugh all the time at the videos. Yeah, the videos, you're just like, how do you like that? Is seriously AI? Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:16

Well, I think it's getting, and this might even be a year out. It'll be to where we won't be able to tell. I just think it's a matter of time. Right now we still can, which is why it's good to be educated about it.

SPEAKER_04 44:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:30

Or yourself, because I think that we're getting close to not being able to tell the difference. Because it just gets the videos get better and better, and we see the breathing, we see the skin, we see everything more human-like.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

Well, and even to say that I hear this term about it gets smarter. I was like, doesn't it just get more data? Like, is it really getting smarter, Trent? Is that or is it it it is?

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Yeah, it is getting smarter. Interesting. Um in my daily uh stock market research, I upload it quite a bit of data every morning, and I have an algorithm that I tell it to run, and then it comes back and it says, Oh, this is what I'm seeing. This is you know, here's what you asked for. Well, the next day I do that, it goes, Oh, by the way, there's a pattern for me. And now that I've done this for several years, now it can look back on my several years of work and it's very, very good at seeing those patterns. Whoa. So that's how it gets smarter. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_04 45:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:46

It just gets better and better at the repetitive task.

SPEAKER_04 45:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 45:50

Because the data that I give it is the same.

SPEAKER_04 45:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

I give it the same set of data every day, but it's gotten better at how it interprets it.

SPEAKER_04 45:59

Interesting. Interesting. Wow.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

And we can say that's getting smarter. I say it's just getting you know better. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:07

Right. Yeah. That's awesome. That's good clarification. Wow.

SPEAKER_03 46:12

You learned a lot today. So did I. I did.

SPEAKER_04 46:15

Thanks, Fosters. Thank you, Trent, for being here today. Yeah. That was great. It was great. Appreciate it. All right, you guys. We'll see you next time. And uh everyone, like and subscribe if you like what the content we're putting out. Please tell your friends, share the videos, and we're the we're all over the place. So we appreciate it. Thanks again, Trent. Always great to see you.

SPEAKER_03 46:41

Thank you.