High Octane Friends

Do no Evil? A tech investor's view of AI’s impact.

• Rob McMullan & Trevor McKee

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On High Octane Friends' latest podcast, Caitlin Carter from VC firm/venture studio Highline Beta discusses where Artificial Intelligence is going and how it is affecting investment, startups/scaleups, and society as a whole.

Join co-hosts Rob McMullan & Trevor McKee with Caitlin on this insightful and far-ranging conversation.

Available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple and other podcast platforms. Also on our website.

High Octane Friends | Highoctanefriends.com


The High Octane Friends podcast is where Rob McMullan & Trevor McKee discuss a variety of subjects in an authentic and unvarnished way. 

Rob McMullan LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/robmcmullan
Trevor McKee LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/trevordmckee
High Octane Friends website
highoctanefriends.com

SPEAKER_01

You can talk of the evening or morning or midday to you, or um, if you're somewhere else on the space-time continuum, because we do get people from all corners of the universe here. Uh well, at least we will, I should get the tense right. Welcome, high octane friends. Uh, we've got a really uh what is the word? Uh fantasticimo, I don't know, something like that, guest today. Um, Caitlin Carter, and she'll tell you all about herself. And she certainly fits the mold of a high octane friend. Um so it here we're here we go. Um last time I was uh at one of my many, as you know, listeners, fantastic penthouse apartments in the sky. Last time it was in Shinjuku, Tokyo, and this time we're right just down the street from you know that thing that the Americans was it the Americans gave them the Eiffel Tower? I think it was. Um, I wish I was there a few weeks ago. But um anyway, so um do we want to just do you want to launch right in, Caitlin? What's on your mind? Who are you?

SPEAKER_00

Who am I? This is a question I wake up and still don't have every day with and still don't have the answer to, right? And it the answer actually changes every day. But yes, let's just go right in. I'm so pleased for the opportunity to be here today. I mean, we are relatively new friends, like let's just set the stage for that, people. Uh, we met a month ago at uh tech.

SPEAKER_01

But what you know, our paths probably have have crossed before.

SPEAKER_00

I've never met you before in my life.

SPEAKER_01

No, I'm 100% sure. Because you would remember, and I would remember right, we would remember.

SPEAKER_00

Um, and it's just been such a delight to get to know you and the people around you. Um, and Trevor, you and I were sitting at opposite ends of the table a month ago, and so I didn't get a chance, and it's totally different and table last time. Yeah, so didn't get a chance to know you a bit better, but uh, I'm looking forward to that opportunity today.

SPEAKER_03

Fantastic. No, that sounds great.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Um yeah, because uh we have uh we have a tech and grow business um tech and grow uh breakfast series that is co-sponsored by Hawk 10 Friends and my my employer think and grow. And uh we've had well just completed the second in the series, and it seems to be going swimmingly well, doesn't it? We've had some amazing people such as yourself. Come on, Caitlin. So um, yeah, that's looking like a hit. I I had some people, for example, I had uh Stefania Mancini, who is I think the head of product marketing over at Intuit in Canada. Like she was kind of happily, I was happy that she was like, Oh, that was so lovely. Thank you for inviting me. And like it's great to know people like that. And Roy Pereira, all these amazing people in the tech ecosystem.

SPEAKER_00

And Roy Pereira, I actually met uh when I was director of operations at 111. So that was a complete shock to see him there. I haven't seen him since I left uh just actually a year ago. Um, and I think the world of him, he used to call himself the mayor of 111. That's how he introduced himself to me. I love that.

unknown

That's great.

SPEAKER_01

Awesome, awesome. Trevor, what's what's on your mind today? We'll we'll throw it over to you a little bit. You're you're looking a little bit blue, literally, are you?

SPEAKER_03

It's the lighting, so yes. Uh I uh uh you know what it might be? We we have actually uh grow lights um for uh our plants. So we uh we have a couple things ongoing um in my house. The one is uh getting ready for our um backyard garden. So it's a um it was a COVID project. Was like I think we just had the the driveway redone, and there were some parts that were still kind of um sandy and hadn't been hadn't been asphalted over, and we said, you know what? Um that's the perfect width for a uh you know four foot by eight foot um uh bed, uh uh like like garden bed. So we uh so I assembled some garden beds out of cedar. Uh we had like three like huge bags of um of of um manure fertilizer, yeah, yeah, uh compost uh like uh dropped in our front in our front like in our parking lot of our like where where our car parks, and I had to I had to transfer all of it so that we could actually move the bags enough to park the car.

SPEAKER_01

Literally, was it literally big piles of manure?

SPEAKER_03

Three cubic meters of uh no of like composted soil. So just ready to go, you throw it in, you put the plants in and they they grow up happily. And it was delivered from like a farm outside of Toronto, and they uh they brought on a big flatbed truck and just uh dumped dumped them uh right there. And uh I think we we still have a few because um uh actually um Toronto um has uh free compost um that that like the city councilors will have like a a day in the summer where um they'll just similar sort of idea, they they dump a bunch of compost on like in a um park nearby, and then then we'll go with a couple buckets and just um uh pick it up and it's for the community so anyone can go pick it up and use it for their you know, for whatever it could be your your um either like a little flower pot on your uh on the side of your balcony, it could be you know backyard gardens, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_01

And uh or it could be in your case, your massive basement grow up.

SPEAKER_05

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_03

And so because the grow season is so small in Canada, uh we're we're up in zone four or whatever it is, um we have to actually get the get the plants going um in you know in sort of March-ish, uh uh March April, uh in order to have them, you know, big enough that they'll be productive for as much of the summer as we can. So we've got like um dwarf tomatoes, we've got jalapeno and a couple other hot peppers, um and then uh and then well the zucchinis tend to be eaten by the um by the squirrels um that come by, so we have to, you know, we're we're we're figuring out all sorts of stuff, but that's that's our thing. And then um and then we grow extra, my my kids grow extra plants um in just little solo cups. And we have a uh we have a plant sale in like May once they're sort of just about ready to be transplanted. Um and we've been doing it for the past several years now, I think four years. This might be our fourth year running, and um the neighborhood loves it because they can come by, they can pick up, you know, like um we have kale, we have um you know, these dwarf tomatoes are pretty popular, we have strawberries, um, we have like chamomile, so you can make chamomile tea out of it. And um and so turning them into little budding entrepreneurs, so they've made like over a hundred bucks the past couple of uh uh times. And we we distribute it according to uh you know, like a parental uh uh uh discernment based on how how much each kid actually contributed to like taking the plants out every day and getting used to the outside sunlight and everything else. So um but they they really enjoy it and um you know, and it's it's something we can do for the community because it like we sell it for two or three bucks a plant, which is like below market rates. Um like the the the entrepreneur keeps saying, we can we can bring that up.

SPEAKER_05

And my wife's like, no, no, they're not the best plants.

SPEAKER_01

Well, let me know when your strawberries are in, and I may take a trip down to your house.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01

Uh do you grow anything other than I know you grow tech startups, what you do, but do you grow of the leafy kind?

SPEAKER_00

We did do that during COVID, and it was a really nice family experience. Yeah, it's slow. I mean, my kids then were like three and five, and they're like, when is it growing? When's it growing? When's it growing, right? Like it's a long couple months.

SPEAKER_05

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00

But we did grow, you know, cucumbers in our front yard. And I live downtown Toronto, so my entire house is 17 foot wide. It's right tiny. But we grew these cucumbers in the front yard and they went bananas. They I had 20 cucumbers, they were gigantic. Um, did not taste great, I will say that, because I think I probably should have taken them out a little bit earlier. Oh, right, yeah. English cucumbers and yeah, huge seeds but very little taste. Uh, but it was a lovely and it was a lovely time doing that all together. The one thing I really would like to grow and have never been able to do it, even though my cousin, who is an avid gardener, says it's so easy, is lettuce. Have you done lettuce?

SPEAKER_03

We have, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's it is it is a bit more finicky than the other plants. Actually, we find that kale um seems to be a bit more hardy. So um, you know, that might be an option. And um, but the the lettuce, the thing about the lettuce is that you have to sort of uh so like you know, the it'll it'll grow and then the the you have to sort of trim the lower ones, uh the lower ones, and then it'll sort of keep growing. Um but if it if it gets unhappy, it'll bolt, which means it'll just go to seed sort of right away. Um, if it's not getting enough whatever, either it's nutrients or or water or anything else. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Well, for those who are just joining us, this is the FIOC and gardening show. Like uh in case you were confused. So we're gonna segue a little bit more uh into into all things tech and money and entrepreneurship and all that fun stuff, because as regular avid listeners, the many hordes of you would know, uh, you know, that's kind of our thing uh in many ways. So I'm gonna throw it back over to you, uh Caitlin. So tell tell us what you what you do, maybe um from whence, how do I say that? From whence you came?

SPEAKER_00

That's a large question. Uh I did come from two parents and uh grew up in Toronto. I'm gonna start at the very beginning. Grew up in Toronto, went to an all-girls school for 13 years, which means that I wore a tunic for 13 years, and our uniform had a red blazer. So the Highline beta red is very Clementine. I was a Clementine.

SPEAKER_01

There you go. I knew you said red blazer, it's just that it's weird for me.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. So um went there, then went on to Western. Um, didn't find my place there. Uh, I actually was 100% convinced that I was gonna be a teacher. So uh was just planning to go to Queens to do concurrent ed. And like a month before I was going, I said, I actually don't want to do this. And so my other two choices, which I didn't care about when I made the application because I knew I was gonna go to Queens, were Waterloo and Western. And I'm like, I don't see myself at Waterloo. So Western turns out wasn't a fit there either. Um and then through a series of events, found myself in the world of tech, uh, actually through a close friend who needed a project coordinator role. We built a platform for Tim Hortons um and ultimately Burger King globally, uh, that was their learning management system and operational task management system. So I don't know if you worked in a McDonald's or in a restaurant, but uh there are a number of tasks that you have to do. You have to show that you clean the floor, you clean the bathroom, you clean all these machines. All of that was paper and we digitized for them. And we also got every 10 minutes their drive-thru times, we got their sales tickets overnight. When I think what we could have done with AI as opposed to developers who are running all these queries to see correlations, it's amazing. Um, and I was there for 15 years and I loved it. Um I was told myself I was still in education because I was more on the learning side. And in this case, in my case, it was learning how to make a whopper, learning how to make a double-double, but still education. Uh, and I learned so much from um the president of that company. It was acquired twice, first through from Riverside Capital and then Intertech, which is a global 40,000 employee um company in the quality assurance space, and they decided they wanted to get into the people quality assurance space. Um, so the president of the company just I cannot thank him enough. His name is Michael Holland for all the lessons. Like it was a hard job, especially when we got the Burger King contract. We were 24-7 because some country around the world couldn't figure out how to onboard their employees or um were missing a training title, whatever it was. Like, I I the number of times I'd wake up at 2 a.m. and start an email, like it was it was crazy, but I learned so much from that. Uh, and that's actually where I met Marcus Daniels, who's the CEO and co-founder of Highline Beta. He was our director of operations. And I will say this to everybody about Marcus. When I met him, I was like, mm-mm, something's wrong with you. You're too nice. And I don't really have that reaction to people, but I was like, I don't trust you. But he I turned out to be completely wrong. He is just a gem of a human, so smart. And I just can't believe I'm lucky enough to be back with him. I went from that company that I was there for 15 years, Frameworks, Wisetail, Intercheck through many iterations, joined one of Marcus's or Highland Beta's uh portfolio companies called Parachute. And Parachute was um the fin care company, and by that I mean it was a lending company, but it specialized also in financial wellness. And it cert Canadians who had a credit score of below 700 and couldn't access traditional banks. Only option was predatory lenders. So we saw people across every single job, uh, income level, like this is not a low-income issue, uh, who were going to places like cash money, Fairstone Financial, Easy Financial, they had loans of 47 up to 40%, 47%, because that was the cap that uh maybe it was 46%, but that was the cap that was on loans at the time. But if you're taking out a$25,000 loan at 46%, you were never paying that back. And what happens is people take and is it compounded daily?

SPEAKER_01

I don't know how often it's compounded.

SPEAKER_00

It's just it's just a really bad situation. And um, you know, in my time, I learned so much about the psychology behind how people manage their money and feel about their money, and it's just as much financial literacy as it is psycho psychology, if not more. Um, there was a study out of UBC that talked about the impact of stress uh from finances is like the same as being impaired or losing sleep. So you can't make rational decisions when you're in that mind state. Um from there, I got an opportunity that was just amazing and eye-opening at uh 111, director of operations. I was there for a little under a year solely because Marcus offered me a job here and I was like, the chance to work with you, I will drop everything. So that's how I made it to Highline Beta.

SPEAKER_01

Well, that's good to know, especially about Marcus, because I mean, I think we'd we may have done a little messaging here and there, but I I've never met him. But I am set to meet him at least on a phone call, I think at a week's time. So good. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. And getting back to the uh to the to the more important thing.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, what is that? What's more important? Sorry, Marcus.

SPEAKER_01

That a Whopper may be more important than you, no, not really. Um, but I wanted to mention A, my my wife has these random cravings for waffers. Like, can you go to Burger King? Um, that's so interesting that you were um I can remember when all those systems I could actually go into them. You go to McDonald's or or Burger King, you could see the paper things on all the things.

SPEAKER_00

They are called build charts. And as part of my role, I guess we designed the build charts for all the sandwiches. My first job, actually, my first task at the company's built frameworks was to reconcile the footage that we had on tapes, on physical tapes, because we would go in and film in the Tim Hortons restaurants and make sure that it was on our Mac. I don't even know what these systems were. They were huge, they were like these towers of storage. And I mean, I was 27 at the time. I didn't eat breakfast. Uh, and my job was it was they just launched the breakfast sandwich. So I was watching hours of footage of this breakfast sandwich being recorded. I just remember being so hungry.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I I have a cousin, uh, she's retired now, but she used to be a producer, um uh an advertising agency producer, and she did a lot of TV. And I know she used to do uh what's what's that thing? The Italian one that we have in Canada. Hey, bada boom, bada bing, like that.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, pizza nova?

SPEAKER_01

Uh not pizza nova, it's the other one.

SPEAKER_00

Oh, East Side Mario's and all that, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I remember having a conversation with her about that, and like you see those burgers in the food, and because the filming for those commercials is typically very long, that's all fake food, eh? It's not real food. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Well, um yeah, no, my my dad, my dad used to work in a um a candy factory when I grew up. Uh like he literally was. Oh wow, and um and and and um he was he would tell me all the inside scoop like the like the um the milk that you see poured on like the cereal boxes is like Elmer's glue, you know, because it's yeah, it doesn't it doesn't drip like it's very hard to catch the the milk splashing in just the right way, you know, kind of thing. So yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

We didn't have the budget for that, so we used real foods, um, but it was not a marketing, it was a video, it was a training video. Training video, yeah. Do you know that was such an interesting experience? I've had never had any production experience at all in my life, and I got to go on green street green screen studios and just to see the post-production. It amazed me what people could do, and I'm talking like 10 years ago, what you could do in the edit suite. Uh and I remember you know, just change this up, change that up.

SPEAKER_01

I couldn't believe what we were able to do, and and like it might be the case that a very, of course, a very avid, like right from the way back beginning, a very avid um listener. In fact, he he's one of the watchers. Fewer people watch us on our YouTube channel than they do listen to the audio. But on that very point of um how things are produced and and really things, so um, Ryan Gosling, um, as Trevor knows well, is a really big viewer of the channel, and he has recently put out the big hit. This is all BS, of course.

SPEAKER_00

Okay, I was lit, I was in, I was buying it.

SPEAKER_01

Darn it. Okay, wipe that last 10 seconds out, Trevor. Um, yeah, no, I that movie Hail Mary that he's done, I highly recommend it. It's a terrific movie, it's long, it's like almost three hours. But um, they do a lot of special effects in that, as you would imagine, and when they go to space and how he I was asking my wife, I said, like, that's amazing. I you know, he was floating around and doing all that, and I thought that was actually going into space and doing weightless stuff. You know, they do the planes, he's like, No, they hook them up on the green screen and everything, and they move around and then they just take all this, I don't know, the lines out, which I think is amazing, but there's a lot of training, right? Acting is uh is is pretty difficult stuff, just like tech. There's a lot of deep see the details. Like, for example, how Trevor just turned on Gemini like halfway through our thing.

SPEAKER_04

No one would tell tell it's still a bit of a work in progress.

SPEAKER_01

So yeah, it's all part of our ethos of authenticity. There you go. Everyone, let's embrace it. Yes, right.

SPEAKER_00

Embrace it, except for the fact that, like, you know, we all have fake backgrounds, but the people well, I had a white wall until 30 seconds before we started, and you two shamed me into changing my background. Oh, you don't show up on this podcast with no background. I think I'm in Mexico somewhere.

SPEAKER_01

Like having a penthouse with your windows open, beautiful day, looking onto the Eiffel Tower. Um, but it is what it is. Oh, I think you said uh before Keserasera, and I was going to I I'm going to throw out a bonus question to our listeners, and and of course, we will give you a prize once in the future we have a sponsor, which maybe is Burger King. Um, what is the connection between Kesarasra, Doris Day, and the tech ecosystem? That is the question. So we'll let you figure that out. And bonus points for if you can connect that back to Trevor's dad and what he said earlier. You might want to, you know, read the candy factory.

SPEAKER_00

Um, I live beside a candy candy factory now. Oh, yeah. And I do. I live beside the Cadbury plant. So I'm in little Portugal. Not only do I live beside the Cadbury plant, but I also have a diner at the top of our street. So on any given day, I'm the luckiest person alive. I walk out in the morning and I'm smelling bacon or chocolate.

SPEAKER_01

I know. I know. I didn't even know there was a Cadbury. And what's the diner? Let's check them out.

SPEAKER_00

Um I don't know that you have to rush to this one, but it is called New Sunrise Grill. It used to be a Sunset Grill. I think it has exactly the same menu, but it's called Sunrise, and now it's New Sunrise.

SPEAKER_01

Uh well, maybe they just decided that they couldn't afford the royalties. A lot of these recipes do that, right? Seriously. I don't know about Sunset Grill. I don't want to diss them and not knowing, but I do know that is the case sometimes.

SPEAKER_03

They just they want to the franchise that has a lot of uh fees and stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah years ago, I used to be an investment advisor, and um this client of ours, I'm like lived in this gargantuan house right on the lake in Oakfo. Like, wow, this is a fortune. And um, of course, we were asking, like, how did you make this money? And uh he really came from nothing, but somehow he very early on got a McDonald's franchise and then expanded, had a few of them, I think. And I remember him telling me a story about one of his you know, co-franchise owners, and he called him up and he's like, Oh, I screwed up because I really didn't like the buns um that McDonald's has in their hamburgers, and so I was using my own buns, and they're very strict. We franchise just over that, like you can't do that. Um and I digress. I I think I let me ask you this question and see where we go. This, you know, we've talked about AI a little bit and and tech and growing business, and and we're all Canadians, and we're in Canada. Um where in Canada in particular, and then we can extend it out to the world, where do you at this point in time, um and in the next little while, where do you see AI taking entrepreneurship in Canada, startup scale? Where do you think that's go that's gonna go?

SPEAKER_03

Like yeah, is is the myth of like the the the um single founder unicorn like uh uh real or is it just sort of you know wishful thinking, you know, I think is is the way I would I might phrase it, because you hear all of these things about. I mean uh there was there was a uh a story that I don't know if you just saw um anthropic, um the Claude, um uh the guys that make the the AI Claude. Um they just purchased um a uh a startup and it was literally nine people um called Coefficient Bio, and they were sort of a very small kind of I think AI for AI for drug design and something like that space. Um but it was like 400 million in um in stock, I think, options, and so like it's like 44 million per person acquisition, which is which sounds good. On paper. On paper at least. Um but uh you know that that that's the closest I've seen to sort of you know this uh this size of things, but uh it's it's hard to tell, you know, how much of that is um well being lucky being the at the right at the right spot at the right time, or if if you know they they had some really interesting IP that that was worth that amount of money.

SPEAKER_01

All of the above. No doubt.

unknown

Probably, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

What do you think, Caitlin?

SPEAKER_00

Well, it's so hard to tell um because I go back and forth on this. So I I certainly know that AI makes things theoretically easier to build. Uh and I've played around very superficially. Like my AI is primarily Chat GPT still, and I'm working to change that. But you know, I I tried lovable, like uh tried a couple other platforms, and I got to a certain point, and then I was like, I I don't know what to do with this. Like I can't go any further. I don't know how to, I don't know what prompt you want me to say, but this is not working between the two of us. I give up. Um but it certainly is reducing, and I'm actually this was uh Marcus uh puts out a a weekly almost weekly newsletter called CIO and beta, and he was talking about how AI is reducing time. So time used to be a really big moat for um founders, but it's no longer that. I am genuinely pleased to see the shift from everybody saying they have AI in their products to actually having AI in their products. Um and I'm excited about what AI can do for founders who don't necessarily have the resources to hire a team around them, but have the technical skills to do something that much more so than I could do. Uh I think like everything, this is we've gone, we tend to go like a pendulum, right? We swing all the way this way and we swing all the way this way. And what will move us forward ultimately is when we find that balance. And I don't think we're quite there yet. Um but that's what I'm excited for when sort of the hype and the hysteria dies down a little bit, yes, and we can really see in action what these things can do. Clearly, people have done amazing things already with it. Is there gonna are there gonna be more unicorn founders because of this? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. It's it's very interesting. I I mean, I have a couple of thoughts on this. Um, one is you know, because we're where are we going to be in the near term and the longer term? We're we're right in the middle, I think, of that peak hype cycle. Um and of course, companies are rapidly trying to uh attract heaps of uh investment money, venture capital. And so, you know, if you want to trust people like Sam Altman, when he said the other day, apparently, I'm calling it, you know, AGI is already here. Well, I don't know about that. Um, but I think metaphorically, I wonder as a question, is AI going to end up being kind of like the equivalent of, you know, when you're younger? I mean, even though I'm only clearly only 25. But you know, you go to the nightclub and it's it's a dark nightclub, and like you somehow find yourself uh next to and dancing with this really hot person, and then everything's all great, and you're all hormones and all that kind of jazz. And then um, you know, what happens sometimes is you get podcast is this?

SPEAKER_00

You've invited me to hold on, hold on.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, cue the samba music, cue the thing anyway. You know what I mean? Like then you get them out into the light of day, and it's like, hmm, that wasn't what I thought this was gonna be. You know what I'm saying? Or maybe they're thinking that about me. Um I'm projecting.

SPEAKER_05

That story did say a lot more about you than it did about AI.

SPEAKER_01

That was before I had my my third penthouse in Paris, so a little different now, yes. Um which is why now I have a t-shirt. I should have worn it. It's like, hey, I have a penthouse in Paris. You want to come up and see my etchings? Naturally, but metaphorically, like, is it is this just gonna is this gonna burn out? Is it nonsense? Is there is it well Trevor? You wouldn't know a little bit, wouldn't you?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, well, I I think uh Caitlin, I'm very much along your uh uh thoughts that you know again there's there's the hype and there's everyone saying they're using AI when when in reality it's sort of you know it's a bunch of people behind the screens sort of responding to prompts or or fixing things. Um uh but I I do I have certainly seen like the um uh the enablement of me being more productive or at least getting more out of my day with AI, although although some the person I was sitting next to at at uh at uh the the breakfast was sort of shocked and and was saying like you need to like spend some time away from a screen.

SPEAKER_05

I'm like no no you don't understand.

SPEAKER_03

It it helps me. Uh but you know I think I think either Claude Code um is just great, and and I mean there there's lots of versions of that with the different um platforms as well. But Claude Code I think does an excellent job of you can point it at a directory of folders. I mean, I had I had this exact problem that I had uh uh my CTO had to step away um from uh the company to to do um other things that or she she got a new job and and had other things that that were on her plate. Um and so I got sort of dumped with a whole bunch of scripts for you know like piles of scripts for each of the different um um projects that we have ongoing. And um I was able to kind of work my way through that by uh pointing Claude Code at it and saying, hey, here's for you know, step one, document everything that's in here, and then step two, kind of like learn what the different parts are, and then kind of reassemble them in in a way that made sense to me, um, that helped me to sort of move move the project forward. Um and um and even like here's some proprietary format for um for uh for segmentation um uh and uh like reverse kind of reverse engineer it and give m build me an importer that can import it into a software that I know how to use so that I can do something with this. And um and it was able to do that, you know, what would have taken me a week of my time sitting there and pairing through the docs and and figuring it out, it was able to do in a couple of hours with kind of a conversation, you know, with a natural language conversation.

SPEAKER_01

So I think And did it was the output of that ultimately uh what's the word accurate enough that you didn't feel like you had to spend hours and hours yes and no, right?

SPEAKER_03

So um um when when I think uh I went to a AI thing that said like uh uh and there was a guy who's been a software engineer for 30 years and is now using AI for a lot of stuff, and he said, you can't get away from um doing the hard software engineering parts, you know, and so um which means kind of keeping an eye on what it's doing. Um so so that you know that that sort of importer was a clear win for me because it solved something that I was I think we were previously we couldn't read the files, so we had to sort of read the images that the files produced and sort of trace around the outlines of these things and it was imperfect. But with this direct importer, I could not only I could not only get the actual polygons that were saved in the file itself, um, but I could also get the um labels for each of the cells that were in that file. Um and so and the labels were sort of the more the more important thing um because that related to actual biology of each of these cells.

SPEAKER_01

Um just to sort of interact to interject, just to remind our our audience, um Trevor knows a thing or two about the application of uh what like machine learning and other technologies to medical uh image diagnostics, right? Didn't they teach you that at the Manatool Institute of Trucker? AKA MIT.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, yes. Okay, most of that I I I I learned a lot of that I learned subsequent to MIT, where I was um running a core facility in um uh Princess Margaret Cancer Center, and they're sort of the data analyst responsible for helping to take all of these different image formats that were coming off of the images and uh convert them into something that could be useful for a publication, that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01

Let me ask you something on that very nice, because I'm very curious. It almost seems like you wouldn't have have to have gone to all that trouble, perhaps, and money um and opportunity costs of going to MIT, the real MIT folks. Holy, um could you have instead, um, now that you're tempting me, could I just like go out and buy a white coat and show up to say the likes of Princess Margaret, which is one of the premier cancer research institutes in the world, right? Just show up and hey, I'm the new in I'm the new fellow or what I'm the new intern and just go and learn that until they kick me out.

SPEAKER_02

No.

SPEAKER_03

No. Uh I mean, like MIT was was great. I mean, A, they paid me to go, uh, you know, so I was there for grad school. So I'm I'm I I didn't even bother applying um for undergrad because it was like$40,000 a year, and that just wasn't in our path. So I went for undergrad, I went to the University of Buffalo, um, which was like the biggest state school in the SUNY system, and was incredible. And like I could take like I could take med school classes at the same time as taking my engineering classes, and um, and so I I got a lot out of it.

SPEAKER_01

And then you weren't tempted. And sorry, and you weren't tempted by the terrific nightlife of downtown Buffalo, right? No.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly. Um uh and then by the time I got to MIT, then um my my boss would consist constantly remind me that not only was he paying my stipend, you know, uh my grad student stipend to like for living expenses, but he was also paying the MIT tuition, um uh, which was like, you know, again,$47,000. So I cost him more than a postdoctoral fellow. Um but I made it up for him by getting 10 papers out in five years. So so uh, you know, and uh working pretty hard. Uh but I think I actually you you derailed me, Rob, because I think I was getting back to the second of yes, which is fine. Um uh this the where AI doesn't work if you're not careful, you know. So I think I was I was looking through the code that it had generated for one of my things, and uh there was a random number generator, and I'm like, what are you using that random number generator for? And it's like, oh, I um I couldn't I couldn't import your data, so I just made up a bunch of data over here, and I'm using that like because I think um you know, like the the problem with AI is that it doesn't it doesn't like failure, right?

SPEAKER_00

It's sort of which is such a human element, yes, right? So funny.

SPEAKER_03

Well, but but that's worth and it's it's extremely sycophantic and it will like always trying to please you. And so when it couldn't import those files, rather than just coming and asking me, you know, well, what how do I import those files? It said, I'm gonna make up some data over here, and then we're gonna use that, and then eventually we'll get back to like you know, importing the real data. But um, and and so then I'm like, no, no, don't ever make up data, you know, insert the right data. And so then it fixed it said, it said, okay, okay, I fixed it. And then I I look at it again and I'm like, no, you didn't fix it. And I was like, oh, well, I fixed it in the script that was generating these files, but we didn't actually run that script to regenerate the files. So you can't do that.

SPEAKER_00

I'm sorry to interrupt, but has anybody done like a book that sounds very archaic, but are there Reddit posts of these hallucinations?

SPEAKER_04

Uh I I'm sure there are, yeah.

SPEAKER_00

There has to be. I really want to read those.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, it's uh uh we we should definitely if there isn't, we should start one of like you know, funniest kind of hallucinations, because I think it's it's definitely, but I've certain seen anecdotally it's it's the case. And so and so then people get into like there's there's ways of telling it um not to do that, and you know, and and even I think I saw one that that I used on myself that was very uh actually quite helpful. And I said to ChatGPT, which I'd just been using for like solve this problem, solve this problem, solve that problem over the years. Um it was like be brutally honest with me and tell me everything I'm doing wrong, you know, and uh and it it went pretty hard.

SPEAKER_05

And so it's like you're the CEO of this company, you shouldn't be troubleshooting someone's access to GitHub. You should like, you know, like this, this, this, this, the next.

SPEAKER_03

And so um uh uh but but what emerged out of that was like, well, uh how about we put together a knowledge base for the company, you know, that because I think I think that the trouble I had was that um was that our our existing sort of data analysts, they were trained sort of one at a time by um by um the the tech person at the time and and but none of that was actually saved and recorded anywhere. And so it it sort of it hurt my engineer you know heart to to see like a process that wasn't sort of documented in a way that could be reproduced. And so uh and so my approach then was to like start a knowledge base literally just on GitHub on the company GitHub, and it's like here's here's a bunch of like if you do something more than once, you know, write it down, put it in the knowledge base, um, because most likely some of your colleagues might might be doing that as well, and then populated it with like some things that I saw, and then now now the question is kind of getting getting the rest of the company to buy in to actually edit and update that. Um, which I think like sometimes there's even a uh activation energy of like learning how to use GitHub in a more interactive way rather than just dumping files, but like you know, downloading the markdown files, taking a look at them, editing them, uploading the revisions.

SPEAKER_01

You you you have the technical chops to be able to assess whether the AI tools right now are actually doing things that are real or you know, you can kind of see whether they're correct or not. But you know, these tools I think Caitlin you'd referenced earlier, lovable, um, which I am you know kind of superficially familiar with. And how you know you can just kind of oh, you can just vibe code your way into everything, but I do think it's a bit of the last mile uh problem. And it reminds me of you know, and and and that can create more work. Like I remember I'd seeing a few months ago all those, you know, things are changing, developing, that um overall at least AI wasn't actually creating less less work for people. I don't know if it's debatable whether it's gonna create less employment or not, but it wasn't creating less work for people overall. Um, I don't know how uh true that statement is because it was causing other things like that last month.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, yes. No, I I think the way the way that I've heard it um phrased is that it's um some people find it difficult, right? Because um when where software coding used to spend sort of 80% of your time coding and then 20% sort of like thinking about and detecting stuff, it sort of it flips that on its head because now the the the um AI takes care of all of that sort of grunt work of the actual coding and putting you know putting pages together and stuff. And so then you end up spending a lot more of your time on the sort of uh potentially kind of higher cognitive load, you know, um things of thinking how to structure this all together and and and those sorts of things. So some people were actually complaining that like it yes, it accelerates, but it's sort of um, I mean, I I I remember a great exam uh uh analogy of this was I was uh when I was in undergrad, I had a uh professor I was working for, and um and he would uh uh so he was studying decompression sickness. So the bends, when you fast, you get bubbles in your uh in your blood and your tissues. Um and so uh he had this uh old whatever 386 computer that would um would slow like run a mathematical model and chunk through overnight, and he'd come come back like he'd so he'd set the thing up, it would run overnight, he'd come back in the morning, and then he'd get his answer, and then he would um sort of like you know, he would think about the answer and then revise the code over the day, and and and so then I brought in my my fancy Pentium One computer, right? At the time that I'd uh uh uh you know uh that I'd got just when I was a freshman in college. And I um and then I showed we installed the same program, and what used to take sort of an overnight run took now like 15 minutes or an hour or something, but that was too fast for him. Like he didn't have the time to sort of think about it and reflect and come back. So, you know, it didn't work.

SPEAKER_01

I think I think what's profoundly important.

unknown

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

That you know, and it's somewhat paradoxical because like as we speed things up and as we have more information, it is in a way um not only the time, but ultimately Our ability to do deep thought about things. And so it's questionable in my mind the ultimate output of all this kind of thing. It'll make some people very rich. Um, I I I'd written down here something which I increasingly I think is the case. I have kind of thought more vaguely this is the case for some years now with technology in the march thereof digitally, but um particularly pointed with AI's development is I I think what we're ultimately going to see is essentially an atomization of the workforce that will, you know, there are going to be fewer big companies that require all this labor to do this stuff. And out of necessity, and in some cases, some people just have that gene for entrepreneurship and we'll do it. But you you'll as a result, a lot of us will become entrepreneurs. And um people will very reluctantly enter that world, and there's good and bad to it. But I I I don't I don't know if I subscribe at this point to the apocalyptic kind of outcome of AI, and I certainly don't just subscribe to the other extreme of the poll, which is like, wow, isn't this great? You know, like these ridiculous techno-optimists. It's I I tend to think of things in the kind of Blueist way, the middle way. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

It's definitely gonna change how we work, you know. Um, and it's it's kind of a question of how does that translate into um uh you know, like our jobs and how our jobs are going to change. But that's the the same could have been said for when the internet came around, right?

SPEAKER_01

Remember, email? Oh, this is great. I don't know to send things through the mail and go to the post office, and it's gonna be great, it's gonna increase my efficiency. Uh no.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, uh, which I think that is one thing that people struggle with, and I'm gonna talk about my level at least, which is senior director, so that not C suite, not manager, somewhere in the middle.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_00

How do I implement AI? Pardon? How do I implement that uh AI in my workforce? Um, I mean, I keep thinking back to our co-founder Ben. He wrote Lean Analytics. I don't know if you know that book, but with Alistair Kral. Um, and he has said a million times, just because you can build something doesn't mean you should. And I really struggle. Chat GPT I use all the time. It gets me over my writer's block, and a big chunk of my job is communication, and it's just it's a lifesaver for me because I I don't have that fear of failure as much. I don't know why, but I I mean I still edit everything, but it it just gets me over that hump. But other than that, I'm not using AI, like I'm not building processes and uh little tools for myself because I've had a frustrating experience in the past. And I need, I guess it probably exists. I'm sure there's AI camps or something that I could go to, but they don't necessarily have my business in mind.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

So how do how does leadership give those tools and that strategy to their workers so that they can succeed with AI?

SPEAKER_03

It's a very good question. And it's something actually I've been I've been toying with uh with a friend of mine in terms of like, do we run like an AI boot camp for uh for managers that kind of says, um, you know, like here's what we can do to save you time or something like that. But I think the the thing I struggle with in that is is the value proposition, you know, of of what are those things that take you time that um you know that the AI can speed up. And that's going to be somewhat different for every person that's you know like looking at it. So for for myself, uh one of the other things I've done is I've installed um Nanobot, which is sort of a miniaturized version of OpenClaw, um, on one of my computers at home. And what that does is it's basically an always listening um kind of uh uh uh agent that I can speak to and I can say, hey, I'm working on and uh uh what I where I found it really useful is just um just in uh uh helping me to manage my to-dos. So like I'm on whereas when I was on the subway previously going downtown, I would be like whatever, playing solitaire or something on my phone, like you know, distracting just something distracting. Now I'm I'm using Telegram to communicate with my nanobot and say, hey, I've got to do this thing with the kids, I've got to pick up some milk after, you know, like after work, I gotta um do this, this, this. And it takes all of my random to-dos and sort of structures them in a well, here's a chunk of stuff you have to do that involves email. So maybe when you're sitting in front of a laptop, you can do those. And then, you know, like helps me to um as I can just brain dump, you know, things that I need to do, and it helps me to kind of organize that in in a certain way. Um, and and I find that I find that to be useful, but um, that's again sort of a bit of a personal like thing for myself.

SPEAKER_00

So and do you have that on a separate machine or is that connected to so I I recently met somebody who did something very similar, but they were very conscious to put it on a standalone that doesn't have access to their email and all their information.

SPEAKER_03

Yes, yes, yes. I I I'm being very cautious about that because I've read the nightmare. You know, I mean, some people swear by, oh, just let AI take over your digital life and it's great. Um, but then other people are like, oh, it it it left, you know, it left the uh API key for all of my, you know, my my logins, all of my AIs just right out there. Um so I think I've I've tried to I've tried to sort of that's why I'm starting like baby steps and so I'm not having it yes, it's a standalone machine, um, separate from the one I use every day. Um uh it doesn't I haven't yet sort of logged it into um my uh my calendar or anything like that. Um but I think before I do, I think you know, like again, I'm gonna pre-feed it instructions of when you when you're accessing my email, you know, never delete anything, never kind of like never hit enter on the response. You can always draft a response, but I'm the one that needs to like review it and respond, you know, like actually press the send button. Um just to avoid those sorts of you know um things. And and so and and so even, you know, and then uh uh even to the point of some people that I'm speaking with that, you know, don't really want they're working on private data sets or something. They don't want to um interacting with some open, you know, with some some AI that could be learning from it. So um there are even ways of of installing a local uh large language model, like an open source large language model that runs on your computer itself, and then that way there's there's no uh interaction with the outside world. Like it's it's not gonna be as advanced as you know, as Opus or Chat 4.5 or whatever the latest version is, but um, but it's going to uh it's gonna ensure that none of your proprietary information that you're working on will um will interface with the open with the outside world.

SPEAKER_00

So that's interesting because I I also come back to one of my concerns is security with everybody building the app like anybody can build an app theoretically. Now I have heard from some folks that some of these um coding applications have built-in security, but I I remember again with Tim Hortons of Burger King when GDPR was introduced. That was a freaking nightmare to go back and structure our data. And I don't know that I trust a young guy and or girl um to build an app that I'm gonna love that will actually care about my data and keeping it safe. I'm I'm not sure about that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to share something with you that underlines that point, which kind of threw me off balance and it's it's happened to me twice um recently. So um my wife's car is about to come off lease, and so um, you know, we have one child, our son, who's 20, who uh loves cars, and so of course he's trying to convince uh his mother and I, particularly his mother, to like get something super awesome. Yeah, so she has indulged this wish for the last few weeks. We uh we've been uh test driving some really amazing cars, and well, amazing that she entertains that some of these are well, you you know, as a university student, you get good grades and we'll actually get this car. I won't tell you what it is, but like it's it's this crazy car. Um but there, I don't know whether we well, certainly we weren't told, and even I worked quite a bit in digital media and marketing and and and know how these things work to some degree. Um, but I must say, even I was surprised when today and recently, like suddenly all these random people from the likes of Land Rover, Range Rover, and Aston Martin and even Rolls-Royce, believe it or not, has been following me around to connect to do all this. It's like, where is this kind of? I have no idea these people are. I'm like, oh well, somehow um they are, I guess, sharing, like, say Mercedes uh shares data with these people, or maybe it's just like uh uh, you know, on a human level, they have deals like, well, if they don't buy the Mercedes, they might yumble each other into similar car dealerships and they might buy from you, so they probably have some kind of cross, you know, maybe not even uh corporate sanctioned. Um but to your point, like I don't think you can trust these people either either on an asset ethical basis or on a uh the basis of competency. There are too many complex moving parts that that could go wrong. And I I know my family thinks I'm paranoid about this, but I'm like, I I tell them, I say, when you're on the TV and you're watching YouTube, like never ever log into YouTube, never do any of these things. They're trying to connect all the dots, and the dots are, you know, even if you think you're doing things separately, I I this might be super paranoid, but I think it's probably worth it. Like you're talking about a separate 386 machine, like an old machine that doesn't have anything, there's no way of getting that on there other than like physically taking the thing, but I'm not so sure about that. Like, you know, you have a little bit here, you love a little bit there, and the human mind being what it is too, you tend to forget what you put in those places, and then when they can aggregate that data and consolidate it and infer, you know, I I like Google knows so much about me, and then there's another company with their data set proprietary about me, and none of them have the complete picture, and they all know that, but then they go through exchanges, which are essentially like big digital stock exchanges, and they're trading information for money, which goes back to I don't know if we're recording this, it was before we got on, but how I tend to use the Brave browser or DuckDuckGo is because like if you use Chrome, for example, they every time you pull something, some request on there, some file, it is selling that that piece of data through an exchange that they're not exchanging in. It's super slow. I I can't stand Chrome.

SPEAKER_00

Um I didn't even know about Brave. I've heard of DuckDuckGo, but I am gonna certainly check that out. I also am that terrible person because I have no patience of like, yes, have my data, yes, just get me to the next screen. Yeah, right. And you don't nobody reads that stuff. Well, yeah, sorry, I shouldn't say that. The majority of people don't read that stuff, just like you don't read your credit card agreement.

SPEAKER_04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00

Um, there should be some law that summarizes the key information. It's like, do you remember um airline prices? They used to advertise it without the tax, yeah, and then they had they made it a law that they had to show it with the tax because the taxes sometimes were more or equal to like they'd show a$200 flight, but the taxes were$600. No, the fees, like baggage fees, fees fees and all that stuff.

unknown

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. I just I think it's symptomatic of our essentially in this part of the world, at least capitalistic society. And we're living next to arguably the most capitalistic society on earth, the Americans. And we're pulled into this. And even if we have laws in Canada, for example, that protect us, you know, there are things in there. If you if you use American technologies, there are things written into American law that can completely ignore your sovereign law, which is bogus. But what are you gonna do? Go to war with America? Well, obviously, we we've seen what what that results in.

SPEAKER_03

Well, yeah, you you can you can use alternatives, you know, is is the one thing. So I think I think there that's something that I've seen um uh rising up with the recent tensions, um, is that there's there's been a whole new uh certainly in the hospital space, um, if there is a Canadian entity that's doing something um that was used to be done by you know more of a global entity or something, um, then then the the hospitals need to need to consider that. Um and so that's been helpful for one of the startups I'm I'm involved in, which is uh biospecimen storage. And in that case, you know, we're we're storing stuff in Canada for the for the local hospital network, and um, and we have some advantages over kind of a larger conglomerate that um that is uh you know not sovereign and based in in Canada. Um and the same with the same with data, like we helped to store data and and we're working with a um a cloud provider that is um that has you know kind of sovereign um cloud centers um in in Canada that don't interact with the US because I think that was that was a big deal in a recent um lawsuit or something that um Microsoft or Amazon couldn't couldn't um guarantee that your data wouldn't at some point reside in a in a um uh in in a server that was in the States.

SPEAKER_00

That seems like a massive opportunity for Canadian entities then.

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00

But that means that companies want to support that. We need the companies that want to support that sovereignty, and we need people building in Canada to support that sovereignty.

SPEAKER_01

I think it's certainly happening with things like uh with all the money flowing to defense now. Now, Trevor, obviously, you can talk more about the healthcare system, but you know, defense is like that that is super fundamental to our security as a people, is that you know, we're maybe certain things you shouldn't share even with your, well, allies.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And going back to just talking about how data can get misused, um, one of the things that when we started this conversation and knowing that you're in healthcare, Trevor, it's such a huge opportunity as a consumer to have my health data to travel with me everywhere. So that wherever I go, you know, doctors are only human. So if I go to somebody for uh, I don't know, chronic ear infections, because I just go to the walk-in clinic and then go happen, I have something that's wrong with my lungs, and somehow they're connected, but because it's disconnected, nobody sees that pattern. Yes, yes, but then I think about, and I don't know what the right answer is, somebody if monopolizing or capitalizing on that patient data.

SPEAKER_03

Right. No, that and that's a huge that is that is absolutely a huge deal. And um, you know, and and and I think there's an active discussion about who actually owns that data. Is it the patient or is it the hospital? And the hospital is uh is the the hospital is really the the the curator of the data, but you know, ultimately it allows the patient.

SPEAKER_01

So you should be able to demand it to be deleted, I think.

SPEAKER_03

Well you can certainly delete it. It's because um it's because hospitals in Canada are mandated to keep um samples for twenty years for adults. Oh my god, or fifty years for pediatrics, like just in case there's a recurrence when you're looking at my shoulder. So you know that leads the basement to filling up with these specimens that could be used for in the basement's invaluable downtown real estate Toronto real estate that could be used for better things, you know.

SPEAKER_01

Your name attached to them. Well, um anonymous.

SPEAKER_03

Well, it it's it's uh it's the uh the you know the the ID, like the the um the ID of the patient, which is then linked up to your name itself as well.

SPEAKER_00

So then you'd have to store the data as well of for 50 years of who that ID is and 20 years.

SPEAKER_03

Whether or not that happens, that's a very good question. There's probably paper records. Oh gosh. But you know, I mean uh uh up until very recently I remember one of my radiology friends was complaining that like we still send radiology reports around biofax in the year 2026. It's it's there's there's the the the hospital, you know, like the healthcare runs uh slowly uh for for good reason because they don't want to change you know, they they certainly don't want to change so fast that um that it can lead to some something bad happening to a patient. Um you know, so there's some good reasons for that, but I think it does lead to a lot of these sort of ossified things where um you know there's not very there's uh innovation in healthcare is hard. Um and so, you know, for for that reason I think I've sort of I've stayed in my sort of comfort zone of of working in the research space where there's a little less kind of um you know overhead, but um I think that that doesn't you know that I do need to also interact with uh the clinical space and I have done that in like clinical trial um analysis in the past, but um you you really you know like as you get more closer to working with patients, you have to be a lot more rigorous about um both your processes and making sure that you know like like things aren't mislabeled and that sort of stuff, you know, because ultimately when it impacts patients, it's it's uh it's a very important thing. So um, but there there's certainly you know areas for improvement in that space. And I think um, you know, that's something that that uh um you know is is an area of opportunity um um for the future for sure.

SPEAKER_00

There's a founder that I met while I was at 111, he's a founder of CHA AI. So they are their mission is to keep seniors and those with debilitating illnesses in their home for as long as possible, and he uses AI systems to interpret um potential falls, and and he's been very conscious about privacy, so everything is stored locally. His name is Robert Stanley, he'd be a great addition to the Tech and Girl Breakfast. Um and then he should meet Nadine.

SPEAKER_01

He should, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's doing something great. She's in that space on that as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yes, I actually I think I reached out to her and mentioned his name as well. I reached out on LinkedIn after I read that. That's right. I'm glad you you brought that up, but he should meet Nadine. The other thing that I wanted to throw out here, because why not? Um, I met a lovely young woman who works in the philanthropic fund of sick kids, and it's um an investment fund, but you don't get anything in your turn other than goodwill. So you invest money for four years, um, and then you get the opportunity each year to have a vote on which research will be funded that year. And if there's any commercializations of those projects, the money goes back on the fund. Really interesting concept. But she has invited me to a tour of the sick kids facility on April 28th. If either of you would like to come, let me know. Because she said, invite who you want. And I would love to have a have somebody else there, especially of you two brilliant minds. There's an amazing woman out of the sick kids foundation who is the uh, and maybe one of either of you know her, I don't remember her name, but she is the chief AI officer for the Sick Kids Foundation, and what she's been able to do and the way she describes AI, she would make the best speaker ever. She's just great. Could be, because that sounds somewhat familiar.

SPEAKER_03

Um I don't think she's for the foundation, she's chief AI for like the whole um for the research area, but whole kitten cabudo.

SPEAKER_00

That is not her, but it and this woman specifically foundation. I mean, I recently got introduced to the Sick Kids Foundation, and it is such a remarkable organization.

SPEAKER_01

So I know that my my family, I won't say who it was, but like we we benefited from their care and we saw like, man, these are these are some of the best people in the world. Like the yeah, the team, the physicians, the nurses.

SPEAKER_03

um like general staff were fantastic so yeah uh uh if i'm around on the 28th yeah maybe if you don't mind send me that i will listeners who want to uh you know we have many many mega donors on um gosling being one of them i think um so like send me send me uh send me a a whatsapp note buddy and um you know if you're in town on the 28th um maybe yeah come on ryan gosling you're invited can i bring my friend friend ryan gosling can yeah absolutely all right i'll see if he's not busy him and eva might be busy that evening i don't know well you have quite a connection with hollywood don't you rob legitimately uh well i i do have some connections why do you ask i'm i'm very curious i only remember uh hearing a bit of your history but it sort of spans every single industry i'm aware of and i remember you talking and i i can't remember the the story but somebody that you were working with in production or something like that you were out on the west coast yeah yeah it's uh it's uh we we we're we're I think going to be doing more work with a company that uh is headed or co-headed by a Canadian and a uh Hollywood producer and they are using AI in fact they uh what they put to us I haven't seen the film yet but it was the first full-length feature film created entirely by AI which is pretty exciting and they're doing lots of things um also uh reaching back into the bowels of my serpentine past and me having done everything is many years ago uh I was actually on the Korean equivalent of friends believer yeah you see you didn't know um and like the you know it was like I was one of two leads and we would go all over the place in the city and it was fantastic it was like a part-time thing for me but it was such a great job and um I lost that job because my other co-lead uh the very beautiful Kate who was an Aussie who had moved with her Korean uh Korean boyfriend and the Kum husband um and this stupid director and you know like as is the case in Hollywood apparently in Asia as well the movie business entertainment in Asia as in Hollywood it is uh you know kind of been thoroughly infiltrated by the scourge of nepotism and so the director was the son of the whole studio owner and um owned lots of media assets and so he was always making these super inappropriate um you know comments to Kate and I'm like dude like you can't do that and then so he didn't like that um yeah so I I have I've done a few things um but yeah I'm very interested in what what will come of uh entertainment in the next little while I always just yeah with with AI being making it so easy to to generate these uh these things I don't know if you've seen even like the the Iranian um like reverend guard is putting out um these like full-length sort of like mini movies uh mocking Trump and everything and uh and it's like a Trump a little Lego character uh uh Trump and uh it's it's it's amazing and it's just you know like they're they're just generating it on you know not even not even a shoestring budget but just from the tools that are available uh you know uh around and you wonder how they're doing that are they doing that in a bunker somewhere as the bombs are falling around them like it's it's on a practical level like how do you how do you concentrate yeah yeah yeah yeah well I mean it's a big country there's 90 million people and you know there's a lot of them in in the guard itself and and you know like being in a in a propaganda wing of of a you know a company uh of a country you could you could be anywhere you know like I mean and and I mean Russia well Russia is a big um example of this right they they they directly influenced you know several US elections at this stage um by putting out um you know uh all of this sort of uh pro-Trump propaganda and um and and you see we saw it when you know X.com or Twitter um uh turned on the location uh tags for where where people are posting from and um and a whole swath of these you know like right wing uh you know uh American you know uh posts were were were being uh done from Pakistan or from uh from Russia other places. So so you know it's it's well it's good and it's bad, right? AI is good in that case because it's enabling people to make um new content. So I I saw something that was like this incredibly moving sort of uh uh thing in the in the Star Wars universe of Darth Vader like um uh visiting Padme's grave and it was like this this incredible you know like short again short film completely made with AI um uh and I mean hopefully it's still up hopefully Lucasfilm hasn't sort of gone after them but um you know that it it's enabling people to create content in you know in a in a new in new ways um and then but it's not necessarily that the um the technology is good or evil right it's it's the the people using the technology and what they use it for. You know um so I think I think that's uh that's another interesting you know kind of concept to to think about is that um the technology enables that like for for for myself I've long since given up on on worrying about you know whether Google knows my my um you know what I'm doing at any one particular time but um the the trade-off is that I have you know gmail emails going way back uh in my in my lifetime that I can sort of dig into and search up if I need to remember like yeah but you know what I do like I I I understand what you're saying but apart from me doing things like using DuckDuckGo and to and just not not putting out more than I need to I will actually on occasion purposefully go out there and put BS out there because I'm I'm deadly serious and like I and I will even click on things that are completely antithetical to my belief um because I just want to like pollute their their you're trying to confuse the the uh that's exactly what I have algorithm like straight up that's what I do I do the opposite and I I just have I have distinct I have like five different distinct they know everything about you I have five different distinct uh you know like like personalities on uh whatever it is Instagram or or YouTube I have different channels for like so my my my I can I can tell well uh for certainly for the different people in my family so that you know all of the the sort of knit there's a knitting and gardening channel there's like mine which is like all politics and then there's my kids which is like all Minecraft and and Lego videos.

SPEAKER_00

So but that's interesting um there's two things I just want to talk about I know we're probably running close to time. Yes yeah having literal different profiles representing different parts of yourself. I think that's really fascinating in itself and and I know you went on to explain that's more so for your children but I am like I really want to know does the does the Rob that is not Rob is there a focus on that Rob or is it just completely random it could be anything from gardening to okay so there's no other alter email that is forming here.

SPEAKER_01

And in fact I'll leave you with this uh I still find it rather amusing um when I first signed up for Facebook years ago um and I believe if I recall correctly um that was founded in 2004 and so it was like maybe 2006 2007 and I was already kind of hearing through the grapevine a little bit about you know like that they're playing fast and loose with uh privacy and it was actually at a Harvard Club of Toronto event I wish I could remember this fellow's name and and and meet him again and I was telling this guy um this and I'm like you know like I'm kind of interested in this Facebook thing and but like I'm kind of concerned about like I've heard some things about and playing fast and loose and you know my private data and stuff. And he goes well let me tell you something because I was literally at Harvard College with him and on the same Dharma floor I know Zook. That's the first time I ever heard that nickname Zuck he's like basically saying that Mark Zuckerberg had no scruples and so I was right to be paranoid. And so um what I had done they eventually forced me to close this but I literally was a 101 year old man. I was using nickname all this kind of stuff. Yeah and so they eventually the buggers they got me because I didn't use the right birthday obviously and like please and I'd long forgotten like actually what the actual date was like it's still there I think I'm if if so so the moral of the story is if you're if you're gonna lie to the algorithm uh keep your facts straight. Yeah yeah but that's just one little thing but but I will like I I don't use Facebook I don't use those things I don't need to and you know um you've probably already realized Caitlin like like those things that we do like that tech and girl breakfast series. By the way listeners if you're in Toronto you it's almost always the first Friday of every month except that there's a holiday day before but I much prefer in-person things um you know and and as a way to meet people wherever possible um I'm in Paris obviously so we couldn't do that today. So um but anyway so on that note thank you so much for joining us uh Caitlyn this is oh thank you for having me it was so fun. Yeah lots of fun and um you know as Trevor and I like to say um all this is just to justify our um I don't know existence as I to listeners if you can get but one gem not a germ but one gem out of what one of us says which is probably Caitlin one of the guests and then we'll have done something good. And um you know for all the millions of listeners out there of course I'm speaking in the future um you know thank you so much and thank you to our uh hordes of sponsors and Burger King yes like uh call me and at least at least you could sponsor us with with the odd free whopper my wife would love me to death um so thank you Trevor thank you Caitlin um and thank you Rob cats for not being too noisy outside my door they're clearly hungry I don't know if that came through um but we'll see you next time so tell all your friends comment share um and um yeah Ryan Gosling yeah right we've got Ryan Gosling and Burger King these are our but he's the one that's been like buzzing my phone Robe

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