Elevators, AI, and the Fear of Change

Summary

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Culture & Code: "Elevators, AI, and the Fear of Change"

Hosts: Rei Inamoto & Tara Tan
Date: September 23, 2025

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Overview

In this thought-provoking episode of Culture & Code, Rei Inamoto and Tara Tan explore the intersection of technology, culture, and our collective apprehension toward change. Using the historic adoption of automatic elevators as a metaphor, they analyze technophobia, rapid digital transformation (especially with AI), and how these phenomena are re-shaping society, industries, and the role of human creativity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Elevator Metaphor: How We Fear New Tech

• Timeline of Automatic Elevators (00:00—04:25):

  • Otis automated elevator buttons were invented in the 1890s, but it took about 50 years (until the 1940s-50s) for the public to broadly accept and use operator-less elevators.
  • Despite technological safety, people were reluctant: “When these automatic elevators were introduced, nobody wanted to get into them. ... The technology was there, but the human passengers were afraid to get into them without somebody you can trust to operate the box.”
    — Rei Inamoto, 03:32

• Pattern Recognition:

  • This mirrors today’s reluctance to embrace autonomous vehicles or AI—in both cases, trust and the need for “the human touch” play crucial roles in adoption.

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2. Comparing Adoptions: Then vs. Now

• Unprecedented Speed in AI Adoption (04:56—07:46):

  • Tara details her own heavy LLM (Large Language Model) usage—“I’ve had about 3,800 conversations in the last two and a half years, which averages out to about 75 minutes of collaboration a day.” (05:37, Tara Tan)
  • She notes that AI tools, such as ChatGPT, reached 100M users in 2 months, compared to TikTok’s 9 months and Instagram’s 30 months.
  • “We’re going at it at a pretty exponential rate. … I’m a moderate heavy user, but I think there are folks who are much, much more heavy users.” (07:10, Tara Tan)

• Nature of New Tools:

  • LLMs and generative AI streamline tasks previously handled by humans, like minute-taking in corporate meetings, often producing equal or better results.

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3. Human Factors: The Role of “Touch” in Service

• Tasks Easy for AI vs. Tasks Still Requiring Humans (07:51—11:28):

  • Routine, transactional work—like note-taking or certain types of customer service—are the first to be automated.
  • But experiences where emotional nuance or personal interaction are valued (e.g., hotel check-in, luxury services) are slower to change.

• Quote:

  • “I appreciate being greeted by a human being and I appreciate being checked in by a human being at that hotel.”
    — Rei Inamoto, 10:13

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4. Enduring Fear of Change & Acceptance Barriers

• Cultural Resistance (11:28—12:41):
  • Tara observes, “Fear of new tech has been something that’s plagued us for centuries. ... Even like when writing was invented or printing press was invented and industrial machines were invented. I feel like humans have always been fearful of change.” (11:41, Tara Tan)
  • Example: Autonomous vehicles (Waymo). Tara’s informal poll—about a third of San Francisco visitors refuse to ride in one, even though data suggests they are 12x safer than human drivers (12:13).

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5. Industries at an Inflection Point

• Auto & Energy (14:14—15:08):

  • Rapid EV adoption in China, driven by battery technology advances, shows industrial leapfrogging.
  • "I think something crazy. Like a majority of cars in China right now are EVs." (14:45, Tara Tan)

• Filmmaking & Creative Industries (15:08—19:29):

  • The hosts discuss “prompt-based” filmmaking and animation tools that can rival professional studios, disrupting jobs but also increasing creative access.
  • Rei notes, “Animation studios and animators unfortunately have to either reskill and retool or upskill themselves ... or maybe even find a completely different thing.” (16:26)

• Entertainment Market Expansion (16:40—19:10):

  • Tara argues the market will actually "double or triple" in size, with demand for entertainment skyrocketing—creators just need to adapt to new tools and models instead of clinging to old workflows.

• Democratization vs. Craft

  • Rei and Tara go back and forth on technological democratization:
    • Rei: “What used to be reserved for highly skilled people with expensive tools, software and hardware tools, is now available to many people…” (19:29)
    • Tara: Access doesn’t equal quality—skill and relentless improvement (e.g., MrBeast’s hundreds of videos) still matter.
    • “AI is the same. You put in schlop, you get schlop and it's gonna be easier to create slop. But the people who put in the time and energy and craft into making these pieces, that's not gonna go away.” (21:47)

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6. Other Sectors Facing Disruption

• Broader Impacts (24:38—26:48):

  • Retail/E-commerce: Transformed radically with Web 2.0; early critics were wildly wrong.
  • Legal, Accounting, Consulting: White-collar professions based on information retrieval/organization are being upended by AI’s ability to process, retrieve, and reason with vast data.
  • Tara: “A lot of the white collar jobs ... will get impacted. It will grow in many ways. But ... it’s going to be disrupted anyway.” (25:08)

• Case Example: Legal Automation

  • Increasing accessibility to high-level legal information, less need for human intermediaries—except at the highest stakes.

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7. Closing Reflections: The Golden Age of Ideas & Using AI as Leverage

• Rei’s Takeaway (27:26–28:51):

  • “Because the bar for execution has lowered ... we may be entering a new golden age of ideas. ... But the people who are doing good work ... are relentless about coming up with good ideas ... and fine-tuning the ideas as opposed to just executing for the hell of it.”

• Tara’s Takeaway (28:51–29:36):

  • “How can you use AI as leverage, and not just as a tool? … It will almost make you superhuman. ... That’s the challenge I would leave you and everyone with, including myself, which is: how can we build these systems to leverage that change?”

• Final Exchange:

  • Rei: “It’s like a leapfrog, you know, let’s be human superhumans. Let’s become superhumans.” (29:36)
  • Tara: “Let’s be superhuman.” (29:42)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On technological resistance:

  • “The technology was there, but the human passengers were afraid to get into them without somebody you can trust to operate the box.”
    — Rei Inamoto, 03:32

• On AI tool usage and adoption speed:

  • “ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months... We’re going at it at a pretty exponential rate.”
    — Tara Tan, 06:54

• On the ongoing necessity of craft:

  • “You put in schlop, you get schlop ... the people who put in time and energy and craft, that’s not going to go away.”
    — Tara Tan, 21:47

• On societal transformation:

  • “Every time that there’s been a new technology revolution, it’s always created a new prosperous cycle for humanity, always.”
    — Tara Tan, 28:51

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:32 — Origin Story: Elevators & Cultural Resistance
• 04:56–07:46 — The Explosive Uptake of LLMs & Age of Rapid Adoption
• 07:51–11:28 — AI’s Role in Task Automation & Human Interaction
• 11:28–12:41 — Fear of Change: Autonomous Cars, Then & Now
• 14:14–15:08 — Industrial Leapfrog: EVs in China
• 15:08–19:10 — AI in Filmmaking: Expansion, Disruption, and Democratization
• 19:29–22:36 — Democratization of Tools vs. Quality of Output
• 24:38–26:48 — AI’s Disruption in Retail & White-Collar Jobs
• 27:26–29:42 — Key Takeaways: The Golden Age of Ideas & Leveraging AI

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Summary

Through engaging anecdotes and relatable metaphors, the hosts illuminate how our anxieties about automation and AI echo past technological upheavals, but with unprecedented scale and speed. The conversation offers both caution and optimism: while barriers to creation and information are plummeting, the enduring importance of skill and adaptability remains clear. The invitation to become “superhuman” by using AI as leverage—rather than just a tool—serves as an inspiring note on which to end the episode.

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Transcript

[Reina Moto]

It actually took 50 years.

[Tara Tan]

5, 050.

[Reina Moto]

So it was 1890s when these buttons were invented, but it took until about 1940s, if not 1950s, for these automatic elevators to be common. Welcome to Culture and Code, a podcast about the biggest shifts in culture and tech. I'm Reina Moto, a creative entrepreneur and founding partner of iancorp, a global innovation firm based in New York, Tokyo, and Singapore.

[Tara Tan]

And I'm Tara Tan, managing partner at Strange Ventures, an early stage fund focused on the future of computing.

[Reina Moto]

So today's topic is the adoption of new technologies. And obviously, needless to say that when we are in this, in the midst of one of the biggest transitions, at least of my lifetime, going from regular digital technologies to AI technologies. But I thought I would start off by sharing an old story of how people adapted to a new technology. And this story is about elevators. And the idea of an elevator has existed for a long, long time, you know, for centuries. But the elevators as we know them today, which is you get into this box and you press a button, and automatically it goes to the floor that you want to go to. And that technology itself, an automatic elevator that's operated by a machine, is about maybe 125 years old. So it was in the 1890s when this individual Otis, and Otis, by the way, is an elevator company today. It's one of the leading elevator companies today, was founded by an inventor in New York named Otis, who invented a button that automates the movement of the elevator. So up until then, the elevators were operated by humans, human operators who would ride the elevator with you, and that operator would have to manually dial or spin a wheel to go to a certain floor. And it was this invention of these buttons, up and down and in floor numbers that would take the passengers to that given floor. So that was in 1890s. And by that point, the elevator technology had developed enough that there were these measures that would prevent accidents from happening. So, for instance, like, let's say the rope of the elevator gets damaged or gets cut, there were stoppers or mechanisms that would stop the elevators from falling down. So technologically, elevators were safe by 1890s, and it was these buttons that made the elevators automatic. Now, the question is, you know the answer to this, but the question is, how long did it take for these automatic elevators without human operators to be adopted by the general public?

[Tara Tan]

Yeah, I was going to say seven years. I don't know. Eight years.

[Reina Moto]

No, it took much, much longer. Take a guess again.

[Tara Tan]

20.

[Reina Moto]

It actually took 50 years.

[Tara Tan]

5, 050.

[Reina Moto]

So it was 1890s when these buttons were invented, but it took until about 1940s, if not 1950s, for these automatic elevators to be common. And the reason was when these automatic elevators were introduced, nobody wanted to get into them. Yeah, people were scared of getting into an elevator, much like, I guess, these automatic vehicles or autonomous vehicles. I should say that the technology. Well, I guess autonomous vehicles may be a slightly different story, but the technologies had been around for quite some time for the elevators to function properly without a human operator, but the human passengers were afraid to get into them without somebody that you can trust to operate the box.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Reina Moto]

So I thought this would be a worthwhile topic to dig into because we are seeing automation of many things today, and we've seen automation of many, many things in the past. And as I mentioned, you know, autonomous vehicle being one of those things. I'll stop here and just see your reaction in terms of, A, the adoption of elevators, of the new technology and why it takes so long, and. And B, what patterns we are seeing today and might see in the next couple of years.

[Tara Tan]

Yeah, I mean, that's a great story. I mean, I do think elevators, for one, it's physical built environment stuff, takes a lot longer to adopt and to change because there's all these, you know, sort of physical things that happen. I mean, on the counter. It took 50 years for elevators to electrical elevators to get adopted. I think we're seeing unprecedented adoption today. So I'm preparing for a keynote talk and I was kind of looking at what was my LLM usage just on ChatGPT over the last two and a half years. And so I kind of did a quick check and I found out that I've had about 3,800 conversations.

[Interjecting Participant]

Okay.

[Tara Tan]

In the last two and a half years, which kind of averages out to about 75 minutes of collaboration. Did a day.

[Interjecting Participant]

A day. Wow.

[Tara Tan]

Every day for the last two and a half years.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tara Tan]

And so if I count in other tools like Claude, or, you know, the coding tools like, you know, cursor and so on, I'm probably sitting at about 90 to 100 minutes.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

Of working with an AI every single day for the last two and a half years.

[Reina Moto]

And I would imagine that time duration has increased more recently than say, two and a half years ago.

[Tara Tan]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Reina Moto]

Probably you may be using three hours of AI today, let's say, you know, you may have started with a half an hour two and a half years ago.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

And that's only two years. Wild. Because I was like, that is a lot of collaboration that is probably, you know, one quarter of my day at least, or more or one third and spent, you know, I don't spend that amount of time with one single person. So that's a lot. That's a lot. And if we look at the history of AI adoption, I think ChatGPT reached 100 million users in two months.

[Reina Moto]

Oh, that's right.

[Supporting Participant]

Yeah.

[Reina Moto]

I've seen the graph.

[Tara Tan]

100 million years in two months. I think for comparison, I think TikTok took about nine months to get 100 million users, and Instagram took about 30 months to get to 100. So almost two and a half years.

[Reina Moto]

And touchy. Be the only two month.

[Tara Tan]

Two months, yeah, two months. So we're thinking of the speed of adoption. I feel like we are going at it at a pretty exponential rate. And I would say I'm a moderate heavy user. I don't even think I'm that heavy. I think there are folks who are much, much more heavy users of LLMs and so on. But thinking through the history of, say, the adoption of the mobile phone, because I remember going through, like, pagers and then in the different iterations, obviously the iPhone and so on, I feel like the pace of adoption, we're seeing something that's unprecedented. You compare this to the adoption of the elevator 200 years ago.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

I think we're kind of in a. In a new zone.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Reina Moto]

A couple of thoughts. One is the nature of the tools, AI tools that we use. And I'm kind of thinking a lot as I talk about this topic, but one is that AI replaces a certain task that human beings are doing or are capable of doing, but can do it much more quickly and. Or much more efficiently. That's one. And it doesn't really matter whether it's a human being doing the work or not.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

So, for instance, like, I was talking to somebody who needed to create meeting minutes, and particularly, by the way, because I just came back from Japan, it's quite common in corporate settings and corporate meetings. And let's say there are 10 people in it.

[Tara Tan]

Sure.

[Reina Moto]

There's at least one, if not two people, whose job is to exclusively take notes at that meeting and then send the meeting, like literally meeting minutes, not even a summary, but meeting minutes, manually taken and sent to the attendees or other people.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

So I said to that person, like, AI can do this job as well as you can, if not more quickly, you know, and the output from AI will be as good as at least the ones that I've seen, almost as good as what a human being can do. So, like, why don't you just use AI to do that for you? And then her answer was, well, we're not allowed to. Like, apparently it's that corporate policy that you can't record meetings. So, I mean, that's a different topic. But the point is, is that a human task that can be done by a machine, and it doesn't really matter whether it's a human doing the job or machine doing the job. So that's one. The other type of work that can be replaced. But maybe a human factor is important, is when that human interaction between the customer and the service provider means something. So, for instance, like checking into a hotel, for instance.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

And by the way, there are certain places and certain hotels where I don't mind checking in without any interaction with a human being. But I mean, depending on how much you pay.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

A lobby. You walk into a lobby. And I appreciate being greeted by a human being and I appreciate being checked in by human being at that hotel. Yeah. Another might be, say, like, customer service, you know, service phone calls. And I would imagine, like in the next couple years that AI tools, LIM tools will be good enough that you can have a conversation and you might not even know that you're talking to a machine. And you'll be like, mimicking human beings. And that kind of human touch may be replicable by a machine. And we may get used to a machine acting like, almost acting like a human being to service an individual. And then the elevator example that I used earlier, it took a while for people to sort of move away from their appreciation for humans providing that service. And then the trust factor and being okay with machines doing that work. And it may be not even having a transaction with the customer to accomplish a task.

[Tara Tan]

Right. I mean, I think it's part of human nature. I think fear is. Fear of change is a. It's a very big one.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

Fear of new tech has been something that's plagued us for centuries.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

Even like when writing was invented or printing press was invented and industrial machines were invented. I feel like humans have always been fearful of change.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

I mean, I'm seeing it in real time. Emos are everywhere in San Francisco. Whenever there's a new visitor, I always ask, have you taken away mo?

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

And it's interesting because do a mental survey, and I would say about a third are saying, I'm never getting into it, not right now.

[Reina Moto]

Oh, really?

[Tara Tan]

Yeah. And I say, you know, but, you know, studies say that it's about 12x safer. 12 times safer than a human.

[Reina Moto]

12 times safer, yeah.

[Tara Tan]

So insurance company did a study and it says 12 times safer than a human driver. But that's going to change your mind. You know, it's quite alarming. I feel like if my parents came to San Francisco, it's a 50, 50 chance if they will sit in a way more or not.

[Reina Moto]

That's.

[Tara Tan]

It's quite startling when you sit there and you see sort of the steering wheel turning on its own. It's kind of moving, navigating pretty complex situations.

[Reina Moto]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

It is quite a sort of step change.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

It's interesting.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Reina Moto]

And in the case of something like Waymo and autonomous driving, it's taken a while to get to this point because, you know, autonomous driving has been talked about for quite some time.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

I don't know the exact timeline, but at least for a decade, if not 15 years, maybe even like 20 years. It's been talked about and I think companies like Google, Uber used to have an autonomous driving unit and Tesla and other companies have talked about quite a bit and Maybe it's taken 10 years to get to this point, but I don't think it's going to take another 50 years for this to be. It might be quicker than saying elevators becoming the norm a hundred years ago.

[Tara Tan]

Yeah. I mean, honestly, I feel like the tech is pretty ready. I think that's what we're not talking about is that the tech is ready. I think there's a lot of regulation and sort of these sort of safety concerns or litigation issues that we have to work around.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tara Tan]

But the tech is not the issue.

[Reina Moto]

Do you think there's another. I mean, AI is such a broad field and there are so many implications and applications of AI, but what are some other territories that we are not talking about that can be replaced by AI or machines?

[Tara Tan]

I think cars are one sort of industrial settings wise. I think that's a pretty big one. I mean, if you look at China and EVs, they have completely leapfrogged gas cars.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

Especially with your battery tech. It's completely.

[Reina Moto]

And it probably happened in about 10 years. You have really quickly.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

I mean they made a bet. They were like, we're not going after hydrogen, which is what most EVs are, including some of the more well known car brands. They went after the battery and that worked out.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

I think something crazy. Like a majority of cars in China right now are EVs.

[Reina Moto]

That's crazy.

[Tara Tan]

And the only reason why they haven't flooded the United States or Europe or Any of these countries is because of trade areas. But otherwise these cars are cheaper and run faster and they run on electricity.

[Supporting Participant]

Right?

[Interjecting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

Yeah. So EV is one technology that's at least taken over in a place like China. The US is being stubborn about either blocking China and or protecting fossil fuel companies because there's a lot of money still there and the US still benefits pretty handsomely from fossil fuel. I mean, another technology or industry that will have a significant impact, and I think this is sort of an obvious one, is filmmaking. Just within the past six months, the introduction of multiple animation and or filmmaking tools that are either prompt based and or a combination of prompt and other techniques to produce a 30 second, a 1 minute, 10 minute films and clips. And from an executioner standpoint, it's as good as almost professionally produced films for a million dollars or more in terms of the budget and something that we once seen not even five years ago, but two years ago. So that I think is another industry that will be fundamentally changed. Like these animation studios and animators unfortunately have to either reskill and retool or upskill themselves and or maybe even like find a completely different thing for them to work on.

[Tara Tan]

So here's my challenge. This is my, I guess my contrary take. I believe that the entertainment market size and market demand for entertainment is going to double. Triple. It's growing.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

The industry that is locked into traditional tools will probably shrink, but the market size or market industry for entertainment is going to double or triple. Do you see what I'm saying here? Which is like, I think there's, I.

[Reina Moto]

Don'T disagree with that point.

[Tara Tan]

Yeah, that's a fairly big disconnect here where you know, we talk about like movie studios going away. I actually don't think, I mean, I think they have to adapt or die. But market demand for entertainment is skyrocketing. It's exponentially growing. So you know, my question is like, you know, how do these companies move into these new tools?

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

And it's going to change. I think there's a great story a friend shared where he went to LA and spoke to a lot of the studios. And this is not a political sort of kind of statement. I'm just sharing an observation. He said that, you know, most of the studios are still locked into these labor contracts. So while they're working with AI, post edit tools, AI for post editing, whether fixing lighting and stuff, they still have to pay someone in lighting X amount of money because of labor or union.

[Reina Moto]

Laws, reunion laws, right?

[Supporting Participant]

Yes.

[Tara Tan]

So now they're handcuffed in some ways where they have this huge expense that they aren't able to work around yet or be agile. So I think there's probably some use there where either you train these folks to upskill or you can translate a lot of their knowledge into working with these new AI tools.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

So there are ways to adapt to it. Like the printing press displaced a lot of people who were professional calligraphers and writers.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

Like people who basically wrote, but they created a whole new industry of librarians and bookkeeper and publishers and so on. So I feel like there's a huge transition that needs to happen. And then there are ways. These people are not irrelevant. The lighting guy or girl or people who can do these animation studios or whatever, they're not irrelevant. They just have to adapt. Like, their expertise and everything is still very, very much needed, especially when their industry is skyrocketing.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tara Tan]

You know, sky marketing, same for same design. I would say very similar story.

[Reina Moto]

So I don't disagree with what you just said. I agree with you. I think what's also happening is the democratization as well as de. Industrialization of the industry and what I mean by the specific skills.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

So what used to be reserved for highly skilled people with expensive tools, software and hardware tools, is now, those things are available to not just people in a developed country like the United States, but is now available to many people outside of this country.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

So I'll give two examples. One is, say, photography. 50 years ago, you had to have, or even 30 years ago, you had to have expensive cameras and knowledge and skills to be able to take a good photo.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

In the past 15 years, because of the iPhone and smartphones having good cameras, if you have a. A smartphone today, the camera in a smartphone is as good as the camera that used to be $5,000. And skills.

[Tara Tan]

Yeah, I would say there's a gradient, actually. So, like, I feel like this is another misconception I actually kind of want to address. How many videos do you think Mr. Beast made before he got good?

[Reina Moto]

How many videos? Hundreds of videos. I would imagine thousands.

[Tara Tan]

Hundreds.

[Reina Moto]

Thousands. Okay.

[Tara Tan]

He was relentless until he. I mean, even right now, he's perfecting.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

Every output.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tara Tan]

And if you're telling me that's not skill and that's not expertise and that's not experience, like, I would say, like, I would disagree strongly with it. And I think, yes, it democratizes it in that more people have access to it, but, you know, like, let's take the camera. Like, what do you call DSLR camera.

[Supporting Participant]

Right?

[Reina Moto]

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure, sure.

[Tara Tan]

It's much more accessible to a lot of people. But the number of people who can really truly create art with it, it's different.

[Supporting Participant]

Right?

[Reina Moto]

Yeah, yeah, point taken.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

They either studied or self learned or practiced or they put in heart and energy and time to perfecting a craft.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tara Tan]

And so, yes, while I agree that there are fewer gatekeepers in the sense where maybe make a movie in two years, you don't have to sell your way through a slew of execs.

[Interjecting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

So there's less gatekeepers, but you still need to pour in that amount of work to have that high craft.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

AI is the same. You put in schlop, you get schlop and it's gonna be easier to create slop. But the people who put in the time and energy and craft into making these pieces, that's not gonna go away.

[Reina Moto]

I think we're talking about a few different points maybe in one conversation.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

I like what you just talked about is craftsmanship and somebody's willingness to invest time to craft something so that output is better than everybody else's.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

What I was talking about is the access that people now have to tools. So what used to be reserved for certain individuals with certain skills and access to certain tools is now available to a lot more people.

[Tara Tan]

I feel like that's just been the case for a long time. I mean like, you know, most of the animation studios or edit studios are actually in Vietnam.

[Reina Moto]

That's true, that's true.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

Or in Spain or other places.

[Tara Tan]

Sure. They've not been concentrated in the US for a long time.

[Reina Moto]

Got you.

[Tara Tan]

I mean software has enabled that. Like even stuff like Capcut has enabled an entire generation of people who can edit.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

I think software in general has democratized it where, you know, gone beyond that. So I feel like distribution wise it still remained somewhat similar in the sense where like everyone who has access to the Internet are likely to be users of the tool. That's pretty much the whole world. Yeah, yeah, but I would say in terms of like, yeah, but democratizing it. I do agree that more people have the opportunity to learn how to use it.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Reina Moto]

And to make.

[Supporting Participant]

Right, to make.

[Tara Tan]

Yeah, to learn or play with it or something. The bar curve for exploration is probably less steep than say learning an Adobe tool suite.

[Interjecting Participant]

Right, right, right, right.

[Tara Tan]

I think that our learning curve as a civilization is going to be exponentially higher for sure. Like in a two and a half years, in my 38,000, no, 33,800 conversations yeah, I feel like I am learning at a pace that I've never learned before.

[Interjecting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

And I've been an avid learner for my entire life.

[Interjecting Participant]

Right, right, right, right.

[Tara Tan]

Like it's exponential. And I feel like that sort of learning is only going to grow.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Reina Moto]

So we were just talking about industries that get impacted by new technologies. So one is the automotive industry and the battery.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Reina Moto]

We just talked about the other one is filmmaking and the film production industry is another one. Is there another industry that in the next five to 10 years that either by AI or any other new technology that can be disrupted in a major way?

[Tara Tan]

I think many. So, I mean, we can talk about retail. Retail has been disrupted. Has been disrupted by. With Web 2.0, it was disrupted. Like E Commerce.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

You know, all of that. There was a great. If you look at a bad prediction from 1995 in Newsweek, they said that buying online would never work out, shopping online would never work out. It was kind of a really fun article, but they were like, it's impossible. You're missing all these different pieces. So anyway, E commerce, I mean, retail has been disrupted.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

I would say a lot of the white collar jobs that people are talking about. So accounting, legal, consulting will get impacted.

[Supporting Participant]

Right? In many ways.

[Tara Tan]

It will grow in many ways. But I also think that it's going to be disrupted in any ways.

[Reina Moto]

I wanted just to pick on a specific one. If legal is another industry that will get impacted in a major way because a lot of the legal information is available and what used to take a lot of searches and a lot of deciphering of information to understand the legality of certain topics or what have you. And I think it was like a year or two years ago a lawyer got caught using ChatGPT to make a case.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Reina Moto]

And that was a comical episode topic. But I wonder more and more, and then I wonder, like, I'm seeing a lot more ads for lawyers in New York City these days, for instance, like the subway. I see a lot more ads for lawyers than I used to say two years ago. And I wonder if there's a correlation between tools like ChatGPT being legal counselors for individuals as opposed to picking up a phone to talk to a lawyer for legal advice.

[Tara Tan]

Yeah, that's a great one. I do agree that the long tail of a lot of these industries. So the smaller parts of the business will probably be very much transformed.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

I think the big guys are going to stay around or gal is going to stay around largely because their clients are paying them to Be liability houses.

[Reina Moto]

Sure, sure.

[Tara Tan]

Then when you take on a client, you take on that liability. Like that's what they're paying for for your freaking, like, contract. That's pretty much templated. They're paying for that liability cost.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

So, yeah, very similar to why companies hire like your, McKinsey's and Baines. Very similar. All for that.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Reina Moto]

So automotive. Yeah, so automotive, film, retail, legal. Those are some of the industries that are being disrupted in a major, major way. So just to wrap up. What's your takeaway?

[Tara Tan]

You know, I had one, but it kind of escaped me for a little bit. So I was going to say, okay.

[Reina Moto]

I'll go, I'll go first. I'll.

[Tara Tan]

Okay, go first, go first.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah, yeah.

[Reina Moto]

My takeaway. And this could spawn another conversation, another episode, but because the bar for execution has lowered so drastically or is drastically decreasing or lowering that we may be entering the. A new golden age of ideas. There's so many, you know, all these, like, online courses about AI this and AI da. And I've taken some of those just out of curiosity and just to sort of keep myself updated. But at the end of the day, to your point about Mr. B spending hours and producing thousands of videos before he got good. Yeah, you can use this LLM or that tool and these prompts, prompt libraries and whatever. But the one, the people who are doing good work or people who are producing good things are A, spending a lot of time with it, and B, are relentless about coming up with good ideas and, and sharpening and fine tuning the ideas as opposed to just executing for the hell of it. So for that, I may venture out and say that we may be entering a new golden age of ideas. That's my key takeaway.

[Tara Tan]

I do think that humans have always been very resilient. Every time that there's been a new technology revolution, it's always created a new prosperous cycle for humanity, always. But my key takeaway is how can you use AI as leverage and not as a tool? So I think that's, for me, a fundamental reframe.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

Which is it's not just a tool to create an artifact. How can you leverage AI to create systems? It will almost make you superhuman.

[Supporting Participant]

Right.

[Tara Tan]

And I think that's the challenge I would leave you and everyone with, including myself, which is like, how do you. How can we build these systems to leverage them, leverage that change?

[Reina Moto]

It's like a leapfrog, you know, let's be human superhumans. Let's become superhumans.

[Tara Tan]

Let's be superhuman.

[Interjecting Participant]

Yeah.

[Tara Tan]

Okay.

[Reina Moto]

All right. That's a good place to end. All right. Thank you.

[Supporting Participant]

All right.

[Reina Moto]

Bye.

[Tara Tan]

Bye.