← Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
Money And Wealth With John Hope Bryant
AI, Agency & The Black Future: Van Jones & Sheldon Gilbert
00:52:15
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- [00:00]
John O'Brien
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- [00:38]
Van Jones
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John Hope Bryant, a production of the Black Effect podcast network and iHeartRadio. This is John O'. Brien. This is a top 1% podcast in the world today on every continent, and the top 100 for business and top 50 for entrepreneurship on Apple. And so thanks everybody, for your support on the civil rights movement. From civil rights to civil rights, from the streets to the suites, this is a very special episode. I don't remember ever having two guests with me at the same time. A lot of you know that I do these solo often. I thought this is so important. This is not just a tech episode. It's not just about AI. It's a survival guide, a playbook, and a warning label all in the same breath. Black and brown communities have historically been last in line when economic revolutions hit the world. This is insight from Van Jones, who's on with us today. My brother, from another mother. From the industrial era to the digital boom. But AI is different. It's moving faster than anything anybody has ever seen. To go from the automobile to horse and buggy to the Automobile took about 60 years. To go from labor to technology centric reality will take about six. And that's probably a very generous timing. We're going to probably see 30% improvements in efficiencies in companies in the next two to three years, which means that they won't need employees to do many of the jobs that just got made. More automated and efficient new jobs will come, but this may not be a direct overlay in real time, which means you need a survival guide. You need to be your own toolkit. The communities that understand, shape and own a stake in this revolution now will define the future of power, wealth and opportunity. Later, before I lay in and let my brother Van Jones and Sheldon Gilbert lean into this in a way that will transform your life, let me just say this. AI is moving Faster than civil rights legislation ever did. What happens if we don't act now? Dr. King once said the world is moving that human rights and social justice in America. This is what he said back then was moving at horse and buggy pace, but the world was moving at jet like speed. That can be said for where we are now. Between what's going on with the suites and the streets, Van Jones brings his policy and media voice and his brilliance. I think he is literally a genius in this area and others revealing what what's happening in Washington and Silicon Valley behind closed doors and technology too. He once told me that 99% of black folks don't know a thing about AI, but 99% of white folks don't know a thing about A.I. either. So this is the equal opportunity discrimination. Van Jones introduced me to Sheldon Gilbert, who compensates not smiling with having a brilliant brain. That makes it irrelevant whether he smiles at you or not. He's just dead serious. He's making smart sexy. And it's a big thing for me to tell somebody to smile. My wife's always telling me I am Mr. Serious. This brother makes me look like I'm libertarian, I'm a liberal. Breaks down how AI is being coded without us and why that's dangerous for us, for algorithms, for equity and for democracy. I'm going to help, I'm going to try to, in the middle of this great conversation, reframe AI as the next frontier of financial inclusion, civil rights, civil rights and community economic empowerment. It's an urgency of now to my brother Van Jones.
- [04:50]
Sheldon Gilbert
Well, it's an honor to be here and I think you've done more than any the next hundred people in getting financial literacy and the silver rights movement taken seriously. We're now in a position where if you're going to be focused on economics, what's happening now when it comes to artificial intelligence and exponential technology? There's no lawsuit protest bill you can pass. It's moving so rapidly and yet I want to point out we as black folks should be happy. Because if everything's going to be disrupted, as they say, they say they're going to disrupt everything. AI is going to disrupt every industry. Good. Because these industries have been leaving us out the whole time anyway. It's not like the status quo has been so wonderful. I mean, do we like the healthcare system that we've got? Do we like the education system that we've got? Do we like all this stuff so much? So why we are the main ones who are being threat sensitive as opposed to Opportunity sensitive. You're now in a position where the most creative people in the world, black culture, inarguably the most creative, most innovative.
- [06:09]
Van Jones
You just said something about basically the urgency and how we miss the dot com boom, we miss the Web 2.0, and we're not going to miss AI. But I just want to say, and I'm not making at all a political comment. Please, anybody listening to this. As you know, I'm inclusive of everybody.
- [06:25]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yes, you are.
- [06:26]
Van Jones
I'm not making it all a political comment. I just think this is sort of funny. People say, some people have said, let's make America great again. I'm not making a political comment. I'm not even digging at anybody. I'm just saying, when was America ever great for black people? I'm just saying, like, I mean, when. My grandfather was a sharecropper. My second great grandfather was a slave Georgian. He fought in the Union army for a country that.
- [06:57]
Unknown
Didn'T want him.
- [06:58]
Van Jones
But he was in the, he was part of the Emancipation Proclamation. I mean, civil rights movement. Dr. King was killed and all these other folks and just trying to get some folks to August to a watering station, a water fountain. You know, affirmative action was given to white women. All good. I love that for them. I'm just wondering. Well, I'm not trying to get off. I'm just saying this for the record, when making America great again, when did that ever apply? We worked 20, what, $20 trillion of free labor and slavery. 44 trillion. And you talk about missed opportunity. I'm not complaining, I'm not whining. I'm just contextualizing. Back to Van Jones.
- [07:40]
Sheldon Gilbert
Well, I, I, I, I think what you're saying, seriously, in the following respect, though, black folks really do have a profound sense of history. In fact, we do history as well as anybody's ever done it. In fact, we have a whole Black History Month. Everybody in the world knows who Harriet Tubman is. Everybody in the world knows who Dr. King is. I'm not sure anybody knows who any Irish American or Italian or Greek American heroes are. So we've done a great job with black history. The question is, what about the black future? I would trade in at this point, about 10 black history months for one black future weekend. Can we talk about the black future? Where are we actually going? Especially given that when waves of change come, you can either be knocked down by them or you can ride them to a different place. And so the reason I'm so happy to be on with Sheldon is because there are very few people in the world, black, white, or any other color who understand the depth of what this AI revolution means than Sheldon Gilbert. One of the things I think that we get caught up in is we tend to look at this from the perspective either of just folks who are scared or folks who are at 1,000ft above and are thinking about how they're going to beat China with AI and that sort of stuff. But here's reality. These AI data centers are not in the cloud, right? We talk about cloud computing. I think a lot of people think there's some laptops up there in the clouds, like holding all this information. There's no laptops in the cloud. You've been on a plane many times, you've never seen a laptop up there. Because their data centers on the ground on planet Earth using materials that came from Africa. They call them rare earth minerals out there, rare in Europe. They're Africa abundant minerals is what we should call them. And there's water being used on the ground, there's energy being used on the ground, and there are workers going in there every day who are doing real computational work in a very different way than somebody from Silicon Valley, grassroots, real time people. And that material reality of what this AI revolution means is something that Sheldon understands. And then also the fact that the Internet itself, which was built for humans, is now going to be rebuilt for AI agents. These two massive changes in terms of the data centers and what they mean on the ground level and this new Internet that's being created are two areas that Sheldon knows as much or more about than anybody else. And I just wanted to make sure that we had that conversation, because if we're going to make Wakanda real, which should be the new black aspiration, is to make Wakanda real. Science, spirituality, heroism, high purpose, but technology being central, we have to have, we have to start honoring our technologists. And one of those is Sheldon Gilbert. So did I get that mostly right or mostly wrong? Sheldon, you can correct me. You're the engineer.
- [10:47]
Unknown
Yeah, no, absolutely. I love also the reference to Wakanda with Dune in the background. So good stuff.
- [10:53]
Sheldon Gilbert
I'm broad. I'm broad.
- [10:55]
Unknown
Exactly. All encourage.
- [10:57]
Van Jones
And I want to acknowledge Van as a new kind of leader. Because leaders in the past, our community would not commend another leader, certainly not recommend another leader. In fact, Dr. King was viciously attacked by civil rights leaders who happened to be black because he, I don't know, he was popular. I don't know what it was, but I mean, he, he really died. Chain smoking, overweight and depressed, he thought he'd failed. And when he tried to even give the Nobel Peace Prize money away to the other nonprofit civil rights leaders, they didn't even acknowledge the gift after he had wired the money to them. They were so resentful. And stories go on and on and on the guy in Chicago who changed the dress of his church because it was on Martin Luther king Boulevard. After Dr. King was assassinated, he changed his address to the side street. And here you are, Van Jones, not taking credit for himself. He introduced me to Sheldon, who runs Cure labs, amongst other things, and told me he was a genius and all this stuff. And I took some time with Sheldon, realized he really was a genius. And really, all me and Van Jones are doing here is a prop for Sheldon. But I think it's really beautiful to commend and give Van his flowers for being the kind of leader who's willing to share the stage and even hold up the stage for someone else. Sheldon, over to you.
- [12:06]
Unknown
Absolutely. Well, first, John, again, really appreciate you actually inviting me in. And yes, brother, I do smile. But you're right. The time is a very urgent and serious moment. And again, brother Van, as always, thanks again for. For your constant brilliance and insight and perspicacity with regards to a wide range of topics. And I know that you began, first and foremost, really sort of making that clearing call with regards to environmental issues. To your point, it's still even that much more pressing given the massive energy consumption of AI. Look, it's interesting. My mom. I'm from St. Lucia, born and raised, and my mom down there, to her credit, about a few years ago, she's about 71 years old, she goes, shell, what's the big deal about this AI thing? I kind of walked her through chat GPT. I'm like, mom, you know that. Really? That cruise that you want my sister. Want my sister and I to take you on? She's like, yeah. I'm like, okay, check this out. This itinerary. I'm not gonna put an itinerary together. Look at this thing. I pull up my cell phone. I showed her this thing called ChatGPT. I said, mom, think of all the islands that you want to go to, and they'll give us the itinerary. Hour by hour, everybody. And she was blown away. I go, okay, you think that's impressive? Check this out. It shows you all the restaurants, all the.
- [13:20]
Sheldon Gilbert
Right.
- [13:20]
Unknown
Everything. All the places we could go. Yes. Imagine if you actually hit a button, says, okay, now book that. She's like, what do you mean? I'M like, imagine the next thing you could say, book that. It will book all the entire itinerary for you. Goes, are you kidding me? I'm like, that's exactly what's going to happen. And that's exactly what's happening. This is the world of what we called AI agents. And I remember someone was giving a talk recently and saying, what is the most consequential tool that human beings have ever created? I think it was Yuval Harari who wrote Sapiens and many of us know, gave a really interesting perspective on this and saying, is it the wheel? Is it fire? What is it? Steam engine? What is it? And he goes, I don't even think we could actually put AI in that category. And he goes, well, why is that? Because it's not a tool. We need to harness the wheel, we need to harness fire, we need to harness water, we need to harness steam. AI could harness itself. It has self agency. These things can act on their own. We have never been in a situation ever in human history where we've created something that one could argue, could start to act independent of us now. Lots of concerns, lots of drama. Exactly, exactly.
- [14:40]
Van Jones
His head just exploded, by the way.
- [14:43]
Unknown
Yeah, and so these are things that called AI agents. Like let's talk about practically what that means to have an AI agent. An AI agent is basically, think of this basically as software that can act on your behalf. It has agency, not unlike a real estate agent. Right. Or a broker. It acts on your behalf. So imagine now that you basically could have an agent that could go in there and check your calendar and go book flights for you, or a doctor's appointment for you, or buy stocks for you, or can educate you. The question is, do you actually now need to go get a PhD? Do you need to now go to. There are ways in which these things could advance your understanding in very, very significant ways. But this also has real consequences for labor in the workforce.
- [15:42]
John O'Brien
There's something special about folks that come through without being asked. Like your co worker surprising you with your favorite coffee just because. Or your friend handing you the ox cord the moment you get in the car. No debate, no fight, just positive eyes that kind of love. It just hits different. And that's exactly the energy. AT&T is on with their new guarantee. If there's ever a network interruption, AT&T will proactively credit you for a full day of service. No calls, no emails, no jumping through hoops. It's just handled. It's like the universe saying, I got you. Except this time it's not the stars aligning, it's your network. And let's be real, the connection is everything. Whether you're holding down the group chat, checking on your parents. Scrolling TikTok. Your network's gotta come through. And if there's a problem, AT&T is on the case. No stress, no drama, just real backup. When it counts credit for Fiber downtime lasting 20 minutes or more or wireless downtime lasting 60 minutes or more caused by a single incident impacting 10 or more towers. Restrictions and exclusions apply. See att.com guaranty for full details. AT&T connecting changes everything.
- [16:50]
Unknown
You know, John, I was, I've told you, I've told Van before, I said, look, the future is when they're hiring. They're not going to hire, you know, our kids. It's not like saying, hey Janice, hey Sean, hey Maria, we want to give you a job. Companies are going to be hiring our children's individuals anymore. They're going to be hiring our children alongside agents, the agents that they have built that are working alongside them. And think about that. It fundamentally changed the nature of employment. Right. And what it means to be an employee. So if, whether you're a nurse practitioner, whether you're a truck driver, whether you're a teacher, or even if you're a surgeon. And the other thing about this, by the way, is all those revolutions you referred to before John, the horse and buggy farming and these certain things, primarily what was at risk is one we could argue sort of like manual labor. Right? Blue collar work. This is an inversion. This is the first time ever that white collar services jobs are at risk. We've never had that level of inversion before. So whether you are again, a stock analyst or even even think about jobs in the most advanced, like be a neurosurgeon, they're a deep risk. Why, I don't know if you guys have paid attention to surgery recently. One of my good friends, an orthopedic surgeon as well as an obgyn surgeon, he performs surgery with robots. Half of his surgeries are done with robots. Forearms. Why? Because they don't tremor like the human hand can, so they can achieve far more precision. And the other arms are in there as scopes and magnifying glasses. And he's just controlling his procedures through a joystick.
- [18:33]
Van Jones
So what does that mean, human error? No, no, no lawsuits. Because you left a scalpel in somebody's.
- [18:41]
Unknown
Right. Exactly. But now think about this. So think about like not only a long distance surgery, but what does it mean now to Actually have AI conduct a surgery. So what does it mean now to be a doctor? Are you just supervising the robot? What does it mean to be a nurse practitioner? Many people from our communities are nurse practitioners. What does it mean now? You've got to start to learn how to sort of collaborate and interact with those agentic systems, both software and physical world. This is where Elon's really going. After you look at the different question.
- [19:12]
Van Jones
Go ahead.
- [19:12]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yeah, well, I was just going to add on, you know, two things, one conceptual and one practical. This is the fourth intelligence on the planet. Right. So if you believe as I do, you have the original intelligence, you know, I would call it God, you can call the universe, call it whatever you want to, but there is a great intelligence that, you know, I believe is divine. That intelligence gave rise to what you would call nature, the natural world, which is very intelligent, biological, but non human, but very intelligent. Go in the ocean, you see, you know, go in the forest is very intelligent. But then that biological, non human intelligence gave rise to us, who are, you know, biological human intelligence. And now we've given rise to a fourth intelligence, which is non biological, non human intelligence, artificial intelligence. That's the fourth intelligence. And so you now, the next, the rest of the century is going to be determined by how do these intelligences interact with each other.
- [20:21]
Unknown
Sure.
- [20:22]
Van Jones
Anybody who did not recognize when I said that Van Jones is a genius and you just sing him with CNN don't get it. You're only getting a slice of him. Replay what he just said. Because as smart as I think I am, I've never framed. I will steal with acknowledgment. Van Jones just said. That was. Van Jones once told me there were four people, there are four countries that want to just take America out. I mean, I thought about this. I had part of it right. But Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and they're just waiting for us to screw up. They can't win in a fair fight. But we're just so busy tripping over each other and fighting over politics and black and white and red and blue, which, by the way, is an externally generated fight, Jewish and black, but externally generated fight of us against us, because that's. They didn't swoop in and leap. But Brandon just dropped another knowledge bomb on you with these four intelligences that I've never heard before. You need listen to this podcast. Hit reverse. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm gonna ask him to repeat it. But that was. That was. That was boom.
- [21:31]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yeah, but the Reason, the reason I say it, because I want, I wanted to, to give it back to Sheldon, which is, if you look at the first three intelligences, how did. Basically God gives rise to nature, nature gives rise to man, and then man turns around and abuses nature, and badly. I mean, the planet is overheating, we're having floods, fires, extinctions, whatever, and often disrespects God. So now we've given rise to something else. Artificial intelligence. You should be worried, because if it then turns around and abuses us the way we've abused nature and disrespects us the way we've disrespected God, you can now see karma is a mug. So what you don't want, right, as we move forward, is to have this new civilization that's emerging, be lacking in wisdom, lacking in compassion, lacking in morals. There is a reason for African descended people to be engaged now, because you're about to have a society where the leading technology is all data and no wisdom. That's the great danger, I think. And so it's important for us from a practical point of view, as you're pointing out, to try to begin to evolve our professions and evolve our ability to compete, but also to recognize we have something to offer now. Because we know what happens when a single group, a single ethnicity decides it's going to recreate human civilization. That happened 400 years ago. Europe, you know, jumped the queue and redesigned civilization. And we had slavery, we had colonialism, we had ecological destruction. You need everybody at the table, I think, around technology that's powerful to make sure that it reflects wisdom and decency. And I wonder, Sheldon, if you agree, in addition to the professional part, there's also the purpose part that we got to deal with.
- [23:29]
Unknown
Yeah, look, I think those four layers that you laid out there, Van, are really astute. I think there's actually some sort of poetic aspect of that too, because in many ways the constructs for artificial intelligence are based on what I call neural networks, which is basically trying to mimic the human brain. My background is in molecular genetics. And so my entire thing and the way in which I think about the world is through the lens of Sheldon.
- [23:59]
Van Jones
That was sexy. Say that again.
- [24:02]
Unknown
Didn't mean to turn you on, John, but.
- [24:04]
Van Jones
No, no, you're turning me on. But you're single. A whole bunch of women, like I don't know what the hell he just said. I'm completely straight. What you say? Yeah. No, no.
- [24:15]
Unknown
So it's an interesting thing. It's called, it's a whole field called molecular Genetics, you're trying to understand genes and inheritance and heredity, but at the smaller sort of molecular level. What does that mean? Understanding how DNA is formed, How DNA basically unravels itself, makes copies, forms proteins, everything in life. So this all ties together. Here's the interesting thing, and people say all the time, like, wait, so your background is molecular genetics. How did you end up in coding? And I said, you do realize the person who actually wrote object oriented programming, Java and those different things, and Python was actually molecular biologist. So all these terms have deep references around each other. So these terms like polymorphism, inheritance, the more important is this, you have to imagine that these systems that are being built up are trying to mimic nature. They're trying to mimic the natural order. So the new thing right now around drones and military systems, there is this whole notion around swarms. And how do you actually have these swarms on the battlefield regulate themselves? They study ant colonies. The study, like my background particularly is around the immune system. And so the immune system is one of the most, to me, that's the true artificial. True intelligence, as you mentioned before, is like just if you think about how the immune system acts, it's remarkable. As we're sitting here, there are trillions of things invading our bodies and our genes are literally turning things on and off to try and help us evade the attack. It's going through constant simulations. And so all these new digital systems are trying to mimic that, whether it's called the neural network. So all these things are based on these true organic biological systems, and we're trying to mimic that as much as we can. Now here's the reality. Look, there's very, a lot of concern, a lot of dystopia around artificial and general intelligence. The robots are taking over. Look, as someone who operates in this space, we're far away from artificial and general intelligence. So we're still very far away. That said, what is very real is the ability of these things to do a lot of processing and synthesis of information. That's going to cause massive economic dislocation, jobs very quickly. So from everything from being a law clerk to being an assistant, to be all these different things are rapidly going to change. And so we have to pay very, very close attention to that. But one of the things that someone said is that we don't necessarily worry about being replaced by AI, but we have to be worried about being replaced by people who know how to use AI. I'm in that latter camp. I'm focusing extensively on making sure that we're being equipped so companies before, they had teams of about 30 to 40 people. And, John, they're going to shrink down to about 12 people. And the people that are left are going to be sort of these super employees, and they're going to be having these teams of agents that are working alongside them. That's what I'm thinking about. I want to make sure that our communities are not left behind from this AI agentic economy, because if we're not careful, that's being calcified already.
- [27:29]
Sheldon Gilbert
Can I say in the positive, this is the biggest opportunity for black progress ever? Because everything that you're saying is scary and weird, but it's not just scary and weird to black folk. It's scary and weird, period. There's such a small number.
- [27:45]
Van Jones
Don't lose your train of thought. But what we can't talk about is the meeting we were just at, which we can't even acknowledge the meeting just happened. But what we heard at the meeting didn't happen is there's almost another podcast episode that's a layer scarier than this one based on what we heard is coming. But anyway, so continue. But I think this is a. What I'm hearing is that we got to do this again to go a layer deeper so we can truly prepare our people for what's coming and not to be afraid of it. But when you're being run out of town, get in front of the crowd, make like a parade. And oddly enough, black people are uniquely positioned this time to win. Continue. Van I think that's where you're going.
- [28:24]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yeah, yeah. This is what I'm saying is that on the one hand, you know, someone listening to this might be thinking, wow, this dude's saying that basically, you know, robots and computer programs are going to replace me. And so that could be very disparaging. Hope, as you're listening to this, that everybody else listening to this feels that way except you. Now let me talk to you. What you should be saying is I could build. If I lean into this and I learn how to use these tools, I can be in the 12. If it's gonna go from. From 30 to 12, I can be in the 12.
- [29:03]
Unknown
That's exactly it. And I want to talk about specifically what you need to do to make sure that you're in that 12. I got a friend who's. Who's. She's becoming a real estate agent, potentially leaving journalism, entering real estate. And I asked her about that. I said, do you do know the world you're entering? She's like, what do you Mean like you heard the word agent, okay, that's going to, that, that may be you, it may be a system. But how do we make sure that you become the super real estate agent that's leveraging these new capabilities? And she was showing me all these different tools being, I think we got to do it for just about every, every system that's out there. Look, there's still going to be a need for what's called, here's a term hil, human in the loop. So companies are making sure that their people whose entire job is to build these systems and managing these systems, sort of quarterbacking those systems, and every field is going to have that and be great to actually talk about how you could be that for any field that you're in. How do you make sure that you are familiar with these agents and you're helping to manage them along with the other teams. And the premium is going to be in human relationships, though.
- [30:04]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yeah. So for instance, if you listen to this, if you have not downloaded ChatGPT, download it. Simple as that. Some people haven't even done that yet. And I'll tell you why. There was a time, I'm a little bit older than my brother Sheldon. There was a time when there was a real digital divide. It was a hardware divide. I can't remember how many meetings and Kleenex we went through talking about one laptop per child. We've got to get one laptop per child. And now everybody has one of these devices in their back pocket. So, so the, the, the one laptop per child is already solved. It's in your back pocket right now.
- [30:43]
Van Jones
So there's not a whole audio only. Brian just showed you basically his iPhone. This is essentially a microcomputer in your pocket. Go ahead.
- [30:50]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yeah, so, so, you know, we don't have to spend the 10 years we spent crying about one laptop per child. You never have to cry that again. Everybody's got some kind of smartphone in their back pocket. That problem has been solved. So the, the, the digital divide is not a hardware divide. You've got the hardware in your, in your pocket. It's not a software divide. It used to be you had to spend money to, you know, buy, you know, buy all these soft software packages and get them. You can download chat GPT for free. F R E E free. And so it's not a hardware divide. It's not a software divide, it's a wetware divide. The wet wear in your brain, the wet wear between your ears is telling you this is, this is scary stuff. It's for white folks. It's going to come and get me and it's stopping you from getting the best coach, the best lawyer you will ever have for free on your phone right now before this podcast is over.
- [31:44]
Unknown
You should now CTO the best strategic thinker, all those different things. You know, Van, you can take that.
- [31:48]
Van Jones
Sheldon co creator.
- [31:50]
Unknown
Absolutely. Absolutely.
- [31:54]
Van Jones
Yeah, yeah.
- [31:55]
Unknown
A thousand percent. Listen, I, you know, I, you know John, I know this is also a podcast about entrepreneurialism. So you know what? Let's just take what Dan said. Let's extend it to be for entrepreneurs. Well, there are four main things that were that guided the success of the company. Right. The first thing I remember years ago when I first launched my first tech startup, the capital. So you basically need to basically have access to engineers. So you need engineering talent. That was number one. Number two, you needed computational infrastructure, data centers, these different things. Third, you needed capital. You raised the capital so you could get the engineers, get the infrastructure. And fourth was domain expertise and relationships. I got to tell you, the first three have fallen. The first three have fallen.
- [32:36]
Sheldon Gilbert
What do you say?
- [32:37]
Unknown
AI is the great equalizer. Listen, you could pull out your credit card and start renting cloud computing on AWS right now. And with a lot of the coding agents that are available through Cursor and others, you can actually get a lot done written. AI can now write code somewhat better than most human beings at this point. We're probably about two cycles away by GPT5 for sure along those lines. So there's a barrier to entry has been significantly reduced. And you know what the premium is now on is on human relationships. It is your ability to actually know how to articulate your ideas. Meet with the Prime Minister of Jamaica or Botswana or Nepal and talk about how you're going to help modernize the electrical grid system.
- [33:22]
Van Jones
Or the mayor.
- [33:24]
Unknown
Or the mayor. Is this. Exactly.
- [33:25]
Sheldon Gilbert
It's school board president.
- [33:28]
Van Jones
By the way. Let's say this for the average person listening to this. We're all average, but we're also extraordinary. You're listening to this, you're saying, how does this relate to me? I want you to think before we run out of time here, because I want everybody to get the last word for and tell me whether you want us to continue this series on AI and you. But think about everything in your world is about to be reimagined. Everything from the most basic thing, the cup that you're drinking from the, the, the hair. The, the brush that you comb your hair with and how you comb your. I mean, I'M being a little crazy, but you're gonna have 300 million robots or hundreds of millions of robots amongst us, human eyed robots in your lifetime. You're gonna have 300 million virtual robots by 2030. But think about Sheldon, man, help me out here. The phone, the, the how furniture gets produced, your medicine, your medicine, how, how.
- [34:22]
Unknown
You consume media, how your children being.
- [34:25]
Van Jones
Educated, where you consume media, what is a network, how do you care for you?
- [34:29]
Unknown
How do you care for our elders?
- [34:31]
Van Jones
Yeah, elder care.
- [34:34]
Sheldon Gilbert
But the reason why you could change.
- [34:37]
Van Jones
Everything wherever you are. You can be a pioneer today.
- [34:40]
Unknown
Absolutely.
- [34:41]
Van Jones
If you just combine this with your passion, sports. Go ahead, Ben.
- [34:45]
Sheldon Gilbert
So again, just try to keep it as practical as possible. All this stuff might sound way outlandish. Download ChatGPT and literally just say I'm scared. I want your advice. I'm a nurse, I'm a this, I'm a that. How could I use AI to become a super employee or a super employer? And it will tell you for free in two seconds. You literally need, you don't have to be afraid of it. It will literally tell you what to do and it will ask you is this good enough idea? Do you want more of this? Do you want more that? And you can guide it. And literally this afternoon you can become an expert in how to become an expert. That is what's so amazing. You would have had to go and take a test, apply to college and spend four years to get the information you can get this afternoon. And why is that? There used to be something called water scarcity. 10,000 years the hardest thing to get was some clean water. That's why every, everybody like lives along rivers and stuff like that because clean water is hard to get. Well, modern cities and modern cities, et cetera. Now you don't even think about if you live in an industrial country, you just turn a screw and the water comes out. You don't have to walk down to the river with the thing on your head and come back. It's right there. Intelligence is now right there. You used to have to walk down the street and take an SAT and get enrolled in a program. It's right there. So now everything that John and Sheldon been telling you should go from being frightening to being liberating. Yes, AI is going to tear the floor out from under you, but it's also going to tear the ceiling off from over you. You can literally fall or fly based on your own effort. And that's all we've ever wanted in the first place. That's called freedom. That's what freedom is. And you now have a jetpack. You have a jetpack. It's for free on your phone chat. GPT Claude, I'm not picking anyone, but I'm just saying that's the one you heard of get that one. And literally everything that just made you feel uncomfortable. From what John Hope Bryant, Van Jones and Sheldon said, you can tell the AI and it will give you the answer. And you say, give me a curriculum to study this stuff. What books should I read? In what order? It will tell you that too.
- [37:05]
Unknown
Absolutely. By the way, if you watch some of the leaders in tech talk about it, I was just watching podcasts recently with Michael Dell or Cynthia Jensen. They tell you all the time that they spend the weekend. I do the same thing. I'll say, okay, the 10 year yield curve, we explain that to me like I'm in third grade. Or explain that to me like I'm like, like I'm in 11th grade. And then you know what I then do? I'll say, quiz me, quiz me. It's next level. Oh, here's. I give you two quick antidotes, by the way, at a friend who was trying to negotiate a job at, at this company. Well, she's been this company for about 20 years. A new boss has come in, she's a little bit nervous, come back from maternity leave and so forth. I said, she's like, so I'm gonna tell me about something. ChatGPT. Mike, hold on a second. Give me the person's. Give me your new boss's LinkedIn profile. She's like, what are you doing? Mike, watch this. I loaded in her new boss's LinkedIn profile. I then loaded in my friend's LinkedIn profile. I said, okay, ChatGPT, this is a person's new boss. Come up with a script for how they should negotiate their new salary. She was blown away and she used that gut. Okay.
- [38:18]
Van Jones
I just went to a lunch and I was running tight on time with a really powerful guy on Wall Street. I knew I liked him, I just didn't know why. I just had a vibe. I said, look, I got three minutes before I get this lunch. Tell me this is the person's name. Tell me how, what's. What's correlation to this person and John o' Brien have. Are we in my. Is my gut feeling right? What is our common threads, man? Three seconds later, it's here. Yeah, your story and his story. And here's how you connect and capital and community. And here's, here's the value added. I Never.
- [38:52]
Unknown
Exactly. Exactly. And John, here's the other thing I tell people all the time is what Ben said is actually spot on. Same thing with you, John. Here's the. To take it to the next level. If there's an article that someone has just sent to you, your boss, your friend, whomever, take that, copy that URL that link, put it into chat GPT and said, could you give me the executive summary of this article? If you tell me how this article is related to this, it could summarize it for you could send this even behind the paywall, by the way. So this is just. We. I got a ton of these things. There's a bunch of these, but that's one of the ones I think is a. Is a massive unlock when you actually have it sort of distilling information, even synthesizing information. By the way, guess what? Your boss is already doing it.
- [39:33]
Van Jones
Yes.
- [39:34]
Unknown
Okay.
- [39:35]
Sheldon Gilbert
Okay.
- [39:35]
Van Jones
So. So Van's gonna have to go on TV soon and. And Sheldon's got to go make another billion dollars for somebody. Sheldon tries to unlock the brain with what he's doing around AI. I'm doing financial literacy. Van's doing, you know, trying to heal the world. And we're trying to bring these three things together for a new movement for all people, by the way, but certainly underserved people. When mainstream America has a headache, black and brown folks have pneumonia, but we're all sick. We got to get the folks who have pneumonia first because they're the most at risk. But here's the first. What Vanna said is those were at the bottom have a chance. The folks who. Folks are gonna get hit. Yes. If you worked at CVS or grocery store, your job's going away. Okay. You saw that automation at the checking checkout counter.
- [40:22]
Unknown
The grocery store.
- [40:23]
Van Jones
Okay, that's obvious. But also the accountants, the middle class folks who work their whole life to get. If they don't retool themselves, they're done. And that's the fair income. It's gonna disappear. So you're is playing field's been level. We don't want anybody to be run over by this. Right. But if you're black and brown, you. You used to crisis, you're the crisis every Tuesday. So this. So we want you to give you the army with the tools to be successful and then help your brother and sister come up. Be they black, white, brown, yellow, be they middle class, upper class, we're all in this thing together. The world's starting anew, man. Give us some walk off music.
- [41:01]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yes.
- [41:02]
Van Jones
What do you have to say to folks as you. And, you know, we don't have time to get into why this relates to the black Jewish conversation or the global conversation or the other, but you're normally five or ten years ahead of everybody else in your thought leadership. Folks don't understand you. That doesn't mean you're wrong. That means that they're not caught up yet. What do you say? Because I dropped the mic, and then Sheldon will leave you with the last word.
- [41:24]
Sheldon Gilbert
I just think the main thing I would just say is to be encouraged. Be encouraged. You know, no pressure, no diamonds. All the things that we've gone through, that you've gone through has really prepared you for a time like this. You've been through stuff, and you know how to make a way out of no way. But there's this. This thing can either be a hand grenade or it can be a jet pack. It really just depends on how you choose to relate to it. And if you move first and you say, you know what, I can ask it. I want to do a business on this. Is it a good idea, a bad idea, what I need to do? It will literally teach you whatever you need to know, because all the intelligence has been put. Been put in there. Now, sometimes it'd be hallucinating, and you have to, like, you know, double check stuff, but just declare that this is your moment, Claire. That this line that you've been standing at the back of is about to get blown away anyway. And so you get a chance to fly or fall based on your own effort, but with technology that, you know, we could only dream of. To me, if you said, you can have reparations or you can have AI, I would take AI every time. Because, you know, if you gave me reparations and I had no knowledge of what to do with it, I would be in trouble. But if you give me AI, I can figure out a way to get reparations times a thousand. That's the way we should be thinking about this thing.
- [42:43]
Van Jones
Amen, Sheldon. Bring us home.
- [42:46]
Unknown
Yeah. You know, I'll end where I began by saying that, like both of you said, so, I think so eloquently, is that this became. This is the deepest repository of human knowledge collected together. I think that's the first order, is how do we actually learn from this? The second thing is about action. How do we actually make it act on our behalf? We've never dealt with a substrate like this before that could act on our behalf. There's this whole thing called vibe coding. So basically, tell the system, what you're thinking about building and we'll build it for you. This is literally what is happening. Look, next week we have a meeting with a number of students through a program with Accenture teaching high school students about agents. You know what we're going to teach them about emergency evacuations for the next forest fire, for the next flash floods, for the next earthquake. They're going to be building agents that could scan all the real time news reports, things on Twitter, all these different feeds and will then basically connect to mechanism that will actually do 311 notifications based on their location. Right. Based on their location on their cell phones and to tell them to the nearest areas for emergency evacuation. They can now build the plumbing for the emergency relief infrastructure. We're just getting started. This is about agency. That's the ultimate driver. Here is agent self agency amplified at a level that we've never seen before.
- [44:14]
Van Jones
I want everybody to tell your friends about this podcast episode. Share it. Start a conversation in your fraternity, your sorority, your community group at the barbershop. Play. This was a short episode. It's 42 minutes. I want you to play this. You can cut down pieces of it. Any one piece of this in five minutes will be an hour long conversation. I want you to reimagine everything. This is why I keep saying we got to stop making dumb sexy. We got to make smart sexy again. Because if you're dumb as rocks, if you think bling sings, if you are locked in this old narrative of look the part but not be the part, you can't take advantage of what we just talked about. So in other words, crap in, crap out. And you will crap out if you take what they just said. You download this app, but you're not creative because the creativity is your superpower now. You're not intelligent creative and you can't ask the right question, you're not going to get the right answer. So you can all you be asked. You'll be asking AI for how to get movie tickets, how to get a ticket, you know, tell you about what you know, shoes, who won the game last night.
- [45:24]
Unknown
Right. I knew that.
- [45:27]
Van Jones
So. Yeah. That I do that too if I'm being lazy.
- [45:30]
Unknown
Exactly.
- [45:30]
Van Jones
You'll miss the brilliance if you. Here's the good part. Let me be short to positive. We gotta wrap this up. If you're brilliant, you know you're brilliant and I know you're brilliant. We've been doing so much with so little for so long, we'd almost do anything with nothing. If you're Black. So if you're brilliant, you just like, I just need a shot. I just need a shot. These guys just gave it to you. Now you can ask the question I asked three, four, five times a day. Mind bending questions of my AI agent. Mind bending questions. I'll take this and this, smash them together and say, okay, now tell me how to do this, this third thing.
- [46:05]
Unknown
Exactly.
- [46:06]
Van Jones
Now I gotta go do it. First of all, I had to have the creativity to think about it. But now I have to execute on it. Okay, Brad's got to go. But I want you to. I'm trying to light the fuse for you. If you are smart, this is your time. If you are nosy, this is your time.
- [46:19]
Sheldon Gilbert
Go ahead, man, listen. I grew up on the edge of a small town in rural West Tennessee. It took me a very long time to figure out how to basically get my twin sister, who was smarter than me, to get her. She got an affirmative action scholarship at the University of Tennessee at Martin. And then she tricked them into giving me one. So I've literally started my career on my sister's affirmative action scholarship at the University of Tennessee at Martin. It took me a long time to know what I. I know and to get where I am. But that's never going to happen again because you can now get to your dream so much faster. Everything that took me so long to assemble, this relationship, that relationship, this book, that book. But it's all right there in your phone. And so you, who are the most creative, most imaginative, most innovative, you came up with jazz, you came up with hip hop, you came up with the blues, you came up with gospel. You found a way out of no way. You started black colleges two minutes out of slavery. It wasn't Harvard Law School that figured out that the Constitution wasn't compatible with segregation. That was Howard Law School. That was your school. It wasn't the white church that figured out the Bible was incompatible with racism. That was the black church. So everything you have created, from theology to jurisprudence to art to culture, has been magnificent, has been world changing. And you had nothing to nothing, nothing but your own brilliance and God's love. Now you have a jetpack. You have a jetpack. Any dream you have is possible now in a way that has never been true since we were brought over here 400 years ago. And so do not let them cow you and scare you and all the tricks. This is your time. This is your time. And this is your tool. Artificial intelligence.
- [48:10]
Van Jones
So Van has got to go pulling him for tv. But I want Van to Hear this as he walks off, and I want you to hear this. And then, Sheldon, you're the last word. There was a joke. Not a joke. There was a story about Africa. Somebody told me that blacks had black Africans had the land and unethical missionaries. People posing as missionaries came with the Bible. We turned around, and 100 years later, we had the Bible and they had the land. What he's telling you is those rules don't apply anymore. You can't be snookered out of this. You can't be manipulated out of this. You got to give it away. You got to literally just sleep through this. Resort evolution. This is your time. He's not telling you not to go to college. Dude, I don't want anybody to hear that. He's not telling you not to go to college because you need relationship capital. You hang around nine pro people, you'll be the 10th, right? All Harvard is a group of people who hook each other up for 40 years. So find whatever group of people who are aspirational. That's college. Great. Learn. You're going to learn in different ways, but that relationship capital will be this value added. Sheldon, bring us home.
- [49:21]
Unknown
Yeah, I said, you know, before. I think also what we're looking at here, John, is, you know, discrete steps and advice that we could actually give to people. So what I very much look forward to is the opportunity. You know, you mentioned the barbershop. You mentioned a couple of other areas. There are very discreet things that we could actually suggest and recommend to people, particularly if you're, you know, we're enterprising, right? We're entrepreneurs. We think we have to do things to survive. And there's so many people that come to me all the time and say, shell, listen, I'm thinking about starting this business. This business said, listen, I'm very flatter you came to talk to me. I really am. I got someone who's better than me, 10 times better than me. It's in your pocket. You can ask anything that you want. It will. It's your lawyer, it's your accountant, it's your finance person. It's all these different things. If you think about creating a bar, you want to launch your own school, you want to create your own Montessori Academy, you want to create your own fintech company, you want to start doing crypto mining, it will actually write the code for you. It will tell you the systems to get. We've never been here before, right? And so this whole notion, again, about agency, that's the amazing thing about this, is One thing to ask questions other than say, okay, now tell me what to do. How do I build this? It will give you the blueprint. It's the blueprint to build it.
- [50:35]
Sheldon Gilbert
Yeah.
- [50:36]
Van Jones
Here's the new era. Van Jones Talk called me and said, you need to know Sheldon. I met Sheldon, who I think, by the way, if you never. If anybody listening to this on audio podcast only. He's black. I know he may not sound like his brother. Oh, Colin Powell, you speak so well. What do you think? I'm an educated man. Anyway, but for those who are not, he's black. He's just a black genius in tech. And it's great that by the way, we're talking to black people about this whole. Can talk the same way as everybody else. No disrespect to Sam Altman, who I'm co chair of the AI Ethics Council with, and all the other tech geniuses. We need them too. But he's black and I. Van sent me to him and he sent you to your phone. Nobody's trying to pimp you.
- [51:24]
Sheldon Gilbert
Trying to get you up and away.
- [51:28]
Van Jones
And on that point, we're. We're out. This has been a great conversation. This is money and wealth on the Black Effect Network and iHeartRadio. This has truly been a unique podcast episode. I challenge you to find another episode like this in the world on this topic. Tell all your friends about it. Share this on social media. Rinse, repeat, share, converse, discuss. There's no right or wrong, it's just forward. I'm out. John o', Brien, Sheldon Gilbert, the great, amazing Van Jones. Love you much. Peace, Money and Wealth with John o' Brien is a production of the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the Black Effect Podcast network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- [53:57]
John O'Brien
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