← The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
The Truth About AI, Critical Thinking, and the Jobs of Tomorrow
00:51:11
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- [00:00]
Morgan
Hey, everybody, it's Morgan. Welcome back to the Journey podcast. I'm here with your fave and my fave, Jeff Nelson, co founder of Blavity. And we're talking about all types of things today because there's so much going on in the world. And I know that everybody feels like it's just too much to take in, but Jeff and I really wanted to have a catch up about how we're thinking about AI, how we're thinking about the speed at which the world is moving, the speed at which technology is moving, and then also just talk a little bit more about security and how to protect yourself, because I don't know if you guys have been paying attention. And Jeff, I don't know if you know this because you probably aren't on TikTok like that, but, you know, the TikTok has an app called Cap Cut, and Cap Cut does all the edits. And basically Cap Cut changed their terms of service to be outrageous. Like, they're literally like, you can own. We own everything. We put. We own in perpetuity the rights to remix everything and charge people for it, and you're just gonna have to deal.
- [01:04]
Jeff Nelson
Well, you mentioned I didn't know specifically about Calcutta changing its term terms of service, but I'm not a TikTok user. But one of the things that I. One of the TikTok holes that I fell into recently was these AI generated pages of black women doing. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, have you not seen it? I have to send it to you. Yeah, it's like, wait, what are they doing? Oh, it's everything from sexualized content. It's like the pseudo sexualization is like the black women with the lashes and the hair, like that esthetic. And then they're talking about things like, oh, my baby daddy this and that. And then they're doing mukbang content. And then they're like, day in the life with me go shopping. I mean, it's. It's the type of stuff you see.
- [01:47]
Morgan
It's AI influencers.
- [01:49]
Jeff Nelson
AI influencers. And you cannot tell the difference.
- [01:51]
Morgan
Like, can you actually not tell the difference?
- [01:54]
Jeff Nelson
You. It's so hard. Like, I showed it to quite a few people and they're like, this is AI. Are you serious? Now something.
- [02:00]
Morgan
I'm on TikTok right now. I gotta look at this.
- [02:03]
Jeff Nelson
What's. What, what's one of the pages? Let, let, let me see. Let's see if we're gonna pull it up.
- [02:08]
Morgan
This is why you guys have to watch on YouTube because honestly, I love podcasts on audio and I'm shout out to all of our audio listeners. I know you guys are multitasking right now, but there's just too much going on. I have to, I have to pull this stuff out.
- [02:21]
Jeff Nelson
So. Hello. J A Y L A A jlo.
- [02:24]
Morgan
J A Y L A A space.
- [02:27]
Jeff Nelson
AI Just search for that.
- [02:30]
Morgan
Okay, well, at least they're saying it's.
- [02:31]
Jeff Nelson
AI and just like, look at some of these videos. I mean, Pogren, it's, it's really good. And like, and the thing is, like, it's like, it's not overtly sexual, but like some of the, like, the things that they're talking about are stuff like my baby daddy this and this and that. And then another aspect of this is like the. These, the AI generated influencers. They look like they are teenagers who are 16. Exactly. Right. So it's, it's there, there are all types of implications of that type of thing that I think are really, really dangerous. But you know, as you mentioned with like Capcut changing their terms of service, the first question I have is like, well, how did AI get this good? How did AI get to the point?
- [03:25]
Morgan
Who did you train on?
- [03:27]
Jeff Nelson
What? Well, they're training on all the videos that were posting on social media. All the stuff where it's like, oh, look how, you know, scan my face, look how I'll see at this age or content we're putting on YouTube content we're putting on TikTok, like all of this content that they, that we're putting out there for free, these companies are using get the train models. And the implication of that is it's producing technology that can produce things that are so realistic, which in and of itself is. In, in and of itself is a problem. But then the other piece that you're kind of alluding to, Morgan, with Ken Cap cuts in terms of services, them saying that they own this sense of perpetuity means that they own your likeness, right? So imagine you are an influencer or a content creator that creates content and you're putting it out there. But then, and you make whatever you make from it. But then some platform is like, well, we've got it. We've got your voice, we've got your look, we've got your likeness, we've got your mannerisms. We have the technology to create it. We own it. We don't need you. We don't need you. We can, we can create whatever content we were paying you for, whatever real we were paying you for. I can do that. And it's so Realistic.
- [04:34]
Morgan
Oh my God. Listen, I know y' all be click, click, click on Terms of Service just to get to the other side. You cannot do that anymore in this world. You gotta read the terms. Yeah, that's crazy.
- [04:46]
Jeff Nelson
That's why I'm really hesitant to use a lot of these new tools. Like I will wait. You know when tools come out and there's like, oh, there's AI that can do this and it sounds great, it can change your life. But I'm not one of the early adopters when it comes to a lot of these new AI platforms because one, I want to understand the terms and understand, you know what I'm, what I'm giving my data to. But I'm just really, really skeptical about the short term benefit that you may get from using these tools and the long term implications of somebody owning and having the rights to my likeness and my voice and my face and all of that stuff. I mean, that's potentially.
- [05:29]
Morgan
It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to skip over a few things that you just touched on. I want to actually go back. I want to tell you about this lawsuit or this thing that's, that they're working on in California where people are generating AI children, AI sexualized images of children. And the laws of course are designed to protect real human children, but the laws aren't designed to. Or it's a gray area on what's the protection for a AI generated child. Now my question is, well, you had to input an image or a data point of a child in that type of fashion and then make some assumptions in order to generate out whatever your output is, which is a violation of whatever child was put in in the first place for it to train on. So to me, I'm like, there's a genesis of every piece of information and every, every data. And that's to your point how I think people should be thinking about it. It's not that they're going to just dupe you like one for one. It's a, okay, this is what a black guy looks like. That sounds like that does this, this, this, this. And then we're going to put this would normally not be in. That's a violation to me of my rights. Right?
- [06:50]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, there are lots of, there are lots of. And I don't know that this is the time to have those conversations, but there are so many moral, ethical policy, legal arguments to make in this world where if everyone, technology allows us to have at our disposal whatever reality we Want, we can use AI to generate it. It's kind of like the kind of classic libertarian argument about drugs, right? Like libertarians thinking like, well, you know, as long as you're not harming anybody, what you do on your own for yourself and how it affects you, that's your business. You know, are people going to start arguing, well, you know, like, God forbid, like someone saying, like, well, if AI can, you know, like, let's say that a pedophile wants to argue, oh, I can use AI to generate this stuff, I'm not harming anybody. I mean, that, that to me, to me, that's like the slippery slope of where these things kind of lead to. And we're going to have a reckoning to really, as a society talk about not only the benefits that this technology enables, but also the gateway to some really kind of crude and just, I would say sadistic things that it enables.
- [08:03]
Morgan
Just, or just normalizes. It just gives permission to. And I think your point about drugs is the same. It's right. It's like, yeah, you deciding to smoke is your choice. And. But if you're smoking in a public space and I have to inhale that smoke, but my child has to be exposed to that smoke and I have to be exposed to that smoke.
- [08:21]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. And again, for me, like, not to sound like a, you know, like a super conservative boomer, I think we know you're not conservative. I'm a conservative. But, but even, like, even, let's say, like, even if everybody is smok their own home, what does this say from a society standpoint when you have your entire social fabric made up of people who are influenced by drugs, who are in the implication, like the implications, what does that do to the productivity of society? Right. Same thing. If everyone is kind of using AI for their own devices and it's enabling these vices that can have collective harm in the long term, even if the immediate kind of impact is individualized. That's something that we've got to think about. And I do wish that our politics and our government was set up to have these conversations in an intelligent way.
- [09:14]
Morgan
But they could barely remember when Mark Zuckerberg was on stand and like, well.
- [09:18]
Jeff Nelson
Sir, yeah, they didn't understand Internet concepts from like 2013. So yeah, we are, we're kind of in a bad place.
- [09:30]
Morgan
So Trump's bill includes a 10 year moratorium on state laws protecting against the misuse of AI, including this ban in Cali about the AI generated child pornography, deep fake porn and everything. 10 years is a lifetime.
- [09:46]
Jeff Nelson
Think about how much AI has progressed in 10 months?
- [09:50]
Morgan
Yeah. 10 years ago, like TikTok was ByteDance.
- [09:53]
Jeff Nelson
Okay. Yeah, exactly. So if there, there's no regulatory scheme happening anywhere for 10 years, I mean, we're, we're potentially in a world of hurt. I mean, that, that's potentially really dangerous.
- [10:07]
Morgan
Yeah. I mean, the reason why I wanted to do this episode is because of course you've been seeing it. I've been playing a lot with creating this digital avatar and this digital twit of myself where I have given this tool. Hey, Jin. My face, my voice, my body, my hand motions, and everything that makes me uniquely me. And to create this interactive avatar that's like my angle. An interactive avatar that I can have at Afrotech since I won't be there. Also, get your tickets to Afrotech if you don't have them yet. Zachconference.com Afrotechconference.com okay. Anyways, but so I am kind of like. And then as I got deeper in that hole and I started reading the terms and I started to like generate these hyper realistic versions of myself and share that with you all, a lot of people were like, oh, wait, now every time I post a piece of content, they're like, is this the real Morgan?
- [11:00]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah.
- [11:00]
Morgan
Or is it the AI Morgan? Because it's getting very good and it will only get better. This is the worst it will ever be. So there will be a point where I say, this is my twin. And does it make the content that I'm putting out in the world less valuable because it's a twin trained on me?
- [11:21]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. Now I will say, fortunately for you, your value, you put out great content and there's a lot of value there. Even if the value of your content went to zero, you yourself are still valuable for so many other things and you build so many other things that you're protecting. For the average content creator where, if that is your profession and that is your livelihood and you are a content creator and that's what you do, I think what you're saying is something that people have to think about. It's like, is it worth it for me to give my secret sauce to this thing? Which in the short term makes it easier for me to do what makes me money. But then if it's easy for me to do it, then it's easy for somebody else to just come and take that. My secret. I've given my secret sauce away. Right. It's kind of like if, if, if, if KFC were to give away the 11 herbs and spices to someone Right. That you've got the secret recipe, you've got the secret. If somebody else has your secret sauce, then that point, what, what is your sort of moat in your, in your barrier. Right.
- [12:27]
Morgan
And so I think that there's going to be situations where there's going to be even social networks that are just AI influencers. Like we're all operating as if the content that we see every single day on Instagram is real. It's a real person showing us a window into their life. But in reality it's highly augmented already. They're augmenting what they look like, they're augmenting backgrounds, the colors, they're augmenting the angles at which they're. We already live in an augmented reality on social, so this will just take it even further. And I just wonder if it will. We'll wind up in a situation where like the next Instagram will just be all AI instances of all of us.
- [13:06]
Jeff Nelson
I do worry about that. I do worry, worry that we are in or quickly heading to this, this sort of self perpetuating world of AI content being consumed by AI and it's just this psycho.
- [13:20]
Morgan
I didn't even think about that.
- [13:21]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, I mean, because if everybody is, I'm putting out AI content and everybody's got their digital twin and all that stuff and, and you know, like now the bots are the ones that are driving so much engagement. If that is the world that we're living in, then it kind of, you know, it, it prompts this question of like, well, what, what then becomes of the human experience?
- [13:43]
Morgan
But then can I just be on a yacht and working on my plants in my backyard? Like, maybe that, maybe that does work. Maybe that just means humans go back to look like my digital twin is so smart online that she's just like operating and that I can, you know.
- [13:59]
Jeff Nelson
But I, I guess it's sort of like, well, what's the point, right? Like what's the point make money. But if your digital twin is only being viewed by other digital twins, right? Like it's this artificial world. It's sort of like you have the, this artificial world and then what, what is what becomes of the real world?
- [14:16]
Morgan
Like, but isn't that how video games already work? I mean, I'm, I'm a gamer, but I'm not like a, I don't know what they call it, like an interactive gamers where like I'm not going into a cyber world and then purchasing. But I do remember back in the day when I had neopets. I don't know if you know this about me, this is getting very unique. But I had neopets and so I would go into the world and you're in commerce in the ecosystem. You could decide to be a business owner, you could decide to be a consumer, you could decide to, you know, create other people's websites in the digital world. You could decide to have commerce in that world or be a consumer, which is how 90% of people operate on the Internet.
- [14:54]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. So one of the things that when we started blavity and part of what's in our vision of mission is this view that there's this continuum between digital and in person experiences. And I think that we've always done a good job of figuring out how do we use, how do we create in person events and experiences for people to connect and build community and then use online in the digital world to scale that up and allow people to form new connections that then have some, some in person translation. And I. And that's, and that's the world before AI. I think that's everything that you're talking about like video games and neopets, like whatever you want to call it. Social media, there was always this ability where social media and technology allowed you to do things easily, connect with people, do it at scale. But then there was some kind of in person payoff, right? Some kind of expected in person realization of that in a world where AI where if, you know, if everybody is just, everybody can just do quickly, here's my digital twin. Here's my digital twin. And everybody's like, well, I don't want to do the, the digital stuff because I can automate it. If everybody kind of takes that view then I think you kind of lose that continuum, right? You, you actually kind of lose people ability to appreciate that balance between digital and in real life. Right.
- [16:17]
Morgan
And so I think there's going to be a social hierarchy in a digital twin universe. Like I could imagine people being like, okay, we're going to have a digital blavity fest. But to have to get access to the digital blavity fest for your AI twin to get in here, then you've got to do these things or you've got to have this level.
- [16:34]
Jeff Nelson
Well, if is my digital twin enjoying it or am I enjoying it? I mean this is, this is the first of my love Black Mirror. I would encourage any, anybody who, who you know is watching if you have not seen the new season of Black Mirror.
- [16:47]
Morgan
So good.
- [16:48]
Jeff Nelson
Highly encourage you you to watch it. This is the kind of stuff that Black Mirror was reckoning with, you know, five, six years ago, this idea that. And it's kind of, you know, I used to take philosophy classes in, in college, right. And there's this, this old thought experiment of the pleasure machine, which is if your physical, if your physical body could die, but then you, your brain could be hooked up to this pleasure machine and it could be fed every sensory experience that you ever wanted. It was pleasure. And you yourself would not know you were dead, that your physical body was dead. Would you take that? And I feel like we're at a place now where we're kind of seeing those dilemmas in real life where if my digital twin is having an experience and my digital twin is an influencer and giving ears and like, do I truly benefit from that? Like my digital twin is at the digital vavity festing. The digital two chains. The digital Kirk Franklin do the thing. Do I like, do I derive joy from that? Like, does that feel.
- [17:46]
Morgan
The answer is probably yes. Because I, I don't think we're that far away, Jeff. Like in my brain I feel like I'm. There's people who I know who have a million followers, so their perception of clout, in their perception of happiness and joy and money and popping and vibes, like they receive an adrenaline pleasure from people perceiving them that way, even though in their real life they are unhappy, they do not have as much money as you think they do. And they're making all these trade offs every day to pump out that volume of content to have that perception. They're living, they're literally going to events, restaurants, places to take pictures and make videos, not to experience the restaurants, the vacations and trips and stuff that they're doing. So I think that we've already made that trade off.
- [18:40]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, we're there. We're knocking on the door. One foot's all the way in. I think you're right. And it will be interesting to see what like for our kids when, when they are our age, what is, what is life in the world look like to them? Because I can imagine for even like think about our parents and how they interacted with their friends and their community compared to us who we have social media and we can, you know, we, we are maybe social first where we don't randomly call people just to catch up. Everything is like, like, like I have friends that I haven't spoken to in five years, but I follow them on Instagram so I know what's up, right? I know what's going on in their life and so it's like the, the nature of connection has changed and what you're saying now is that it's, it's continuing to change and AI is going to continue to make a change and.
- [19:30]
Morgan
It'S going to accelerate it. Like instead of it taking five to ten years from us just having Facebook pages to now, people having careers and media companies on social media to now than their AI influencer, AI twin having careers on social media, it's not going to take five years. Yeah, it's just not. So anyways, you guys, not to be a Debbie Downer.
- [19:53]
Jeff Nelson
Well, let's talk about some happy things because AI is not all bad. We're not, we're, we're not a, we're.
- [19:58]
Morgan
Not going to observe new segment.
- [20:01]
Jeff Nelson
Really. So you know, you and I have been playing around with 11 labs and so I've been playing around with it for a couple of months. I haven't given it my voice, but I've been using like some of the built in voices that they have. And I'm really interested in this space of creating AI agents and making it easier for people to create AI agents.
- [20:22]
Morgan
Wait, explain. An AI agent.
- [20:23]
Jeff Nelson
Yes. So what is an AI agent? So in, in the most layman of terms, if you think about what ChatGPT is, ChatGPT is kind of a chatbot that can generate content for you. An AI agent goes beyond that and it's a super assistant that can actually do things for you. Right. So instead of you having to take the content, right. If you're saying I want to generate an email or I want to generate an image or a blog post or an Instagram post, instead of you having, let's say create this for me, then I'm going to take it and then I'm going to post it. An agent can do it for you. They can generate the stuff, they can post it, they can look at the data, they can do all that stuff. Right. And agents are still relatively early and so they aren't as mainstream. But the vision of an agent, are.
- [21:12]
Morgan
You still giving it instructions? Like just like I tell chat, here's my prompt.
- [21:16]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, so, so you're still prompting an agent. But the, but the beauty of an agent is when you have these like multi step things that need to happen, you can just sort of tell it like this is what I want. Right.
- [21:27]
Morgan
Is that just automation?
- [21:30]
Jeff Nelson
It, it builds on automation, but it's a little different. What separates an agent from automation is that an agent has the ability to make decisions and refine its plan. So in automation you, you specifically say, if this happens, then do this, this happens, then do that. It's a rigid plan and it's automated. But what an agent can do is it can say, all right, I understand, if this happens, I do this. But if there is new information or there's new data, an agent is able to decide what it should do without having to be told. That's really of an agent, is that you can kind of say, you can give it a goal. I think an example may be, you know, we talk a lot about this for the travel case, you know, Travel Noir, one of our brands at Blavity. If I'm taking a trip to Spain and I. And I can sort of give an agent and say, like, hey, I'm going to Spain for seven days. This is. This is like, what. This is the type of trip I want to have. Like, I want to visit some historical sites, I want to eat some good food, I want to take some Instagram photos, I want to, you know, have some good wine. I can just give it kind of that set of instructions. And then the agent can decide what to do without certainly having to say, okay, go on this website and book my flight. And the flight is, you know, under this amount, book this airline. Instead of me giving it the specific if then rules, I can give it just a goal or an objective and the agent can figure it out. And then if the agent comes in, you know, the agent encounters an issue where it's like, well, there are no flights to Spain on this date. It can intelligently say, well, I've booked all these reservations. You're not going to be able to make this trip. I got to call them back. Cancel. Right? That's the beauty of an agent is that it. It can auto, it can. It's like super automation.
- [23:17]
Morgan
So I was just reading a press release last week from one of these big companies and it was saying, yeah, we've got a thousand agents.
- [23:25]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah.
- [23:25]
Morgan
What does that mean? Like, they have a thousand bots.
- [23:29]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. So some of it's hype, right? Like agents, people, again with everything, there's a bit of hype. People are, I think, are using the term aging, even if they've got a simple automation. So even if they.
- [23:39]
Morgan
Automation. That's what it feels like. I'm like five tools and called it an agent.
- [23:44]
Jeff Nelson
Exactly. Right. I think people are kind of using that term for a little bit of time. Right. But, you know, it could be anything from simple as, like, I've got some, you know, if, then this, if this, then that recipes and we're going to call them agents to. You know, I'm a. I'm a software engineer. So there are some really cool tools when it comes to writing code. Like, you can actually have agents where you can go and you can say, here's a product requirements document. Go and build this thing. And it is actually doing the work to design it, to write the code, to submit the code to the repository where the code needs to live. It can run tests. It can then say, I'm going to work on this feature. It can slack you and say, hey, this is what I did today. Tomorrow. Well, not tomorrow, but now I'm going to work on this. Like, those are.
- [24:32]
Morgan
I think, first of all, does it work 24 7? Like, there's no concept of time.
- [24:35]
Jeff Nelson
There's no concept of time? No, there's no concept of time.
- [24:38]
Morgan
That's wild.
- [24:39]
Jeff Nelson
It's wild. I mean, I think every employer's dream is like, yo, if I could have employees that are working around the clock and they, you know, they're not complaining. They're. They don't need vacation, they're actually doing work. Like, if you and I talk about it all the time, like, the best feeling is when you wake up to work being done that you.
- [24:55]
Morgan
Oh, yeah, it's the most delicious thing.
- [24:57]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. When you can review it, get feedback, and then you can work, make a lot of progress and you go to sleep with them, more work is being done.
- [25:04]
Morgan
Not because y' all working while you're sleep. Just to be clear, that's not what Jeff and I are saying, but we're saying we can step away and come back and people still worked.
- [25:11]
Jeff Nelson
Exactly. Work. Work is back, done. And I. Right, right. And I. And I didn't have to be there, like, driving every step of the way. You're still driving the bigger picture. But it isn't like, unless I'm on somebody slacking, them saying, do X, do Y, do Z? You know, work. Work only happens that way. No, it's like the vision of I can step away and I came back and progress was made.
- [25:34]
Morgan
I think that's actually probably the easiest way for like the average person to understand an AI agent. Just like having an employee. Right. Like we have employees at Blavity and they write articles every day. Right. Like, they're editing the articles, they're providing feedback, they're having their own meetings with one another, they're deciding different things. And then we get a report once a week or every couple weeks with, here's what the traffic is. And based off of that Report, we'll say, hmm, something's off, or like something's great. And then we say, well, tweak this, tweak that, tweak this, tweak that. Then they go off and they do their thing for another couple weeks and they come back. It would probably be about the same thing. It's just not people.
- [26:16]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. And, and I read something recently and I get a lot of questions about how should people prepare themselves for an age of AI where if you have tools and agents that can do the work, what's my value as a worker? What is my value? How can I prepare myself for that and still remain employable and useful? And I think the sort of classic work spectrum of productivity is there's the phase of kind of planning and deciding what to do, there's the, the phase of the work actually being done, and then there's the phase of reviewing and integrating the work that was done. And it's kind of this cycle continuously. And when you're a startup, you're doing every phase of that, that cycle. Like back when we were first starting Wiley, like, you know, Morgan, you were, you were planning it, you were, you were do, at Afro Tech setting up the booths, you were reviewing it, you were, and then you were planning again. Right? So as a founder of a small startup, you're kind of doing every phase of that continuum, right? When you become a bigger company, then that's when you sort of hire people that can do the middle phase of like, okay, you're going to do the work, I'm going to plan it, you do the work, I'm going to review it and then integrate it and then I'm going to plan something else. You do the work, integrate, boom, boom, boom. And then when you get really big and really successful, then you can hire senior staff that can do some of the planning or do some of the integrating.
- [27:41]
Morgan
I think those people are screwed because I think ChatGPT strategy and critical thinking functionality is better than most of the senior directors. Not at my company, because y' all great, but in general, like, because you're really just taking data, summarizing it, coming up with a couple hypotheses and then saying, here's how I want you to apply those hypotheses, go do that and test them out.
- [28:08]
Jeff Nelson
So I, I, I agree with you to, to some extent and, and this might be a little controversial, I think that you're right that what AI output is better than a lot of, a lot of high level people out there. And again, not, not an argument right But I think what it's revealing is that it's kind of like the opposite of imposter syndrome, where, you know, really high achieving people don't feel that they deserve it. There. There are actually a lot of high achieving people that are truly imposters and they don't, they themselves don't think that they are imposters. And I think AI is revealing that, yes, because you know so much of people's expertise and they've attained a status in this position. But I look at them like y' all aren't that impressive and not really is. Is revealing that. And so to me, the litmus test and to me, what to tell if somebody's like, yo, I used AI and it is so much better than what I could do. Like, I use AI and it leveled me up 10, 100 fold. And I'm like, you weren't all that impressive to begin with. Because I use certain things. I will say this, there is nothing, and I've used all the AI tools, there is nothing that AI has ever produced that is better than what I can do. I can do things faster.
- [29:32]
Morgan
Faster. That's what it is. That's what it is.
- [29:34]
Jeff Nelson
We're ready. Faster. But I've never got some written from ChatGPT, Quad or Gemini or whomever. And I'm like, man, I couldn't have written this. This is great. Like, no, I'm just like, actually, it's the speed. It's the speed to react to something. And again, what we were talking about before, as a boss, as a manager, your ability to have progress be made so you can react and get feedback and then have your feedback incorporated and get more things to react to. That's where you want to be, right? And so what AI does is it allows that to happen much more quickly. But if you're in a space where suddenly you did not have these abilities and now AI is giving you those abilities, then you weren't all that impressive to begin with. And those, to me, those are the people who are in danger. Because if you're only. If your only value to an organization or to a company was this ability to kind of do these things that were tedious at a high level, right? And when I say a high level, it's like you're, you're doing thing you, you're sort of senior, but you're really doing tedious and automatable work. You're adding no value on either the planning or the integration phase. Well, AI is going to come and wipe that away, right? Yeah, that's the.
- [30:48]
Morgan
I mean, I agree with you. I mean, it's the same reason we still have project managers at our company. Because I'm like, it doesn't matter. Use the tool with AI so you work faster. But I still need you to have judgment.
- [30:59]
Jeff Nelson
Judgment, yes. The ability to decide, the ability to be discerning, the ability to be strategic. The ability to have forethought. Like as you said in the example where our team will come and give us reports, our job is to not just take the report and say, did you hit the KPI? But it's to look at, well, why did you hit the KPI? What, what were the reasons for the trade offs?
- [31:21]
Morgan
We were just talking about this.
- [31:23]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. Why did you miss it? And, and problem solve for that? Or like, what are new opportunities? Or what are things that we should stop doing?
- [31:29]
Morgan
Yeah. As a result, you know, there's that article that just came out from. I think it was on Psych. Yeah. That said that like basically AI skills erode critical thinking skills. It was a super small study. So I just want to say, like their methodology was a little lax. But you know, it started this conversation. I'm curious what you think about that.
- [31:51]
Jeff Nelson
I, I think it, I think it's true. I mean, I even notice for little things when I am using, there are things that I can do. But it just, it feels like such a chore now because ChatGPT is in quad and Gemini and all these tools, it made it so easy to write an email. It feels like a chore. Right. Something is basically an email. I don't even want to. It's like you don't even want to. You don't want to turn that part of your brain on to do it feels like such a chore. Right. And I think that that's where this notion of like mental atrophy comes into play, where it's like your brain is a muscle. If you don't work it, you know, you, you will, you will lose, lose those abilities. Right. So much of running your company in business is almost like the scientific method. You are constantly testing hypotheses, seeing what works, doubling down on what works. And then what doesn't work, you discard it. And the nature of what works and what doesn't work is dynamic because you're. The conditions in which you operate change. So what AI is really, really good at is kind of, kind of automating at scale and automating imprecise instructions where.
- [33:07]
Morgan
I can say historical context, which I think is right.
- [33:12]
Jeff Nelson
It's really, really Good at that. But the value for humans in this loop and what as you want to kind of prove yourself in the world of AI is you have to have the ability to reason, have the ability to have judgment, have the ability to come up with the hypothesis. Figure out how do I test this hypothesis, how do I know that something works, look at data, figure out what worked, what didn't work, but also what in the data did you not think would matter, but actually may matter because you're seeing these, these trends right there and have that ability to come up with a new hypothesis. So again, that spectrum that I was talking about, where there's kind of the, the planning and strategizing the actual work of execution and then the sort of evaluation and integration, those two ends, the planning and the evaluation and integration, like those two ends of that spectrum are where humans still have the ability to shine, even in an age of AI. But the doing AI is really getting really, really good at doing. Right. And it's like with any automation, I saw a stat where I was looking, I forget the specifics, but it was like the, the peak number of farmers in like it peaked, I think it's some decade like in say like the 1930s or something and then that they either have as many farmers but the output is. Yeah, same thing with manufacturing. It peaked at some year like say like the 1960s. I made up the years, but peak in the 1960s. Now today there were 20 million manufacturing jobs at the peak. Now it's 10 million. But the output of manufacturing is double. What is great about technology and has always been true has been the ability to scale up the actual doing of things. But where humans still can shine is figuring out what needs to be done and what do we do with what has been done.
- [35:02]
Morgan
Yeah, that's what use AI for good, not for bad.
- [35:05]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, exactly. Right.
- [35:07]
Morgan
Yeah, exactly. And I think, I think that's a really important thing for people to realize. I mean I think there's, right now there's like cultural push against AI is taking my job and you know, what's my value if AI is doing it? And I think it's exactly what you just shared. Right. Like there were people who were in factories and were doing the work that now machines do. It didn't make them less of a human, it didn't make them less valuable. You have to decide how you want to participate.
- [35:35]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah. You know, up your, up your brain. Right. You've got to use a higher, it frees you up to do a higher level thinking.
- [35:42]
Morgan
Right. But if you're 60, you might say, honestly, I'm out. I'm just going to retire early and call it a day. Like y' all got it. If you're 30, you can't afford not to adjust because we've got a lot of working years left. Right. If you're 20 and you're about to take that manufacturing job, you might want to reconsider another industry.
- [36:03]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, well, yeah. For three year olds who are wondering, well, what do I study in college? What do I major in? What, how do I think? How do I think what? I think you're philosophy. It's an interesting point, is like, does AI just free us to be. To lean more to the humanities, to lean more to the, to the subjective, into art, into philosophy, to do more like get in touch with the earth and nature and, and have experiences with the world around us. I mean, that is a view, right? And that that can certainly be part of it.
- [36:35]
Morgan
I mean data would show that that is accurate. Right. Like when people weren't hunting and gathering because there were things that allowed us to, you know, store food longer, then people weren't doing all these things. When women were able to have a refrigerator, then when microwave meals were able to happen, then people were able to go do other things with their time. Like there's so much data that shows. Yes, to your point, it also maybe left more room for shenanigans.
- [37:03]
Jeff Nelson
We, I think the conversation we'll be having, the, the sort of world history, AP History class of this century is going to be interesting to 100 years from now. And talk about just from 2000 to 2099, the way that the world has changed.
- [37:22]
Morgan
Certain people start having babies in their 40s and 50s and it's normal, you know, when you got to do it early because it's the right timing, but then it's like, no, we're working. It's like, well, you know, like there's all these different things that I think we thought were rules and guidelines and structure and society as we know it. But what has been one fact and one truth about society is that it's constantly evolving. That those numbers and those benchmarks are constantly changing as you're living.
- [37:49]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Expressing there.
- [37:52]
Morgan
Okay, so what new tool have you been using?
- [37:56]
Jeff Nelson
So the two, the couple of tools. One, for anybody who is into software development, I really like a. It's a tool called cursor. Cursor, okay.
- [38:06]
Morgan
Cursor's not that revolut. I mean it's revolutionary. But people have heard of cursor.
- [38:09]
Jeff Nelson
Jeff well, they've released an update. Yeah, there's a, there's a new version of Cursor.
- [38:16]
Morgan
Okay. Okay. I like Cursor.
- [38:20]
Jeff Nelson
And again, like I said, I'm not always an early adopter. Believe it or not, with the technology, some, sometimes technologists themselves are not early adopters because we know how brittle technology can be. So I am, I'm using Cursor. Right. The reason I really, really love Cursor is because it has greatly improved my development workflow. And like, you know, our teams at labty, I'm getting them to start using this. Just the ability again to still be a human that is driving the thinking, but to have AI scale up the speed at which you can do that. Right. So to iterate on concepts and iterate on code and debug and test things in real time, like highly encourage anyone that is writing software to use a tool like Cursor or any of these AI tools that are providing those abilities. I'm using AI in my wearables board. That, that's the space that I need. Oh, I don't have them on now, but you know, I am my, my only social media influencing that I do. For the even realities, the G1 glasses, the glasses with the teleprompter that I debuted at Afrotech last year, which are really, really cool glasses, they've rolled out some new AI features.
- [39:36]
Morgan
What, what's the name of it again?
- [39:38]
Jeff Nelson
They are called. The company is Even Realities.
- [39:42]
Morgan
Okay.
- [39:42]
Jeff Nelson
And the glasses are called the G1s. So they are, they are, you know, Meta has the Ray Bans. Those are former smart glasses I have, but I have every pair of smart glasses there are. But I really like the G1s because they are so unobtrusive. They look really, really good. They, they look like nice regular glasses, but they pack a ton of functionality and features within them. I love the teleprompter feature that they have, but they also have sort of this AI integration with them as well.
- [40:11]
Morgan
Do they have an app store?
- [40:13]
Jeff Nelson
They don't have, they don't have an app store. But the, the cool thing about it is that, so with metas, the Ray Bans, the way the, the interaction with that is like there, there's audio so you can it, it's speaking. So it's like a, like, basically like a speakerphone in your ear. So when you're interacting with the AI and the meta ray bands, you're kind of hearing it. Which I actually don't like because I'm always self conscious about like, hey, can other People hear this or it's distracting me from the world around me because the G1s have the teleprompter, their interface to you is this kind of heads up display. Like you can actually see in the glasses where it's projected this information. So they have a dashboard that's projected, they have notifications. So I can see the notifications from my phone projected. I can see what the AI, the AI is listening and then it's telling me the answers in my glasses. I really, really like those because other people don't know. Like I can be having a conversation with you in person and I'm seeing all this stuff from, from the AI in these glasses and nobody knows. And it's moment. I'm not looking at my watch, I'm not like hearing something in my ear. But it's, it's super, it's super nice. What's interesting in this wearable space, I don't know if you've seen the lawsuit that OpenAI is engaged in.
- [41:38]
Morgan
Oh yeah, we can't even talk about it. I mean, we can't. But yeah, I was like, that's crazy.
- [41:43]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, so, so a few months ago, Johnny I've, who was the former, you know, head designer at Apple, several years ago he, his company, I believe it was called Loveform, was acquired, was acquired by OpenAI to form this partnership where they were going to work on a wearable device. Some sort of, he's going to sort of revolutionize AI. And they called the company IO and apparently there was another company which was an offshoot of a Google project called IO I Y O. And because of the lawsuit, Sam Altman kind of posted the emails about why he thinks that the lawsuit is bogus. But what has come out of that is what it's clear is that what OpenAI and Johnny I were planning to work on were a pair of AI earbuds because that's essentially what the company IO Iyo was doing. And so I think that's interesting because I think that the sweet spot for AI in everyday life, like if you're on a computer all day, if you're a white collar worker and you're on a computer all day, then yes, we've been using AI. And even if you're on your phone, but if you think for the vast majority of people who don't have that kind of job, where they have the luxury of being on a device all.
- [42:59]
Morgan
Day, yeah, Uber drivers, people delivering our.
- [43:03]
Jeff Nelson
Mail, how can they use AI? It's going to be some form of a wearable and so I thought it was interesting that they, that they, the intention is for them to lean into earbuds as kind of the main input output device for people to use every AI in their everyday life. I don't know if I agree with that. I have some ideas about what it could be and maybe I'll work on those if I ever get some spare time. But I am interested in this space of wearables because we have so many devices, we have so many miniature computers that are connected to us at all times. And I, bento person, or the company that succeeds in the AI space is going to be the one that really figures out how to intuitively integrate AI into those devices in a way that we naturally can give it context and information. We can naturally get value from it.
- [43:57]
Morgan
Yeah, I agree with you. I don't think the future is us on screens. Like I don't think it's the, the future is us getting all these technic lines because our heads are down like this all freaking day. That's not the future. The future, absolutely. I actually agree with them that it's audio. You know, I feel this way, but I think audio is so intuitive, it's faster, it's faster to output, it's not necessarily faster to input. So I think that's where sometimes like I can read faster than I can hear it, you know, but I can speak faster than I can write. Correct. So I don't know how they reconcile that. But I'm a, I'm a creator. Most people are consumers. Yeah, right. So I don't know how you reconcile that. But like even within my own house, you know, we have Alexa in our house and even my son, who's what, 19 months, like he knows that these things talk and that they're dynamic and he can say, you know, he can't say it well, but he can be like, he'll be like E.I.
- [44:55]
Jeff Nelson
O.
- [44:56]
Morgan
And I'm like, oh, it's not on. Like yeah. Like hey Alexa. And he's like yeah, yeah. And, and it knows that he's trying to get to old me down at a farm, you know what I'm saying? So that's smart. And he doesn't need to be on a device to have that interaction. Like physically. I think that is more freeing than him having to get on his phone, click the app, download the whatever, swipe, swipe, swipe. It's way more accessible with audio, visual. Like I can't imagine my 19 month old son having to have a wearable that's visible like on his eyes in order to have that interaction.
- [45:38]
Jeff Nelson
Yeah, I think you're right. In that case, for. For me, if we. If we ever. And I know met is working on it, but, you know, I was. The one thing I wasn't really adopter for was the Vision Pro. I think I went out as soon as it came out, and I've probably used it a total of one time since I've owned it.
- [45:55]
Morgan
You and everybody else.
- [45:57]
Jeff Nelson
And everybody else. But the experience itself was great on it. It's just. It's so cumbersome to use. But if we figure out how to. Because people wear glasses because they truly need them to read them. They also. People wear glasses just from fashion, whether it's sunglasses or, you know, fake reading glasses. If we figure out how to get the power of what you can see with a Vision Pro, like I can actually see my device in front of me. I can. It has the gesture recognition. If you could get that in a pair of glasses that was this lightweight or contact or contacts. Yeah.
- [46:32]
Morgan
You know what I'm saying? Like, that would be crazy.
- [46:34]
Jeff Nelson
So to me like that again, obviously not for children. But, you know, I just think in a world where. How. How do we bring the power of AI and computing to us continuously but make it natural and the things that we naturally. People naturally wear glasses. People naturally use earbuds. Like, how can you surface up concepts and those things? And so that's why I really like the G1s. Granted, the display is like just all text. It's just kind of like all green text. Right. It's not graphical. But to me, even the power where I can be out at lunch. And this was really, really good at Afrotech because, as you know, at Afrotech, our internal slack is popping off. Right. It's so much going on behind the scenes. And so then when you or I are on stage, but you know, we're also having to be operational. We. If there's a fire, but you're, you know, in a meeting with somebody, and it's something where only you can deal with it. Somebody needs to be able to get in touch with you, but also you need to be able to filter the noise out. I love the glasses because they would show me everything, but I could just glance up and be like, okay, no, that's just. No, don't need to. Oh, no. I actually need to pay attention to this. And so like that, to me, that vision of literally the stuff that I need to know is in my face and it. And I don't have to Have a heavy headset on or if you like the wearables and audio, like cool. It's in my ear, I can hear it and I don't have to have like some big device on. I do think wearables are going to be that sweet spot for AI in the future.
- [48:04]
Morgan
Yeah, I mean, I'm excited for these people. I mean, sometimes I get jealous because we're sitting talking about ad impressions every day and they get to talk about wearables and philosophy of how consumers in the society should be interacting with these things. And you know, I just, it's such an interesting thing to be an entrepreneur, but an entrepreneur who started 10 years ago versus entrepreneurs who are getting the freedom to start today fresh, you know, with a vision of the future. You know, we're operating off of a vision of our future from 10 years ago and constantly updating it to today. And so for anyone who's listening to this, just know that I'm a little jealous and it might feel overwhelming. But I think the point is this is a moment where there's an inflection point where we're remaking a piece of how we operate as human beings, you know, and the same way that there was an inflection point in the 2000s when people were remaking how we use the Internet or how establishing how the Internet was used for the next 10 years, there's people building how we're going to be using currency for the next 10 years, consuming information, creating information and also online human identity, you know, and like how cool.
- [49:18]
Jeff Nelson
It's cool. I'm excited. I'm excited.
- [49:24]
Morgan
So to help everybody who's listening to this and just the society at large, Jeff and I and the rest of the Afro Tech team are putting together a new summit that's going to be open to the public called AI Edge. And this summit is going to help you get access to some of this information, hear from product leaders at some of these companies that we've been talking about that it's going to be free to give you guys the tools, the methods, the resources so that you can get up to speed or ask the people who are actually these technologists. So make sure you look out for that on Afrotech's website, on our social newsletter, of course, on me and Jeff Social, we'll also promote it by AI Edge, by AfroTech. Coming to you very, very soon, August 8th. So we're trying to give people the tools, we're trying to make sure this is accessible to you whether you guys come to Afrotech or not. Although you should be coming to the conference, but if you're. Even if you're not able to make it the conference this year, we want to make sure you still get this knowledge, this information. All right, Jeff, we just talked about a million one things. I feel like my brain hurts a little bit, but I also could keep going because there's so many things we didn't even talk about. You all make sure you subscribe to the YouTube channel. Put questions in there for me and Jeff. We read every single note, every single comment. If you're on listening to this on itunes or Spotify, make sure you leave a review and comment and share this with other people. It's important that we build our tribes of information and sharing in this world because we don't want to be left behind. We don't want our community to be left behind. Even if you don't agree with everything that we said, that's okay. That's part of the dialogue. That's part of the discourse. So make sure that you're participating actively so that you can be informed and make informed decisions about your likeness, where you want to be, and how you want to participate or lead within this new era.
- [51:06]
Jeff Nelson
That's right.
- [51:08]
Morgan
That's it.
- [51:10]
Jeff Nelson
Bye, bye.