Time to Talk About AI for Today!

Good morning, happy Tuesday, LinkedIn friends, Value First Nation. It is time for another episode of Value First AI Daily, your collaborative intelligence report. It is March 3rd, 2026. How we doing, fellas?

Doing pretty good. Can't, uh, can't say I'm too shabby. How about yourself over there, George?

I'm doing good. Um, Tuesday, you know, looking to see how much we can rock out this week and how much we can learn. But Chris, how are you doing, my friend?

I am doing awesome, learning a lot right now, building out, uh, the, the, uh, the intelligent org infrastructure of the Value First team, uh, going beyond the 3 leaders and continuing to learn why I need to do that. As not every prompt and response comes back the way that you design it. So continuing to learn all these new tools getting just handed to us and trying to overcome some of the Yeah, I think we get so accustomed to like troubleshooting sometimes. And like this morning, uh, two things come to mind. Um, one, I was— I started having an issue last night of, um, you know, 401 API errors in, in the IDE with Claude, Claude Code, and Since it's been an error, that's like one of those is like try again, like situations, like where you don't trust the words on the screen. It's like, all right, I'm trying again a couple of times and then just go to bed. Like, all right, not going to work. Get up this morning and same thing's happening. And instead of like reading the words on the screen and then trying to follow the directions out of the error, I open up Cloud Desktop instead and start working over there. And it works fine until it doesn't because it's in a different environment. I'm trying to do the same commands and now there's other setup to do, like plugins and connecting Google and all this stuff. I get there and enough to the point where I come back. So there's enough friction over there, come back. All right, let me just do the /login like it's telling me to do. Okay, we're fixed now. Just follow the directions. And two things. So that, so the first thing is like, again, stepping back and like, instead of trying to like troubleshoot at a different technical level, right? It's like the, is it plugged in kind of, kind of thing. But then the other thing I thought of, and why I think people should be thinking about AI differently even though we're using it through software interfaces, like, can you imagine a world where you're using HubSpot and HubSpot stopped working for you, or, or something was getting in your way, and you were like, that's cool, let me, let me go use Salesforce? Real quick to do my job, like, because that's already set up and ready to go and able to help me. Like, I don't know that I can think of a software, you know, experience like switching between email clients. Like, that stuff we haven't done before, and I think people, you know, miss that part. And when we talk about AI as infrastructure and not as software, That's the kind of thing that, that we're talking about.

Yeah, and I, I agree completely because they're really— that's, that's one of the major reasons I've been agnostic this whole time is in order to not be stuck with one particular platform for solutioning or another, right? In case one one or another goes down at any, at any given time. And, uh, even Laura was saying the same thing. She's like, well, you know, you're getting into getting pretty knee-deep into this business, and what happens if one day, you know, Claude's just down or what have you? And I'm like, well, then the rest of the world knows why I'm not going to be working that day, right? Like, it's not, it's not as if, um, like, the, the funny part is I was like, well, you know, there's been outages for car dealerships, there's been outages for airlines. Like, the stuff happens. So it's really not, you know, the scale is obviously much, much larger, but it's not an unheard of thing that society would depend upon a technology in order to become its infrastructure for doing business on a day-to-day basis. So, um, yeah, but it is definitely the case where You know, to your point, no, if, if stuff's not working for you in HubSpot, you're not just like, okay, well, let's just go power, you know, fire up the sales— everybody just go log into Salesforce now, we'll use that one instead, and they'll sync back later, right? Um, that would be a seriously— I don't know why you would want to do that as an organization ever, but, you know, yeah, I suppose.

Um, I think this is where the intelligence comes in too, because the only comparable thing is like spreadsheets. It's like such a simple— it's like the simplicity of the thing allows and allow you to switch like between, you know, Notepad and Word and those kinds of apps. But then you add complexity. In terms of any kind of software category like a CRM, and you just cannot— like, that just doesn't make any sense. And now you add the intelligence in, and that whole motion, you know, becomes possible. And it's just like a different—

yeah, because you've re-centered where You've re-centered where the actual core of the tech stack is, right? Instead of it being in the CRM or in somebody's particular platform, now it's in this intelligence layer and everything else plugs into it. So now everybody wants to be friends with Claude and ChatGPT. It's really not a matter anymore. Like, I don't really care if something plugs into HubSpot anymore. I only care if I can get to it with Claude or if it has some connector, because that's it. Like, I already have HubSpot connected to Claude, so I don't need anymore, right? Like, it's this thing of if, if that's what the intention is. I'm not saying like if you're a marketer, like the all-end-all or what have you, you're probably still working in the application for now, um, but Yeah, I do think we're definitely headed in that direction. I mean, we're seeing more and more articles, we're seeing more and more posts. Like, it's definitely getting to that point where people are getting to that next step of like, okay, cool, web was fun, desktop's cool, what's the— what's CLI? What's that all about?

It's, it's interesting listening to you guys because my brain is going in two different directions and I don't know if it's good or bad or indifferent. But like, as you're talking and you're like, Chris, you used the example of spreadsheets. My mind went to like, not one day on this planet have I paid for Spectrum and Windstream at the same time. Now I could, and guess what, if there was an internet outage in the area, I'd probably still have internet because I would have Windstream or Spectrum as the backup to the one that failed. But I've never done that. What I can tell you that I've done though is I've had Netflix, Hulu, Paramount, Apple, like at the same time with all the shows. Some of the shows same, some of the shows different. Right? And so I'm trying to figure out, like, why did my brain go there? Why did in one scenario I said I've never done this in my life, but oh my God, I've done this? And I think it comes down to, like, the raw core thing that you feel is just deserved to you to be delivered and the luxury of benefits that you get from another, right? Like, because seriously, I have one account, I know it's because of one dang show. One dang show that I want the benefits of watching that show, or I should say my wife or my daughters or whoever wants the benefits of watching that show. And so I kind of try to think about like, how, how do we now start to look at— maybe not we— how do humans start to look at AI the providers? Claude, ChatGPT, Perplexity— are they Spectrum, Windstream, or are they Netflix, Hulu, Apple? Because the way that you'll engage with them at one time or at the same time probably depends on where your mind lands to what they are in your life. I, I hope that makes sense, but like, that's That's where my brain goes on how I think people will make decisions about this. Like, I know that I started to lean more into Claude because of Claude Code versus Codex. I know that I continue to use Claude because of like agent teams, and I really haven't heard, might be my fault, of anything like that over on the Codex side. Like, I know that I use ChatGPT and then Claude and not Perplexity because of the content system that I was building in one or the other, the benefits, the features. Um, so it's just interesting to me.

Yeah, it's almost like there's a— like, we naturally want options, uh, as humans. But like, the way— again, this is— this might be a spot where just the optionality of an infrastructure is just— we've not experienced it. Um, because as you bring up the media, it's like, that's— I would imagine that comes from a place of like TV and Hollywood, like just like diversifying enough, like going from one channel to thousands of channels, like, to be able to provide. And then we just, we naturally enjoy that experience and that choice to the point where we, like, uh, are probably feel entitled to have it, right? And that kind of— I'm having a hard time not bringing it back to joy somehow. Like if we can choose joy, if joy is an option, we're naturally gonna go in that direction. And like the closest thing of other infrastructures I can think of are like we have like, for a long time we had like 3 or 4, you know, cell carriers, but nobody liked those contracts.

Yeah.

Like when I moved from Michigan to Texas, like, Michigan, you didn't have electricity, like, provider choice. Uh, and in Texas you do, but you're not flipping back and forth like whenever you want. And it's just like, it's checking all the boxes for us. And it's kind of like, that's what AI is built to do. Um, so it's just interesting, uh, to think about think about this dynamic. Um, and I think it's important to think about it from these perspectives just because if you're having trouble understanding why this is such a big deal, or why maybe you should care a little bit more or learn a little bit more about its impact, like, all of these things are coming together. And even from the perspective of, we're used to, like, all those channels, um, all that, all those content providers you mentioned, Netflix and all that, like the pricing and the cost of that stuff, usually at the cost, but the, like, it can be a race to the bottom, right? Cheapest, free, all that stuff focused on pricing so that people will pay And now you see, see things happening where, where with Anthropic, people are like, just out of principle in recent days, like, I'm— I just— yep, I went over and got the Max Plan, like, immediately. Uh, and they're finding ways to charge more for faster value, right? And it's this, like, almost race to the top as far as like how much value can we create in any given moment. And all of these, every single space is impacted by it in a, uh, let's say it's impacted by it in a way that everybody can build on the foundation if they choose to. And when they do, there is a, you know, higher value output. And any— and the last thing is anybody can be a part of that. Like, if they want to, if they choose to.

It's, it's funny, you, you've said the word choose twice now in like the last 45 seconds. And I can't— I've tried to like get my brain to move on from something else that you said. And I, I can't, I can't move away from it. And, and so, warning, warning, this has nothing to do with AI. But Chris, you said if joy is an option, you'll go in that direction. And my brain felt sad and I wanted to yell out immediately but not be rude and interrupt you and say, isn't joy always an option? Isn't it all— aren't we supposed to consider it all joy? Trials, temptations, the good times, the bad times, the hills, the valley. Like, isn't joy always an option? But we have to choose to have the perspective, the outlook, the mindsets, the belief that joy is always an option. Okay, my brain unpack that.

I think that's fair. And that's why, like, the positioning of Industrial Age versus Age of AI is how I'm choosing to frame it. Usually when I'm talking about this, like, we've been trained to be like, oh, let me get joy in 30 years. No, I'm gonna do some stuff right now. God, make sure I have joy in 30 years.

Right.

If I had to wait for joy in 30 years, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I mean, I find joy when I wake up in the morning. I find joy when I see my wife's beautiful face or my kids. I find joy when I look out and there's a blue sky and clouds, or when I see the color of the leaves change. Like, I find joy in waking up and being able to be on this podcast and talk to people about technology and the endless, boundless things that they could do with their life.

Life.

If you have to wait 3 seconds to find joy, you better change your life, because it's everywhere. Even in Claude Code, in ChatGPT, there's joy in it if you use it in the right way to do the right things, to build the life and dreams that you want to have. Not 30 years. Not 3 days.

Hmm. Could be tomorrow.

It could be tomorrow, but I hope it comes today, brother.

Yeah, right.

3 seconds.

That's what I'm saying.

Oh, Nico, I know you wanted to— you were excited to talk about something and I kind of went off the rails, so—

No, no, no, no.

What do you got?

It's, uh, it's along the same lines. Um, so I shared with you guys that story from, um, the— about the Supreme Court basically just not necessarily ruling, but it's sort of like a ruling without ruling because they were just like, yeah, we're not going to listen to it. Um, it was a case that was put forward by a gentleman Stephen Thaler, who put together his own AI model called Dabas. And it's his claim that Dabas is like the first sort of sentient model, right? And he had Dabas— I mean, I don't know if he had Dabas, but asked it basically, asked it to create a picture without any reference. Didn't give it, tell it what to create, anything like that. And so it created a picture, right? I'm not entirely sure the exact circumstances underneath it, but I'm assuming that this is like very much— I mean, when it happened, this was 3 or 4 years ago when it first happened, so it was very much like pre, you know, DALL-E and pre-GPT image. This was not like a thing of you know, hey, um, you know, create, create me this image of this thing, right? I'm not, I'm not even sure. I haven't tried it. Maybe you can, but I haven't actually tried like, uh, querying a model and just being like, hey, uh, create me an image of whatever you want, right? And I'm sure that it would, and it would just pick some random thing and do it, right? If you see the image that Dab has created, you could very much— it, it reminds me so much of the sketch from, uh, District— uh, not District 9, uh, the, the other movie he made at Chappie, when he's like sketching the car in the back. And it's— it kind of looks like a sketch, but it looks almost like a Scantron style sketch, right? That's how Davis's picture looks. And it's like, it's almost like a forest with like a, you know, train tunnel or something going through it. Anyhow, Dall-E went to courts and said, hey, look, I didn't do it, the machine did it. The machine wants to copyright the work because it made it. I didn't do it, right? It's not mine. And the court said, no, this is ridiculous. Human didn't do anything, so we're not copyrighting this. Let's get out of here. And so he's been fighting it, fighting it, fighting it. Supreme Court finally, you know, got up there and they were just like, yeah, we're not going to take a look at it. The reason I think that this is interesting is because at the time it wasn't possible to ask a machine to write an entire piece of software, take your hands off the keys, and have that be the case.

Mm.

But we're like Right on the doorstep of that. Had companies openly admit that their engineers haven't even touched code in months. And companies launch based on code that they never wrote.

Hmm.

How then do copyright laws work?

Well, maybe not even that, but my brain went to trademarking something.

Exactly. How do you own anything?

Yeah, I think that's one of the many, one of the many pieces of, um, policy and infrastructure That just does not make sense in the age of AI.

Like, but I mean, how so? How does one make it make sense, though?

Like, that's what I'm saying.

Like, it's not an easy answer. It's not. You can't just be like, okay, we're flipping the switch from blue to purple. Like, it's not because there's so many ramifications on the framework that all of that stuff is legally built on that. Like, if you start tipping dominoes there, whoopsie, like real quick you get to a place where, oh, maybe we shouldn't have tapped that domino.

Like, oof, we're finding some of those dominoes for sure.

Already, uh, and what I, I find the most interesting, right, is that again we are hurtling towards, uh, this, this progress that, that we're achieving. So it's not like it's going to— even if we did stop tomorrow, it would still take to the end of the year for the reverberation to actually maybe settle down. Maybe, um, you know, they've That's, that's the crazy part. If we stopped attempting to advance today, we would still have months and months of discovery and months and months of exponential stuff just from the stuff like that we've already done. Right. So like, there's still more like potential to be unearthed from the stuff that we've already created. We just keep moving forward, just keep leapfrogging because it's like, well, it's too easy. So let's just do that. Um, okay, my, my thing is we're so close to something that is able to on its own, like, do its own calligraphy or do its own drawing or write its own poem or produce its own song on its own, unprogrammed, unprompted. So like not Optimus type stuff, right? At that, like, and I'm not saying we gotta solve it, but it's like we're only, you guys know, we're at best like a couple years away from that moment. So it's like we have that little an amount of time, or potentially humanity to come to terms with, well, yeah, I guess if it did it on its own in a closet and nobody was around to see it, and nobody gave it direction, then it did actually do it on its own.

That's going to be interesting. I'm going to go the complete opposite way with 0 minutes left because, Nico, my brain went somewhere as you were talking and maybe we just ended here. I don't know. But if all of a sudden you got told that AI was getting shut down in 60 days, Um, how much would you sleep in the next 60 days versus build?

A lot.

A lot, actually.

Yeah, surprisingly.

You would sleep a lot or you would build a lot?

I mean, like, I wouldn't— I wouldn't sleep any less than I already do now.

Of course, I don't know how much you sleep. Chris, if you knew V and Sage were gone in 60 days, how much would you be sleeping over the next 60 days?

Uh, I would—

I love the face.

Yeah.

Um, There's inner turmoil, ladies and gentlemen, and that's why I asked the question, because he knows what the human answer should be and he knows what his answer is, and he's thinking of all the things that he could do that he wouldn't be able to do after 60 days and how he would try to set himself up for success for it to be able to be possible afterwards. And I just wonder if you've asked yourself If it went away tomorrow, what the hell would you do?

Oh man, I know you want me to end it there, but I'm not going to. I think for me it's actually— and this is like, I can't stop from connecting all the dots all the time, right? And what you just— I am building a life around trying to help people transition into AI. In the age of AI. And if you tell me that it's gone in 60 days, I have a different— I need to figure out that new problem. And like, am I— do I start helping people transition away from AI? And like, and then it's a— if AI can help me do that thing, I will use it a lot over the 60 days for sure. But if there's other, you know, if it's like, all right, I guess we're setting up local events again and I'm going to start walking around town and like get physical instead of digital. Like, I could see me going in that direction. So that was my inner turmoil. I think because like you say, I think we're in a point where I get a lot of joy working with AI right now, but I know that I could find some different sources of joy if AI was not here.

Yeah.

So we'll leave it at that if you guys don't mind, uh, and we'll see everybody tomorrow morning. Thanks, fellas.

Peace out.

See ya.