9 Business Ideas To Profit From The 2022 A.I. Gold Rush (Using Dall-E & GPT3) (#376)

There's a new era and I'm not part of it. And that's kind of how I— that's a little bit how I feel when I see this. And I don't know, how do you feel when you see this and how do you intend to kind of like get your hands— you know, we're a bunch of scheming, greedy, you know, horrible people. How are you going to get your hands on this? How are you going to get your stinking paws in this game?

Okay, this is the AI episode. It's all AI. Everything is AI. Um, I was mind-blown. I would say that's the right word. Like, to me, this is the biggest holy shit moment I've had when it's come to— when it comes to technology, of seeing what's going on in AI. Um, for you, you got emotional, which is a strange response.

I think I'm more emotional than you are. I think I, like, I get touched more than you do. Let, let me give you the background really quick. So it's a company called Play.ht. Um, but the, and one of their side projects is a thing called Podcast.ai. And basically what they did was they gave their AI algorithm or program, whatever you wanna call it, they gave their, uh, program, uh, Steve Jobs's biography. Uh, which is, and I think they actually gave him one or two of his biographies cuz there's two or 2 major ones. Then they basically gave him, they gave the program every single Steve Jobs recording I think ever, or anything that they could find on the internet, along with every Joe Rogan episode ever. And they made Joe Rogan interview Steve Jobs. And in the interview, it's like 25 minutes long. They talk all about all types of stuff, but they say some amazing things. Like Joe Rogan does the intro and he goes like, he teases out the who, who it is just like he does in real life. He goes, What's up, freak bitches? Which I don't even think he says anymore. But he said that in all the early episodes. He goes, what's up, freak bitches? Today's guest is someone who's incredibly smart, incredibly—

we should just play it, right? Let it, let it.

And insufferable. Well, he says insufferable, which I thought was crazy. So go ahead. This podcast is brought to you by Play.ht.

All content is generated by artificial intelligence. Weird voice choice for this part. Listener discretion is advised.

Hello, freak bitches! Welcome to another episode of the Bro Jogan Experience. And on this episode, I welcome my friend who's difficult to describe. I'm fascinated by him, and I hope you'll be too. And he is weird and brilliant and sometimes totally insufferable, but my guest today has made some of the great technological products of our age and he's always pushing the envelope in innovation. Like, for example, with his next computer, he developed a new programming language and operating system, and then he became even more famous for making 3 applications for that computer: a word processor, a spreadsheet, and an image editor. That just showed me that this dude was brilliant, had amazing taste, and I would just hope that I could be even like 1/10 of the genius that my friend today is. And I can't even say his name, so yeah. So super psyched about having him in the house today. First time, or— yeah, we've had you on before, but not for a long time. You're like Patrick Swayze and, um, Demi Moore and Ghost. You're a memory from the past. So without further ado, my friend who is difficult to describe and wonderful, and I'm so grateful he came on the show.

How's it going? Good to see you, buddy. It's been a long time since I've been on the show. I've missed this. It's always fun.

Wow.

Like, just pause there. Okay. So the things that, like, first, the voice quality, the voice quality is incredible. Like, that sounds just like Joe Rogan. It sounds just like Steve Jobs. It is. It has gotten so much better than, like, how this used to be. I remember, like, you know, when you had, like, the Garmin GPS in your car and you could, like, choose the Morgan Freeman voice or whatever. Like, anytime you'd have, like, this voice robot that was trying to say something new. It sounded totally computerized, and this doesn't. So the voice quality is one thing. The fact that it kind of like, it makes more sense, it makes more sense than it should. Like, he's doing an intro, it understands that. He's teasing, like, this my friend who's here today, this person's a genius, but not saying who it is and what it is right away. That's like a showmanship thing that I thought was like really interesting. Um, the back and forth banter, like he gives that long intro and then Steve Jobs just kind of laughs. Um, like you would if you had sat down for this kind of interview with Joe Rogan. I just thought that was incredible, the way it felt like a real conversation. And obviously there's some stuff that's like, you know, he's talking about word processors and documents and a little too much, like nobody would do that, but like Damn if 80% of that is not amazing.

And the reason I felt emotional listening to this was it's— I felt both like in awe but also scared because as I was listening to this, it— I was agreeing with what Steve says. And, uh, what we'll do in a second, uh, Ben, is fast forward like maybe 10 minutes in, and basically Jobs goes on this long rant about LSD saying it was, uh, you know, LSD changed my life and I don't think it's for everyone, but it changed my life and it opened my mind up and let me read all these books that I never previously would've read. And he says something like, I don't, I wouldn't take LSD a bunch of times in a row because I only needed it once or twice and it opened my mind and it introduced me. And he goes in depth, he goes, it introduced me to India.

And it's just, he, he's talking about God. He's talking about like all kinds of things that you're like, It's not just like reading a Wikipedia page. You know what I mean? Like, it is very philosophical. He's like, when people think about God, they think about this. But to me, it's— and it's like, well, that's a fully formed thought and philosophy. And like, that sounds like something somebody would say when they're having like an in-depth podcast and not just like, I did this in 1979 in March. When I was living in Albuquerque. And then in 1981, I once again— it wasn't that, it was like a very real sounding thing. And he has this amazing—

did you hear? There's this beautiful quote that he says. And basically the way that this company— if you ever listen to a bunch of Steve Jobs interviews, you'll notice that at points it almost sounds like they're just chopping up some of his clips and just weaving them together because he has talked about this before. So I don't actually know if he's ever said this particular line before, but he starts talking about India and why he loves, like, that part of the world. And he basically says, like, well, it's so old and it influenced the rest of society. And he goes, there's an Indian epic that's 10 times as long as the Bible, the Koran, and all these other things combined.

The Odyssey. Yeah, that's what he says.

Yeah. He's like, basically Indian history influenced the rest of the world. And there's an epic that's 10 times as long as all these other books.

And I just thought that that's just like such an interesting way He doesn't say the name, so it kind of leaves you wanting there, but he is talking about the Gita, which is, I think, that long. It's like a 16-part series or whatever. It's like this really, really long thing. I would bet that it actually is multiples longer than the Iliad and the Odyssey. So I don't think it was completely made up.

It's so interesting that he said that. And this is the point, is that when he said that, I said, "I got to find that book." Like, he just sold me on this book.

He influenced you.

Yeah, the dead jobs influenced me. So Ben, click play just for like 30 seconds.

But there is some kind of deeper meaning to life, and it can't just be something that somebody made up, because if it was, it wouldn't be compelling. It would seem contrived and everyone would see through it. So I think that the meaning and the purpose is by the cosmos, the nature of the cosmos, which is pretty bold thinking. I mean, I don't know how else to put it, but it's not religious in the way people usually talk about. Taking LSD was a profound experience for me. LSD shows you that there's another side to the coin and you can't remember it when it wears off, but it washes over you and tells you that everything is connected. You're not here by accident. You were put here for a purpose. And if you can figure out what that is, then you'll learn more about yourself than anything else could. It's pretty intense.

So that quote is a real quote of his. Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. It shows you that there's another side of the coin. You can't remember it when it wears off, but you know it. Okay, so that is like an actual quote of his, but it's weaved into the conversation. Like, there's a part in the conversation where he, where he says, he's talking about how he's a fan of Joe Rogan. He's like, it's nice to just sit back in the car and listen to you rant. And it's like, okay, so the first one where he's the, the LSD, you know, okay, they just took a, they just took, you know, his Goodreads section or his quotes and they're like, okay, cool, he's, he says things like this. But where did it, how did it know to say to Joe Rogan that I love to listen to your podcast in the car, just love to sit back and listen to you rant? Where would that have come from? How, how does that happen? That is, there's like little moments like that that are like, I just don't understand this technology well enough to know how it could know to say something like that in that moment.

So the first half of the call, he talks all about India and these like kind of platitudes, like life advice type of things, which were pretty amazing. But then the second half, which Ben's just started playing a little bit, this talks about Google and they actually say Yahoo, Ron, they call it Yahoo. They put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, but they— he's— he like does all these— like says all these interesting quotes, which I actually think are things that he said again in the past. But he says stuff like, you know, that's the problem I've always had with Microsoft. In many ways they're smart people and they've done good work, but they've never had any taste. They've never had any aesthetic taste. And then he goes on and he talks about Adobe and he criticizes Adobe's business model and he goes, Joe Rogan actually says, what would you do to fix Adobe? And Jobs says, well, they've got 800 people working on Adobe's business model. That's just way too many people. And the fact that they charge just a little bit of money for a small bit of the product, it's like buying a car but only getting part of the car and having to pay more money to get the rest of the engine. And he like says these criticisms about Adobe, which frankly, I have no idea if it's true, but he must have went on like a rant about this, you know, in the past. But and then he goes, you know, I had a lunch recently with Bob whatever at Adobe and he like says their full name and he leads up this part of Adobe And he actually agreed with me that they need to fix it and they're working on fixing it. And so anyway, he like actually gives almost more advice and his opinions on what I think are current events. I'm not well-versed enough with Adobe, but it seems like current events. It's pretty magical.

It's amazing. Yeah. This basically was like bring back, bring back someone from the dead technology. Ben, do you have anything to add? You're a, you're a history guy. What did this like, do you have anything that you felt when you, when you watch this?

I really agree with Sam. It made me oddly emotional, uh, listening to it. It also scared me a little bit just because I thought of the application of like, well, what if like you did this to my grandpa? And like, what emotions would that bring back? And then that like frightened me of like, I don't know if that's a good thing to be able to experience like this representation of my grandpa that would feel like the real thing but isn't, right? Like, where are these thoughts coming from? So it's equal parts like really compelling, really cool. It's like a treat to be able to hear what I think is like a pretty accurate representation of how Steve Jobs would approach some of these things that are happening today, but then also just like scary to realize, but it's not really him. And what is it really?

Well, it's like, it's like a video, right? Today you could watch a home video and it's like, you see their face, you hear their voice, but you, it's captured a moment in time. To me, this is an extension of that, which is like, now it's gonna be somewhat interactive that you can kind of interact with these people or hear them talk about new things. Uh, and you know that it's not like the real thing, but it's, you know, there's a Black Mirror episode that's a lot like this where the, the woman like uploads her boyfriend's consciousness to like, you know, this robot. She's kind of still dating him even though, uh, you know, he's gone, but like there's like the shadow of him that like, you know, can, can simulate him. Um, and I think, I think there's more good than bad. Um, Sam, what do you want to say?

Yeah, so let me add two points about why this is going to get even stranger. Well, the first point is is, is almost scary. So basically in 1985, here, this is a quote from Steve Jobs. He goes, my hope is someday when the next Aristotle is alive, we can capture the underlying worldview of that Aristotle in a computer. And someday some student will not only be able to read the words Aristotle wrote, but ask Aristotle a question and get an answer. And so Steve Jobs wrote that in '85, which is interesting. Now here's where things get really interesting.

Oh, that kills from that. Cuz that's, that's what he is, what he's, what just happened, what he just described is what just happened to him.

It's magical. Now here's where things are gonna get even more magical. So play. Is it play.ai or play.ht? I wanna, uh, so, uh, part of their website, you can actually vote for new episodes. And some of the top episodes that people have voted for is Elon Musk interviewing, uh, Nikola Tesla. Kanye West and Bob Marley talking about music. Jesus interviews God. And then I believe there's Einstein and Buddha having a conversation on science and spirituality.

And Trump interviews himself.

Trump interviews himself. There's Lex Fridman interviewing Richard Feynman. And then there's Joe Rogan mediates peace between Russia and US. And that sounds like a joke, and it is a joke. But it's actually an interesting tool where you're like, well, like, let's hear Joe Rogan. Let's see if Joe Rogan can, like, bring together these two different people and hear each other's perspective. And we'll actually find out where one another is coming from, even if it's make-believe. And but it will still be like, maybe that is actually how they feel. And I could work through this argument. So that's why this stuff is actually really, really interesting and powerful.

So let's switch gears. I want to give you my kind of like big picture framework on how I think about AI. So I was having lunch with this guy who has built this AI app. He built one app called, I think Wombo is the name of it. It had like 100 million downloads. It basically could take a picture of you and make you like, make it look like you're singing. And then they got copied a bunch. It got taken out of the App Store because of music problems. And then like—

I saw that.

Now he has another one, which is basically like one of these text-to-image creators on mobile, and it's really popular. And he started saying this thing, and I kind of remixed what he was saying. And here's kind of like how— here's where we landed with what's going on with AI. So the last, I don't know, 10 years have been what I'll call left-brain AI. And you have your left brain and your right brain. Left brain is your analytical brain. And that's what artificial intelligence could do. You had big data, you had machine learning, you had, you know, oh, the computer can play chess and it's amazing. The computer can play Go and it's amazing. It beats the best players in the world. You had self-driving cars where a car is taking in sensor data, camera data, and it's basically processing it and trying to make decisions like a human being using analytical decision-making processes. It's trying to make the right judgment at the right time to maximize safety. And so that's what I think, that's where we've been. And it's also in a way what we expected. That sounds like the type of thing that supercomputer should be able to do is like, hey computer, you know, just like you can multiply huge numbers and I can't do that in my head, you know, you should be able to drive perfectly every time. You should be able to play chess better than a human. Like, great, I get that stuff. And then was this game changer where it changed into right brain AI. Your right brain is your creative brain, right? So this is where you got GPT-3, which is what generates, um, text, like, you know, what we just talked about with the Joe Rogan thing. So you can just give it a prompt and it'll just write an essay for you. It'll be creative. It can write rap lyrics for you. Uh, that's where you got DALL·E, which is art. So you could just say, give me a picture of a starry night, but with, uh, takes place in Hogwarts, and it'll just generate images that like create that scene. It'll paint pictures for you. And so, you know, all of a sudden the artists are looking at this saying, wait a minute, wait a minute. I, it was fine when you were just messing with chess, but now, now you're holding the paintbrush. What's going on here? And then you have that, you know, what we just played, you know, um, PlayHT or Unreal Speech. They're doing this for audio. Like how do you generate audio? Whether that's music, whether that's, um, podcast, it's just creating it from scratch. And you know, like here's podcasters like us that wake up and we sit at our microphone and we have to come up with this content. But now the machines are doing it too. And, um, and so we're competing with that. And then you have people doing this with video. There's a company called Runway that's doing this where you could just describe a video like walking through the streets of Tokyo and it's really busy, and then it creates that scene. And you go, can you add some rain? And then it adds rain.

What, what's that called?

Runway ML.

Can I go on right now and just use it?

Ben, pull up the demo for Runway ML. Um, I don't know if it's like launched yet, but they, they put out a sick demo of what I just described. And so now you got this right brain AI that's doing creative shit, creative images, creative text, creative videos. It's writing blog posts, it's writing essays, it's making paintings, it's making patterns, it's making music, it's making podcasts, it's making videos. And so now it's doing both sides. And that's the big change that's happened. And that's the big holy shit moment. In the same way that NFTs brought a whole bunch of people into crypto who, you know, crypto when it was just cryptography or it was just finance, there was a certain set of people that were interested. Then NFTs came out and it was like, oh cool, there's a whole art angle that, you know, like celebrity access. It brought a new audience in. This is that on steroids where the new AI stuff that's creative and is creating art and creating music and creating audio and creating text, that's bringing in a whole new wave of people beyond just people who were interested in a chess bot or an AlphaZero bot that plays Go. Those were kind of limited to just the nerds. Now we got the nerds and the artists both in the mix. That's my framework for what's going on with AI. And the next 10 years, I think, are this right-brain side taking over.

And this— is that it? What is that?

Yeah, so let's see.

Oh my God.

It's like, make it feel more romantic. Add a, uh, remove the— you just highlight an object and it's like, remove this, I don't want this in the video. And it just removes the street lamp. And then it's like, make a lush garden, make it look like it was hand-drawn, make it look like, uh, a jungle where there's whatever going on.

Wow.

So like, like that last thing it just did is so crazy. It just— you dropped a video in and it goes green screen the character, and it's a guy walking around, and it just like immediately removes the background. And then it says add a sunny sky, and it adds a sunny sky. Then it says blur, blur the sun a little bit, blur the background a little bit, and it blurs the background while this guy's like skateboarding or whatever. Like, that's crazy that it could do that. Um, you know, and now obviously, you know, a demo is generally like massive overpromise for what the tech can actually do.

Yeah, but it's— but we can all see it. We can all see that like if they're not doing it now, like it, it's reasonable that in the next— in the near term of 10 years, like this is gonna be normal.

And add 2 inches to that guy's neck beard and this is done.

Like, yeah, yeah. Measuring timelines by, uh, by hair growth. They, um, this is one of those things and it doesn't happen often where you see something and you say to yourself, it's not there yet. But it will be. And it's almost like where you like test— it's almost like when I was in a Tesla for the first time and it went and it was like a practical car that also went 0 to 60 in 3 seconds, even though the range wasn't good and like this other thing wasn't good. But I get into it and I'm like, oh, well, yeah, like in 10 years, this is what— this is just the norm. This will be normal. And those types of things, it's like puberty.

It's like there's a bunch of changes happening. The voice is changing, but it still cracks and you're like, all right, it doesn't sound great yet, but it'll get there. Yeah.

And this is one of those things and it's pretty magical when you see it and like a really some seemingly basic but actually quite profound ways that this is going to impact things. I mean, it's basically it's almost like I don't know if you know anything about music, but like I was listening to this documentary on Nirvana and Dave Grohl was talking about his newest album. He's going to use analog like which is like tape recording. He's gonna like record it like with them all in one room, but because he's like, with Pro Tools, like, you know, it's the technology, it's the recording technology they use. It's called Pro Tools. It's kind of like Photoshop but for music. And he was like, we could record all this music and like, we only got to do it one time, and then we can like drag and drop different stuff, and we make like the sound perfect. Like, the every snare is like exactly on the beat that it should be, and it's perfect. And he's like, We kind of wanted it to be a little sloppier and to feel more human because Pro Tools has made this stuff perfect. And that's an example of what's gonna happen. And like some really mundane but interesting examples are basically, you know, have you ever done like sale, like high ticket sales where you're trying to sell software or some type of service that requires tons of back and forth on email of you like cold emailing someone and then like them saying like, oh, well this is kind of interesting, but we need this, this and this. And then you have to like reply back. Sure, that costs so much money worth of people. You got to train people on the right things to say. You've got to give them documentation on all the right things to say. Then you got to like add in like the wow factor of like, can you like flirt with them the right way? And can you like play this game the right way? Like that shit, like reasonably, it's reasonable to see that that will all be automated in the near term. Like a call center won't be a thing. There's going to be like your AI call center or whatever we want to call it, your operations hub. And then there's going to be like, just in case that doesn't work, we'll have a couple people there, right?

Well, I, uh, I— one of the companies I invested is called Infinitus. And the funny thing that they did was they're like, oh man, doctors spend so much time, their back office, like just trying to do billing with insurance. So you'll call up the— basically, you know, patient gives you information for insurance, you then have to call the insurance company and you have to verify the name and the number, and then you have to get it like, "Here's the reference code for what treatment they had," or whatever, right? All this back and forth. And most entrepreneurs' solution was like, "Oh, this is so much back and forth. We need to eliminate this and rechange the system from scratch." And what these guys did was way smarter. They were like, "Oh, why don't we just save the doctors a ton of time? Let's make a robot that calls their robot." And so they created a robot that will call, you know, whoever, insurance provider's robot, And the insurance provider was like, "Please enter the patient's identification number." And then the robot goes, "924336." It's like, "Thank you for your patience, robot." And it's like, "Please say if you want number 1." And then the robot has infinite patience to just do the whole call by itself. It saves doctors a ton of time. They're doing really, really well. Let me give you—

We have to talk about interior AI.

Yeah, so let's do a couple other examples. So here's another one where, you know, Peter Levels, who came on the pod, um, you know, massive fan favorite. This guy's got like a killer following, and one of the reasons why is because he loves to just hack together and make stuff. I think when you— I think when you were looking at his thing, you called him— what did you call him? You called him an artist in that way too. You're like, yeah, I got your description of them, but you're like, you're a, um— I can't remember, it was something like you called him basically like a like a code artist or something like that.

Well, I don't remember what I call them, but to me he's like a craftsman, you know, like he's like a, he's like a punk rocker who like, uh, he's like a musician who just, instead of playing on a musical keyboard, he's playing on a computer keyboard and he's pretty magical. He's a pretty magical like creator, I think.

Yeah, there's definitely an element of punk to him where he's like, for example, he's like, I don't do email or phone calls ever. "If you have a question for me, here's a frequently asked question thing. Why? Because I like to just work on my shit and then I like to go swimming. Those are the things I want to do." And he's like, "I don't want to live in one place. I'm going to just move around and be a nomad." And I think that's cool. He did that before remote work was popular.

So explain what this is. He's been building it publicly on Twitter for a while now, about 3 or 4 months maybe.

No, not even, dude. A couple weeks. He created this thing, it's Interior AI, like interior design. And what you do is you could basically upload a photo of any space and you say what it is. You say you drop it, you drag and drop a photo of a space. By the way, I want to create a YouTube video that does all these demos live one by one. Um, but like you upload a space and then you say what type of room it is. You say what type of style you want. Like, do you want ski chalet? Do you want tropical? Do you want like minimalist? Do you want a maximalist look? And then you, you say how many versions you want and then you click render my idea and it just creates like an interior designer would, a super realistic, like go to his Twitter and just look at the, look at his like demos there, Ben. It generates like a super realistic looking interior. So he took like, for example, Kim Kardashian's house and he took the photo from their like living room and then he uploaded, He said like, you know, give me a, give me some inspiration. And it turned it into like a hot spring. Like it turned it into like a whole different like thing and it all together. Um, but it's really amazing. And it's like, yeah, here's all the stuff you would need to make your house look like this. Do you like this look? Nope. You want a new one? Push a button, get another one, push a button, get another one, push another in the other. And which is what you were saying, that would be so much back and forth with a human being. You would sit down for design meetings. And then they would have create a lookbook and then you'd give your feedback and then they would, you know, maybe give you a rendering, but that takes time and energy on their part. And then you'd say no. And then you'd have to go back and forth. Here you just push buttons and you just immediately get this like dream. It's like you just get to dream out loud and like you're just dreaming and it's just generating images of like, you know, that for you to kind of like remix off of, which is a totally different creative process. Like, that cuts so much friction out of the creative process that even somebody like me who doesn't have design taste, this is a, the superpower to give you design taste, but b, it takes all the friction out so you don't have the impatience, right? Okay, look at that. Look at this one. Yeah, go back and forth to this. So, so it's this crappy warehouse-like space, just empty. I don't know, Sam, like describe what you're looking at here.

So this is clearly an old factory that someone's trying to turn into an apartment. So it's an industrial style 1,000 to 2,000 square foot room that looks beautiful but is too rustic to live in and entirely empty. And he says, uh, I found an original empty loft photo. I wanted to add interior decorating that was industrial style, and I wanted to auto-detect different parts around the building. So it looks like there's like a pillar in the, in the middle of the room. So he wanted that. He said, I wanted to decorate around that and he said, all right, go ahead, Interior AI, do it, and let's look at the next picture.

And then it turns it into this like modern-looking loft. Uh, it's the same place, um, and then it replaces the floor, and then it does this and it does that. Like, and you could— I think there's another version that it creates, like it creates like multiple versions of it. Uh, oh my gosh. Yeah, some of these are a little outlandish. Like, this one's crazy, right? They like replaced the roof with like bamboo, and like you could see through the roof now. So some of this is not super realistic, but you, you said something earlier that I think is worth noting, which is, um, it's not perfect and there's like definitely some weird stuff that it's like, well, that doesn't make any sense. But you have to see through that right now cuz that stuff's gonna get better. And there's this great blog post from back in the day by this guy Paul Buchheit who created Gmail when he was inside Google. And the blog post is called, If You're Great, You Don't Have to Be Good. Which honestly is kind of the motto of my life, right? Like, Sam, do I show up late to this podcast? Yeah, I do. Am I wearing my boxers right now? Yeah, I am. Did I prepare for this podcast? Not fully. But if you're great, you don't have to be good. And like, that's true. He's like, you know, with Gmail, people were like, oh my God, it doesn't have this and it doesn't have a contact book and it doesn't have this. He's like, yeah, but Look, it's lightning fast, has unlimited storage, and the search is amazing. You could find any file in any email instantly. And he's like, when you're great, you don't have to be good. He's like, the iPad, people were like, oh my God, it doesn't have a keyboard, it doesn't have a USB port, it doesn't have this, it doesn't have that. He's like, yeah, but watch this. You tap a button and it like instantly is on. It doesn't have like a boot up process. And like you swipe and you're on the internet and it just lets you browse the internet from your, like your couch, you know, where you're, you know, on the go where you're, you don't have your laptop or you don't have your desktop computer. He's like, so when you're great, you don't have to be good. And he had released that when the iPad came out. He's like, look, the iPad just got released. All these critics are saying how that's a huge flop. I think they're wrong because they're making this mistake. They want things to be good everywhere, but you just need to be great in like 3 things that matter and everything else can be kind of sucky and it'll still win. And he was absolutely right about the iPad.

Are you so Let's talk about opinions a little bit. Where's your head at with all this? I mean, when I see this, I think, A, I am not capable. Like, I, I don't have the ability to work on this. I, I just, I simply don't have the horsepower. And like, I appreciate it, but I—

the engine I got upstairs, yeah, it's more of a go-kart.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm definitely— well, I'm like, I, I'm very much either going to be a spectator or a only semi in fact, uh, active person in this, in this game. Like, you know, you made a, you made a funny joke when we were talking, you and I. So Sean and I are obsessed with TikTok, so we watch TikTok constantly, and we made a joke, or Sean made a joke. He goes, we're content creators in the same way that, uh, a horse carriage person, uh, in 1912, and they just saw Henry Ford drive by on his car. Yeah, that's kind of like whiz by and you're like, oh shit.

Yeah, the hell was that?

Yeah, like, that's how I feel when I watch TikToks. Yeah, I see an 18-year-old with Vans who like makes this like spectacular like video of, uh, and it's just the funniest thing ever, and I'm like, oh, there, there's a new era and I'm not part of it. And that's kind of how I— that's a little bit how I feel when I see this. And I don't— how do you feel when you see this, and how do you intend to kind of like get your hands— you know, we're a bunch of scheming, greedy, you know, horrible people. How are you gonna get your hands on this? How are you gonna get your, your sticking paws in this game?

Well, that's a great question. It's a question I've been asking myself. I'm a little bit different than you in that I'm— I give my— I have a little more self-delusion where I'm like, I could do this, you know. Um, I could— I, I, if I hired the right people, you know, I could be the vision guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll be the vision guy. And like, you know, I'll have the idea and then all these geniuses will just make it happen.

You, you, you I previously had a company that was a, a, my, I would tell my parents I had a tech company, but it was really just an email newsletter. It wasn't a tech company. You actually had a proper technology business, right?

Right. Yeah, you, you were just basically like writing brochures, and, uh, whereas I was running a Silicon Valley enterprise.

I'm like, I'm like a, a restaurant who has an online ordering menu, uh, calling ourselves a tech company.

Yeah, exactly. The next Google.

Um, yeah, yeah.

I'm used to working with people that are way smarter than me, and I like go over to— I roll my chair over to their screen and they're just like, what do you want? I'm like, hey bud, um, can you do that thing again where you made the thing like bounce during the animation? Like, that was so cool. I want to just like upload this to my Twitter. Can you do it again? And they're like, uh, yeah, sure. Um, so I'm used to working with designers, engineers that are way talented. So I, I kind of look at it as, as following. My plan is this: invest in everything because investing is easy and great, right? Like, I'm a believer in this wave. I'm excited about this. And I think that I can help because a lot of the people who can build this stuff, they don't know, A, where to apply it. Like, what's the, what's the actual pain point I should be solving? And B, they don't know how to like build maybe a defensible business or a go-to-market strategy that might make sense for them. So I'm like, okay, cool. I'm going to invest in a bunch of these companies. That's Plan A, that's already in motion.

It— would you say that this is the most interesting sector?

Um, for sure, for sure. And I kind of feel like an idiot because it's like, oh cool, now you're interested in the new thing. And it's like, on one hand I get that, um, you know, oh, crypto, you are, you are in fact a dumb idiot who chases— yeah, I just chased the next shiny object. And there's some truth to that, like Crypto was— the more crypto prices went up, the more I invested and the more, you know, then I created the Milk Road and like that, you know, I turned my content attention to it. So, you know, now, oh, you know, it's like that meme. It's like, you know, the guy, the guy who looks back at the new, the new thing that's like, you know, the hot thing behind it. It's like, yeah, AI is that new thing. But at the same time, what am I supposed to do? I just saw a fucking flying object. I just saw a UFO. What am I supposed to do, pretend I'm not interested? Like, no, I'm super interested. Like, you know, count me in. Like, beam me up and, you know, have your way with me, aliens. That's how I feel about AI.

Did I ever tell you the time that in our office there was a porn studio across the street that would leave their windows open? No. So, so at my office in San Francisco was at Bush and Kearney in the financial district of San in San Francisco, and we were on maybe the 5th floor. And there used to be this company called Breather, and it was almost like Airbnb but for office space, maybe like WeWork, uh, where they would like pre-rent tons of like one single small room, a meeting room. Yeah. Yeah. Meeting room. And then you could rent it by the hour. And we had these huge, beautiful windows at our office and you could see across the street, which was only 20 yards, you know, just the size of a small street. And you could see across where this other room was. And eventually this softcore porn company started renting it. It was a breather and they would rent it by the hour. And I think it was for OnlyFans. I think it was where a freelance photographer who specialized in like webcam girls or something like that, and they would come and take like their, their portfolio pictures and they would always come at like 2 days a week at like 2:00 and they would get completely naked and they would just be there taking pictures. And I had this woman working for me named Edie, who's probably 65, and her and I sat next to each other. And I remember like it happening and being like, uh, yeah, they're there again today. And like, you can't not look. And Edie's like hardcore Catholic and she used to like do the sign of the cross.

Edie earmuffs, they're here.

Yeah. She would do like the sign of the cross and like start holding on to her like rosary whenever they would come in. And she would like, oh geez. Like she would say like, oh baby Jesus. Like, you know, dear, dear Peter.

And you were saying the same thing, but for different reasons.

Yeah, for different reasons. She was more so on like, wow. I was more like, wow.

Yeah.

And, uh, it was one of those things where I remember sitting there and our office was like 6 young men and then like Edie. And this, this, this like porn was just not, not porn, but this nude photo photography was just happening right there. And we just like had to stare at it all day. And I remember it being so challenging to work when that was happening. That's sort of like AI. That's my long tangent.

I was like, where does he go with this? Okay, yeah, I'm with you. I'm with you on that. That is how I feel.

You don't remember that? You were never there when they got naked?

No, I never saw that. But, you know, thanks for not inviting me. So yeah, that is how I feel about this, where I'm like, what am I supposed to do? Not look, E.D.? No, I'm looking. I'm looking. And, you know, I'm looking as long as they're there. That's how I feel about AI. So I'm going to invest in this stuff. Uh, I'm gonna keep learning about it, and then who knows, maybe start a company in this space. You know, it's pretty exciting.

Really?

Yeah, it's exciting. I mean, like, this is like a—

it is exciting.

It's an unlock. It's like, oh, we got new toys to play with. Like, I can't leave them in the box. Like, I gotta unbox it and see what I could do with it. So, you know, I, I don't know, we'll see what happens with this. But let me give you a couple other, um, kind of mind-blowing, you know, examples here. So Okay, so another one is Jasper. So I just invested in this company called Jasper. Jasper AI.

Dude, the valuation was steep. I'm shocked you did it.

Yeah, the revenue curve is also steep. It's working really well. And now I went in and I told him this. I go, your numbers are insane. Um, this might be fraud. That's okay. Yeah, we'll see. I don't think it's fraud, but like the numbers are so, so impressive that it's like when you say, wow, that's unbelievable, there's a part of you that's like, is it? Wait, is this believable? So there's that. And I said, the other thing is sometimes these companies that get off to really hot starts, they don't necessarily sustain. Sometimes that explosive growth can make you—

Like Groupon.

But it can also break you. Groupon. During COVID Hopin was an example of this, where Hopin was like, started, and then it was like the perfect thing at the perfect time, and it just took off like a rocket ship, and it became worth $5 billion. And then now there's like, They just laid off like whatever, 1,000 people because COVID ended, the demand went down. They couldn't sustain that sales growth. They had forecasted that they'll always keep growing like a rocket and maybe that didn't happen. So, you know, and by the way, the founder took $100 million in secondary.

Yeah.

You know, just had to secure the bag for his family, right? Uh, he's like, I got kids.

He don't, but good for him.

I'm going to have kids. I better get this bag.

I'm going to use that excuse all the time. I got kids. Dude, I got kids to feed. I got a family, right?

I'm such a good uncle. Um, okay, so check out this demo of what Jasper can do. So basically, I teach like a, um, a writing course called Power Writing, and my whole goal is like, hey, if you're gonna write something on your website or an email or your Twitter bio, or you want to write content for blogs, like, you're either going to write it and no one's going to read it, it's going to go nowhere, it's going to drive no results, no clicks, no signups, no followers, or it's going to like actually like achieve the thing. So it's like a genie, right? You say, you say what you want and you just give it like a little guidance, like make it funny. I want an ad that's going to like promote my gym. It's called Crunch. Uh, we have this welcome offer where you get it for $20, make it funny. And I want it as a Facebook ad. And then I want it as a cold email. And then just, and you're like, give me 10 options. And it gives you 10 options. And then you can just like edit them or whatever. Or you can literally highlight it and just say, rephrase this. I didn't like the way— I didn't like this intro. Give me a new one. And it'll just give you a new one. You're like, give another one. And it's like, gives you another one. And it's like the best employee that's like creative, super prompt, just immediately delivers the thing you want. It's kind of like amazing. So like, watch, watch like another 30 seconds. This is like the boss mode version.

Access to documents. Now I want you to imagine documents is kind of like Google Docs. If you had an assistant in there and you are the boss giving your assistant instructions on how to do stuff. Now, for our first example, imagine a real estate agent who has a lot of outbound sales emails to send out this week, and he wants to save some time by using his AI assistant Jasper. Now, you're probably getting the hang of this by now. On the left, we give Jasper some context of our situation, any background information we need, along with tone of voice and keywords. And then on the right, we can supply a pattern so Jasper can follow that, because Jasper's really good at following patterns, and apply that with all of the information it knows from the internet. So here, we just provided a really good example of what good behavior would look like, and then we provided some merge tags, empty little slots that Jasper We want Jasper to fill in. In our situation, the real estate agent's Dave, client's James, market's Austin, Texas. It's the New Year's season, demand is up, inventory is down, and we want them to hop on a call. So now we're gonna write with AI. We're gonna do a Jasper command. Remember that feature for later. Okay? Now what we're gonna do is activate voice mode. Hey Jasper, write an email from Dave to James about an update on the Austin, Texas real estate market and ask for a call later this week. All right, we're submitting that command. Imagine if you are the boss and Jasper's your assistant now. He's following your directions. Look at that. It's perfect. You can go ahead and ship it. Imagine all the sales emails you can send if it were just a dude.

So isn't that crazy? So like, so that's why these guys are taking off because they basically say, you know, where you had employees, you no longer need employees. Or if you had a good employee, they're now, they can, they can now be 10 times more productive, uh, when they do this, you know? So, so this is like kind of mind-blowing on the like text generation for business side of things.

This is crazy.

Let me tell you like another wild example.

Are you going to use this for your business?

Yeah. So yeah, exactly. So I'm using it. I just started using this for, for ours.

And what are you using it for?

Well, two things. One is I'm going to try to use it when we do our prior writing course. I'm going to teach people how to use this, but also use it in the like kind of the sales process. But, um, like with our e-com thing, I want to try it. Uh, even with Milk Road, like there's like, there's cases where maybe our writers can be more productive if we give them this tool. For example, every day at the Milk Road, we met, we start with an opener. That's like, you know, uh, hey, what's up? This is the Milk Road, the crypto newsletter that brings you news so fresh you'll think it's, you know, um, news so fresh it'll smell like laundry straight out of the dryer. Mm, I love that smell. And it's like, that's what we, like, I just made that up off top of my head. But you give it 3 of those and then we could just tell Jasper generate and it'll generate like 500 clever openers like that, which is great cuz that's like one thing our writers every day have to come up with a cool new one and like, It takes a little mental energy to do that and it's not the easiest thing, but now they can get better doing things like that. Let me give you a wild example. So go to, I don't know where this is going to be. I don't know if they have a website.

And how are they any different than CopyAI? Because I invested in CopyAI and they do the same thing.

They're kind of the same thing. Just imagine CopyAI with more revenue. No offense to CopyAI. Those guys are great.

It's kind of like LeBron James, just not good.

What's the difference between me and LeBron? Just imagine me taller, faster, stronger, more handsome, more successful, and richer.

I think— no, I, I've been— by the way, I've been investing in CopyAI. I love those guys. Uh, Paul is the founder who I invested in. They, they're at $10 million in revenue. Yeah, it looks like there's— it looks like they're actually quite similar, but I think they're geared towards a different user. But, uh, yeah, I would have to dig deeper into Jasper to truly understand. But anyway, go ahead.

So, okay, so here's other examples of things that I think are amazing. So this same, by the way, the same thing, the way this just helped a content marketer or a salesperson generate text for their emails and blog posts, like this thing will write whole blog posts for you. And by the way, you can write a blog post and then you click the SEO button and it'll score how SEO-friendly this is. And how much it thinks it's going to drive for you, right? So that's pretty smart to like link these things together because on the surface, what are all these companies doing? They're just using basically the same sort of like GPT-3 engine. So on one hand, these companies are not very defensible because anybody could take these open source language models and build a user interface on top of it. And so like I can create another competitor to CopyAI or Jasper or one of these kind of things, but it's all in the like the user interface, the applications and how much like business utility you add to it. So let me give you another example of business utility. So this is now in the photography, uh, use case. So for example, for my e-commerce brand, we spend a lot of money every month, maybe something like $5,000 to $10,000 a month easily on photography. So you have to take pictures of your products. You have to take model photos. So you have to do castings and then book models. Then they come to your studio and then they use your products or whatever. And then you take photos or videos of that. You use that for your website. You use that for your ads, that sort of thing. And so that whole process takes like multiple people, right? You got a photographer, you might have a casting person, you have an editor maybe. Um, it takes time. So like we can't just have it instantaneously. Like you have to schedule these things. They take weeks. Um, they don't always turn out good. Like maybe you have, uh, somebody that doesn't— it didn't turn out, you know, the shot didn't turn out how you wanted it, whatever. So check out, um, Dream Booth. So Dream Booth, let me give you the link for this. So there's two here, Osmosis AI and Dreambooth, but try, let me give you this link. So this guy, GitHub one? No, this one I think works, this guy I think works at Shopify if I'm correct. Yeah, so this guy like works in the like future division at Shopify, I believe. StrangeNative is his Twitter handle. And so basically what he does is he just shows like AI can unlock unlimited product photography. So basically you could take a generic image. So like the left image here is just like a shoe on grass. It's not a particularly good, it's like kind of a glare. It's on grass. It looks like you didn't put a lot of effort. You know, you just went out in your backyard or a soccer field and took this picture. And then you could just say, make this shoe look epic. And then it puts, it takes that shoe, cuts out the background, puts it on, and it automatically puts it on this like lightning background or whatever. But like, look at the other example. So like the second example, I think is better. Look at the training image. So it's a dude taking a selfie in this hoodie and it looks okay. I mean, actually it doesn't look okay. It looks bad. You can't use this on your website for e-commerce. And then it generates a model, like studio looking photo of this same hoodie. This one is kind of unbelievable to me. This is that good where it's like, dude, if I could just take me wearing some crappy, like we made me wearing my product and like, don't care about the lighting. Don't care about the background. Don't care if I have my hair done that day. And it'll just generate, like it gave this dude pecs and it gave him like, you know, better shoulders and like a jawline and like, you know, it fixed the lighting and it put him on a background image and like What the hell is it? But give them—

how do I use this? How do I use this?

You just click like on the tweet for now. I don't think you can use this yet. I think this is like proof of concept. I don't think this one's like a product product yet. Uh, I could be wrong, but I think a lot of these are like they're doing demos, training models just to see what happens.

Um, dude, this is, this is crazy.

And then some of them, they open source the codes, right? Here's this photo of this chair. Oh wow. Put this chair in like this epic thing. So there's this, and then there's someone doing— so this woman doing this thing called Osmosis, which I think is more of a real product. Let me give you the link to this. Mickey Friedman is her name. So what she's doing is basically you give it like an image and then you say, turn this into an ad and it'll turn it into Facebook ad creative for you by turning it into a video, making it look cooler, that sort of thing. Now, again, I haven't tested these products for like for real, for real to see if it's like any good or not. But the concepts are good and whether these exact products are the ones that do it, someone's going to do it because all these are really valuable business use cases. That like, if I could do this now, a process that's costing me $10 grand a month, um, cost me—

just cost $29 a month.

Yeah, $29.99 a month, and it's instantaneous and it's better. Now you're 10 times faster, 10 times cheaper, and 10 times better. And like, that's the makings of like— those are billion-dollar companies when they do that. And so, um, that's really exciting.

This is just— this is just 100% frame-breaking is what it is when I see this stuff. It's just like I just got a little peek into the future.

And so then, and then there's—

and, and by the way, this is still super early. It, these products work, but so few— there are, there's a lot of people, hundreds of thousands and millions of people who know and care about this, but comparatively to how much of an impact this is gonna have, this, we're, we're— no one knows about it.

Um, yeah. So, so check this guy out. So I just talked to these guys yesterday, young guys. I wanna invest in them, but I didn't love their idea. So check out this guy. I'm gonna send you a link. So I'm gonna send you this link, but in the meantime, you should just, yeah, hear me out. So these guys, basically they're young guys. They started, one guy started a company outta college, raised a little money, didn't end up working out, failed. And he's like, then I was just thinking about what to do next. And I was kind of joining these different communities. And he's like, Then I met Hugh through TikTok. I was like, how'd you guys meet? I always ask every co-founder pair, how'd you guys meet? They go, we met through TikTok. I was like, you met through TikTok? Kids meet through TikTok nowadays? You do YouTube? What? So he's like, yeah, Hugh has been making Jarvis. So I don't know if you've seen the movie Iron Man, but basically in Iron Man, I guess I haven't seen it, but it's like there's an AI assistant who he talks to and takes care of shit. So this guy for the last year has been building in public on TikTok, trying to create Jarvis, like trying to create the real life Jarvis on TikTok. He's got like a million followers on TikTok as he's been building this. So they met through this process and they decided to like create an AI company together that actually like does, you know, some version of this. And one of the things that they made, or the first thing that they made is this thing called Carter. And what they're doing with Carter is they're like, you know, in games, you walk around, there's just like, like, you know, you walk into the store, it's Grand Theft Auto, and there's like a guy working at the store and they call these NPCs, non-playable characters. It's just like a character that's in the game so that the game's not empty, but they don't do much. You can just like punch them or like talk to them and they say the same 3 words. So what these guys started off doing was saying, hey, any game developer who wants their characters in game to actually just be able to talk using like AI, just plug this like line of code in and all of your non-playable characters will all of a sudden be like able to hold conversations with the players. Chit-chat back and forth, do all the stuff we've been showing that like, you know, the AI Joe Rogan, AI Steve Jobs thing, like just like hold a full conversation as long as you want or guide the player to go do something like, hey, I'm looking for the sword. They're like, well, if it's the sword you seek, you should go check behind the waterfall. Yeah, maybe there's some answers there for you. And like it guides you automatically. You don't have to hardcode that response. 'Cause if the player asks for something else, they'll say something else, but like kind of guide them towards that answer. I don't know if it all works yet. It's like in beta or whatever. And I don't, honestly, I don't love this use case, but it is a cool use case. It's a cool idea of like, oh yeah, I guess in the future games, just these like stock characters that are walking around are gonna not just be like random objects. They're gonna actually be like things you can interact with, which will change the way that the games work. Like you'll be able to spend this guy hours and hours in the games.

This guy Hugh just retweeted a tweet from this guy named Alex Wang, who's the CEO of Sam Parr. Scale AI, which I don't even know what entirely Scale AI is other than it's like a $10 billion software company. And so he's—

it's like for labeling data. It's like to, to make your, to make your machine learning smarter, you need to label data. Let's say you're a self-driving car company. You need to like look at a million images and point out which, what was a shadow versus a dog crossing the street. So they basically give you software that will let you upload your images. And then there's humans, like, I don't know, the Philippines or somewhere, I think. That like will label your data for you and you just pay per image like $0.02 or $0.01 or whatever.

So presumably he's quite intelligent and he has like a really grand perspective because this company is so big and he sees lots of information. He, this guy Hugh, retweeted something from Alex and he says, we're at a critical turning point for humanity. Children born today are likely to have more AI friends than human friends. AI friends are going to be more reliable. Consid— I don't even know what that word— conciliatory. What's that mean? Agreeable and considerate. What does this mean? What does this mean for childhood development and social norms? We will find out. That's wild. I completely agree with them. And then he says loneliness is an epidemic. It's on the rise and a real public health problem. This technology, when it exists, has a lot of potential for good.

Yeah, I love that. And I'm like, this is so fascinating. So let me tell you 3 ideas that I think somebody could build that are not in the demos we just talked about.

All right. Okay.

Idea 1 is exactly what he's talking about. And I call it, you know, some version of either the AI friend or the AI therapist. So there are a lot of people out there that would benefit from therapy. And there are apps that will connect you with a therapist on your phone, like I don't know, 7 Cups of Tea or like, I don't know, Talkspace or I don't know, some companies.

You're like, you're like, I don't know, I'm not one of those therapy losers. Yeah, exactly.

But you broken people, you know what you use. So these companies, these companies doing well, they make, you know, like $100 million plus a year. It's great, but it's very expensive. And so if you were one of these—

it's just, it's a cute little company. You know, they're whatever, like you need, like, you know what, the crypto bros like you, you, you started using the word Web 3.0 and you're like those, those Web 2.0 dorks. Like, that's what you have to describe. Like, whatever is just like human, you know, old school.

Yeah, exactly.

Reality, Reality 2.0.

AI replaces DNA. That's what I, that's what I believe. And so what they were doing was they're connecting you with a real life therapist who's licensed and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And because of that, you know, they maybe take an in-person visit, which might be $150 or $200, and they turn it to a $60 or $90 a month subscription where you get 3 visits or something like that. I don't know the exact economics, but something like that where you're paying a kind of meaningful amount of money, but you're getting it more conveniently than if you just went to a— you were going in person. And you also don't have the stigma, the taboo of telling your friends, where are you going? I'm going to this. No, they're just on your phone in your pocket. Well, there are, I don't know, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions of people who would benefit from having someone to talk to. Either a therapist or just a friend, a companion, somebody that they can confide in, somebody that won't judge them, somebody that will be positive and helpful, somebody that will maybe offer good advice, somebody that will never share their secrets, and somebody that has, you know, no self-interest in the matter. You could now provide that for like, I don't know, a dollar or something like that, right? Like the cost and the accessibility of, of curing, you know, sort of like loneliness or, um, helping people talk through what's on their mind and get things off their chest, that's going to drop dramatically. So AI therapy slash AI companion and friend, I think, is a mega, mega idea. I think that is a tens of billions of dollars worth idea. Now, I think maybe there's— it's going to be a lot of competition. There's not clear, like, the network effects around that. But I do think that that is a, a very, very big idea and I think it's very impactful. So that's one startup idea. You wanna react to that and I'll give you the next one.

Yeah, that's pretty plain and obvious to me. Like, like that, that's a pretty obvious straightforward solution. That's obviously challenging to pull off, but like straightforward and we could all predict that. So yes, I agree.

The next one is a little sexier. This is called AI Spotify. So what's AI Spotify? Okay, so traditionally the music business has been like, what's a situation where people just run into a burning building? People just make terrible decisions. It's like a horror movie when you're like, "Don't go in there." And they're like, "But I heard a sound. I want to just go check it out." It's like, "Ah, you're going to get slaughtered." That's basically what the music business was. Basically you're competing. It's like everybody loves music. So you are competing with a bunch of people who want to make it better. It's like someone creating a to-do to-do list app or something.

Yeah, do you like pain? Because you're gonna get pain.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, you like music? I guess you like pain too, because that's what you're gonna get— music and pain. Um, so the second thing, so, you know, unlikely you would even ever break out of the, like, thousands of people trying this. If you did, guess what? Here's your prize— a lawsuit. You're sued out of existence, whether you're Napster or, like, one of the many, many music companies that came in between. Okay, you survived the lawsuit. You're Pandora, you're Spotify, you, you didn't even get sued out of existence. Congratulations. Here's shitty economics. Because guess what? To deliver music, you have to have the rights of the record labels. They own the pricing power. And that's why Spotify, after building the best-in-class product, getting everybody to use it after 15 years or whatever, does not have impressive economics. It does not spit off a bunch of cash the way Google or Facebook or other tech companies are able to. Okay, so why is AI Spotify different? Now basically you can create a really cool music app that doesn't have to pay musicians a dollar. All right, musicians everywhere are getting pissed, but you know, here's, here's the good news. You know, uh, here's what the service would look like. The same way Interior AI was just like, you, you want an industrial look, you want a minimal look, you know, gimme a starting image and I'll, I'll riff off that. What you're gonna be able to do with AI Spotify is you pick, like you could basically upload a playlist or you could just like, like, um, you know, like pick a song that you really like, like Pandora.

Yeah, it's just gonna be, it's just gonna be Pandora radio, but they don't exist.

But these, these songs don't exist. So it's just gonna generate a new song on the fly for you. And like TikTok's algorithm, it's gonna learn like when you skip, okay, that was not good. Where did they skip? Why did they skip? What songs get liked? Um, if you like this song, will you like this song? That sort of thing. So it's gonna generate an algorithm. The algorithm's gonna generate music on the fly for you. And then you could add crypto to it where I would be able to say, if I hear a good song, like by default, all the songs are like, they're here today, gone tomorrow. They're like ephemeral. You don't get to hang on to them. But if you like the song, you're like, oh, I want to keep this song. I want to— you don't just get to keep it and save it. You get to own it. So you'll click mint, you'll mint an NFT that now you own that song. Why? Because it was your taste. It was your directing the engine.

That's crazy.

That created that song. Now you own that. And maybe it could split royalties with all the artists that like inspired that music, or the algorithm just owns, you know, 50% and the user owns 50%.

Did you just come up with that, or is someone working on this?

Off the dome, baby. Got that big brain. Got that big boy brain. No small boy stuff, just straight big boy ideas.

This is wonderful. I think, yeah, this is finally— you Web3 nerds are probably finally coming up with interesting shit.

A use case! We did it! No one believed in us! 10 years and a trillion dollars and we did it! We got an idea that doesn't absolutely make no sense.

Nah, I'm just joking. But I do think this is a great use case.

But seriously. Joking with some elements of truth. But I do think this idea is really great. I think that somebody should make this.

And it's not ready yet.

So for example, what happened was With GPT-3, somebody, OpenAI basically downloaded all the text of the internet to create this text generation engine. And then with DALL·E, they did the same thing. They downloaded all the images of the internet to create this image generation engine. And what these guys from the podcast thing or the speech stuff, they're downloading all of Joe Rogan's back catalog to generate Joe Rogan's voice as a voice engine. Somebody's about to do that for music. They're about to download all the music They're about to go download all the music off Spotify and then they're going to train an engine to say, hey, create new music. This is what music is. Create new music. And that's what's going to happen. And they're going to release an open source model that will say, would you like to generate music? Here's an API that will just let you generate music using this, this engine that we've, we've been training by downloading all the music that exists.

Wow. Brilliant. Finally.

Finally. Brilliant. Finally is the best backhanded compliment ever, dude. You did it. You peaked the backhanded compliment. Wow, that is brilliant. Finally. Too good.

We're so stupid. It's like Beavis and Butt-Head made a few bucks.

Yeah, you might have artificial intelligence, but we got that real stupidity over here. Yeah, this is so stupid.

All right, what's the third one? Um, I don't know, I lost my list.

I just clicked. But, um, okay, last thing I want to leave everybody with is, um, there's this guy who's— I think the— I think he should be the Billy of the Week. $1 million isn't cool. You know what's cool?

$1 billion.

Emad Moustakheh. So Emad is his name. He's the guy who is behind Stable Diffusion. So I don't know. Do you know what Stable Diffusion is?

No, I know that the tweet that you just referenced was talking all about Stable Diffusion.

So Stable Diffusion was basically an open-source competitor to DALL-E. So OpenAI created DALL-E, it took over, everybody was excited about it. But, you know, you had to like, you had to get permission to even use it. We were asking, hey, who can get us permission for GPT-3? We want to get access. Who can get us access to DALL-E? Oh, you have to pay for all these credits. Oh, you don't know XYZ. So Stable Diffusion is basically a, a like—

here, here, here's their tagline. Their tagline is great. AI by the people, for the people, designing, implement— designing and implementing solutions using collective intelligence and augmented technology. They're just, they're like the FUBU of the AI world. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

Anybody who does this bias, everybody who does Forrest Bias, generally they're full of shit. But this guy, I watched one interview with him and I could confidently say from the bottom of my heart, after this one interview I watched, this guy's the real deal Holyfield. So let me tell you about this guy. So He gives all— he's my Billy of the Week. He's not a billionaire yet, but this guy's going to be a billionaire. He basically, for Stable Diffusion, he put in $600,000, I think, to fund like the development of it. The company's worth like $1 billion already.

What was he walking from?

So the guy, he's born in Jordan. He's got like a British accent for some reason. He's like a math background, quant type guy. You could just tell in like the first 2 minutes talking to him. It's like, I bet this guy could say more than 5 prime numbers. And it's like, yeah, he definitely can. So he works at a hedge fund. And he's like, I'm the quant guy at this hedge fund. I'm doing trading and it's good. It felt good to try to win that game. And I was winning that game. Okay, good. So he does that. Then he has this life change. He has his first kid and his son is diagnosed with autism. So he decides to take a few years off. I don't know if because it was the autism or just because he had a kid, but he decides, okay, I'm not going to do the hedge fund thing. I just kind of retired early after winning the hedge fund game. Retires and he's like, okay, goes to the doctor and he's like, what do I do about this? What can we do when it comes to autism? And he's like, well, there's no solution. And he's like, but I'm an engineer. I have a problem. That means there must be a solution. And he's like, no, there's no solution. He doesn't accept that response. So he starts doing his own research and basically ends up like, I don't know, curing his son's autism or at least making it a lot, lot better. So here's how he did it. He basically was like, all right, there's a lot of like literature out there, like research papers, but if I try to read this one by one, it's going to take me forever. So he creates an engine that just ingests all the papers and does a semantic search on it and basically creates like this machine learning thing to learn what is all the research about autism telling us. And by the way, I didn't verify any of this. I don't know if any of this is real. This sounds a little too good to be true. But again, just judging the book by its cover, I think this guy's legit. So I choose to believe.

This is the biggest hedge ever.

In case like 3 weeks from now this guy turns out to like, you know, this guy pivots to selling his NFT collection and it's like, oh wait, this guy changed his name and like used to launder money for a living. In case that comes out, let me just say there's a chance, but probably, probably he's just a super nerd who's amazing. Okay, let me tell you why I think that's true.

Just because he's a brown guy with a British accent is what you're saying?

You said just based off of what he looks like and the vocabulary is stunning. So he's describing autism and he's like, you know, the way that he's like, autism is, is a, is a sort of like, uh, it's a, it's a phenotype. It's like a, um, it's like a, a behavioral description, and it has underlying causes, which is like, you know, certain body chemistry things. He's like, well, what causes those? And could we rebalance the body chemistry so that the behavior changes? And what he realized was that autism as a whole comes from many different types of these imbalances. And he's like, so he's like, the doctors are correct that we can't just like fix it or cure it because there's so— it's a multimodal system. There's so many different, um, like inputs that create this output. He's like, but on an individual level, if you can understand where in one individual the body chemistry is maybe slightly different, perhaps there is a treatment that we could do, or there is a rebalancing that you could do of the body's biochemistry. And so he starts to create a process for himself over a couple of years to try to help this. And he said in this interview I was watching, he's like, yeah, my son is doing so much better. And He didn't claim like, oh, I've cured autism or anything like that, but he's like, I learned deeply what goes into these biological systems and what we can do, how maybe science is going to get better in the future using AI. So that's kind of where his AI itch got started. Machine learning and AI is going to be able to help these things. And so then in 2020, he's at a dinner in Davos, You know, as you do. As, yeah, as one does.

Yeah, as people with British accents and huge vocabularies do.

I had dinner at Chick-fil-A last night. Okay, so anyways, this guy was at a dinner in Davos and he's there, you know, and he's, people are talking about this virus coming out of China and he's like, huh, that's the way they're describing this virus, this COVID-19 thing. And he looks into it, he's like, it sounds very similar to autism where it's a He calls it a multi, multi-stomach inflammatory disease. And it's basically, his main thing was like, this thing is complicated. And he's like, it was pretty clear right away that developing a vaccine for this was going to take some time. Like we weren't going to be able to do this in months. It was probably going to take, you know, a year, year or more to try to figure this out. And, uh, and even if we did, it wouldn't work for everybody because again, this is like a multimodal system and like, you know, these like one-size-fits-all solutions are not, are not going to work very well. And so he starts this like thing to try to help, um, use data to help, you know, policymakers for COVID like do a better job, blah blah blah. Um, anyway, he goes through this process, the bureaucracy of like this whole like, you know, dealing with these World Health Organizations and UNESCO and World Bank and all the stuff, you know, it ends up being too bureaucratic and he like, you know, gets fed up with it and it just like sort of the whole initiative collapses. And then he comes up with what he calls his Promethean mission. Prometheus, the myth of the guy who gives fire to humans. And he's like, I want to open source all of the powerful AI and ML tools that exist so that they're not controlled by large private corporations. I like that. And so that's why—

For us, bias, baby.

OpenAI is called OpenAI, but it's a private organization. They're very close to the vest about what they're working on. And then when they release it, they release it kind of like not to everybody all at once. And all that stuff. And if you look at the charts, Stable Diffusion has far surpassed OpenAI. And the tweet that went viral on this was like, OpenAI, meaning the actual open-sourced AI, is beating OpenAI. So the people who actually are taking an open approach are crushing now the company, the private organization called OpenAI.

How do they make money then?

I think it's the same sort of thing. You pay for some credits or usage along the way. They open-source the model, But if you want to run it, blah, blah, blah. Who knows? Maybe they're going to have some— open source companies have these weird models where it's like Linux, Red Hat makes a bunch of money through services and things like that that are not what you would expect. So he says he starts Stable Diffusion because his daughter asked him if he could do the same thing he did for COVID or whatever for art. Oh, by the way, in between, he wins this grant or this X Prize. I think Uh, Elon Musk and somebody else put up this $15 million prize for who can— uh, what was it? So, um, it was like who can basically create a system that, um, like teaches kids in foreign countries, like, I don't know, I forgot what it was, like English or mathematics, uh, for less than like, you know, $75 total cost or something like that. And basically They had created this thing on an iPad that you could just give to kids in countries, and they would basically be able to learn or pass certain tests within 75 days or something like that. I don't know the exact specifics, but he wins this $15 million thing, again, doing good in the world. And so anyways, he creates Stable Diffusion, or his company Stability AI releases Stable Diffusion. It kind of takes off. Um, and he also has, you know, you know what that thing, uh, what's it called? Like a fantasia where it's like you say a word and it creates an image in your head or something like that. Or like, uh, or like emotions have colors or something like that. It's like, yeah, it's like these senses are linked in your brain in a way that's not normal. Or like numbers have smells, you know, the shit like that. Uh, he has one of those. What has it been?

Synesthesia.

There's synesthesia, but he has a different one. He has another one, I think, called aphantasia. Anyway, so he's supporting researchers and he's trying to give them money to open source this thing. And then he's like, okay, I'm going to bring together 20 of the best engineers, Manhattan Project style, and I'm going to self-fund this thing. And I'm going to, we're going to create a project in this space. And they created Stable Diffusion. And basically he self-funded $600,000 and got these 20 engineers to come in and they created this thing that's like, you know, taken off and now, you know, valued over $1 billion.

Dude, isn't it crazy just how bold some people are? Just like, it just— when I talked to Ryan Holiday the other day for the pod, I felt inspired at the end because I was like, your type of success is awesome and inspiring to me because I, I too can work hard and like achieve what you achieve. And then I hear a story like this guy and I'm like, He just like— that story just bitch slapped me in the face, you know what I mean? Like, like, like I just— I am— I am nothing and I am nobody. And this guy is going to steal my lunch money. That's what this— that idea just bullied me.

No, he's not going to steal your lunch money. He's going to give you lunch money and you're like, who are you? Why did you give— why are you giving me lunch money? And he's just like, don't even worry about it, son. Like, wow, thanks. Dad.

Yeah, like this guy, you're just straight, Dad. Yeah, I feel inadequate.

Yeah, that's actually what the Billy of the Week section is. It's really the inadequacy of the week. It's like, yeah, it's like, ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to feel like shit? Because I got a story for you. This guy who's younger than you, better than you, smarter than you, richer than you, did it faster than you, doing the same thing you said you wanted to do, but he actually did it. And guess what? He's also ripped.

And that's how I feel about Ahmad. Do you— is there a world where he's full of shit?

Like I said, I didn't know of this guy's existence till like 3 weeks ago. So yeah, like, you know, there's, there's definitely a world where everything I just said turns out to be like, you know, not true, or this guy turns out to be You know, he's like, yeah, I taught those kids math, but then, you know, they work for me now. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on here? Like, why are the kids in Kenya working for you, bro?

There's like this commercial, uh, for a car commercial. And there, there's like, uh, they're on the highway and it's in, uh, bumper to bumper traffic. And this guy pulls off on the side of the road and starts going through this bumpy forest. And, uh, the, the guy in the passenger seat goes, dude, this is pretty scary. Have you ever, uh, taken this shortcut before? And the guy driving goes, yeah, once, including this time. That's like you telling these stories. You're just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know all about this guy. I just learned about him an hour ago.

Yeah, I'm literally reading it while I'm talking. I'm reading my researcher's notes while we're talking because I watched the interview, but I wasn't taking notes because I was driving at the time. And so all I remember is my feeling, right? What's the Maya Angelou quote? You won't remember the facts of what you're researching, you'll just remember how it made you feel. That's what happened to me. I don't remember any of the words this guy said and I didn't go fact check them, but I remember how he made me feel.

Wow, Angelou said that?

Yeah, her famous quote's like, "People won't remember what you say, they'll remember how you made them feel." It's basically that. I remember how this guy made me feel and he made me feel the same way I felt when I heard Vitalik talk for the first time about—

Weak.

Weak at the knees. Vitalik, when I heard him talk, Zuckerberg, when you hear them talk, people who are extremely mission-driven while also being slightly Asperger's and also being extremely impressive in their past accomplishments. And they're just very matter-of-fact about the way they think the world is going. And they're not trying to hype you up. They're not trying to sell you on it. It's like you ask them a question, they gave you their answer, and then you're like, that answer just broke your frame. And so you keep asking them questions and then in there it's almost like the tone of their voice is sort of like, I said what I said. I, you know, like, yes, this is what I believe and this is what I'm doing with my time. And yes, like, you know, yeah, this is what I think is important. And you're just like, you know, you just sort of like, you look stupid when you're talking to them because you just come from like, you know, it's like you're speaking a different language. You know, they're speaking a language of like being mission-driven and confident and like knowing their shit. And you're just like, you know, me, you know, just being silly old me trying to understand what the hell they're talking about.

This is one of those episodes that we record and I, it's like I have to take a nap at the end. I'm so exhausted from excitement. Do you ever get like that? You're like a, you know, like my dog, like if I like feed him too many treats, like in such a way where he like gets pumped up and hyper about it, he's got to take a nap just from the excitement. That's how I feel. Like I got to go like rest my eyes. Like I'm going to go like, I'm going to go buy a dad chair just to take this nap that I need.

I need to be reclined at a 34-degree angle and my feet need to be above my hips.

At the end of this episode, I'm going to get up and make a grunting noise just because, just because of—

not from pain, just, just, just out of habit.

This is, uh, just so fascinating to me. I think this episode has had a lot of mind-blowing things. I'm eager to see what people say. I think that I feel just amped after— this is almost like a quit and dedicate your life to this topic type of thing. You're like, um, almost. Not actually good idea. Yeah, it's like, it's like, it's like—

other people should go do this.

It's like when someone has worked at your company forever and it's their last day and you just, you gotta go say goodbye and hug 'em, but they're like all the way across the room. You know what I mean? Like, they like worked for you for like 10 years and you know their wife's name and their kids' names and you're so excited to give them a hug and tell them how much they mean to you, but the couch is really comfortable and they're just all the way across. They're all the way across. It's going to be at least 50 steps.

That's how it is. AI is all all the way across the room. That's so good. All right, we're ending it on that. We're out of here.