The future of video with Robert Scoble | EP3

Welcome to episode three of my podcast. I'm actually seriously thinking about changing the name to the Future of Video. Why am I saying that? Well, because I just interviewed Robert Scoble, one of the world's leading leaders when it comes to technology. One of the leading influencers, I should say, when it comes to technology. Robert's been at the forefront of technology, oftentimes at the front end of the wave way before anyone else would be there. And I wanted to get him on a call to ask him what his thoughts are on video and the future of video. And it's really interesting how the call came together. You know, Robert's a very busy man. He's very influential, and I didn't think he'd get on a call. And I was really surprised when I asked him I. On X, he just immediately said yes and took a couple of days to schedule a call. And we jumped on it. We did it live on X and it was just incredible. It was one of my most favorite calls ever. And I had so much fun talking to Robert. I was, like, super nervous before the call, and, you know, I had all these questions prepared and I wasn't sure where it would go. And I did a ton of preparation using Grok. And, you know, one of the things GROK said, you know, make sure. Make sure you bring it back onto the topic and things, because Robert will want to veer off on different topics and things. And it wasn't like that at all. It was actually really on point and very, very relevant for the information that I was looking for, which was to talk about the future of video as it relates to us as video creators, video content creators, and specifically, you know, applying it to creating video content for growing your brand and for growing your influence online. And the stuff we covered was. I mean, it was just from start to finish was just mind blowing. You'll see. The. The call starts with Robert Waring. Well, actually, I won't spoil it for y'.

All.

It's something interesting that happens in.

In.

At the beginning of the call, and it sort of took me a bit by surprise, but I just set the scene for the whole thing and it was just so much fun. Anyway, definitely watch the whole thing. It gets. It gets more interesting the longer you watch. And somewhere towards 3/4 the end, we cover some pretty interesting stuff that I. I didn't think we would cover, but we ended up covering it and some very, very interesting insights from Robert. So I think if you're in the video space and you're using video at all to grow your influence and to grow your reach for your brand. Whether it's your personal brand or your company brand, whatever brand you're building, this is essential watching. So let me know in the comments if you think a name like the Future of Video might be a good name for this podcast. I'm still sort of toying around with names as I'm playing around with this new format. Let me know. But without further ado, I'll introduce you into the interview, which was run live and was streamed on X. But here's the recording of it, so I hope you enjoy it. Let me know your comments once you finish watching it. Talk to you soon. Hey everybody. I'm here with Robert Scoble, somebody I've been following for a long time. It feels like a lifetime, but it's probably only been about two decades, which is still quite a bit. I remember seeing Robert the first time on Twitter when it was still called Twitter. And I believe Robert can confirm this or not a bit later. He was the number one most followed person on Twitter for the first two years. So he's lost that position now. I think Elon's got it.

Still others have passed, went by.

And yes, but what actually happened was I've been doing a lot of video, as you know, but I've been really interested in what X has been doing with video. They've upped the game a lot. They've been talking about upping the game a lot with video. And on Friday I saw something really interesting. The interface on X, at least on desktop, changed and they changed how they show portrait videos in particular. So I had a little video or a little post about that and Robert replied to that and we've been chatting, you know, loosely throughout the last few months and I said, hey Robert, why don't we, why don't we just talk about that and talk about the future of video. So yeah, let's do it. And he couldn't do it at the time, but we've scheduled for today. So Robert, thanks for coming on the call. Such short notice. Really appreciate you being here and also being here with the Apple Vision Pros.

Video is changing. There's a lot of cameras on my face.

Yeah, I mean, this already gives us the futuristic look that I wanted to have for this, for this interview. So thank you for putting those on. I think I believe you got, yeah, these ones. Tell me a bit about them because I, I, you had a video about it just earlier today as well on your, on your X feed. What are these ones?

These are the even realities, there's a whole series of wearable computers coming out that three categories of them, lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight. The Vision Pro I was just wearing is the heavyweight, right? And gives you a much more immersive view around you. Gets you a wraparound screen if you're watching video or whatever. These have just a little tiny green and black display right about, right about here. If I raise my head, I can see it. And so, yeah, you know, they're, they're regular glasses. Pretty close to regular glasses. I mean, here's my old glasses, right, that don't have digital displays next to these. Even realities that have, have displays.

And that's amazing.

It's, it's showing you that their computers are getting smaller and they're able to put them into things that look like glasses now. And you're going to see over the next 18 months, I think, quite a few different ones. Google and Meta both are readying products to bring out to the market later this year along these lines. And that will do, I think, more. In fact, I know they have full color screens instead of just a green and black screen. So the world is coming and you put some AI on your phone and now you can talk to the AI and it can show you things on the, on the screen in front of you, like translate, you know, a converse conversation you're having with somebody who doesn't speak your language. You can actually see it right there being translated in real time. It's pretty cool.

I love it. You know, it's. I'm always so jealous of you guys in America. I'm here in Australia and we always are so late with getting the technologies. Like when you guys got the Apple Vision Pro, we were just sitting here going, when are we going to get it? I think it took months. We eventually got it. But it was cool seeing that world through your eyes. And so that's just sort of a, a wave of things.

We got autonomous cars everywhere. It's like just a year or two. It's like, oh my, this is like a different world here now, right?

We've got to wait another, I don't know, five to 10 years before we'll see those in Australia probably.

You got some Teslas in your neighborhood. You're going to have it sooner than you might think.

I hope so.

A couple of years maybe.

I hope so. So, Robert, you've, you've been at the. I was just saying before, at the. To me, it feels like you've been like at the bleeding edge of technology. And also video. I Think maybe, maybe not necessarily in the creating stuff, but certainly in terms of using and being one of the first sort of users of video technologies that are coming out. Like, for example, you did the Twitter thing. You were there first. I mean, you had, I think, a.

Video TV show with go back to 2004 and 5.

Right.

I worked at Microsoft and I carried around a $250 Sony camcorder that used tapes in the old days. And I did 600 interviews there on my little video camera and changed how people looked at Microsoft. Right. Economist magazine wrote a whole page on me back then about how I humanized Microsoft this way. And so I've been using video as a communication method for a long time, going back to the 80s. I learned how to do video in a church here in Silicon Valley. I ran camera number two in the middle of the auditorium of, I don't know, 10001500 people every Sunday day. And back then my TV camera was $130,000 and had tubes been around. Had to heat it up and use an oscilloscope to align the tubes, you know, well, you don't have to do that on your iPhone anymore.

It's crazy how it's changed over the years. And like I remember when I was doing. When I was getting into the video streaming stuff, I at least was on Mac, so that was a good start. But this is, this is, I don't know, just when YouTube was starting to stream live stuff and the technology was just so tough for us here in Australia because our Internet was not good enough. I went through three. I think they were called Apple Pros. They look like the. Remember the. Remember those ones that. This sort of shape, I think they were called?

Yeah, mine are outside.

But I killed three of them. It's like $5,000 each for those. And then I had a 5K screen and killed that as well with trying to live stream and the technology just wasn't there. And now, I mean, gosh, so easy. I do have a nice ish camera here, but I mean, if I wanted to, I could have done this whole call just on my. On my iPhone, you know, so it's.

Yeah, I have a. I have a, like a, A mirror kind of thing, a teleprompter in front of me with a DSLR behind it so I can look at you.

That's.

And be staring at a pretty nice camera, which gives me pretty good quality. You know, I have a couple cameras here and we were using. The other one is just not. Not nearly as nice as this dslr.

No, it's not. I've got a DSLR here as well. I just, I'm not sure if I've upgraded or downgraded, but I got the Sony ZV E10 Mark 2 and the reason I changed over to that one is because it allows me to live stream just with the USB C cable. I don't need a capture card anymore and it just, it does a pretty Good job. That's 4K straight into my computer and that's what you're watching right now. So I'm pretty happy with it. I don't have a, it's just a kit lens on it as well at the moment. So I'm pretty, pretty happy with the results so far.

Yeah. But you know, I've also been around like I was at GoPro the night that they released the Hero 2 video and I think that's on point here. That video made them public company and made them. Made Nick Woodman a billionaire. Right. One video and it companies who use video well can get funded or find customers or change the story about their company and maybe even go public, right?

Oh absolutely. It's so I wanted to actually video is powerful.

Usually it's not that way but you know, once in a while a video like that comes along and changes, changes the company and changes people's lives.

I think we've definitely seen it time and again where companies use well crafted videos but, but, but not necessarily even well crafted videos. I think there's, there's good examples of like say someone like Gary Vee. His videos are oftentimes relatively awful in terms of production quality but his content is really amazing and he's just really at the forefront. He's really pushing it and being able to build like a media empire from, from that. So I think this, there's a whole range of, of you know, a spectrum of production quality for example to be able to get results. But the point is video is a powerful medium. It's. Yeah, I remember when it, when it came around to me it was like we had the Internet which was like a big thing obviously and then social media which was a big thing. We called it Web 2.0 back then and then it became social media. And then for me the next big thing was YouTube, you know, and online video. It's almost like it's not quite as probably not. I don't know, maybe comparing it to the AI wave right now. For me if I look back like the video thing was a big wave. It took a while to build up though. Whereas if you Compare it to the AI wave. Now, the adoption is so much faster, but maybe in terms of impact, it has like an equivalent feel to it. It's like, it's just as significant as AI, you know, So I think video is like now, video with AI is incredible.

And now I just interviewed an entrepreneur earlier today. He's building an AI editing tool that does editing automatically.

Is that the guy from Clover?

I'm interviewing him tomorrow. So I'm trying to get, I'm trying to, yeah, I'm trying to get to see all the video tools because I'm interested in this, in this field. And the world is changing quickly because of multimodal models that can look into a video and really understand everything in the video in real time. Right. And you know that, that, that kind of technology is coming out of the autonomous car world. That autonomous car, when it rolls down the street, has to see a stop sign and know it's a stop sign. Right. And understand what the rules are there. And we're getting, we're about to get a lot of really interesting new tools and then we haven't even started talking about using AI to create the video.

Right. Okay, so let me just stop you.

There, because that's got an hour, right?

Yeah, so. So this is, this is exactly what I actually wanted to ask you. This, literally, I've got on my notes here, the first thing is to talk about AI generated video content and how, you know, what's. Where's the puck going with that and how that's going to impact us. But then also the video editing side of it, because, you know, ever since I've done video and video marketing and training people on video marketing, the number one pain point that's always come back is the video editing. It's always the number one pain. So let's touch on that one first, since you, since that's quite fresh in your mind with the interview you've had this morning and tomorrow with the founder of Clover. And I just, I just signed up for Clover on the weekend, but it didn't work on my mobile, so I haven't tried it properly on my desktop yet. But tell me, what are your thoughts on the whole editing scene when it comes to AI and video? Where's that all going? Because it's like, are we gonna. Is it going to be like the knowledge worker situation where those people are going to lose their jobs, or is it, is it going to be a matter of the great video editors? They're going to be able to use AI to create even greater things. What are your thoughts on, you know, what's the deal?

I think the value for humans is still in telling a good story. And yeah, you're going to be using AI like hey, hey Grok, I want to tell a good story. Can you help me out? And it does, right? And if the better you are at telling an AI like a Grok or a Gemini or a Cloud or a Perplexity or a Chat GPT, what you want, the better that original script might be, right? Or that original storyline might be. And then soon I, I believe we're about to get a new kind of camera and this Apple Vision Pro is a, is close, but it doesn't quite get to where I'm thinking it's going to go once they put a multimodal models in there and they hook it up to AI tools like Chat GPT or, or Grok, because let's say I did that Chat GPT. Hey, I, I wanna, I wanna build a three minute video for Instagra, the story to be xyz and I want to make these points or have this kind of aesthetic to it, this kind of storyline to it. It can write me a script then I, the camera could tell me when I'm shooting that when I'm out, you know, let's say I'm doing a video about a car show or something like that. It'll be helping me like, oh, you need a wide shot of the car show, right? And then you go out with your camera, you know, and shoot the wide shot and it can even tell you, okay, we got the wide shot. That looks good. When you get back home, maybe you're missing a shot, maybe you didn't get one. Well, AI can come in and fill in, right? And then take the shots you've already done in the car show and make another one of the car show and it'll be pretty hard to tell. And you might even do that for aesthetic reasons, like you might want to stylize the video and make it look like a cartoon for three seconds. Right. There's so many new creative things that we, we as video communicators are going to be able to do soon. But in 18 months, I think we're not going to recognize this world.

Do you think we'll get to a point where you might be able to have your video AI buddy, whatever you want to call it, whatever that technology is going to be, to be so well trained on you and your mannerisms and things like that and yeah, and maybe other people as well in your world. That you could just say to it, hey, I need a short form video on this topic with me in it throwing some cool B roll and just make it all happen. So that's, that's the one aspect.

The other aspect, I've seen videos that I can't tell I'm looking at a human. I'm, I mean, I, yeah, me too. Are you an AI? Are you an AI? I prove you're a human. I guess soon we're gonna, we're not even gonna know whether I'm talking to an AI or a human because like Descript just last week turned on avatars and you can just type. I already read to Descript, so it knows my voice. I give it a picture of my face and the more pictures I give of it, the better it can get to me. And now I can just type to it and it can make me a video of me talking to you just like this.

Yeah, it's incredible. So, all right, so. So if we progress that thought even further, where. Okay, at the moment it needs some input from us to sort of get trained on. Yeah, that's maybe, that's maybe the reality for the next three years or something. What about beyond that? Five years, ten years from now, are we like, will we, will we be at a point where we'd have essentially AI influencers that are considered just as authoritative or as real as, as us now? And, and that's what I'm saying. Like would we still need human beings for that or would, would we just have these agents running the show for us? And we go, okay, I wanna, I've got a new startup and I need, I need like a really good face for the business and make, make this person attractive, make them well spoken or he her and on point for my brand and for the topic, you know, go and then just all figure it out.

Yeah. Two years from now or five years from now, there'll still be a lot of 2D video in the world, you know, with something on like the Vision Pro. And keep in mind, five years, the Vision Pro is going to be a pair of glasses, right? So you're going to have a pair of glasses on that gives you a wraparound capability. But even worse or better, it gives you a holodeck. Every voxel, every bit of the air can be a volumetric pixel and can be changed by the AI. Right. If I had a Vision Pro on, I could see you and then I can turn the dial and I'm in Yosemite national park and walking around. It's crazy. What's about to come. So now in, in that context, if, if your customer, if your viewer is wearing a pair of these glasses and wants to, you know, click on YouTube 3D, all of a sudden they're in a room with the actors or with things that look like actors, right? Because we're also getting virtual beings over the next couple of years. I've already interviewed a founder of a company that's building them, and they look like humans, they talk like humans, they walk like humans, they sit on the chair next to you, right? So now you can build a whole little entertainment product with a bunch of virtual beings around you and maybe you throw a human in there just to keep it, you know, a little bit of humanness. A new kind of entertainment product. Right? And maybe the camera is just a virtual camera that the AI might even be doing the camera work for it for this kind of entertainment product. Right. Well, it's, it's about to get really crazy over the next couple of years.

Okay, so, so this is really interesting because I was just listening to your interview that you published earlier on your X profile this morning, and I, forgive me, I forget the name of the person that you interviewed. I think it was, it was the.

Founder of Triple Whale.

Yeah, yeah, that's the one. That's the one. And, and he mentioned at the start of the interview, you know, you don't want to be too early and you also don't want to be too late with, you know, when it comes to business. Right. Or any transporting. I've often had that issue where I'm. Like I said, I'm not, not as quite as ahead as you are, but I've often been still way too, too, too much in front of this, of the wave to be able to catch the wave. And I'd often jump off onto another wave before the big wave comes. What's your. What you've been. You've seen so many waves come and go now and you've been able to ride a few as well. But what's your like when it comes to the video game and using video to like to build a presence online for your brand? What would be your take on how to be not too early and not too late for these sort of things? Because my feeling is that the world is changing so fast and it's like you also don't want to miss out, so you don't want to be too early, you don't want to be too late, but you also don't want to miss out. So how do you manage this world of change so much when it comes to video.

I wouldn't look at Robert Scoville. I'd look at Tricia Code. She has created a series of videos with AI of a character that's based on her. But it's. It's a very pink character. If you go to her X account and watch some of her videos, she's creating a character. She's creating resonance with a new audience. The audience is growing. Triciacode. C O D E. Okay, Right.

I'll bring up on the screen while you talk.

Yeah. TriciaCode or X dot com. Trisha code. And she's creating a character that has relevance to a new audience and is having fun with it. Right. And just building music and building skits with her and with this character and having the character meet aliens and do all sorts of fun things. But over time, she's gonna create something that I think would be attractive to corporations to hire to introduce a new product or change the story. That's not her. Trisha. C O D E C O D T R I S H. Let me just make sure.

I'm telling you the right sh.

If you find something that looks a lot pink, you found her.

I'm searching here.

It's Trish. T R I S H A C.

O D E. Got it. Sorry. Trying to do stuff while he lives always. But. Oh, here we go. Oh, I've seen her, of course. All right. Okay. All right, so tell us about this. So this is a fully AI channel. Is.

Is. She said it's mostly AI. It's about 95% AI. She does play bass guitar riffs and brings those into Ableton Live to do. To add some humanness. This is a secret with AI, Right? You can use AI to create something like this, but you're going to be competing with a lot of people who are going to do this. Right. So the way you have to stand out is to add some human sauce to it to make it stand out. And her stands out of the. I have a list on X of, I don't know, 3500 AI artists who are creating various things with AI programs like Clang and Luma and Mid Journey and a whole bunch of Run Runway and others. And her stands out because it's consistent. It has a consistent character to it that has consistency across videos. And it's iconic. It's something. When you see that and I'm in a microsecond, you know it's Trisha's video. Right. You don't even need to see her name because she has a very consistent pink look. That's why I knew if it's not pink, it ain't Trisha. And we've been talking quite a bit because I'm very fascinated by what she's doing. I, I think she's setting up the future of virtual beings because she could turn that property. She's building this character into a virtual being that's hanging out with people. Right. And is part of a new entertainment product in a, in a digital holodeck that's coming with these glasses World that's coming. So she's a little early for that. She's doing well with 2D, but, you know, it's hard to build an audience from scratch. Right. And you're watching her do it. I think she has 4,000 followers right now. But watch people like Trisha and the other AI artists who are creating properties like this and characters and entertainment products and storylines. That's going to be what leads you into a brand in two to five years that corporations are going to want to be a part of. And, you know, we call them AI influencers or whatever. This one stands out. Right?

Well, that's a really nice segue into the other thing that I want to talk about, which is the AI generated video content. And this sort of like, it straddles that world a little bit because it's a little bit of her and a little bit of, like a little bit of real person, but also AI combined into. And sometimes you can't tell the difference by the looks of it. I haven't fully looked at, at the channel, but so, so in terms of, you know, for companies looking at using AI and video together. Okay, let me just give you sort of an anecdote here. I was talking to another business leader and she was, she's quite a prominent leader in her space and very successful. And she, she told me about some software that she's using that's fully AI generated. It does use. It can use your voice to sort of mimic your voice, but then all the imagery and the text on the screen is fully done with AI. And I've seen these videos. They've been around for a while now. And I was, you know, as I, as I'm watching these videos, I'm always thinking, is this obviously AI and therefore there's a bit of a trust issue for me, I'm not, you know, it's like, okay, it's cool, but I'd rather swipe and see a real human being. But what surprised me was that she said she's been using that to generate business for her, for her company, you know, so she's, she's got sort of high ticket sort of sales, 5, 10k a pop kind of transactions or higher tickets. Not, not a $97 product type of thing, you know, so, so that, that came across really interesting to me that A, she was using it and she was happy using it and B, it was actually working for her, which is a bit of a surprise to me. But what's your take on that? Because it seems like, for me, it seems like we're still at that cusp where I think there's, there seems to be still a bit of backlash from people towards AI. So when they see AI generated content, they go, you know, it's, it's AI. So there's a trust level that is not as high. So therefore.

And that's why Trish is early. Yeah, that's why Trish is early. Right. She's, she's building something in an AI world that people are not yet ready for. And I, I study consumer behavior. That's what I, what I really do. I've been up to all over the world studying people, how they change with new technology and new ideas.

Right.

And people always resist. At the beginning, million people protested when Facebook turned on the news feed. Well, now everything is news feeds. Right. And so we all changed. Gary Vaynerchuk and I gave keynote speeches to thousands of people who told us they'd never do social media. Well, they're all on social media now, so they all changed. They all thought they knew how the world was going to work. And then they changed. Change. And the world will change because of things like Trisha that come along, that entertain you in a new way and you realize, oh, that's fun to watch or participate in or have as a virtual being in your house. And it changes who you are as and your belief system. Right. There will be a backlash for a while. Yeah. And there will be a, you know, a human only created media. You know, I only use human instead of my vision videos. I only use humans to do my camera work. I only do humans to, in front of the camera. Right. And, and there will be that. But you're going to start seeing people change. And when you get glasses, that's when you're going to start changing because Trisha in glasses is a lot more interesting than Most of the YouTube videos I watch.

Okay. What do you, what do you think this is going to do to trust, like in, in terms of, you know, you've already We've already seen the videos coming through with, you know, this is funny, Donald Trump and Ukraine.

It has deep implications because soon they're going to be watching a video show like this and you're not going to know whether, whether we're human or, or AI talking to each other. I mean, I can have GROK already do an interview with Elon Musk and the content point with both of us. It knows us so deeply that it can create a fake entertainment, you know, interview show. You're seeing this with Notebook, Lm from Google, right? You feed it up PDF or a, you know, a website, and all of a sudden it creates you a podcast out of that.

So it's crazy, but. Okay, so it's crazy, but. And it's getting crazy good as well. But.

But it does lead to trust because we don't know what's real anymore. Well, that's. It is gonna be a problem.

So. Okay, so. So I think. So I, I also think it's going to be a problem, but I'm not sure if it's going to be like one of those things that you say where people kind of get used to it. They'll go, no, I'm not going to use social media. But then eventually they do, or they go, I'm not going to trust AI. But then they do eventually, and they go, whatever. I'm getting fed here. I'm. It's, it's all good. It's from AI. So, because I'm. What, I don't know behind the scenes with AI, what's happening is like, this is why I'm liking what Elon's doing with this, essentially, the search for truth with grok, whereas with the other platforms, I'm not really seeing that, because I'm thinking, how do you establish truth here? Because essentially that's, that's where the trust will come from, right? If, if something is true, there's, you know, you can trust it, you can believe it.

Well, you'll, you'll build trust because let's say you're going across and. Sorry about the doorbell, you'll be going across the Golden Gate Bridge and you'll see a car on fire. And then Grok will tell you there's a car on fire, right? And, and you'll, you'll realize that the AI thing that's on your phone or on your glasses, that's reading the news to you or showing you the news is actually attached to the real world world, and it's actually reflecting the real world, right? If you go to A city council meeting. You're sitting in the real city council meeting, and then Grok tells you what actually happened in that. Or, or something like rock a Facebook or a Google or, or whatever tells you that what happened in the meeting you'll realize, okay, this is truthful because I was sitting in the meeting and the report on the phone is truthful. So you'll start to trust it based on your own experience over time. Right. Right now we're in a new world where we don't have that trust because we don't have enough experience with it.

Right, Right.

And this is why, this is why humans over time will change because as you have more and more and more experience with it, you'll realize, oh, it's actually pretty good at, at reporting to me what I need to know right now to live as a human being. Right.

You see, that's. I think that's been the missing piece for me. So thank you for that pointing that out that the, the trust thing will get taken care of because we will, we will start realizing, hey, it is actually trustworthy by, by looking at what's happening with the AI, but also comparing it to reality and going, okay, well, it is, it is trustworthy.

And there will be missteps. Right? Because it will get it wrong and then there'll be a lack of trust for a while. Right. It'll hallucinate a fact. And, and if you know the real fact and you see on your, on your phone, you know, or on your glasses an incorrect fact that makes you lose trust in the system because you realize that's, that's not correct. Right? Doesn't match reality. This is why Elon really is thinking about how do you make sure that you align the AI to the real world so that you gain trust more and more trust over, over time and they'll be, it'll be a messy few years, you know.

Yes.

Ten years from now, it'll, we are going to be in a different world. Right? Because the AI is getting less and less hallucinations over time. And they're, they're working. There's a lot of teams here in Silicon Valley working to try to figure out how not to make hallucinations happen by building new systems and new AIs, and, and give it more, much more data. Right now it doesn't have enough data. A lot of times where it hallucinates is place where it doesn't have enough data to give you the correct answer. Right. And it makes one up.

So where do you think we are on that cycle? Now, in terms of, you know, if you look at all the. The previous waves normally, sort of like you say, it's. People get excited a little bit, then they go through that, what is called the valley of death or whatever, and then it slowly picks up again, and then it finally gets to mainstream and, you know, goes crazy. Where are we on the. On the. On the curve early days still? Are we still at the early, early adopter, innovator stage, or are we sort of already in that valley of death? Or is the value of death part still coming up for. For the AI Way when it comes to this trust thing? Like, is it like a big trust sort of issue still coming up with people going, oh, this is. We gotta throw this out and, you know, burn the.

I think we're in the early days still of this kind of whole theme. I mean, you know, Formula one was on TV today, right? And I've been to a real Formula one race. Watching it on TV is better than going to the real race in a lot of ways. The parties are better at the real race, but actually watching the sport is better on tv. In fact, when I was at the real race, we watched most of the race on TV because we could see the whole track on the TV and see our favorite drivers on tv, right? But we could look down at the real track and see our favorite driver go by, you know, there he was, right? Soon you're going to be having augmented experiences in real life, particularly with sports, right? Going to a football game or going to a Formula one race. You're going to be wearing something like an Apple Vision Pro. Now, that seems strange today because it's so big and ugly and expensive, but when it's a pair of glasses, you're going to. You're going to see a lot of people start using it for that because it's going to be much more enjoyable to. Even if you go to the real F1 race to put on a pair of glasses to see the track and see your favorite drivers and see all the stats that the people who are running the cars have on their screens, right? They know how hot the tires are. You don't know that watching tv, right? I want all of that in my glasses on screens around me or. Or in 3D on the. The table in front of me, right? We're still in early days of that. That's going to happen to a lot of things in society. You're going to see new kinds of plays, new kinds of entertainment products, new new kinds of education products like this, new kinds of classrooms you can take a class in, and that's in 3D. We're still in early, early days, and we haven't even. I don't have a virtual being in my house. That's not true. I. I have had a prototype in my house. That entrepreneur brought one over and showed it to me.

What do you mean? What do you mean, a virtual prototype?

Something that looks like you, that talks like you, that's sitting on the chair next to me. But you got away.

The Vision Pro to see it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or look at your phone. Right. Okay, you can see. You can see it on your phone.

Pretty real.

Yeah. They're insane. What's about to come.

Okay, so. I mean.

Okay, so this is what's so hard to explain to people. What's about to come is insane compared to what we have today, and we haven't even started that yet.

Where are we on that continuum of. Of getting to the. The her movie?

I'm pretty close.

Like, if you're talking about that virtual.

Character, I mean, you have Chat GPT. You can do advanced voice on the Chat GPT and talk to it all day long. And it's pretty. Yeah, but it's like.

Yeah, so you can talk.

But I mean, memory last month, you know, it starts remembering you.

Hey, you know, it's nice to be able to see someone, though, like, and. And to. Again, that trusting.

Well, the. Her movie was a headphone in the head. Right. She didn't see him. Right. He was talking to her. Well, we are pretty close to that. On Grok on Chat GPT on Google Gemini, and Perplexity on Anthropic Cloud, we're pretty good. The programmers are calling it vibe coding. They're talking to their coding environment and writing apps this way with their voice. Right?

Absolutely. Okay, so we.

We aren't yet into the virtual being thing. That's coming fast, but.

Okay, is that gonna miss. Is that gonna mess with our minds a bit? Like, if you. Like if you're in an environment, like, you call it the holodeck, Right. Which is. I think it's a pretty cool frame.

Let's. Let's go back and explain what the holodeck is.

I would love you to. Yes.

Yeah. If you go to the Apple Store and you know, and you put one of these things on right. When I'm wearing this and I see my hand in front of. Looks like my real hand, you see the Apple Store, you see your friends around you. It looks real. It's not real at all. It's A holodeck. Everything you view in this is not real. It's a volumetric pixel that's been generated for you by the computer system. And you can change it. You turn the dial on the top of the headset and it changes from the Apple Store to Yosemite national park or the Taj Mahal or, or, you know, wherever, whatever. You're in a holodeck. And so far, we haven't yet hooked up AIs to the holodeck to generate the environment around you or the virtual beings that are around you. Those are coming and coming by the end of the year, right? And certainly by the end of next year, they're going to be incredible. So now we can create new entertainment products that, to look like there's a human sitting on the chair next to you or walking around you, that you're going to be able to interact with, talk with. High five even. Hey, high five. Right. And capture with a virtual camera. And you can maybe grab the virtual camera and put it in 3D space around you to capture you talking with your virtual being. Or the AI can move the camera and capture it for you automatically. So edit the video story you're trying to tell with your virtual being.

I've got a, I've got so many questions. I mean, there's, there's a couple virtual.

Human, or whatever you're going to call these things. We haven't figured out what we're going to call these things because there's some we're going to look like a little dog, right? Some. You might be talking to a fish floating in the air someday, you know, and someday you might want to talk to something that looks like a, a female or a male, you know, or whatever. Robot.

Okay.

You have an optimus in your house that looks like an optimist, but it's not really an optimist. It's just a virtual being of some kind. Right.

What's this going to do to our minds, Robert? Like, like, are we, are we gonna, are we gonna change as a society? I mean, we've already changed like, like with social media. Social media. I was just talking to a friend of mine. He's, you know, he's going through a divorce, etc, and he's talking about the dating scene and going, talking about how different that is now compared to, you know, 20 years ago. So I'm Generation X still. So I'm, I'm one of the lucky last ones to have lived before the iPhone and after. My kids, they're all 100% into the technology. Thing into AI and social media.

My kids learn to read and write on an iPad, on YouTube.

So. So what? What's your thoughts? On what? That's what. This whole AI thing with the virtual worlds in the holodeck. What that.

How far are we gonna go? Are we going to talk? Are we going to be neuralink? Yeah, the brain computer interface world. I mean, I. I already. Or are we. I already have some brain computer interfaces in my house. This one fits on the back of your head and senses where your visual processing is being done and sort of can tell what you're looking at with a device with a bunch of sensors on it, right?

And there's nothing, no implants on that. It's just.

This is external. This sits on the ex. Outside of your head. So it's not real accurate. You know, if you put the wire on the inside of your head, then you get full, full capabilities. But, you know, there's already three humans who have neural link on their brain today, right? And it's not me and you, but there's people who just think and they compute, right? They. They can move the cursor around the screen just by thinking. I saw at Stanford Robotics day the coup ago, a guy wearing a hat and he was cooking dinner just by thinking.

That's.

That world is crazy. And we. We haven't even figured out how to write to the human brain. These devices just read from the human brain, Understand that you're thinking about, you know, hey, I. I want to make some sushi, right? Cut. Cut it this way. And then just think about it.

Gosh, I. I'm kind of. I'm not sure how I feel about writing. Writing into the brain. Like I'm okay with my brain telling it what to do, but coming back in, that's like.

Change this cookie into effects again, right? Because that's, that's what happens when you write into the brain. You can change how I perceive things, you can change my memories. It opens up a whole can of worms. So that's why I brought it up, because if you. If you're really going to understand how human beings are going to change over the next 20, 30 years, you have to. You have to go there and we're going to be a very different species in 30 years than we are today.

What do you think about the physical world, given that we'll have this parallel universe running at the same time? That would be potentially indistinguishable of the real world world, but at the same time we've got the real world happening Here with, you know, the. All the robotics and humanoids picking up. I mean, we're approaching. We've got the. The Ready Player One kind of world versus the. The Blade Runner kind of worlds. Are they. Are they going to be running separately?

Are they going to converge?

I mean, because there's something about still physical touch, right? So, so you need. I'm not sure if that. They've got technology that plugs into your brain, makes you think you're touching something, but you're not actually touching it yet. What's your thoughts on that? Is there a.

Well, yeah. I put on my Vision Pro because now I can still see you on my teleprompter in front of me. It still is real. My lights are up here. My imac. I can see Trisha code on my imac over here. But you're not real. Well, first of all, you weren't real anyways because you're just numbers being displayed on a screen. Screen, right?

Yeah.

But now, now I'm seeing, you know, digital on top of digital, right? You know, and maybe I grab you out of the physical monitor and make you a big monitor, right? So I can see you in much more resolution on a virtual monitor in front of my real telefront or my real imac, right? I do that all day long. I work in this thing. I don't look at the physical screen anymore. I look at the virtual screen that's sitting in front of me, right?

So it's potentially going to change. It sounds like it's going to change the fabric of consciousness. If we, we keep going far enough, it's like, oh, man.

I've had hundreds of arguments with, or discussions with Dylan Yerquidi at Unity Labs because he's a brain computer interface pioneer and he. He loves asking people, what is consciousness? And most people have no idea. In the digital world, consciousness is just a database.

Have you watched the. What's his name, Tom, running on a.

Piece of melted sand. You know what, what we're about to get is crazy. It's crazy to think through where you're running an AI model or AI series of AI models on Nvidia cards that are going to make a virtual thing that's sitting on a chair next to you that is going to have their own life, their own experiences. They might come back. You know, you might wake up one morning and talk to your virtual being. And in the middle of the night, it went to Coachella and has a whole bunch of photos to show you. It's going to be a weird World, you know, Are human beings going to find that entertaining? I, I will. Well, I think I will too. You're gonna go? Hell no.

My. Yeah, the, the, what do you call it? The laggards or whatever. Luddites. They're probably gonna kick against it heaps until right at the end. But I'm. Yeah, I'm almost also sort of part of my brain is thinking for my children. How do I prepare them? You know, like my, my eldest is 14 and she loves video editing, you know, so she's getting into the creative sort of stuff. And I'm also thinking, okay, how do I prepare her for the workforce one day? Like especially from a video perspective. Does she. She Should I teach her how to do video editing now with capcut, or do I go, no, learn A.I. you know, like become good at A.I. figure out everything you can about A.I. eye. Because that's going to be your world. You're going to be completely immersed in it as you grow up. So but I mean that's, that's possibly another whole, another interview.

That one for our kids coming. We need to talk about regulation because that when you get a neuralink, when you get wires put on a human brain, your free will goes away even from external. I was wearing two strips from a company in Boston that's coming out called Orbit. And they were stimulating my brain by shoving electricity into my brain. And they could make me lean left and lean right involuntarily. Right. Somebody else is all of a sudden in control of me. I have no free will. Whether I'm leaning left or right. The computer is telling me to lean left or right.

What do you mean? It's not even in your brain. It's outside. And it's, it's outside scripts.

Yeah, yeah. It put a wave through my body. Right. It was so, so it, so and it made me lean left.

Does it activate a certain motor neuron or something in your brain?

Yeah, it's forces changing your vascular.

Stimulation. For you doing it, it just happens automatically.

It happens automatically. I, I was wearing it and all of a sudden I was leaning left and leaning right and involuntarily without. And you can fight it a little bit, you know, and that's where your free will comes in. But as we head into a full breed in right neural link, which is our kids world, and maybe if we stay alive long enough, maybe even our world, but certainly our kids world, it. It really changes what is free will. It changes who's in control of the human being. Right. Because the company that, that Makes the neural link, in this case Elon Musk, but there's others who are coming. So you might have a Google one or something on. It really changes your cognitive sovereignty and it really gets to the heart of the question of what is a human being in that world. And we have to protect that with regulation. And so that's because once you put it on this device, you're in. You're not going to think about it. Right. You're in. And it's going to rewrite your memories and change your perception of things and in a good way and a good and a potential bad way. So we need to really, in fact you can have these arguments with any AI. It's insane. I've been talking with Grok and with the people like Dylan who are pioneers. Grok and Chat GPT. They know about this world coming and, and even lay out what kind of regulations we need to have and what kind of businesses are going to come in the future, you know, long term future in this world.

Wow.

Yeah. As parents we should be having these discussions that this world is coming and it brings a lot of new super human powers. Because if you had a neural link on and I had a neural link on, we're not talking with our mouth anymore, which is a slow way to communicate back and forth. We're thinking thoughts back and forth. Right. And, and, and we have an AI that's assisting us that we can also think to, you know, hey AI, you know, help us out here, help us design a new 3D building together. Boom, boom, boom, boom. We're just going to town real fast. Gives us superpowers.

Well, I'd appreciate that with, with you know, having, you know, being able to communicate like that with some people. Like my development team for example.

Yeah. You want to be hooked up with smart people and work together. Right?

Yeah.

Maybe your wife, you know, have a mind meld with your lover.

Correct. They're just like, okay, now you can finally understand what I'm trying to say within, within seconds as opposed to, opposed to hours or years, you know, so it makes sense.

Robert, We've probably got new, new problems and we as a society, we do need to think through the regulations. The AIs can help us understand this world if you care about it and can help us think through the regulations and the problems and how we're going to not have these problems as a society because does bring up some major new problems and some major new capabilities too. I'm, I'm signing up. I'm getting one even though I know all the problems it could bring.

Again, I'm, I'll, I'll watch you first because you're a bit ahead of me on the, on the curve.

Yeah. You know, that's my role in life. I was, you know, I was the first one to buy an iPhone at Steve Jobs store every, you know, I took shit from a lot of my friends. Oh, I need a phone with a keyboard, you know. Oh, no, you don't. And now they all have phones without keyboards, you know.

No, I'll first make sure you survive it. And then if it's all good, I'll, I'll consider it. So.

Yeah, well, we already know that some, most of the problems that are coming, which is this new cognitive sovereignty, your ability to have free free will is going to go away in theory, and we have to have some regulations about that yet. You know, if you're going to write some thought to my, like, if you're going to change this Coca Cola can to a spongebob or to a Pepsi can, you, you got to tell me you're doing that before you do it, right? Or at least as you're doing it. I have to be able to look at a log of everything you changed about my world and be able to know, okay, I, I, I didn't like you changing that Coke can to Pepsi can. Right? And that's just the beginning of it, right?

Wow, wow, wow, wow.

Yeah, It's a new world, Total new world.

We've got a new world of video.

Because if you had a neural link on, you can watch a lot of videos instant. And you could fire up a bunch of AI agents to go watch all the video on YouTube, which you as a human being cannot do even if you wanted to. There's too much, there's way more video than you can ever watch in a lifetime. Right? So your AI agents can go watch all that video and bring a couple back to you and go, hey, we found some good for you.

Oh, the new drug. The new drug. Yeah.

Yeah.

I've got, I've got one more thing I want to ask you before we wrap things up, Robert, and that is bringing things back to X. Because, you know, I've, I, I was one of the early users of, of Twitter way back as one of the early signup store, but I didn't actually use it. I was just sort of signed up and sort of checked it on the sidelines. You've been a very active user all this time.

18 years.

18 years, yeah. Right. And that's how long I've been in business for, so it's around about the same time, so. But more recently with Elon, you know, buying Twitter and turning it into X, it's just become a lot more interesting, exciting, and a much better, much more rich experience. Bringing this conversation back to X and video on X, what do you see? Is the future? Is there a future for creators, for businesses, for brands? Is is this a place where they should invest their time when it comes to video? Or should we just stick to writing little text updates for now?

Now he's about to turn on an autonomous car network. And when you're in an autonomous car and you don't need to drive anymore, what are you going to do? You're going to stare at that big screen and watch more video. So he's going to have a lot of people who are hungry for content in their car. And what is he hooking up? I mean, just hours ago he changed the main news feed from being run by an old technology to being run by Grok or a AI from XAI Corporation, which X and X AI are the same thing now. So he's starting to use AI to decide on the, on the content we're seeing on our feed. But soon it's going to decide the content that we see in the car and we're going to be talking to a grock in the car soon. You know, hey, Grotch got eight funny videos for us, right? Videos there. So there's going to be more demand for video in tomorrow's world because we're heading into a world of autonomous cars and glasses that have video screens in them. So more people are going to be able to watch video all day long live streaming even now I was just.

Going to say, are you saying that my, my, my dream of, of hang a. Having a popular video podcast might, might finally become, might pay off.

Might pay off. Might have a few Coke logos in it and you know, a little sponsorship here and there. You know, make some money off your live streaming thing.

Well, you know, I, I again like, I, I'm a bit like you in that sense that I'm, I'm sometimes, well, I'm sometimes a bit too early for the trends coming. So I had a video podcast back in, I think it was 2011 and it was actually, it was, I posted it on, published on Apple Apple Podcasts. It's just, it just when it came became available I thought okay, let's do this. But you know, I didn't pursue that because it was like, no, no one was watching video podcasts back then, but now with YouTube, with the YouTube podcasting, the video podcasting with Spotify, with video podcasts, X with. I mean, this, this whole thing is being streamed on X right now. And whenever I do a video podcast podcast, I posted to X as well. So this whole thing with the, the, the cars not needing drivers anymore and people going to be just sitting there, not twiddling their thumbs, they're going to be watching, well, possibly video podcasts, playing games, watching videos. Yeah.

Talking to their virtual being that's on the screen. You know, having a little relate. Little friendship with a virtual being. That sounds weird, but we're already using chat GPT to talk to it sorts of things. You know, I'm having problems with my wife today. I, I did this. She did this. What do you think? How can I fix myself? You know, it tells you, right? And you're going to be doing that in the car? I. Yeah, I use chat GPT in my. I have already have an autonomous car. I drove me to San Francisco to an AI poker game and it taught me how to play poker on the way to the game, you know, hey, gra, teach me how to play poker.

You know, and then with the neural network stuff or the, what do you call the, the, the implants, we'd be able to be like the matrix where you just download the how to play a poker game into your brain on your way there.

Watch me play the poker game. Oh, you're, you're making a stupid move or this guy's lying to you, you know.

All right, yeah, go all in.

Your AI in your head will be like, go all in. Odds are you're gonna win, you know, Love it.

What, what an exciting future we're about on the hour. Robert and I just want to be respectful of your time. Two things. What would be a final thought that you would leave our viewers with and then also the best place that people can find you and connect with you.

I'm on axe@ axe.com Scobalizer storytellers and entrepreneurs are still going to matter a lot. Even, even if a robot takes your job and even if AI is doing all your video editing, having the understanding of how to tell stories with these new tools is still going to be a in demand thing. So at least for a few years until they figure it all out, there's still a lot of innovation happening every day. And so smart, you know, smart person who is creative or curious and can I use these tools? I have 800 companies on my AI holodeck list on Axe.com somebody's going to go through those 800 companies and put together something new like Trisha did, and there'll be a lot more in the future.

Can't wait. I'm. I'm both excited and, and a little bit scared at the time.

Terrified.

Yeah. And I'm hoping more excited than terrified, but loving what, what's been happening. And thank you for being at the forefront of it all and sort of, you know, oftentimes there's new stuff that I never would have known about unless I saw you talking about it or you covering it. So cheers for that, Robert.

And I'm trying to figure all out myself. You know, that's why I built all these lists. I have 6200 AI companies and lists on AX. Anybody can look at them. And I'm trying to figure it out too, because this world is most. And fast.

Yeah, absolutely. So everybody watching or listening, please go on to X or formerly known as Twitter, but X, we all call it x.com search for scobalizer or Robert Scoble and you'll find his feed definitely worthwhile if you haven't come across. Robert, amazing stuff. Thank you so much, Robert. Really appreciate it. And I'll be following your progress. And over the next, whatever, three, ten, however many years, who knows how long we're going to live with longevity.

If I don't get hit by a bus tonight, I hope to be here because this is an exciting time to be alive. It's. More change is going to come for human beings in the next couple, next couple to 10 years than we've ever seen before. Right.

Awesome. Well, I'm, I'm here for the ride. Thank you so much.

Thanks.