Is AI actually "intelligent," or is it just fancy signal processing?

What goes on in AI is actually just a bigger version of digital signal processing. Critical thinking is seems to be going away because we don't have the the ability to actually get the opposite opinions anymore unless we really reach out and strive to get them.

Yeah. You're a smartwatch user, too. You have a Cuz I don't have one.

Oh, yeah. It's really nice cuz you don't have to grab the phone to figure out what's going on. You just look at your wrist and you know who's calling, what they're up against. Not only do we have multiple cameras in the cell phone now, but the technology is better than the DSLRs these days.

Uh you look at one article, the program decides that's the kind of stuff you like and the next thing you know that's all you're getting. So you're not getting an objective viewpoint anymore. AI is it hype or help? Good day and welcome to the show. I'm your host Pete Cooper and our topic is AI hype or help. Today's guest is Randall. Randall is a friend of mine who I've known for about 7 years, but we have a common history that goes back to a company which we worked both in, didn't know each other over 30 years ago. Now, Randall is an expert when it comes to telecommunication systems and he has a unique perspective on how AI plays into that field. So, let's get into it.

Welcome Randall and welcome to the show. Just for the audience, uh Randall and I have known each other for, I guess, about seven years and we've been working together more recently on some interesting projects and always keeping contact. Randall, I brought you to the show because I think you have a really unique perspective. Your history in communications, we're going to get into all that.

And uh our history actually co-joined also through a company called Nokia um where we both worked at slightly different times at different places but um certainly there's an old Nokia crowd that seems to you know get back together again uh from time to time and there seems to be a common bond with those things. So Randall for everyone who's listening tell us a little bit about yourself.

First of all good morning Peter nice to see you. I'll give you a little bit of background what where I came from. I'm an electrical engineer by training out of MIT and Cornell. Went off and worked for Bell Labs for a while and then had a great opportunity to go spend some time in Europe.

So I ended up in Europe in Switzerland as at the starting point at Motorola's European headquarters just as GSM was starting to roll out. So uh I'm a wireless guy by training with a background in digital signal processing. Spent quite a bit of time building circuits in speech coding, channel coding for the stuff going on in cell phones back in the day. Went on to some other interests in Europe while that was happening. And I ended up in uh in AT&T again back in uh their office in Germany. Uh opened an office for him in Par uh Paris and then uh eventually migrated over to the UK with Nokia which you you meanted.

So I was an IC designer in some of their early stuff again going on as they moved from mobile devices into real handsets. Uh if you recall the bricks back at that time. So I do

been in cellular for quite a while.

Yes.

And uh seen a lot of the evolution of technology. Came back to the states after about 8 years abroad. Went back to Bell Labs and I was in the digital signal processing group there again working in communications and cell phones. So long history there. Migrated out to Silicon Valley for the startup field a while back. Been involved with quite a few startups.

I think I uh worked for probably half a dozen of them, co-founded one, and then decided to go off and become a consultant. So I worked with a lot of startups doing everything from uh business development and strategy helped raise funding, worked with a lot of the startup accelerators, the German accelerator when they set up over here in Silicon Valley, plug-andplay, quite a few of the other European folks I've had uh some background with. So that's a little bit about what I'm up to.

And so what's a good uh avatar for a client that you a future client that you would like to have? Well, I I tend to work with a little bit of everybody.

I've worked for some of the larger players when uh they don't have resources or they want specialized resources in a field.

Uh but I also work with a lot of startups helping them get their feet on the ground and figure out uh you know the best way to get moving, determine what market uh might be a good play for their technology. You know, this is Silicon Valley. We've got technology everywhere, but a lot of people haven't yet figured out where to apply it. So that's one of my specialties is working with them to figure out uh target markets and how to actually access the people that make the decisions in those fields.

Right. That makes sense.

So you mentioned a term called digital signal processing. Now we're both engineers. We know what it is. But can you simplify what that would mean to just the general audience, the lay person? Well, basically it's taking lots and lots of data uh processing it with some specific algorithms to get something useful out of it.

So it's used, you know, in its early days it was echo cancellation and longhaul networks for for telecom. Uh it was a very expensive technology because it takes a lot of processing horsepower and that's kind of what was driving it at the time. And then along came cell phones. And it turns out that signal processing was the technology that enabled everything.

It's the basis behind all your speech coding. Taking that analog speech, converting it to digital, allowing you to actually do something with it on the phone. All the channel coding is done through DSP. So, uh, while we used in the early phones, we had several physical DSP chips, that's all been condensed down to, you know, your typical phone today is basically one big chip these days. It does everything for you. But that was the uh the interaction for a lot of the the signals. The technology has evolved quite a bit. It's behind everything now from disc drives to automotive.

Uh and now that we're in the AI world, uh it turns out with a background in DSP, a lot of what goes on in AI is actually just a bigger version of digital signal processing.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Many many more variables obviously but the basis behind it is is very similar. So, we're going to talk a lot about AI a little bit later, but uh just to ground this um one application I think a lot of people are familiar with because a lot of the DSP is happening in a way that's almost invisible, right? You only you're aware of it when it doesn't work properly and it's a bug I suppose.

But one thing that I notice, and I'm sure the audience does, sometimes when you join a Zoom call or a video call, you get this early bit of echo coming through and then the system seems to figure it out and then the echo goes away. Is that a very, I guess, obvious example of DSP at work? Uh, I think that's probably a good case for it. You know, as it figures out what's going on, it learns and adapts for the the echo cancellation. So, yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, great. Randy, you've got a a fabulous history and uh good position to observe what's happened. There's been u some amazing trends over the last 40 years, 30, 40 years which you have witnessed.

What are some of the really big things that you've seen happen? This is a leading to AI because we got another big thing happening now, right? So, what are some of the really big shifts that you've seen in your history around telecoms? I think the I I'm coming from the semiconductor side.

So the the big shifts that I see are the massive improvements in technology and where we've gone. I mentioned your typical phone back in the early days had multiple DSP chips to CPU, lots of memory, uh separate power supply chips. We spent a lot of time minimizing the size and of course the power consumption.

And uh you know we would focus on various aspects of it and in the signal processing side we were always being screamed at to cut the power consumption get it down extend the battery life. Interestingly enough we worked hard on doing that taking out DSPs combining everything into single chips. But one of the last things we started to worry about was actually the power management. And if you remember your old brick phones, uh you hit that button to start a call, the buttons would light up and you were basically running a 5volt signal from VDD to ground to light up the the keypad.

So before long, we were burning more power turning the keypad on than we were actually burning making the call.

So we spent some time working on that. And you know, we've now got it down to, as I mentioned, just a couple of chips in a cell phone now. And that does everything. So, you've got your cellular connectivity, you've got your Wi-Fi connectivity, you've got Bluetooth connectivity.

You name it, it's in there. There's, you know, seven, eight radios in a phone these days.

Right. Right.

So, it's the I think the massive amount of integration that's going on or that's gone into the uh the devices.

I remember the first cell phones that I witnessed. I didn't own one. It was these ones that would fit fit in people's cars.

They were particularly good for people on the road sales types and construction people and they would be mounted in the back of the car, the boot like this and the handset would be sitting next to them near the gear stick. And then while I was still at Nokia and you probably remember them that the the phones that were coming out were sort of this big and you could purchase them for, you know, $20 or $30. They were being made for sub $10. That sort of happened over a period of let's say 20 or 20 plus years. But then we started to see a shift, didn't we?

The whole paradigm changed and now we have phones getting bigger and bigger as people want more and more features and a bigger display and so on and so on. Um, so the integration is still there but there's just so much more capability. If I picked up this phone and I gave it to somebody back in the 2000s or you know say 2005 they would have said why are you carrying around that huge brick?

Yeah. Well, we got to a point where, you know, they just got too small to use.

Some of the some of the small ones you couldn't find a keypad anymore.

Yeah.

And you we have voice processing technology now, but back then it wasn't quite that good.

So, you know, you can get away with that now, but uh

Yeah. Yeah.

And of course, uh your watch does most of your phone functions these days. So, you you find out what call you've got by looking at your watch and then you use the phone to respond.

You're a smartwatch user, too. Do you have a Cuz I don't have one.

Oh, yeah. It's really nice because you don't have to grab the phone to figure out what's going on. You just look at your wrist and you know who's calling, what they're up against. And

yeah,

I I think that's another interesting thing that's come out of the technology.

In the old days, if you went out and bought an RC car or a gaming station or anything, you know, you had to have a controller, you had to have a complete station. Uh once the technology showed up in the handset, everybody started using them to be a key portion of lots of other consumer products or professional products. So your phone is now the display, the control system for lots of other things and it drastically brought down the costs because you've already got the phone sticking out sitting there on your waist.

Um yeah, you know, you don't need to pay extra for all that technology. So we have a lot less devices hanging around because the phone does everything for you. Exactly.

I mean that that vision because I was on the cell phone side. That vision for a fully integrated phone, I think, was was commonly understood, you know, way back in the '9s. And Nokia was actually a leader in the smartphone technology and and produced uh products like the communicator, the 9000, which was a a big flip phone. And we would carry these massive things around on our belts, a special belt assembly, but they were so handy that we just used them all the time. And we would be texting them and using all the functions associated with that even regardless of of the size.

And I think that was an awakening for what was to come, you know, and I think everybody, you know, I just on the camera side of things, I used to get people saying to me, uh, you know, things like, well, why would I want to have a camera in a cell phone?

Yeah. Well, when when they started, you know, that started in Japan, obviously. I believe Panasonic was the first one.

That's right.

And we looked at that and said, "Oh, it's just a fad. It, you know, Japan, yeah, but it won't go anywhere else. "

And of course, look at what's happened. You know, not only do we have multiple cameras in this cell phone now, but the technology is better than the DSLR, the DSLRs these days.

It's it's amazing what you can do.

Certainly what Apple's put into it. So, uh, you know, you've got people making films with these things these days. Uh, that's another side of it is the the development of sensor technology

and what the cell phone industry did for that. Accelerometers, gyroscopes, all of that technology used to be incredibly expensive. But when they figured out that, you know, if we put this in our cell phone, uh, look at all the cool things we can start to do with it. So now you've got your pedometer for tracking. You've got your gyroscope to tell you where you're going. Use it as an IMU.

Combined with GPS, it can give you all kinds of data where you're heading, how to get there. Cell phones, of course, because you're shipping not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but millions of them.

That really brought down the cost for everything else. So now we've got sensors that are so cheap you can put them in everything.

And that's that's really what's happening today. And I think a lot of that's actually driving some of the AI industry. I mean, we have the ability to monitor and measure everything now for almost no cost.

Yeah.

The ability to collect all that data. Now, we got to figure out how to use it.

So,

the the ability to collect that data and actually process it in a decent way, optimize the usage of it, I think, is uh is one of the things that literally come out of the cell phone industry because of the volumes that it generated.

Yeah. Yeah. So, we're seeing a wave now, aren't we? Let's let's talk a little bit more about AI. We're seeing this incredible wave of of AI uptake. It's I think it's all always been there, but it's been there for a long time. I know people that tell me that they had the notions of AI back in the 60s, right? 1960s was a long time ago.

Well, 55, I think, is

all right.

Around the time that they claim it was started, but somewhere in that vicinity.

Yeah.

But uh I think it's only come to sort of be such a big hit if you like to at least this is my perspective with the emergence of these large language models you know ChatGPTs and I I don't know anybody that I speak to who's actively working that doesn't use them and I think that's that's this big wave we're catching right but it's there's a lot of other things associated with AI that just aren't the the ChatGPTs and LLMs right which you're alluding to it's the ability to take sensor data and make some meaningful use out of it because you can collect the data but you need to render it into something useful and that's not what most people would would be front of mind of when they think of AI

although it's extremely important as kind of the background it's sort of a hidden uh hidden agenda so where are you seeing some of those those use cases where we're seeing this sensor data starting to

as you mentioned it's been around for quite a long time,

but obviously we didn't have a way to economically process all that data.

So, as the technology has evolved, we've gotten to the point where processing is cheap, storage is cheap. So, we can start to expand our models and you know, you can go out and look at everything on the web these days and use that for trading information. So, your models get bigger, more powerful, and you start to see you can do more and more with it.

Now, ChatGPT,

you can do some wonderful things with it, but it can also be pretty scary when it starts to make up its own mind and turn out decisions that really aren't based in reality. So, you have to be careful what you do with it. Uh, I use it a lot for preparing for presentations or papers.

Uh, you sit down, you work out your outline, you figure out what you want to talk about. Uh you start putting some prompts in ChatGPT and the next thing you know you realize you missed half the topics and data you should be covering or there's areas that it finds that you didn't know about and as a research tool it's fantastic.

It it allows you to go back and restructure your thinking so that you can take advantage of all of that. Mhm.

I think the danger is if you try and use it to complete the whole darn project, uh then you got to go double check everything, you know, make sure you're you're careful about what what you're putting out there. Uh

yeah, there was a the story you shared with me offline. Are you willing to keep the details off but share the notion of the story with

Oh, there there's a couple of good ones out there.

Uh one of the larger semiconductor companies here in Silicon Valley when Chat GP came out, their marketing teams uh from the stories I read started using it to put together market strategies and uh they quickly realized that all the data they put into it is now out there in the cloud. It's no longer proprietary to the company.

So you got that risk. Um, there's been a few celebrated legal cases where somebody has put together legal legal briefings and submitted them to the judge and when they go do a little homework, they find out many of the citations don't really exist. The program made them up.

Wow.

So, things get kind of scary if you

try to use it for things it shouldn't be used for. It's a tool. Like any tool, you can misuse it.

Yes. Uh I recently saw one where a large consulting firm was working on a government contract uh several hundred million dollars and the report they turned in uh apparently they used uh AI to generate the whole thing and when they dug into it again the same problem. Many of the the citations and the the paperwork behind it turns out to be non-existent. The program made it up.

Yes.

So you can get yourself in a lot of trouble that way.

So I I've heard that this can even get worse almost like a cancer to the internet if AI starts referencing itself and then another AI comes and references that. So this made up thing I think they call a a hallucination because it's a back to the mind thing. Um create a hallucination and then that hallucination is propagated and it's very hard to sort of cancel it out. And I I think of it a little bit like a cancer and these cancers can grow and we have to find ways to I guess fight those uh those hallucinations and I I think that's coming but we're all seeing the I guess an emergence of a battle between these disease these hallucinations and uh correct fact things based on fact.

Well, we've got a lot of stuff out there that, you know, again, the AI has been around for a while and we just weren't even aware of it at the time. If you go back to the early days of Netflix,

you know, you logged on, you ordered a couple of DVDs, they showed up in your mailbox, you watched them, you sent them back, you went back on the Netflix site, and the website looks at you and says, "Oh, if you like this, you'll love this. " And you go, "Oh, okay. Hey, send me that one.

And you watch it, you send it back, and the next thing you know, you're getting a long list of videos that because you liked X, we're going to send you why.

Yes.

And if you stop for a minute and think about it, your whole

train is the same thing over and over. You're not getting anything new. You're just getting the same type of movies sent to you.

Yes.

Fast forward to today and look at your news feed on Google or Yahoo or whatever you look at and it's the same damn thing. Yes.

Uh you look at one article, the program decides that's the kind of stuff you like, and the next thing you know, that's all you're getting. So, you're not getting an objective viewpoint anymore. You're not even able to go out there and search for stuff

because it's just going to feed you the crap it thinks you like.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of where we are today is because of that uh type of an approach.

I agree. And they call it the echo chamber.

They call that the echo chamber, don't they?

You you whatever you put out there you get back and it just reinforces this sense of uh you know and what I said was correct and there's do you think it undermines critical thinking when that is happening

uh very much so

right so that's a concern to me I think and for me critical thinking is the ability to step back sit back and say okay what's really going on here and how can I analyze the situation rationally and logically critically like critically re-evaluate what I've said, come up with some new and different challenging hypothesis. And if we're constantly getting the fed back what we already believe, um then how can we do that?

How can we

Well, that's where it gets difficult because you're just getting the same stuff thrown at you over and over which reinforces what you want to believe.

Yeah.

You know, at now you're not looking for differences of opinion. You're looking for things that will validate what you want to think.

Right. Right.

And that's that's kind of where we are now. And it's uh it's rather scary.

It is. But do you think it comes to the human human nature?

I mean, they talk about getting a dopamine hit whenever we get reinforced uh with something that we and it's more pleasurable to to be listening to something that reinforces what you we already know versus something that objects to what we already know.

Yeah. I I think you're on to something there. But

yeah,

so we're just feeding.

That's where we are today.

Yes. So we're just this this monkey brain is now all of a sudden out of control and it's being magnified.

Well, if you spend any time on Instagram, you start getting these little video clips and you look at them and you know whether it's the cat or some wild animal. Oh, that's cute.

That's And then you sit back and realize, well, wait a minute. You know, how was this put together? This is actually not something that actually happened. This is a staged event for screen hits.

Yes.

And once you realize that, it's like, wait a minute.

Everything I'm looking at is basically there to entertain me and keep me engaged and not not teach me anything new,

not give me what I'm really looking for. Yeah.

And you know, before you know it, you've wasted another hour online.

Yes. Yes.

And it's it's it's pretty disturbing when you figure that out.

It is. I I agree with you. And I have exactly the same experience.

Um I have various online channels and I may mistakenly perhaps have just relied on what um example YouTube what it's presenting me with. You know, it'll say, "Okay, guess this you'd like this. " And I'll scroll scroll down to find something that I think I'm interested in, and it may be something it's a slightly different package on something that I've already listened to, you know, like maybe ancient history or something, just a different package of the same information, and I kind of enjoy listening to it, but then I think, well, how much new is in there? But then I'm thinking, well, how much do I really care how much is new that's in there?

I'm I'm like, okay, there's there's I'm being entertained. Maybe I'm getting some reinforced learning so I know it better. Maybe it's about ancient Egypt or something and I'm seeing it from different perspectives. You know, how much do I really care? And I think that point about caring is is I guess the key issue, right? Who cares that we go and become more polarized in our opinions? What does it matter?

Well, I think we all should, but the problem is uh I don't think everybody's realizing that that's what's happening and and why it's happening. And that that's the scary part,

right?

Whether we wake up and make some progress in that area, I don't know.

But like you said, uh critical thinking is seems to be going away because we don't have the the ability to actually get the opposite opinions anymore unless we really reach out and strive to get them.

Yeah. I mean, do you have any recommendations for how people could get alternate opinions? Well, again, if you decide that's what you're looking for, you can change the way you set up your prompts and and look for them, but that takes effort.

Yeah.

So, you know, it depends on where you're thinking and what you're looking to do with it.

Well, one idea that come to mind was that, you know, I have a YouTube channel, which I, you know, obviously is it's feeding me what I've already looked at, but then maybe I just start a whole new account, right?

To just start from scratch and then just start searching into different a different completely different sphere and then start to see ultimately that is going to again come back to just reinforcing my own opinions and I'd have to keep doing it again and refreshing

well yeah but if you're looking for different stuff uh what comes at you will be a different opinion because you'll be looking for a different realm as long as you don't keep feeding it the same stuff as your your primary account

right

be interesting to see what you get back if you do that.

Yeah. Yeah.

I've toyed with I mean what happens sometimes is I'm an incognito mode and I'll just open up the YouTube channel and I'm just amazed at what comes at me straight off straight out of the box, right? It's something that I'm going, "Wow, I'm not interested in any of this. This is just a load of stuff. Nothing here is anything that I'm interested in. "

But in a way, it's refreshing. It's like, "Oh, well, somebody must be interested in this. " Otherwise, it wouldn't be a million views on on that topic.

Yeah. Well, there's another interesting side to it. You know, if I go on Amazon and orders some stuff, uh, it's my wife's account.

So, when she logs in and finds out what I've been looking at, and of course, it starts sending you their view of the feeds you really want to see. These are the products you should be looking at, it's uh, it's entertaining for her to see what I've been up to. So,

yeah,

we got a little of that going on in the background.

All right. So I think you you've you've indicated that you use ChatGPT. Uh are the only other sort of insights from your perspective of of ways you're using AI? Um maybe differently to others because of your long history with technology.

Yeah.

Well, I think there's some good uses out there for it, but it's also pretty dangerous for some of the reasons we already mentioned. Mhm.

Um there's a company down or uh actually a nonprofit group down in Southern California called Kwaai KW AI. Ai. It's run by a gentleman by the name of Reza Rassool who was the CTO of Real Networks and pretty much the guy who in invented streaming for us

and he's put together a nonprofit to work on personal AI to take it away from the large companies that are driving everything.

Oh wow. So, uh, doing some really interesting things with it.

Uh, using smaller models and trying to move away from the gee, I have to go out and scour the entire web to get my answer. So, they do lots of interesting little things. Uh, his wife is a college professor, so she's using AI to put together the course syllabuses and all the information related to her class. And rather than go off and search the web completely, they use uh retrieval augmented generation or rag to specify the material that it can go out and look at. So she can feed it all of her course notes,

uh reading textbooks, you name it.

And the the beauty of it is, of course, the assignment comes due at midnight on a particular day, and about 10: 00 she'll start to get phone calls from everybody in the class. Oh, I really didn't understand this. What are you looking for there? And this gives her the ability to put out a tool that can answer all of that for for you.

It's got a a wellrespected uh model behind it uh with voice prompting and it it does an excellent job. So it

it takes that burden away from her having to be on call every time there's an assignment due.

Right.

Uh, I've seen some other examples he put together with a a cyber security author who's written 60 plus books and he took all of his content and put it together in a model. And you know, if you have any questions about this author's thinking on any particular topic, you can get the answers immediately.

So, it's it's really doing some interesting stuff with it. His website, I think I mentioned it's quai.

I'll put it in the description. Yeah, they do weekly uh meetings every Friday morning uh with some great stuff bringing a lot of good authors and they're they're very concerned about where this is going and finding the useful cases for it and avoiding some of the problems.

So you get a lot of good discussion from from that particular source. Um the obvious thing that uh uh that I'm stressing on uh or trying to fill and figure out is that um rag tool has all a lot of private information, right? And the AI tools can go and access that but it doesn't make it public, right? That's one of the

Well, yeah. In that case, what you're looking at is edge processing. You don't want to give it to Google or Amazon or or Microsoft. You want to keep that stored locally. So that's the intention there. Yes.

So it's your AI, it's your content. If you want to reach out to the web, you can, but your stuff isn't going to go outside of that area.

So

yes,

that's that's where the companies are going as well. I think I mentioned that semiconductor company that ended up accidentally putting a lot of their marketing info online.

Yes.

Well, you know, if you keep that at the edge and do your own processing, uh there are ways to control that. So, you know, I think we've learned a lot over the last few years what to look out for. But, you know, there are still some dangers out there.

Yes.

But again, that that comes down to to edge processing.

Yes.

You want to keep it on site for security.

I was in an AIA conference and somebody got up and talked about uh was one of the major financial consulting companies.

Uh and I was surprised to hear that they had thousands of of engineers working in AI. Um we don't see that from the outside what they're doing with that and of course she was at pains to tell us that uh you know they have to work with the AI models but keep their data within the company obviously it's financial data it's also their IP around how they handle and and process that and their value proposition is tied up with that so this idea of personal AI is just coming down another layer isn't it so we've had the the broad max seven companies trying to pull all the data and do the AI at the LLM level. Then we got our companies coming in and saying, "Well, we want it private.

Let's go down another layer. Let's say, okay, let's keep personal data private. "

Yeah. Yeah. Well, that certainly becomes an issue in the healthcare industry where you've got all the HIPAA regulations. So, again, another area where edge processing and keeping it within the company is very, very important. So, you're not going to go out and put patient data out on the web to do your scanning.

Yes. Exactly. Exactly. All right. So, We're seeing this AI coming through as a wave. We've and you've seen some waves in over the history. I I would say the mobile phone technology was one because that's one that resonates and there's multiple others. We're seeing this AI come through as a wave.

Where do you think it's going? Where what sort of a future is it going to create for us, Randall?

Well, I called it a tool, which I think it is. And like any tool, you can use it right or you can use it wrong. So, if it's used properly, it's amazing what it can do to

free up your time, to make you more efficient at what you do. And if it's used right, that's that's really cool what you can do with it.

Uh, I spent some time with a company out of Europe called Silo. Ai, which was Europe's largest private AI company at the time. Uh, they were eventually acquired by AMD. Uh, a lot of their business was devoted to services.

I think 60% of their business was providing services to enterprises.

And what they would do, they would go out and work with companies in various fields. They covered everything from weather forecasting to aviation to maritime to healthcare uh and help them figure out where to use AI and I think the most important part where not to use AI

and then make it happen because it's not going to solve all the world's problems. It tends to be most valuable if you focus on using it to optimize small areas.

Whether that's training, whether that's helping you put together documentation, whether that's sorting through massive amounts of data, uh if you're using it for that and then not trying to let it do everything without human intervention, but using it to augment what the humans do, uh I think it's great and there's no limits to where it's going to go. It's it's showing up everywhere. Let's be honest.

Yeah.

But again, you know, if you try and do the wrong thing with it and give it full control of everything, uh, you know, remember, you're you're training it on on stuff that's already been done, stuff that's already out there. So, you're not going to get anything new out of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not exactly a program for for new creativity if you look at it that way.

Right. Right. Do you think we're going towards this this idea of a hive mind where we just have access to information so quickly and easily and we're using it over a lifetime? You and I, you know, have had a lifetime. I mean, when I was growing up, I was outside on my bike, you know, I didn't have a computer and I learned all that. So, I've got a physical history.

Do you think people are coming into the world now are so much part of information technology and AI that they're really plugged in and they're just they can't really disconnect into the physical world and we're now part of this this idea of a hive mind where it's just so connected that no matter which way we go, we're all aligned, right?

Well, I I hope not. I think that goes back to your comment on the death of critical thinking. So,

yes. One of the challenges for us. Yes. All right. So, do you think it's going to make our lives better?

Uh, if we're careful about how we use it. Yes.

All right. Yeah.

But, you know, if you go back to the news feeds and the fact that you're constantly being fed the same message that you're looking for rather than anything new to be able to make some good decisions, uh, there there's problems with it. So I don't think it's something you should just turn loose and let it run without any barriers or guidelines.

Yes. Uh that reminds me of Mark Zuckerberg had a very he was was he in the courts federal courts? This is just going back maybe 10 years and he said something like they asked him a question well who's going to make the decisions then.

And his answer was something like well we're just going to get AI to be so good that it will make the decisions some something to that effect.

Well yeah that that gets scary there. Yeah.

Again, it's it's it's using old information and not creating anything new, basically. So,

yeah. Yeah. So, what about jobs? Do you think we're going to lose jobs? Is it going to create jobs? Stay the same.

Uh I think it could go either way. Again, I see it if you use it right as a way to boost efficiency, make people more productive. Mhm.

Uh if you try and misuse it and let it pretend that it can do everything, uh I think, you know, there are will be people that lose jobs.

Uh probably not the right way to go, but we see that all the time. There's there's companies out there that have fired all the employees and, you know, let AI do it.

Yeah.

And the ones you see now, it's it's pretty much been a disaster and they figured out they screwed up. But in the future, or is that going to continue to happen? Will they realize that they latched up? Yeah. Yeah. On the topic of AI, is there any other sort of final comments you have about AI, what what's happening now, what the future holds?

I I'm amazed at what it can do.

I've used it for a lot of things.

Me, too.

I'm also scared of what it can do in the wrong hands.

Yep.

I think we need to be a little bit careful about putting barriers in place and some guard rails to keep that from happening.

Again, uh it's useful. Uh, another area of concern, let me back up a second. I think the marketing side of it has been a bit scary because

you know the message you hear is it can do everything on the planet for you. We're all going to lose our jobs. It'll do this. It'll do that. And I don't believe that's really the case,

right?

We need to we need to tone down the marketing a bit and get down to reality. What's it really good for? What's it not good for? And start being more focused on the benefits of it when used properly. Yeah.

Have you ever seen in in your history such a wave of technology which has had the same kind of message? The message there is it's going to do everything for us. It's going to be great and and we're going to lose our jobs. Have you seen any technology that had the sim a similar message um in your history?

Oh, I I think a lot of them have. I mean, come on.

When the PC started coming out,

that was the message we got.

Mhm. And then when cell phones came out, you know, okay, they're it's a big unit in your car.

Then it came down to the brick handset. Then and then all of a sudden Apple came along and nobody cared about hardware anymore. It was all about the apps.

And every time we get one of those, it's oh my god, look what you can do with it. It's going to take over the world. It's going to do this. So this is human nature. It's what we do every time a new way of tech of technology comes along. And it's also business too, right? I mean to sell a big picture is a good good way to get investment capital and grow your company.

In this particular case, I think it's the size of the effort.

Uh it's impacting a lot of things at once.

It's it's changing data centers. It's changing power consumption.

Yeah.

I mean, look what it takes to run a data center. We've got to do something to bring down the the power requirements. It's changing.

Look what it's done to the storage market.

We've got all of this data out there and we want to hang on to it because we need it for training and we need it for all these things.

And again, the sensors are cheap, so we're generating more and more data. So, it's there's a lot of markets

uh that are all being impacted at once. And I think that's that's different from what we've seen in the past.

Yeah. Yeah.

It impacts everything.

Yeah. The scale of it. I think it's a If you said there's waves, this is a big wave that's coming. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah.

Um, so final question for you, Randall. AI, is it hype or help?

I'd say a little bit of both.

Mhm.

Uh, it's still early days, so we don't know where it's going yet.

Yeah. I think throughout this uh this podcast, you've touched on both areas, so I think you're absolutely good at summing them up. Look, it's been an absolute pleasure, Randall. Thank you for being on the show and um I look forward to maybe having you back again soon. I think there's a lot of stuff that uh we could touch on and go deeper in. Um but we're out of time for now. So, thanks for coming.

Well, thank you for having me and have yourself a great afternoon.

Thanks, Randall. Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did.

Brandall had some unique insights specifically around how AI is not just like another wave of technology but is becoming much bigger and broader and it touches so many more areas. It's like a tidal wave or a tsunami coming through not just another wave of technology. We also talked about some of the other pieces of technology that had been developing over the last 30 years that are now playing into the acceleration of AI. And finally, we touched on how large language models like chatpt are being replaced more by companyowned data type LLM and then that's moving down to private personal databases that are now being used and leveraged through AI.

If you want to know more about Skillion, please follow the links in the description below. If you want to be a guest on the podcast or if you know someone who you think would be a great guest, please also follow those links. I hope that helps and thanks for watching.