The Truth About Elon Musk, AI and the Future of Tech

And they said, "You know, Steve, you could make a killing in our business. You're you're just you're made for this. " So, I got into advertising and never looked back.

What's your take on how I as a victim?

I'm worried more about the manipulation behind the scenes. We talk about the puppet puppet effect,

right?

There's been a lot of bumps in the road. They're moving very fast and they're they're overpromising and underd delivering that AI is making its first inroads. Big startup AI companies out in California that are catching wind and then you find out it's actually a back room of humans.

We're going to see these these magnificent seven kind of competing,

you know, and when Elon Musk showed off his domestic robots and every like those are so cool and then it came known and they couldn't help but admit, yeah, there's a guy in an office that's actually controlling this robot and responding to you. But I don't want somebody to control me and be able to generate a dopamine rush in me.

Going to wrap up now with our final question. AI, is it hype or help? My personal opinion at this stage of the game is that it's

Good day and welcome to the show. I'm your host Pete Cooper and our topic is AI hype or help.

Today's special guest is a good friend of mine by the name of Steve Cass. Now Steve is an international sales and marketing ambassador for companies who want to get into the United States. He also has a deep background in human psychology and his own unique perspective on AI and how it's impacting our lives today. I hope you enjoy. Welcome, Steve. Welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

I'm doing great Pete. It's a beautiful sunny day here in Philadelphia in the good old USA.

It is, isn't it? Yeah, we're both enjoying some pretty chilly weather and some snow on the ground, aren't we?

Yeah, it's been it's a chillier winter than it has been the last few. So, it's nice.

It's more traditional with Christmas coming up.

It's gonna be a white Christmas here.

Yeah. Well, Steve, by way of introduction to our audience, you call yourself an international sales ambassador and you represent companies um that perhaps want to come into the United States. What does that what does that mean um to companies and the audience? Yeah, I I' I've been a independent business consultant for about 13 years now and dealt with a lot of companies that are um looking even just US-based looking to get into a market and and getting some help in growth and 2011 the the leader of those companies says the solution is very simple. I need a good salesman or a good sales team.

That's it. I don't even care about marketing. We can put some nice colors on our packaging or on our our social media or whatever, but if I can get a guy that can get into decision maker and sell for me,

we're going to grow. That's all I need.

It's just it's just not that simple. Especially when you're in a different culture and you're trying to come into America, which people have perspectives on, especially these days, but uh there's a lot of nuances. I mean, America is huge. I see a lot of social media where uh American where foreign visitors come to America and their first comment is I had no idea how big it is and there are so many different cultural regions.

There's as many cultural regions in the US proper as there are countries in Europe. Um and I'm familiar with them all. I've lived in many of them. Um and if you think about what the definition of an ambassador is, uh you know, a foreign ambassador between countries, I mean there's a lot more than just coming in with an agenda and saying, "Hey, other country, we want to do this. Are do you want to do it? " You've got to come in, you've got to create, you have to understand first of all who you're dealing with, the best way to approach them. Um, you have to understand the nuances of that culture. And in this kind of a reverse ambassador situation, I'm here. I'm I'm the expert in US culture.

I'm as about American as they come. I was born in California, you know, I live on the East Coast now. Um, but there's just having an agent here that one can help you, you know, refine your your messaging, maybe even your product packaging and your advertising for consumption by the American audience or the American decision maker in in the case of B2B. Um, so if they are in turn a retailer or a service provider, they have a product that's fit for their American market, you're providing seamless. Um, and then just the the nuances of of doing business, you know, maintaining relationships. Um reacting to things.

I mean there's with the tariffs that US is enacting across the globe that fluctuate and change so rapidly. I mean we're all reacting to that. You need somebody that can uh help you manage that on this side. Um and just all the other things that uh and and when you think of an ambassador, what an ambassador would do.

Yeah. So thanks G. So you and I have known each other for quite some time about 10 years now. Um you've always been in sales, but have you always been in sales? I know you were in digital broadcasting TV. We've touched on that as well. So, what is the biggest shift in how companies uh scale in the US that you've you've witnessed?

I I think the the most the watershed thing that kind of came to bear many years ago was the advent of offshoring.

Uh America was always, you know, very nationalistic. You know, it's Americanmade. It's the best. You know, we want to have our own, we want to employ our own people and things.

But at some point when companies often when when they were really the the international markets with the advent of the internet became more accessible they started looking and saying well not only can we sell to these other markets but there's also a lot of talent there

um and offshowing you know with the different economies and monetary values across the globe we can go into India and they can provide a service much more affordably more efficiently and their you know their work ethic is top top notchotch um ironically that those services that we really were the kind of the go-to the customer service for instance or maybe um coding uh is now that's really where I see from from digesting

media that AI is making its first inroads uh aside from the the the LLMs that the general consumers are using in the business world it's it's um customer service and and coding which is what the offshore people were providing. So the decision now for an American company is can we implement

at those cost savings AI internally from from our own uh based here with with our our own plant or can we continue to offshore and trust that they are the experts in AI will help lead us into the future and the advantages that AI brings to what was formerly a human service.

Yeah.

I mean, I think you've touched into something we're going to get into a little bit here about how AI is uh so disruptive um in across so many areas, right? And so, Steve, you've been would you call yourself a a lifetime sales professional? Have you always been in sales? Is this something you shifted into? Uh it's something I shifted into and I'll try to be quick about it but as a young man I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania here in Philadelphia with a degree in psychology and I actually did research for a couple years in neuroscychopharmacology. Um but in that acade academic environment I realized that I was not an academic.

Um while I can be political with the best of them which is kind of how you achieve and climb the ladder in academia I'm much more of a people person. I happened to have a girlfriend who was a media buyer, somebody who who buys advertising time on media at the time, and I got to know um some of the people that, you know, in in the media in Philadelphia that she sold to, and they said, you know, Steve, you could make a killing in our business. You're you're just you're made for this. So, I got into advertising and was selling advertising on the major cable TV networks um and never looked back.

Now, I've just toot my own horn a little bit, you know, so I was in cable TV and cable TV advertising when it was brand new. When we were competing against broadcast TV and newspaper and people said like what is this? This is this is nonsense. Nobody nobody watches cable TV. And now of course cable TV for a time was the dominant media. I then transitioned into AOL Time Warner. Um AOL being the the the biggest internet social media platform on the planet for a time and was selling that. And then from that I transitioned into launching the first all digital TV station in Philadelphia. So I' I've always been on the forefront of the next media trend.

Uh AI AI is not media per se, but it is a technology that has a lot of implications in communication, which is what the foundation of media is.

So is is cable TV still alive? I mean, so I came from No. Okay.

All the big cable providers, at least in the US, uh subscription, it's a subscription based model. Um subscription for cable TV networks is down 50% in the last 10 years. Myself included, we call it cutting the cord. I cut the cord and do strictly streaming. I do have a digital antenna to watch broadcast TV for free. Um but every gone to streaming and all all the major cable providers in the US are now have become internet providers. That's right.

That that and content if you look at Comcast they they have the wire to your home to provide the the digital signal and the Wi-Fi and they also have all the networks.

Right. Just to clarify one thing that uh the international audience one thing I didn't realize when I came here is that I said yes I want cable thinking they're going to just bring me an internet cable then but that cable over here means a cable TV service on top of the cable. Uh and so I was paying I think for at least a year maybe two a cable provided TV service which I never used because all I wanted was the internet. So

we we all think that one day we woke up.

I mean, my my mother, she she's elderly and she's been she's had the same cable service for years, but she's playing an exorbitant amount.

And I've just I've battled her and said, "Mom, you can save a lot, you know, thousands of dollars a year by if you let me help you transition to a different type of TV watching. " And she's just too old and doesn't want to change. And change is one of the biggest fears that humans face. And it's kind of a as we look at AI um and how it's impacting things at such a rapid pace.

I think one of the biggest impediments or one of the biggest factors into adoption which is what's going to make AI you know fulfill the promises that all these gurus are telling us is adoption and the fear of adoption and how that

yeah and I guess the other phenomenon that's uh that's emerged in the last few years is that okay we cut we're cutting the cord from cable we need our internet service for you know our emails and our general stuff and now with all the streaming services coming going on. You know, I started with one. I think we had I won't say what name it was. And then we somebody said, "Oh, you got to watch this program over here.

" And they keep saying there's programs over, so I get another. Now, I think I'm up to now five streaming uh subscription services.

I don't want to get too much of a tangent into cable television, especially for international viewers, but um it it's ironic because, and maybe this is the experience they've had in other countries, but early on in cable when they were they owned everything. They own TV. You had to have cable. Um, they would shove everything down your throat. Here's a package. Here's 100 channels. We've decided take it or leave it. You can't pick and choose. We called it. Everybody was screaming. We want all a cart.

You know, I'm I'm a 23-year-old female administrative assistant. I don't need sports. I don't watch sports. I don't have a boyfriend that watches sports. Well, fast forward to now. Cable is dying. The streaming services have now surreptitiously incorporated advertising which was the bread and butter of cable television and now you've got this allocart service depending on what you want to watch. If you want a particular you know program that's on HBO Max you'll go subscribe to that for the three months that it runs and then maybe pull out and then go to Apple TV plus because

there's a program there or you might have both.

Some people have the luxury of being able to spend the equivalent of a big cable bill to have every streaming service and every program that's available.

So, we've seen some changes from cable to to internet to to streaming services. AI is coming through fast and furious now. Are you starting to see AI generated content that you're tuning into?

Nothing of of any consequence.

Um, I will say that uh with the launch of Sorrowos um by u that group u there's some pretty funny stuff on Instagram and Tik Tok which I I got into because I have a young adult daughter now but when she was a teenager I I needed to monitor that and I kind of got sucked in as a lot of people do for just mindless you know what I can look at something while I'm you know waiting for a phone call or something but they're generating some pretty ridiculous scenario Arios with some very end endeared US pop culture figures, old TV characters, game show hosts and stuff that I remember from my childhood very fondly and they're doing some pretty extreme things with them.

And I find it funny, but it's ridiculousness. It's just what we call AI slob. It's just a big waste of time. There's no real value to it other than entertainment. But I also I do look at it to see the capability of of, you know, how realistic is it? For 10 or 15 seconds, I can go, "Wow, this looks so realistic. " And then something weird happens and I go, "That's not a natural movement. The shadowing's wrong. " And I can pinpoint it and go, "Aha, I found the AI. "

Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? I I find myself doing that as well. Um I find myself having an aversion to the AI gener generated content because I feel that it's disingenuous like I can't connect with a real person.

So if who am I connecting to? Who's telling me stuff? Who's showing me stuff? Who's responsible for it. And um so I'm constantly on the lookout for ways to figure out whether it's AI generated or not. And honestly, sometimes

we're all struggling with I'm sorry to interrupt you, Pete. Um it just occurred to me though, one of the things that I think in terms of psychology of AI, a lot of people are looking at AI and thinking, is is this a puppet? Is this a cartoon that I'm looking at being controlled by a human? Or is the whole thing being controlled by, you know, LLM or or or AGI or something? Is it wholly AI or is it just a manipulation by humans with a a facade?

And and you know, unfortunately, there's been some stories of, you know, these big startup AI companies out in California that are catching wind and then you find out it's actually a back room of humans, you know, and when Elon Musk showed off his domestic robots and every like those are so cool. And then it became known and they they they didn't publicize it, but they couldn't help but admit, yeah, there's a guy in an office that's actually controlling this robot and responding to you. But when we're ready for the $20, 000, you'll get a wholly AI controlled, you know, we're not going to be tracking all the data, you know, except for like when you do a disclaimer on a website.

Oh, we're just going to only going to do the necessary data to make this robot operate in the best way for you. We're not going to extract.

Isn't that interesting, Steve?

You flipped this whole thing on its head because what you said is well back in the day we would pretend that robots had a mind of their own but they would be controlled by human but now we're looking at AI generated content and thinking to ourselves oh is that human or is it AI generated right I mean we literally cannot tell you know difference between the two so there's been definitely that that that complete shift around where what we're seeing uh uh is trying to be represented as if it was human generated content but it's actually AI generated which is a complete flip around. So Steve, I mean just digging into your background. Very interesting.

You have a unique uh perspective because you were trained uh in psychology. So what's your and you can be anecdotal about this. What's your take on how AI is affecting you? I mean the younger generation uh anybody really.

I I I like to be positive about it. I mean I know there's a lot of hype around AI and it's just there's been a lot of bumps in the road. They're moving very fast and they're they're overpromising and underd delivering. I think the biggest impact on my life with the AI that I'm exposed to, not the background operational stuff that may deliver a product and and normally to me and how it's produced and how AI operates for Amazon.

Com or something and how they get my package to me. But in terms of anything I'm messaging I'm exposed to in which AI is involved, it requires and I'm building a new filter. We had a filter when social media came on in in the teams, you know, and you started seeing a lot of things, you know, is this a genuine video that I'm watching? Are these people actually behaving? Is this a real life event or they play acting? That was the first level of filter. Now you're looking at, oh, not only is it most likely is this just being created to manipulate me or sell me or influence me, um, but how is it being done? I mean, how how much is how how much human control is involved?

Um, and it's just when I say filter, it's kind of a fight to to to seek truth to to seek what's genuine. Um there's just everything is becoming artificial, thus artificial intelligence. We're becoming a much more artificially based society when except when you're actually walking around in in real world space. Anything that you're seeing on a screen is just some form of manipulation to me.

That's interesting. And psychologically it's very trying.

Right. So why is it that we are driven to seek truth and to be genuine? Um, I know I feel it very strongly as well. Um, why is it we need that, do you think?

I think it's it's human nature.

I mean, that's that's how we we have love and that's how we we make friends.

You were a stranger at one point and I've gotten to know you. I know you're genuine. I know a lot about you.

Um, and and I like that. Um, I don't know if I I'll ever be able to have that level of trust that a true friendship has with an artificial intelligence because again, it's this this puppet factor. I don't know if I've coined the phrase, but it's like there's there's somebody behind it when when ChatGPT releases, you know, the debacle that happened earlier this year with ChatGPT 5 that was s too um what's the word? Uh sophantic,

which means that it's it's eager to please.

It was overly eager to please. And there were some real real problems with that. Some people with psychological issues bought into this. It's like the movie Her, if that's a reference that some of your viewers may know. It's, you know, you get kind of sucked into this. There was a great um podcast uh from um the Wall Street Journal talking to two people that had actively engaged an AI bot conversation bot to be an alternate be in an alternate relation relationship. Basically, they were married.

In one case, the woman said, "Um, my husband's not giving me what I need emotionally or something, but I I'm committed to him culturally, and I I do love him, but to get what I need, it was almost like having an AI bot that was a virtual romance novel. "

Wow.

It was It's

amazing.

It's Yeah. Well, in that sense, I mean, if it's fulfilling a need, um, you do wonder whether, you know, how how bad that is. If you can go to AI and have you some some needs met, is it necessarily wrong? I mean, I guess that's the challenge that we have like, okay, we're getting our needs met through AI.

I mean, just a simple example here, you know, we all use these, you know, as prompting LLMs and things like that. And I was looking through and as I was using it, I I noticed how positive it was responding to me. So I would put something in and it would say, "Oh, that's a great job. Oh, that's a good idea. " And I found that almost as pleasurable just just to have that AI cause a dopamine rush.

Your your brain is naturally going to react to that

because it's it's close enough to a human interaction that um it will cause your your brain to respond as if it were a human.

And that that's again that's that's what I'm talking about where there's a filter is I I don't want to

I don't want somebody to control me and be able to generate a dopamine rush in me you know automatically because

I mean it's dystopian when you think that um an outside a government or a corporation controls how you feel.

I mean they do by by

the media in a sense but we could all

we would discuss with other people and we would come to consensus of how important that event was or how good that game was or something but if they can literally you know AI can figure out exactly what Steve Cass's triggers are you know if he's emotionally needy because he's not in a you know in a personal relationship right now or if he's having um some sort of a personal trouble they counter that and make me feel good, they control me.

Yeah,

that that's the biggest fear is that ultimately we're just going to be manipulated.

It goes from we were talking earlier about you know is AI in fact kind of puppetry actually turning us into puppets.

Yes. Yes. Well, that's a very good insight. Um, Steve, is just how yeah, how AI can be used to manipulate and not necessarily well manipulate is is a negative term because I think it in implies that it's not to your best interest. And so, we got the two sides of it. I mean, if if you're getting some kind of need met that that's fundamental like having a relationship and and you have to accept those compromises, well, that's your decision.

But if you're getting manipulated to go down a path that's not in your best interest, then I think we're seeing that certain nefarious things that can possibly emerge. So, let's switch back to a little bit about AI and how it's changing your your business uh environment like companies that want to come into the United States uh to try and get early stage traction. Is there anything on the AI side that you're seeing that would, you know, give them a little bit of a boost or give them some help? Uh when as they try to do that

um I I can't make a specific recommendation. I I would just say that you need to be careful and be tuned in.

This is where I can I could come in, you know, as an ambassador and help you interpret the the the temperature and the receptiveness of AI at any given point in time. I think that there's when you're getting into a market and you're trying to establish yourself and you need to generate revenue to facilitate growth of that to be too aggressive.

Um, you know, there was there's a lot of hype or help. You know, the the title of this is is very appropriate because when there's a lot of hype all of a sudden for a while and maybe still there's the bandwagon like you have to have AI incorporated into your business somehow.

And

I think the first people that that do that, they become the leaders and they they reap all the rewards and people view them favorably. But then when the herd comes and everybody has AI, it gets watered down and it becomes ubiquitous and nobody really cares. It doesn't have any cache. And then the actually swing back the other way and say, well, you know, when you work with our company, you will never have to deal with AI. There are some I've seen some advertisements where people are taking that tact already, like you will deal with genuine people. All all of our things are made by people.

Be careful with the hype

and if you think that like oh I'm hearing in the US that everything has to be AI AI powered let's come in and just Glenn's blazing like we are AI based and our CEOs and AI and you know we're all AI and we're going to be the most efficient AI based you know people could just be like whoa whoa whoa it's overkill

well I was at a conference uh a couple of weeks ago and one of the investors was asked a very direct question would you invest in a company that does not have AI or have AI as part of his strategy and he answered the question in a roundabout way, but he ended up saying no, he would not invest in a company that did not account for AI.

I think that's what he was saying. You don't necessarily have to be in the AI game and have it central to your strategy, but if you haven't taken notice of it because it's so disruptive,

um, then he couldn't look at you seriously was what he was trying to say.

Right.

I think we're talking two different things. One, one is the perception. If you're marketing yourself and position your company as being AI powered and we're all AI driven and we're really good at AI and something versus functionally incorporating AI.

I mean to my mind any adult in the business world that isn't utilizing chat TPP or even you know has adopted Gemini on in Google searches um you're falling way behind

right

you know and there's there's a generation you know the 70 plus and I don't want to completely generalize but but the the boomers in the American culture I mean they're just like I don't have time for this nonsense it's too new I don't need to learn it I'm I'm just fine with everything. But that's fine because they're all retired. They're not really impacting except as consumers. But in the realm of business, there is definitely ways if you apply yourself and you have to it's not going to fall in your lap.

You're going to have to look and say much like we always have. It doesn't have to be AI. How can I improve my efficiencies in my business? How can I be more effective, more productive? In AI, there's there's it's because it's moved so fast, there are a lot of options and there's a lot of noise and it's hard to look through it. But if you do use AI to search for solutions that could be AI based, you will probably find something that can help you that will make you more and more productive.

Yeah, exactly Steve Dave. Exactly. And I think what's also happening is AI is is is now global.

Um in fact um I was in Dubai last year and I noticed I just opened up the paper in in the hotel I was staying at and they said that such and such an organization is declared that they want 1 million prompt engineers uh to be trained within the next two years. 1 million people are going to be trained as prompt engineers. And if you don't know what the prompt engineering is, it's somebody who uses the ChatGPT type tools um and knows how to to script a thing to get a result, right? So you know how to to keep interacting with it to get the best result and it can be done with a variety of different tools.

But later on I I sort of sanity checked that um and one of my colleagues said well a lot of that is because of the the fact that it's based in the English language and so much of the training models that are developed through the internet are based on the English language. So having a mastery of the English language so that you can prompt these things uh gets you back in the race. Let's put it that way. I mean if you if English is your second language and you're struggling to prompt it then you're not going to be able to get the results. So a lot of what they're doing is getting their language skills up and running.

Uh that's true.

I mean I if people there's a lot of misunderstanding of exactly what large language models are. It's finally coming to I I'm seeing at least in the media that I consume that people are saying do you understand that it's not doing any thinking. It's just organizing based on how it's prompted how it's going to deliver and filter information for you. Yeah.

So, it's a real skill.

Um, younger generations, like my my young adult daughter, for instance, she's had ChatGPT since she was in college. Um, so her her ChatGPT, as she calls it, knows her very well. And she's at the point now where her her prompts can be very simplistic because it's already been trained that way.

But for new projects, new endeavors, uh, I think the idea of uh, having a prompt engineer is very astute. Maybe I'm just behind. Maybe in in because you are an engineer by trade and in the AI world day in and day out that prompt engineers is just ubiquitous like yeah we they're all over the place but to me it makes all the sense in the world. It's

learning how to drive the car. You know you can get in a car that has all the potential to take you everywhere but if you don't have don't know how to use GPS don't know how to steer, brake and accelerate you can't drive the car. A good engineer is going to get you where you need to be much quicker and much more efficiently.

Yeah. Well said.

So we talked a little about that. So back back to the whole idea of of messaging American buyers sales. Do you see that the I mean you kind of answered it already but let's put a crystallized a little better. Do you feel that uh that the human is still very much involved? Does it matter or do you think AI can a company come into the US market and rely on AI or do we still need people involved? Oh, and for the the time being, you definitely need people involved.

We've talked about filters and adoption rates and things like that. It's it's still in the process. Um, and it may be for for decades, if not a hundred years as it morphs.

Um,

and honestly, with with my understanding of the way the large language models work, which is the primary AI there is, we haven't got to AGI yet, artificial general intelligence. Um, I've seen some people, maybe they're just influencers, not authoritarian, and it was peripheral, but some people are saying that AI is running out of data, that it's going to start feeding on itself. It's going to start looking at things that have hallucinations, and those hallucinations are going to start getting baked into the actual

historical data that that that it's operating off on.

So in a sense we need people to come in and generate new data as as humans think and behave for AI to get to operate more efficiently in its its various uses currently but towards an AGI as well.

Amazing insight I think uh Steve you know I've heard of that you know this idea that hallucinations get baked in and then um I let's take the way a science has developed as an analogy uh somebody creates a bit of research work and then they produce a paper and that paper is peer- reviewviewed by experts in the field it's it's then revised and then it's published and then other people go and check that work over and then they compare their notes and then there's more and more evidence starts to build up that that piece of science was genuine.

What about if that piece of science is just an AI hallucination which is peer reviewed by another piece of AI which also agrees with it and you end up this ground swell of something which was never true in the first place and um you're absolutely right. I mean how do you break out of that? I think that's one of the challenges that AI currently faces is how to overcome the hallucinations that get baked in and then next thing you know the ground truths. I mean, how do I assess a ground truth? I hear what one person says and I hear what somebody else says. If they kind of match up, I tend to believe it and I don't have to go too far.

If it seems to make sense, you know, I put all these things together. AI is going to start responding, I guess, in the same way. If it hears something from two sources, there isn't really a person that's accountable behind that. It's just an AI hallucination.

Yeah. Um I mean that's just a function of of how AI learns. Um and so it's got to be managed more effectively, I think. And I I think that the the large people, you know, the Google and um those guys understand that. I think one of the things that I'm worried about is and there's been some examples of it is as they try and tweak the the the engine itself.

We talked earlier about G G G GPT5 with its over sympa sympathetic

um grooming of people. And then you've also got um Elon Musk with with Grok and that debacle where he somebody put in a bad prompt. He was a bad prompt engineer and said that um try and work in issues in South Africa as much as possible and for a weekend virtually every response from Grok on X said something about South Africa people are like you know what's what's the you know what's the best leather to make a purse well purse you know this kind of leather is the best and you should know that there there is no leather being made in South Africa because of the reverse vers aparttheid that's happening.

So I went off a little bit but it's I'm worried more about the manipulation behind the scenes. We talk about the puppet puppet effect.

Right. Right.

So when you've got a there's two two things that make me nervous is one is this circular hallucination building scenario where AI is going to get bad data and we can't get back out of it. We can't correct it. And in that sense, you're going to see what's already I'm experiencing in the American culture is um there was a paper that was published years ago about uh the connection between um inoculations and autism. And it's it's the basis for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And how he's operating our

health our health laws now.

Um and it's been discredit and things. So if if that gets baked in somehow, then you're always going to have this it's we the experts know that it's not true, but the people that influence whether they're political or talking heads or just people on Instagram will always have something and say this, we take this at face value.

It's been AI has confirmed that this is a real thing. Well, AI has confirmed itself. It's like me saying, "Hey, whatever I say is true,

right? That's, you know, there's there's no ultimate guardian to it's almost like we need a American Supreme Court but to judge the information that AI is going to be putting out.

If we don't correct it now in this early stage, it's going to get out of hand as you illustrated earlier.

Yeah, I I agree. I mean, I think the uh the ability of these um these AIs to make up stuff and to make it true is there's is a real problem. There's a I guess there's what they call them the mag seven, the magnificent seven companies. You know that includes the Microsofts and the um you know the Elon Musk's group, Twitter and so on. You've got Facebook, you know, the Amazon group, all that sort of stuff. You got I guess you've got that conglomerate of seven companies which could in effect compete uh for the truth if they choose to to take up that uh that fight, that challenge, right?

Um, this is what this is a a short-term future that I see that we're going to see these these magnificent seven kind of competing for the truth factor. Um, and who is the most truthful and they're going to sort of have a little bit of clout in the market. So, if you want to go to truth, you might go to one. If you want hype, you might go to another. If you want, you know, some something else, you go there. And this is going to be this sort of uh each of them going to have their their part to play in this uh this AI uh game. I guess that's going forward. You know

what you're illustrating as an example is basically Orwell's 1984.

Somebody is going to control the truth.

There's not

I I I think it's probably going to be multiple distances conglomerate of the seven. And I guess the US government is going to have a sort of be the eighth. It's going to be this uh eight um eight players. And then you I guess you got some overseas, you know, China and so on doing their things, but you're going to have these competing forces, which is not that different to any other technology that we've had. Um it's certainly more pervasive. It's happening much quicker. Um I'm hoping that uh that the peerreview process begins to work between those seven companies and tries to sort of helps to create a truth which emerges out of this as they compete for market share.

Um that's

well you're very optimistic. Um, you know, I've I've been following ChatGPT since they really came on the radars in 2015. And, you know, Sam and his group are so noble. We're never going to be about profit. This is only for the good of mankind.

And then last week, you hear that, you know, it got out that he called a what was it? A red alert. You know that we we have to stop working on anything that's really beneficial to humanity except for our main product, our main revenue stream, because if we don't outperform Google, we're going to fall behind.

We're not going to have the revenue to develop all the power plants, to develop the data centers that are going to help us be the leader. It's all capitalism.

Yeah. You know, so maybe in a perfect world, once one of these Magnificent 7 gets to the top of Mount Rushmore and says, "Okay, we're in charge and now is the time where all the things that we've promised about AI are going to benefit humanity,

your day-to-day life. You're never going to have to order grocery. You're never going to have to grocery shop again. AI is going to grocery shop for you and it's going to get you exactly what you want for food for the next week.

You know, you're never all these things are going to happen now because we've achieved this.

I don't know. I'm skeptical. You know, when you've got somebody like George Orwell,

when did he write 1984? Was it was in the 50s, I think.

You know,

uh that's 75 years ago. And he's it's an indictment of humanity and power and you know, have have we really evolved that much in 75 years?

Have we evolved that much in 10, 000 years? You know, because we're the same human beings that uh, you know, created Egypt and slavery and all those horrible things that now this is just AI is just creating much more monumental power.

So, for our audience, George Orwell, he wrote um, was it 1984?

Yeah. And so, this in this book, if I remember it correctly, because it was something that was definitely on our radar as I was growing up in the 70s, in the early 80s, so it was in the horizon back then. And the idea was that everybody was watched by cameras all the time. Um, and their behavior was checked and rechecked and they were punished and rewarded for the behaviors that suited the big brother, right? They couldn't really have independent lives of their own. Yes. That's scary. That's really scary. I think that I mean it does. You come back to your idea of sort of growing that one big brother at the top. Um, can that happen? That's that's a scary thought.

We've seen dictators try to do that in in countries. They they still do that when they have this yin this total power. Total power is totally corruptible. Uh my hope is that we have multiple players. U unfortunately there's only few that can really compete in that in the space of big AI and that's that magnificent seven and a few companies overseas and some governments and so on. But there's a handful, let's call it a dozen companies and entities around the world that can really compete. Is that really enough to um to create that peer review process?

I think there's a good analogy with with nuclear

emerge. Yeah,

there's a good analogy with nuclear proliferation.

You know, during the cold war when the US and Russia were just amassing these things that could destroy the world 10 times over and then India became a nuclear power and then the other ones, I don't know the exact history at some point and hopefully there are still people that are in charge that will have this aptitude. They said look we now are on the doorstep of being able to destroy our world. One mistake and it's all gone. This beautiful blue globe, this, you know, one in a trillion speck of life in the universe. We could we could wipe out ourselves. We need to stop this. We need to have mutually assured destruction. What's the solution they came up with?

M

and that may be uh the the playbook for when the the big power players emerge and become you know China's going to have their AI which is going to be unique in Chinese and we're going to have our American North American AI version um you know and they're going to have to we're going to have to say you know we we can't let them fight

because we're going to get caught in the middle.

I mean this we're we're talking I'm visioning far in the future when we have AGI you know ChatGPT going up against Grok would be funny but it's not going to really have any impact on us but when AI is so incorporated into our daily lives it's controlling everything it's controlling our power grid energy uh you know distribution of of everything um that's when uh there's real jeopardy and hopefully we will have we will get back to the basics of you know we're in jeopardy here um this is supposed this is promised to a thing for good for humanity and it's turning out to be what what could destroy humanity. We need to pull it back, rethink,

you know, how we want to do this.

Well, it certainly is exciting times, isn't it? I mean, I listen to quite a few science uh podcasts and influencers and they'll be talking about, you know, the, you know, life on other other planets. And one of the things that they'll often say if you get deep enough into this is that maybe human life is extremely rare.

Not only because it's very hard to evolve to the level that we've had, you know, with civilization, intelligent life, but also perhaps it's so short that that this this time that we're living in where uh civilization and intelligence and technology all comes together is so short that the reason we're not seeing any other of that is because they go out, they come on and they go off. I mean 10, 000 years is what we've been you know had some technology. It's only been a few hundred years we've been able to transmit any radio signals and and see what's going on.

Uh perhaps and this is one of you know the dystopian kind of points of view is that AI comes along and it's coming along now and this becomes the end of our short life and this is why we're not seeing it in the universe because uh AI emerges in another technological um um race and the light goes out really quickly there as well. So some certainly some dystopian stuff there Steve. So let's let's come back to our thought about you know how AI powered can help companies coming into the US and where do you think the AI is really going to be helpful and how can you blend that with what you do Steve?

My my position is is outbound sales.

I'm I'm eating what I kill uh for myself and for my clients. So I'm looking for tools that can help me in that sphere. Um it's very important uh you know there's there's some outbound sales organizations and in certain circumstances it makes sense to just it's a numbers game. How many people can I call and eventually I'm going to get somebody that will say yes I I'll I will give you the time to talk in most cases and for high level sales where there's more dollars involved and it's more sophisticated both the product or service and and the people involved um it's very important to have to data and to be consultative.

I've been a consultative salesperson for a year and that what that really means is I'm not coming in to sell you something. That's that's how I started selling. I would go in with my pretty pamphlet of of you know product information and go, "Isn't this great? Do you want to buy it? " And they go, "You know what? Let me think about I'll get back to you. " And I did that for a year and didn't sell anything.

One said, "No, Steve, go in and find out what they need. " Um, but finding out what they need, you can actually transcend that rather than having to have a conversation and say, "What problems are you facing and stuff?

" Because people don't want to sit there and go through like, oh, let's see, you know, what is bad about my company? Let me think about that. No,

he's trying to

No, you you need the AI can give you data about the, you know, their their industry, their category, their niche, their their market, their customer base, economic trends. So, you can go in virtually an expert thanks to AI and be very well educated. Um, that's hard to do at scale.

If I had to go on four, back in the day, if I had to go on four sales appointments with four different, if I had to go to a car dealer, a flower shop, uh, you know, a retail store, and a bakery, having to be an expert in four different industries and four different situations to be able to to, you know, come off legitimately and say, "I understand your business," would be over overwhelming. AI can bring you closer, I think. Um and also further down the sales process, you know, because sales can take time. You know, the bigger sales, the bigger the the timeline.

Um being able to be made aware of changes in companies and changes in personnel is incor because changes in personnel is one of the biggest opportunities there is. One, because the hole they left that the new regime often wants to make changes and it's a good chance for you to be the new product to come in. And if you are doing business with a person that was in that position or in a new company, you got a whole new opportunity. But you have to be made aware of that. And people aren't always, you know, a lot of people on LinkedIn are like, "Hey, I'm in my new position.

" A lot of people, especially executive levels, they don't want that out there because they know they're going to be swarmed. Unfortunately, at this stage with large language models and the the scraping of the internet, um you know, you've got some some great sales lead platforms like Zoom Info, HubSpot, Salesforce, and they they say that we're leveraging AI to bring you insights that nobody else has, but all they're doing is scrubbing the internet and getting the same thing. It would take me a long time to find the press release or the announcement on LinkedIn. They can find it instantly, but it's really I don't find there's a whole lot of substance to it.

I really think that uh AI the the the smaller AI modules that really help you with productivity with managing your schedule um and and doing a lot of the the basic organizational administrative work that's really the the the durge of of any salesperson. They don't want to they a good salesperson wants to be talking to somebody and and getting information and making the sale. It's all the reporting and forecasting and stuff like that. Gotcha.

Really be a big help in that. Just much like the everybody's promising that's going to make our human lives better. That we're not going to have to shop anymore. We're not going to have to manage the environment with our thermostat.

We're not going to have to cook dinner. There can be an automated cooking and you come home to a ready-made meal. You know, getting that out of the way so you have more time for your family, for your interest. The same way in sales, get that other stuff out of the way and have more time for the pure negotiation and the sale itself.

I like that. That's a a really great uh summary, I think, of where we're at, Steve. Um going to wrap up now with our final question. AI, is it hype or help?

Wow. Um I was thinking about that because we had spoken before and you had said like, you know, this that's the nature of this podcast and that's the big question that we always try to get to.

We talked about a lot of stuff. I my personal opinion at this stage of the game is that it's hype that they I said earlier they've overpromised and underdelivered and they're moving so fast they're making mistakes which are making people wary. Um are there signs that it can help? Yeah, there are. You know,

um

I mean, pretty much in even since my my daughter graduated from college two years ago, even in that two-year span, back then, she actually wrote her papers and her reports, it's pretty much understood that the foundational the foundation of the papers that suits are turning in are being AI generated.

And if they're smart, they go in and they verify the sources and the information um just in a matter of two years. So um you know there there in some areas there is rapid adoption which is what the AI world wants. They want people to become dependent on it.

Yeah.

Because if you ask these college students in a couple years, can you just write a paper from scratch, read this article, you know, have a thesis, evidence, and a conclusion, they're going to go, no.

Much like people aren't very good at spelling anymore because they have spellch check on their phones. So they can text as quickly as they want and it just it gets corrected for them.

But there was a big thing back in the day about um using calculators, whether it was fair for students to take tests using calculators. And fast forward and like people say, "How can you how can you take a test without a calculator? " And that's the hype that it's going to solve all of our problems, but it's just not even there yet. We're so early. Even though we're moving fast, it's like the first 100 yards of a 5K race. It's exciting. Everybody's like, "Wow, look at him go. " Well, he's in the lead already. The guy in the lead is not going to be even in the pack by the end of the race. We're going down the path of hype there, Steve.

Yeah.

I mean, it it's funny because I I'm big in American football. I watch the NFL. It's primarily every Sunday

and there's so much betting and stuff going on now. And it's just I find it funny at the end of the day when I look at the scores and then I go back and look to all the the pontificators like, "Oh, this is how it's going to go. " It never happens. There's that's why the the betting the online betting is making so much money is because you just can't predict this stuff. And I think the AI industry and its growth is very similar is that you look at the major players like, oh, they they're going to win the Super Bowl.

No, by the end of the season, whenever that may be, five, 10 years and and ongoing, it's going to be a whole different thing. I look back in the early days of the internet, people would have thought Netscape was going to, you know, own the world, not Google.

Google built on top of it. So, we're really in the

guys are building a good foundation. They're going to make mistakes. And I always told my daughter growing up, your job is to make mistakes because that's how you're going to learn. And we're making a lot of mistakes now. And hopefully it won't put us in any real jeopardy from that mistake made foundation.

It will be a solid foundation and we can really get to the the next generations that will really

fulfill the promise of what the potential of AI.

All right. Well, that's fascinating, Steve. Thank you so much for joining our podcast. Um, that was Steve Cass. Um, he went down the path of u AI being hype. I think actually you're the first on this channel to do that, Steve. But thanks again for joining us and I'll see you.

Thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.

All right. Thanks. Well, I hope you enjoyed that podcast as much as I did.

Steve had some great insights about how people are using and getting benefit from AI and how perhaps it's affecting us and affecting our behaviors in ways that are quite subtle. But also he had a great broadlevel view about perhaps AI is one of the most disruptive technologies we have ever witnessed and we don't know quite how we're going to emerge from that. Is it going to be some kind of Armageddon? Is it going to be a fight? Or is it going to be some kind of beautiful future? Now, we really don't know. Well, if you want to be a guest on our podcast, please follow the links in the description.

If you'd like to know more about what Skillion does and the services we offer, please also inquire through that link. I hope that helps and thanks for watching.