Speaker 0 | 00:09.169
All right, welcome everyone back to Dissecting Popular IT Nerds Today, Super Nerd. I mean, it might be the biggest nerd we’ve had on the show, and I mean that in a very cool way. Corey Glickman, welcome to the show and author of Practical Sustainability. you have some really cool things we’re going to talk about i’m excited very excited about this show but first let’s just let’s just plug your book right off you know right off the start here you know you you wrote a book during covid which is cool i i partially wrote a book during cove but it’s it’s almost out but tell me why did you write the book was it i just had nothing to do during covid or was this a is this a life project that was that was coming along
Speaker 1 | 00:56.588
Great question. First of all, thank you for inviting me to your show. And I certainly appreciate the super nerd title. That’s something I have great pride. I think everybody wants to write a book eventually, right? Somewhere, somewhere down.
Speaker 0 | 01:12.534
Maybe. I’ve had some haters. I’ve had some haters that said, yeah, you’ll never write a book. Like I remember in college, I was like, I’m going to write a book. Like, yeah, okay, guy, like whatever, like you’re, you’re a dreamer. You know, there’s always those people that are like kind of putting you down because. they need to bring you down to their level and i try to tell my kids that all the time you know who what do you mean they did it also who cares you’re not trying to bring someone what is bringing someone else down to your level do help so you know you do have those people out there that’s a great point and uh
Speaker 1 | 01:42.813
no i did not like grow up one day saying oh one day i have to write a book so why did why did i write the book so i was um working at the time for a very large indian i.t company And we have a great history of delivering sustainability solutions. Actually achieved net zero without purchasing any offset components. So it’s a great history. And I was recently given this position right before COVID to say, you are now the head of sustainability design. Take what we’ve learned over the last 10, 15 years. And turn that into commercial IT properties, create a better world, make a business out of this and go ahead and scale.
Speaker 0 | 02:33.978
And you, and please forgive me because I tell people to do this all the time with me, like interrupt me and ask questions because sometimes, you know, simpletons like myself don’t understand all this. Can you explain that, what you just said in a very layman’s term, like what you did and why it was so good? Well, what they told you to do, and you just followed directions and made it happen. I mean, that’s good, too.
Speaker 1 | 02:57.067
Well, it takes a lot of people, but I’ll take as much credit as I can off of this. So we all know about the climate change issues, right? And we hopefully all understand about diversity and the quality components. So as we are being faced with globally the challenges of climate change, the impact in business supply chains. as we are trying to make a just transition. So as we create these new economies, that there is a more diversified workforce. But most importantly, we’re in this race to make sure that we don’t alter our situation on the planet because of carbon emissions and other factors. This usually gets labeled as sustainability. So many companies and governments and everybody involved are trying to figure out how do we understand that we basically live on a budget on this planet. Resources aren’t infinite. They have to be looked at recycling. They have to be looked at reuse. Technology is a great catalyst in order to make this change. New tough climate tech components. There’s lots of government regulatory components.
Speaker 0 | 04:17.246
Let me stop you right there. Government regulatory components. First of all, there’s a section of the show sometimes where I ask people, do you believe in any conspiracy theories? This fits really well into one of them, which is New World Order. And we will be tracked based on our carbon emissions. Is there any truth to that?
Speaker 1 | 04:47.329
I think that that is a question that is going to… could be a hybrid partially true. And the reason I’ll say that is not even being conspiracy theory. And I’m not sure it’s such a bad thing.
Speaker 0 | 05:02.060
right so if you’re what people are worried about is like i’ll only be able to take one trip a year because i will use up all my carbon emission credits and i won’t be able to go i won’t be able to do what i do want to do i won’t essentially be free anymore because i’ll be you
Speaker 1 | 05:16.224
know judged based on my carbon emission just like everything from question i also would say that what is your credit rates going to be given to you by banks Just like your credit scores, I think your carbon scores are going to impact, you know, how much money can you attain? And you purchase a certain house, do you have to purchase an EV vehicle component, right? So there’s going to be many constructs along that way. And I think as we see solutions of responsibility, if you are a heavy contributor to the problem, we perceive it’s going to be regulatory it’s the same thing as uh people who smoke criticize or not criticize them but we put regulations in place saying you can’t smoke in buildings in certain cities in this country whereas in other countries you can so i think it’s going to depend across there so
Speaker 0 | 06:19.572
will it have an impact i think it has to have an impact on how to choose things so one of the again just to dive deeper in because i don’t know this this is fun the um i i’m not 100 sure about this but i believe uh china has quite the you know facial recognition technology and is already rating people based on how they purchase things and what they do and or there’s kind of like this like whole rating of like of a person what do you think about that you know i would think the carbon emission would go into that like you say so i have eight kids would i be would i be judged based on you know you have too many kids you’re eating up too much carbon uh you know you’re not now your your footprint is um is uh i don’t know too big i think that uh yes i’ll just be very direct think
Speaker 1 | 07:12.102
about how your insurance works you have eight kids you pay more for your health care insurance you you have to make you know certain decisions on your insurance your life insurance policy backwards now it’s kind of backwards in in our at least in the west if you contribute the west because if you have more kids you actually get more of a tax benefit you actually get more of a tax benefit you’re more apt to get free health care than you are to you know i mean so my insurance actually goes down i i agree and i’m not saying whether it’s good or bad um that was a question of you know having you know will you be judged but you will be right you will be given certain um access to programs you will be given certain benefits you will pay certain components based off your carbon footprint i think absolutely and i think that part of that will be your community and society but also a lot to do with your job right so if you’re working for an organization they count every carbon credit for every piece of travel that you do they will have kpis some already are saying you know your team yeah yeah So your measurements, we all work towards our KPIs. We are bonuses that might be associated with it, our ability to deliver on our product. If you’re a coder that can produce less carbon, you’ll certainly be worth more than somebody who produces more carbon because guess what? Carbon offsets are expensive. They also create huge value in supply chains. So yes, your ability to have less of a carbon footprint or to create solutions. that will impact in the proper direction makes you a more valuable and a business sense probably in society so yes how could it not happen fascinating um i had realized i never answered that question yeah so go so so far away go yeah so so so the idea of of the book was this it happened just at the point of covid And I took on this new role of sustainability design. And it was really saying, how do you do this? And the first thing that I asked myself was saying, so I work for one of the very large companies at the time, 350,000 people globally. Not a Western company, so it has an interesting perspective. And they were able to achieve carbon neutrality in 10 years’time without purchasing any carbon credits. And this is back in 2020 when they achieved this goal. And every company and every organization…
Speaker 0 | 09:55.206
Explain that because, again, I’m ignorant. Purchasing carbon credits?
Speaker 1 | 09:59.150
Okay. So the way the system works is this. We all produce carbon. and all that however you can do things that produce less carbon you can use renewable energy sources you can do reuse and recycle in patterns of supply chain you can increase the economic benefits in the communities of where you evolve you can create intelligent buildings you can choose to have an ed car or scooter versus the things right there you’re making me a believer you’re making me a believer okay You can’t eliminate all carbon offsets. You can’t eliminate all greenhouse gases. There’s many things you can start to move down that path. However, whatever you have left over, let’s say you’re able to achieve 50% reduction in all the greenhouse gases in your business and the businesses that you do work with, you still have leftover. So what you need to do then is create offsets. And offsets are basically saying for every metric ton of carbon that you produce, there’s price associated with it. And if you can do either purchase credits, I’ll give you an example of what that is, that would offset what you have left over that helps you say, I’m compliant. Or you can do CSR, corporate social responsibility programs that also give credit. And there’s measurements based on that. So here’s an interesting-Let’s call it a tax.
Speaker 0 | 11:29.356
Let’s call it a- a tax. It sounds like a tax to me.
Speaker 1 | 11:32.518
It is kind of a tax, but it’s more of an open market, right? Where you can trade carbon credits, you can put them out in the marketplace, and every country has different rules and every corporation and even sector has different ways of measuring the cost of carbon. So it’s extremely an investment.
Speaker 0 | 11:49.205
Unless we have a global takeover and we have a new global world order, then this could equalize. Keep going, keep going. This is great.
Speaker 1 | 12:02.984
Let me give you one example. So Tesla, right?
Speaker 0 | 12:06.266
Of course.
Speaker 1 | 12:07.147
Whatever you think of Elon Musk one way or another, it’s just your own thoughts. But if you look at how they make most of their profits, they make a certain amount of profits in, say, putting out their Tesla vehicles. Of course, they do many other things than vehicles. However, because of how they produce those vehicles and the way that they do their electric. economy, they produce a tremendous amount of offsets that they can resell out into the marketplace to, say, the state of Georgia, who’s not hitting their quotas. So this state of Georgia will buy credits directly from Tesla in order to do the offsets. And that’s a more profitable business than actually making cars.
Speaker 0 | 12:48.953
Sounds good for Elon.
Speaker 1 | 12:50.733
It’s very good for Elon,
Speaker 0 | 12:52.094
right?
Speaker 1 | 12:54.795
And then on the opposite side, many companies, particularly in the US, and in Canada right now, they talk about replanting forests, right? That’s kind of a no-brainer saying offsets. But what happens when those forests go up in flames? You’re basically burning away your carbon offset bank. And you’re also increasing more greenhouse gases due to the fires. So one way to look at all the Canadian wildfires and things that are happening on the West Coast is a lot of these banks of offsets that they put into their accounting saying, look, we’re a company that is hitting these goals.
Speaker 0 | 13:28.441
went up and smoked literally right so it’s a very very complex you know scenario that takes place the what’s the and the whole thing where i got that whole the the chinese credit score and and watch and and judging people it’s actually from a video from elon musk and he was talking about you know how china was like way ahead of you know tracking all these things and there’s this theory that maybe maybe um you know no longer twitter what is it x or whatever it’s called you know might be the one of the newest or best ways to use this uh social credit score tracking system etc the what’s uh what do you have to say about the and this is just me asking i don’t know if you know anything about this the amount of natural resources and and digging and and all that stuff that in a you have to charge electrical vehicles what’s the offset there what’s the math around that i have to know you know
Speaker 1 | 14:23.725
unearth all of these things to make the batteries to begin with and then you have to charge them obviously what’s the math on that yeah so i think math is like anything else the statistics are always there but there is there are formulas that basically say per individual um how can you calculate the cost of the energy resource what would be the offset so give you a couple of examples um through this so Here’s a working example. If you think about this in context, what a solution might look like, and then let’s talk about maybe breaking down how those offices might work. So say you have a mining. operation and you want to have large equipment that is basically going to be using renewable energy right in order to do their operations in this environment so how would you design that would you have EV charging stations that would basically power these vehicles and those EV charging stations could be powered by solar wind micronuclear or other say renewable things or they be powered by colon fossil you know behind the scenes yes and what that grid is but the better solution would be not to have these vehicles constantly travel to get charged but why not create a mobile charger with artificial intelligence that knows to go to the vehicles when they need it to
Speaker 0 | 15:51.517
have the equipment running it’s pretty sweet maybe we have a drone maybe we have like a you know like a solar-powered drone flying right how do you
Speaker 1 | 16:02.306
like the offsets you would have to look at vehicles themselves how they were produced how does the charging system work what is the network of the grid what are the companies that are supplying those components what is the cost of extracting the minerals uh what is it the tactic and human labor all these things have to be calculated as part of your offset components and the fact of the matter is take 40 to 50 percent of all the minerals that we’re talking green technologies residing out and only that event has really been discovered 50 percent of africa hasn’t even been looked at yet there we go keep going a you know amazing opportunity but we also are looking at political situations we’re looking at where’s the infrastructure money in order to enable this to take place europe from u.s from china um
Speaker 0 | 16:59.626
Major political implications, major political implications, yeah.
Speaker 1 | 17:03.407
Just transition to green industrial cities in Africa, build these corridors, take place without neocolonialism taking place, right? The traditional place.
Speaker 0 | 17:13.309
Yes.
Speaker 1 | 17:15.430
Take what you have and keep the old guard well-Screw the people over that lived there and,
Speaker 0 | 17:20.551
you know, yeah.
Speaker 1 | 17:24.132
You know, take place. It’s also a great opportunity though, right? Because if you can solve this. correctly you’re you’re changing it and africa is super important as is the global south because we have population shrinkage here in the us we have population shrinkage in china we have growth in india then we’re seeing them rise very quickly but the largest growth is actually now 30 to 40 years and the population growth is going to in africa most of the new cities are going to be taking place there most of the minerals are there
Speaker 0 | 17:57.326
doesn’t reside there is stability or those relationships yet right i think we have a big problem a with well it would be hard it’s hard to go there but a big problem with the banking system a big problem with uh i guess kind of this individualistic uh an individualistic view versus kind of the socialistic view i’m not saying i’m a socialist i’m not saying that You should just go to Africa and just teach, maybe, and then disappear. Then maybe Africa will come out on top.
Speaker 1 | 18:43.388
Well, here’s an interesting point that you bring about banking, right? So if you talk to banks about IT and sustainability and ESG components, the first thing that they’re looking at is climate risk. right they’re saying how do we judge which to invest in what should be the rates and what’s the climate risk whether it’s because hurricanes or because of political instability so banks are you sure it’s not just like how do we make money and take over the world well i think i mean from an honest honestly from banks in in the pure sense yes they want to make money but generally when banks
Speaker 0 | 19:26.218
make money they distribute money out that’s how businesses get funded this is how things take place right also how wars get started and you know if you know the real history i mean you know not just the history that you know we watch on tv but um let’s go back to the book back to the book so this is i mean we could just go through the book and probably have like a we probably have hour-long conversations on everything from from the so this all came off of me asking one little question that i didn’t understand so back to and i don’t remember what that was So we’d have to rewind, but let’s step back to where we were.
Speaker 1 | 20:01.155
So the basic question asked is, so why write the book? What’s in the book? so i asked my question why did it take why would it only take us 10 years to achieve this goal that everybody else is saying that it’s going to take them 20 to 30 years to go do this so went back and said what’s out there what existing technologies are out there what existing processes and also says what are the new things what’s the right mix and play what are things oh i remember what it was it was the carbon it was like why are we buying carbon um
Speaker 0 | 20:33.220
So what was the success? What was the success? Can you give us first a picture of the success and what you guys did and what happened and all that?
Speaker 1 | 20:40.122
Sure. So the largest footprint for any part of a carbon footprint has to do with the built environment. So the idea of creating buildings, campuses, roadways, airports, this is the biggest impact. It’s 39%, if you want to be exact, of the carbon footprint. So being able to design smart buildings or plan systems design, you can actually start to make much more efficient buildings. And it’s interesting, a lot of these ideas are actually older technologies. You know, we have buildings with digital twins, we can understand better systems, we can learn a lot of lessons through there. The second part is getting the right kind of energy sources that come into play, whether it’s using renewables or using purchase power agreements.
Speaker 0 | 21:31.824
comes from renewable energies and the third part is how do you impact the communities around and can you drive a higher economic value of learning and i love it it’s so true too because um i just put a new hvac unit in my one part of my house and uh i have a buddy who owns like an hvac business so you know i said he put this unit in that’s like a high efficient electric you know like really high efficient you know heat pump And it didn’t have some Wi-Fi feature or something. And I said, like, you know, why does it not have this? He’s like, this technology has been around for a long time. And this particular heat pump is so efficient. And it’s been around for a long time. And it’s, you know, I just, I was thinking to me, he’s like, this has been around for like 14 years. He’s like, people just don’t know about it and don’t put them in. They’re only putting them in these like high efficient buildings. I don’t know any more than that. I sound really stupid about it. But. anyways keep going um there’s a bit and oh no i know what it was i asked him i said so why aren’t more why aren’t people doing this he’s like yeah it’s just people just do it the old way they just know slap this system in charge someone some money make this profit so they just keep using the same stuff because that’s what they learned that they learned how to put in you know whatever mitch rubishi or you know whatever they learned this model so they’ve just been putting that in for the last 10 years it keeps making the money and boom they’re done i couldn’t agree with you more you know so that’s a problem you know like like that that’s what yeah just whatever what do we call that capitalism i don’t know like you know just some dude needs to make money and put food on the table so we got to bring in the credit now we’re going to bring in the credit score and carbon like well look your carbon score has just gone down so you need to learn how to make this system and otherwise uh you will be on the streets okay
Speaker 1 | 23:24.346
keep on back here on this so the book looked at the built environment it looked at circular commerce, right? So this idea that if you’re going to have a supply chain take place, how do you put in as least waste as possible into that and pull out, end up with as least waste as possible, right?
Speaker 0 | 23:44.631
So many things going through my brain. I’m sorry. I’m very ADD. The coffee’s starting to kick in. Don’t forget, I am on some muscle relaxants and everything. Not that, no narcotics, no narcotics, just muscle relaxants. Everyone listening, I do have a very torn shoulder. I’m in severe pain right now, but this is exciting. talking actually is therapeutic to the pain um so if anyone’s ever going through severe pain talk with people um you start a podcast the the supply chain i mean just think about what’s going on in america right now with covid and everything and like the trucking industry going through the roof but all the truckers losing their shirts at the same time i mean there’s got to be some you must have some thoughts on that but go back to your supply chain i just wanted to throw that in there in case there is a you know some some you know industry altering thought that you have to provide to our it directors out there that are in logistics and supply chain, you know, management and stuff like that, you know, maybe there’s something that they can do, because this show is about using technology as a business force multiplier.
Speaker 1 | 24:46.657
So if you look at the 2, the 2 points you just asked about, so circular commerce is simply designed technical loops and biological loops and systems, and you want to start to rethink as you produce. products within some system, they should probably either last longer or have a From the day you think about it, you should think, what’s the reuse? It’s not going to end up in a landfill.
Speaker 0 | 25:12.328
Marketing doesn’t like that. Marketing doesn’t like that. I think Chris Rock one time said, can’t they make a Cadillac where the bumper doesn’t fall off?
Speaker 1 | 25:21.432
You’ve kind of got this right. But marketing can figure this out. So a very good example of this would be printing, like our home printers that we have. yes how did they make their money they sold you uh in cartridges well they actually didn’t tell you they still do it it’s like hey i can get this printer from 50 bucks they sell you the printers right but but before they sold you a printer right and the printer would be replaced every three years and you would basically that’s how they made their money how many printers could they sell to you coming across there and then it was very much about the um concept of printing as a service was the switch right You no longer have to go to the store and buy your expensive cartridges and buy your paper. Your printer’s now got enough intelligence inside of it to say, hey, when I’m running out of ink or I’m running out of paper, I will send it to you in the mail the day before you know you need it. Oh. It tells you to go ahead.
Speaker 0 | 26:21.644
Very nice. Except here’s the scam with that. You Google online how to reset your printer mind or whatever you call that back to zero, and poof, it still prints for another month.
Speaker 1 | 26:35.758
It’s certainly a technical problem. But here’s the key, right? So they were able to make the switch to say the reason they marketed and the way they made their money was how often could they sell you a printer? Generally, every three years because that was your capex. And every three years, you’d buy a new computer or printer.
Speaker 0 | 26:52.222
Yeah, or a five-year model, three-or five-year model.
Speaker 1 | 26:55.303
Yeah, now the switch model says, no, I just simply want you to buy toner and I want you to buy paper. And as you need it. I can now build you a printer that will last 15 years.
Speaker 0 | 27:06.520
Yeah. Right? Just like every Microsoft product. I don’t need to buy a disk anymore.
Speaker 1 | 27:12.364
Exactly. So… OPEX.
Speaker 0 | 27:14.605
It’s all OPEX.
Speaker 1 | 27:15.346
So if you go back to trucking now, so what’s the two biggest, or at least the two obvious issues about trucking? Absolutely necessary to deliver things, right? That’s how our supply chain gets delivered, and it’s certainly called out during COVID, and it’ll lack drivers. Right. There’s just not enough people that there’s plenty of drivers.
Speaker 0 | 27:36.959
They’re just not getting paid. They’re not making any money.
Speaker 1 | 27:39.979
Right. So, but that still equals lack of drivers,
Speaker 0 | 27:43.040
right? Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1 | 27:44.761
So how do you do that? You create a system that doesn’t require drivers. You have driverless trucks.
Speaker 0 | 27:52.323
Well, yes.
Speaker 1 | 27:54.683
Right. It certainly is out there from a technology perspective. And you also are using renewable. components there are massive components going through here from from labor change so it what are we out five ten years from truly autonomous vehicles you know and trucks will be one of the first adoptions that we should have more uh yeah maybe more rail rail railways or other other forms of transportation as well sure um but in the us it’s very different than it is europe right so in the us it is it is all about Amtrak and they get right away. They don’t get right away to Conrail. It’s more about supply and demand of freight from West Coast to East Coast generally. I’ve seen models that I’ve looked at to say if your chain takes so much time to go across the country and it’s actually the most efficient form of travel, of logistics, besides the ocean. I think like a gallon of diesel would travel through the US. Something ridiculous statistic like this, right? So it’s extremely efficient. but if you make your trains actually become factories that are constantly moving now you’ve solved another problem right that from the time raw materials comes on the west coast you might have finished products on the east coast if you design your your your roving factories okay there’s a lot you are such a nerd i love it love it makes sense right and it’s it’s already being looked at europe’s a little bit different because of the infrastructure after world war ii having to you know redo the auto industry and building network networks you know through railways it’s much more about transportation between countries but in our country because of the depth and breadth and we’d love to own cars here trains will never become the main you know way that we transport around at this point so people
Speaker 0 | 29:46.638
are going to lose their mind if you take away their diesel their dually ram 3500 one ton you got it yeah so what do you mean i don’t need no tesla so the third part of the book coming back to your question about
Speaker 1 | 30:00.330
people is happier humans. So if people don’t adopt this or are happy about the situation, then they’re not going to adopt it. So why would they not choose the heating system that you talked about? Maybe they didn’t know about it. Maybe they weren’t convinced. The pattern that we’ve seen when it comes to adopting these kinds of technologies is really four stages. The first one is you have to be able to understand the data, right? What data do I need to understand in order to understand the baseline and where I want to head to? How do I collect that data?
Speaker 0 | 30:32.746
understand it and provide some metaphorical pieces because this is great um this could apply on a smaller scale on a micro scale as well i would think inside a general manufacturer or something like that just taking these steps so first understand your data go right secondly
Speaker 1 | 30:49.220
understand your sustainable finance how is the economic model going to the changes that you’re trying to invoke because it doesn’t hold up economically it doesn’t matter how good it is right it’s
Speaker 0 | 31:00.630
economically it has to make sense it’s just not going to apex opex return on investment all of that do the numbers it’s a numbers game so in other words it’s a numbers game so number one data country data it’s a numbers day yeah
Speaker 1 | 31:15.696
technology right so it could be your digital technology it could be your material technology your physical and now it could be the quantum technologies right that we’re starting to see and what’s the impact across those and you That’s a little bit of a flip, right? Because if you were traditionally, as we think of Silicon Valley in particular, we say we’re going to start something up. First thing we do is we invent a technology. This is going to go solve this problem. Hopefully they think about problem solving. But I have to have a technology that works for anything to take. And then the fourth part is there needs to be customer adoption. Right. You need to have that cultural adoption component. So in your case, when you talk about that heating system. Why do customers even know about this? It’s probably the contractor saying, this is what I’m going to give you. And they either made the decision off price or they were convinced.
Speaker 0 | 32:03.254
I was going to say the third step is making the right decisions. I was going to say, it’s basically what you said. The third step was making the right decisions. But yeah, it’s knowledge and you don’t know what you don’t know. And there’s this ocean of, yes, keep going.
Speaker 1 | 32:18.782
So those are the four basic roles. And I think what is becoming very, very interesting, especially with. with IT, there’s a wave of what we call green IT right now. Basically, it says everything that an IT department would deliver, anything from, say, networking to cloud to how they program to how they distribute equipment and so forth, all can be tweaked to actually have a less carbon footprint.
Speaker 0 | 32:48.015
I would assume that’s a plug for AWS, Azure, Google Cloud. I mean, if you’re running… if you’re more migrated to the cloud i would assume you’re you i would assume they’re more efficient at managing whatever kilowatt hours and energy stacks and stuff like that in a data center then um okay you
Speaker 1 | 33:10.112
could also say it’s the it’s the equipment provider your laptops right like you know why it goes kind of back to the printer discussion so why do laptops have to replace every three to five years what if you made a better laptop you know that didn’t why does my iphone why does my why does iphone come out with a new iphone every uh six months why do you think i mean yeah yeah why yeah you know what i mean like why and if i don’t upgrade it slows down okay so you answered this for me because i don’t know the answer to this one so why is an iphone cost three times the cost of a washing machine yeah it has many computer chips and at least 100x times the materials required to to build yeah yeah because they can that’s right
Speaker 0 | 33:51.686
that’s right i mean sometimes the most simplest answer is you know the truth absolutely okay next question it’s like you know like okay i didn’t you know it didn’t take a genius to figure that one out i don’t mean that um
Speaker 1 | 34:10.200
uh i i have a comment for what your your perspective on something here so i was just uh was reading um on the wire today Some respectable institutions just did a test for what happens if you were to completely do your software development cycle with AI.
Speaker 0 | 34:29.983
I’m sorry, what was that? You were going to scrap everything and do all your software with AI?
Speaker 1 | 34:35.226
All your software with AI. So they ran a very strong test, and they said, okay, from the design, coding, test, and documentation, they built, I believe, 70 applications. The application took seven minutes to produce a $1 in cost. Great. 88% accuracy.
Speaker 0 | 34:56.083
Yeah, it’s probably just, it would have taken the coder how long? And how accurate would he have been? Depends on the coder.
Speaker 1 | 35:02.174
It depends on the coder. It certainly would cost you a dollar.
Speaker 0 | 35:05.574
And just to see.
Speaker 1 | 35:09.296
And it certainly wouldn’t happen in seven minutes.
Speaker 0 | 35:11.336
What’d they use?
Speaker 1 | 35:13.657
They used the ChatGPT, and they also used the Google components.
Speaker 0 | 35:19.338
Yeah. What I found in my well, what’s the question?
Speaker 1 | 35:23.139
Well, the question is, is what is the impact that’s going to have on IT departments and companies that their services out to provide consulting services for large corporations to do things that are dependent on large pyramid models, right? It’s about bodies versus time, right?
Speaker 0 | 35:44.049
Go ahead, just explain your pyramid model.
Speaker 1 | 35:47.151
So typically when an IT project is done, you have a team, right? And you have, you know, senior, maybe an enterprise architect, you have a scrum master, you have all the other components.
Speaker 0 | 35:58.922
Agile or Waterfall. It’s a lot of money.
Speaker 1 | 36:05.044
And it’s a global distributed component, right? And you have a lot of software and a lot of things that are going on in that.
Speaker 0 | 36:12.646
It’s stupid.
Speaker 1 | 36:14.446
It is crazy. If you were to build an IT department today, what would it look like?
Speaker 0 | 36:18.808
I had an Agile guy come and ask me that day. He’s like, well, you know, because I’m doing some… we’re doing like a community project and rebuilding a building and a very low income area of Hartford. And he’s an agile dude. So we can do this. We’re going to do that. I’m going to bring in this project manager and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, you know, I kind of talked to him a little bit about, you know, what I was doing and with the podcast and stuff. And I was like, you know, I was like, you do realize that in a startup company, you don’t exist. You cost a lot of money. I was like, you only exist in like very, you know, expensive organizations. So you have this, you know, kind of, uh, it’s just interestingly, it was, it was kind of like a paradigm shift. We were both having a paradigm shift at the same time. And I was like, well, maybe I do need like an agile guy. And he was thinking, well, maybe I am worthless and, or maybe I wouldn’t exist. You know, and it was just like, uh, but anyways, keep going. So So you realize that you’re going to be replaced with chat GPT. No, you already have. Okay, so they produced all this. I’m still trying to get to the question. What’s this deep question for me?
Speaker 1 | 37:35.075
So the question is that the role of an IT department and the economics.
Speaker 0 | 37:42.418
Yes, yes.
Speaker 1 | 37:43.698
That’s the question, right? Deep. Because when the tipping point happened that just says, my 300 people that I have. They don’t make economic sense for me.
Speaker 0 | 37:55.519
Yeah, we should be thinking. So here’s the, great. It’s a great point. So yeah, we should be thinking properly. It probably really depends on A, who the CEO hires. Is the CEO smart enough or whoever’s in charge to hire the right IT-minded individual? Does the IT, what kind of IT individual are we hiring? Are we hiring like the typical stereotypical engineering, you know?
Speaker 1 | 38:22.618
tunnel vision like blinders on uh it guy or are we hiring the more creative thinker you know out of the box uh cto right and i think that’s i think that’s important right because then and that cto is going to not just be say savvy as a chief digital officer kind of business you know business needs to have design incorporated and these understand economics but i think that they will have to understand creativity and innovation they’re probably two different things right they’re not dislinked their creativity could certainly just be labeled as i’m thinking outside the box whether it makes economic sense or not but it’s it’s a new way of doing something right um either in the market or even um on a world stage right it’s just a new way i think i’ve just really saved your costs by x or i’ve taken a process and i’ve re-calibrated it
Speaker 0 | 39:22.230
so that it works much better you know in in a certain way right there’s probably multiple ways that an industry could take over and really rise to the top really quickly if they were creative enough and thought the way that you’re thinking here with with green technology and eliminating you know kind of like the fastest path to the cash so to speak while also creating employee happiness
Speaker 1 | 39:51.498
whatever that is three times the question the peg is back to your socialist mark before right so i’m not a socialist but i also understand there’s lots of parts of the world so what happens when large parts of the workforce as we’re seeing now suddenly have to change right for example well let’s say um certain white collar workers and even certain coders in the future are just not required right to fill that workforce but you still need that population to have spending power right because a large part of our economy is consumerism right someone has to be able to buy product unless you’re a eugenics guy then we just need to kill them off that’s exactly right so in certain societies you would easily come up with a universal basic income right that just says we’re going to distribute enough money into society whether you’re working or not so that you can continue to be consumers right but we don’t do this right it’s it’s taboo it’s not seen as a as a good thing but what happens when you have a certain amount of people that are unemployed and can’t afford things you generally have change in political structures right so it’s going to be an interesting yeah it’s a very deep it gets very deep understanding how economy and money works and
Speaker 0 | 41:17.252
um i don’t know if it’s just because i’m older now and and maybe i need to know how this stuff is works more it’s very fascinating to me even just exchange rates to me are very fascinating. Anyone listening to this thing will be like, Phil knows nothing about money. But it fascinates me that I can take $10 from the United States or $100 from the United States. I can go to another country and I can live a lot longer. Should that be? Why should I be able to live for a whole year in another country, all my housing, all my food, electricity bills paid, everything for $10,000? It’s just fascinating to me that that has to cost that much more here.
Speaker 1 | 42:06.545
But what are you giving up for that? That’s the question.
Speaker 0 | 42:10.108
Not bad health. I can tell you that much. Not relaxation. I’m not giving that up. Not surfing. Not time with my family. I’m giving up stress. I know that much.
Speaker 1 | 42:27.179
Well, I’m not going to go there because, once again, I’m not wise enough to know. you know how will these things work i would just i would that it is interesting that our um particularly our technology and i.t driven businesses and culture is very much dependent on venture capital it’s dependent on patents it is dependent on
Speaker 0 | 42:56.006
Everything comes out of this country. Let’s just be honest. Every major invention over the last 200 years, pretty much. Please name one. Maybe this will be a new section of the show. Name an invention that didn’t come out of the United States. I know you know one. There’s got to be one.
Speaker 1 | 43:10.109
Say advanced robotics.
Speaker 0 | 43:15.131
Okay. What, Germany? Where are we coming from? Where was that?
Speaker 1 | 43:18.992
Okay. Yeah, I think some of the things that you see there. China is going to have a lot of things you see. At least right now, China. I would say that there might be using designers from this area, right? Watches, right? Watches eventually were invented here, but you’d buy a Swiss watch before you’d buy something else, right? I guess you could say maybe better brand across there. I would say that there are many parts of society that do some very interesting components that maybe we don’t talk about. you know enough for example technologies i would say probably some of the most advanced um chip making is not happening here it’s happening in china right now next generation stuff we we know what’s happening through there and we also know that the supply chain manufacturing processes happen a bit smoother in in other areas i’d say that u.s education is still empowering the world right we haven’t reached a point yet where say other cultures are um surpassing this education but whose country that just put that first uh landed a completely robotic uh module on a part of the moon that had never been there before and launched a robot to go do that that wasn’t us did
Speaker 0 | 44:44.647
they yes they oh you think that’s a conspiracy i i don’t know did they let me ask did we land on the moon in 1969
Speaker 1 | 44:54.446
before i’m pretty sure we did yeah i don’t believe every single book somewhere right i bought every single book on this subject
Speaker 0 | 45:05.446
I’ve been reading them, just fascinated. Like, why would people really, you know, I bought everything. And when you get into the rockets, the lift capability, the amount of tonnage that we had to lift, the 220, is it 220,000 miles? I think it’s 220,000 miles to the moon. Three day trip. A phone call from the White House, President Nixon on a phone. Reach out and touch someone AT&T to the moon. to a little umbrella on a Land Rover. It’s pretty fascinating that we did that in 1969 and have yet to do that again.
Speaker 1 | 45:45.266
Oh,
Speaker 0 | 45:45.946
weird. I mean, open my, I mean, if you, everything that we’ve been told, right? It’s insane to even believe that it might possibly be not, that it’s a ridiculous thought to everybody, just about everybody. It’s absolutely ridiculous to even contemplate that. But when you really look into the details, it’s a serious, it’s a very serious, it’s much, it’s a much more complicated, it’s a very, very unbelievable thing when you really think about sending someone to the moon. This is no, I don’t, I think a lot of people are just like, yeah, we went to the moon. Of course we did. Like, yeah, we’re America. We did. We’ve got the science. We’ve got the technology. It’s math. It’s math, Phil. It’s science. Like, yes, we are able to use analog devices and look out the window of the ship and map it via the stars. And it’s called, you know, whatever. And, you know, anyways, it’s when I’ve started to actually look into this subject in depth, I actually I’m not saying that it’s not possible that we I’m just saying there is a lot of question marks. And a lot of people that died and disappeared and a lot of other, and a lot of things that, why didn’t we do this? Why are there no stars in the background? Why didn’t we put like a bunch of mirrors on the moon to prove that someone was on the moon? Why do we believe just what we saw on TV? You know, all these different things.
Speaker 1 | 47:23.185
It’s a fun subject to-My simple answer is this, my wife works for NASA.
Speaker 0 | 47:27.729
Okay, so, so what? 400,000 people were involved on the project, right?
Speaker 1 | 47:33.343
I’ve seen enough. And I also believe a lot of this stuff was designed by Tsiolkovsky back in the 1890s of how this would actually work, right? Russian scientist, mathematician. The math all makes sense. The technology was available.
Speaker 0 | 47:46.346
We’d have to do another show just to talk about this alone. I would love to. I would love to see how this all happened. Because one of the theories is, yeah, there’s 400,000 people involved in the project, of course, but everyone was compartmentalized and working on their piece. to make their peace work that’s why but um i disagree with you on this one i appreciate it hey i didn’t say we didn’t go i’m just saying i’m open-minded enough to listen to what yeah uh i
Speaker 1 | 48:14.302
don’t know at the end of the day um my father would say i am freaking crazy other other nations have gotten to the moon um
Speaker 0 | 48:28.930
I just read it. I read that. It would be interesting. I would love to see you read, read some of the books on the subject. And like, we could just go through like bullet points of like, like the things that were brought up and be like, okay, well, what about the F what was the F three engine rocket or whatever, not being able to bring, you know, this amount of lift? Like, what about that? You know? Okay. What about, you know, the, the fact that the, the ramp, like whatever the camp. guidance computer that they used was could only do this this and this you know there’s so many components there’s just absolutely so many things questions there’s proof of garbage trash left on the moon now the human trash okay
Speaker 1 | 49:11.328
that’s what i would love to see where how the satellites can show it i mean there you can find you can look it up and you can actually yeah i know and people are like oh what about so you know we leave trash wherever we go that’s proof enough for me if there’s anything
Speaker 0 | 49:26.862
right yep if if yes and i think other people would argue like oh well how do we know that’s like that picture is real and you know these different things and all this stuff like this but um yeah and if we did land something on the moon why aren’t we sending uh you know satellites to like you know circumvent the moon and you know oh there’s the rover it’s still there you know why don’t we have clear pictures of this like clearer than what we had before so anyways that’s just that’s just for fun to hopefully make people really mad at phil howard for on dissecting popular it nerds for even bringing up such an absurd subject the uh more importantly i had somebody say to my daughter one time when she said that because she does sewing for like you know like a lot of my kids do sewing for fun like sewing machines they’re like what are you like in the 1980s are you from the 1980s and i was like oh crap i was born in 1976 so i guess i guess we’re getting old now you’re back back in time uh what were you doing prior to the invention of the internet let’s say what was the difference in your life between 1986 and 1987
Speaker 1 | 50:32.046
Sure. So in 1986, I had been working a public television station as both a design director and a show producer, basically doing special effects and figuring out content for shows. And that was just at the beginning. There were this idea of Telnet. Ted Turner in particular was very interested in. education over computers as opposed to just TV, which was the landmark way of technology of communication. And that was 86. In 87, it became, all right, we can take a build an Apache server box. And we got a call from Mr. Andreessen to basically say, hey, we’re trying to build a graphical interface to how people are communicating. certain groups you know over these boxes and across here and i’m thinking about a product called netscape you figure this out and and that was probably the difference between 1986 and 1987. people don’t even know netscape keep going yeah so to give you context back then uh there were really no web pages um the search algorithm was a company called lycos Basically, Yahoo.
Speaker 0 | 51:58.598
Was it basically a messaging board, or what was that like? Was that like a DOS prompt type of thing, or what were you looking at? Well,
Speaker 1 | 52:04.083
it’s just Linux. HTML was just being used by scientists, but Linux was the standard back then. Yeah. It’s just the beginning concepts that we start working on of actually a web having a front-end and back-end. You would have some kind of user interface up front that you would see, but there’d be back-end transactions that would be, whether it was HyperCard. for dynamic web flow pages that said, God, not every page is a single page that gets linked. You could actually go three-dimensional and pull data back and forth between this front end and this back end. Having servers that could handle that was imperative and giving toolboxes, little snippets of code. The first visuals that I remember seeing video over there. can’t remember the exact name i’m going to say white box but it was something similar to this was basically there was a single server that you could post a live image like we could be doing over a smartphone for instance and it refreshed at five frames a second basically and it sounded like you were talking to you know a um someone in outer space you know on a space station it was like all broken up and garbled but that was the first time that you could actually have two people have a conversation over over the internet um through there and it was the inventions that started things such as this dnn network which really became aol built up for steve case um it was the first gps system components that we said what happens if we were to link gps satellites so that we could do geolocation and map it and this is something that maybe we worked on with them created geosystems for MapQuest, which was one of the first components, started looking at some boxes that would allow a developer to say, if I put these together, I can actually start creating webpages. And I’m also starting to invent things like Autofill, which is going to be on my tombstone, and it’s going to be misspelled because that’s probably the worst thing I’ve done to society.
Speaker 0 | 54:18.498
That’s amazing.
Speaker 1 | 54:20.140
Yeah, so all of these things happen because… beginning of a technology cycle, there’s no limits, right? What do you want to create? All right. No one’s told me I can’t do it yet. It’s just, am I smart enough to solve for something? And I just do it. And I’m not sure the value of it yet, but if it sticks, it’ll stick.
Speaker 0 | 54:36.425
So this is a good question. So this is, do you miss those days?
Speaker 1 | 54:45.448
I don’t miss those days because those days still exist for me.
Speaker 0 | 54:48.369
Exactly. And that’s exactly where I was going. how do you stay constantly renewed? And this is for people that like, you know, get tired of that. You know, they’re just like, there’s so many people out there. Just like, I’m just tired. I’m just, I’m done. How do you stay renewed? What’s the, is it just, you know, live like a curious child all the time or what is it?
Speaker 1 | 55:13.369
I think it’s, there’s probably something deeply psychologically disturbed with individuals like myself,
Speaker 0 | 55:19.233
but I would say it starts with,
Speaker 1 | 55:22.736
there’s always a problem to solve, right? There’s something you want to do. You know, there’s some kind of problem to solve. And then I think the other component is you need to find the right environment and individuals to work with, right?
Speaker 0 | 55:34.506
How do you do that? And I’ve said that too. I, I, I’ve, a lot of times I try to give that people, people advise me and say, look, you need to really choose where you go and what you do. I don’t people, I don’t know if people necessarily do that.
Speaker 1 | 55:50.052
It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s hard, right? Because it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a risk factor that you take. And I also think there’s a conception, right? It depends on what kind of individual are. So some people would say you could only do that by going from start to start, right? And there there’s a level like that i’m starting something up and therefore i can constantly think that they do things or pick the right startup you could do this inside a very large organization right one of the big players um but you have to kind of find how to reinvent yourself every three years and the reason i say three years it takes about three years to go from an idea to prove that it’s actually scalable or that it should die off it is like a three-year cycle maybe that will accelerate but But right now, it’s still this three-year. You start someplace. You’re in this golden period of they’re going to listen to you. You’ll have ideas. You’ll get some kind of backing. Then you better prove that you can do it once, twice, or three times. You’re going to have to build some kind of smallish group that can prove that it functions and it’s buildable and whatever is necessary to survive. And then it’s going to have to do something of significance in order for it to go on and scale. And that’s about a three-year cycle. And then that’s usually your test period. If it doesn’t work in three years… chances are you’re going to have to move on or figure out how to rethink this again. And because the reality is this, it always starts out with the technology. I know we talked about the data and you need that data to understand what problem you’re trying to solve. But if your technology doesn’t work, you’re sunk. The second thing is, is whatever you had planned for your resource wise, either physical resource, people resource, financial resource. it’s never going to be enough of what you thought you needed, right? And so therefore, you’re going to have to go back and sharpen your pencil and say, I have to do with less, but I can do more with less. And that’s actually going to make a better design because you suddenly said, you know what, what did I really have to have? What would I like would like to have? So you get better at it. And you might have to pivot and you’ll have to be tough and you figure it out. And the way that it will survive is that if your idea is strong enough, right, or you have enough people that are interested in it. it will probably survive these iterations that you go through. So whether you go to startups or whether you go work inside a larger organization that can do large projects, which has always been attractive to me as one do large things, is you probably have to reinvent yourself every three years. And you probably are going to be one of those very difficult candidates, employees, or part of that group, whether you’re in a hive or in a larger group of people, that they don’t really know what your job description is. or you take a sign and saying okay i’ll invent it as i go along and i don’t have to have the answer to everything and with risk tolerance like i have a rule which is an original um i actually read it from colin powell and said yep he nailed it dead on if you have an idea or a situation that is um less than 40 percent no matter how good idea it is but you can only see 40 of what’s going on probably not going to make it however if you can get in a range between If you can get to 70% of a vision or part of that solution, that’s probably enough to know it’s going to go forward. So somewhere between 40% and 70%, you have a pretty good chance that you’re going to have a fair shot of succeeding. Once I hit 70%, I don’t need to get to 100%. That’s just a waste of money and time. I should just go for it, right? So having organizations have different levels of risk. And as an individual, you have to decide what things you’re going to do. Are you going to be a zero to one? inventor? Are you going to be someone who can take that one to 10, right? And get that one idea and get it to the point where it’s actually provable? Or are you going to be an individual that’s going to go 10 to a billion, right? And make something big? Or are you going to be all three? It’s hard to be all three. Maybe you can be two out of three, maybe one out of three. You kind of have to decide what it is that you’re going to do. And you know, you’re going to get beat up in all process. So it’s just the way it is,
Speaker 0 | 59:52.945
right? That was priceless. I don’t even know where to begin. There’s so much to unpack there. I’m going to try to summarize this as simple as possible. A, you have to be willing to take risks. Some people are unwilling to take risks. You have to be willing to believe that you can create something out of nothing, meaning an idea, and take it to life. Three, it’s a risk, but it’s got to be a calculated risk. So you actually have to break down the numbers. It’s a numbers game. And you don’t just do something stupid based on a dream. A lot of people do that. They’re like, you know, they have an idea. It’s just an idea. It’s really more of a dream. And Oh, I just throw all the money at it. They never did the math. They never knew that they never calculated it out. They never looked at the process or like, you know, like you said, like calculate like the whole Colin Powell thing, the 40 or 70%, 70%. That’s called a business plan. Yes. Who’s planning, who’s planning, you know, you might be goal setting, but who the heck’s, I got tons of planning. I don’t need planning. I don’t need planning. Yeah. I mean, I hear, you know, how many times I’ve heard that? Like, I don’t need planning. We got plenty of planning. Okay, fine. That might be the case. That might actually be the case, but okay. Well, what’s the plan pointing to me? Maybe the point is something stupid. I don’t know. But yeah, I, if people ask me sometimes, like, how did you start your business and how’d you get where you were? And I was like, well, it’s a numbers game. I looked at the numbers. Um, I figured this is what I’m going to do. I know the numbers and Now let’s subtract 30% and see if I’ll still be successful. And that takes you right to the 70% thing. That’s interesting. And I was like, I just knew like if I do 70% and then I look at the math, I was like, will I still survive? Will I be able to keep the lights on in the house? Will I still make, will I still have food? Yeah, I will. Well, I know I can do this. If I know that I can, so if the number was like, uh, if, if, if the number was, you know, this, this is the goal. And I know that I always hit 80%.
Speaker 1 | 61:59.160
all right let’s subtract 30 from 80 and if i do that will i survive yes so if that makes any sense it just sounds like a bunch of like like a mind map but yeah it makes sense and you know it’s an older model but it still holds true uh i think harvard had done it and it is a balanced portfolio idea right so if you’re going to provide services and also innovations and you categorize the three areas core services things that are done that just should be done and maybe you’re not doing right and they’re going to have a return on investment of a 10 cost savings or a 10 increase i just should be doing these things i haven’t done them yet 70 of what i’m doing in my portfolio is adding a 10 value across there nobody’s going to deny that business model then the next level is adjacent innovation matt is saying hey there’s a somebody else that’s doing something cool e-commerce in grocery stores And if I apply that to a clothing store or to a pharmaceutical company, I don’t have to invent it, but I have to transform it and put it into context. Right. I could see a huge advantage. So it’s an adjacent innovation. There’s higher risk because maybe it will or won’t take. But it’s not a super high risk. It’s just a matter of execution and marketing and components. And then there’s a third level that says, I’m going to do a moonshot, go back to the moon. Right. So I’m going to create the next iTunes. I’m going to send somebody off to the moon and get them back, whether you believe it or not. And that could make me the next unicorn, right? So if you go to any sane person with money, whether it’s a VC person or to your CFO in a company, and you say, look, I’m going to break this down. 70% of what I’m going to do is going to be a 10% return on investment. 20% well, you have a good chance of maybe a 20% return on investment. I can’t guarantee it, but I can prove it to you. It shows over here. We just haven’t done it over here, so it’s a great way of innovating. And the third one’s a moonshot saying, boy, we could be the next Powerball winner, right? You know, if we do this properly, isn’t it better to put the portfolio back together? Because at least you know everything I’m doing is going to get you 7% of what we’re talking about. It’s going to get you 10% return, which would be enough to justify the other two, right? And that’s another way of leveling risk, right?
Speaker 0 | 64:17.065
One thing that you want… Okay, so now it’s like, okay, well, all right, we spoke, you know… philosophy and we’ve been talking for over an hour here and i don’t care it’s this is great this is one of the longer shows maybe we’ll break it down into sections for people and we’ll just maybe we’ll end with this because it’s been so deep so we’ve got all this philosophy of technology um we break it down we can break it down we talked about logistics a little bit you’re a little bit involved in health care i think i find health care to be um just tragically broken um in so many ways and especially in the technology world because there’s just so much great opportunity there and i think that the maybe the path forward is long and there’s a lot of politics and a lot of things involved like digital charting and do i have an access to my digital medical records and why can’t i fly to morocco where i was last month and my why can’t the hospital there just pull up my entire digital history why can’t it be on my little iphone watch or something like that it probably should be it could be but um then there’s just health care in general and workers in the hospital and a shortage of workers what what you know where where’s the future there
Speaker 1 | 65:33.816
because i know you have a little bit of involvement in this somewhat or some thoughts you know what i mean yeah huge issue and usually huge issues end up having the best solutions right because you you really have to think through it and that it’s a societal thing right how they treat health care in other countries right and without insurance robbing me and without insurance dipping
Speaker 0 | 65:54.887
their pockets into everything and probably get killed now the next thing is like phil howard of dissecting popular it nerds assassinated you know um keep going right
Speaker 1 | 66:03.860
So we’re a country, and I’ll just speak from our perspective, that we tend to look at only the most high-profile tragic diseases. And, you know, we can get close to curing cancer and other things, right? And there’s a huge amount of components that happen in there. Whereas the daily health care, just staying fit or taking care of normal things,
Speaker 0 | 66:26.449
prevent
Speaker 1 | 66:27.690
COVID, right? Yeah. It goes to CVS now. or it goes to Walmart and you have a different level of where you get your care taken care of, right? Because that hospitals used to make their money by keeping beds filled. They can’t do that anymore, right? It’s because they don’t have the workers. They would like to do it, but nobody wants to work in hospitals anymore. So once again, if you were to design something, the problem is this, how do I fix insurance? And how do I perhaps fix the worker thing? Can more workers be done through robotic processes or through data? Can a certain level of education be good enough to do a certain amount of the functions that could only be done before by people who only had doctorates in eight years of cross-hairs? And we’re seeing that with physician assistants and certain levels of nurses. And it’s not that you’re seeing a degradation, you’re just seeing it more affordable and more accessible coming across there. I think that the fact of the matter is people are living longer than they have in the past, that it’s more expensive than ever to get health care. And I think the only way that health care costs will lower is if these insurance companies can get their profits in another direction. If they had another avenue, it could be funding sustainability risk. Let’s say if you’re a clever insurance company that underwrites climate change technologies, that work and you suddenly are making X amount of profit, could it allow you to take the cost pressures off of producing diabetes drugs, right? Because you’re still hitting their stakeholder needs and things. So insurance is just insurance. I think a lot of these companies, whether it’s healthcare insurance or property and casual or climate change insurance, as long as they are hitting their numbers or increasing their business patterns, I think you’ll start to see some changes taking place. I think… AI, they constantly talk about AI being a huge implication to healthcare and my own dentist. I went in there the other day to get my teeth cleaned and I didn’t need x-rays. He said, let me do x-rays on you. And I said, why? He says, I’m building a database of all patients’teeth right now because I went and took a six-week class in AI programming, and I now have 50,000 pieces of data that I can compare. And I said, so who did the programming for you? She said, I did it myself. I never programmed before. It took me six weeks to learn how to do this. And it took me six weeks then later to build the program. And now I’m using it and I’m sharing with a network of other dentists and I’m going to be able to reduce your bill and give you better healthcare and your dental. So there’s a lot of promise that’s out there.
Speaker 0 | 69:15.209
I might want to have that person on the show.
Speaker 1 | 69:17.711
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 69:18.652
That’s insane. Yeah. It’s insane.
Speaker 1 | 69:22.635
Yeah.
Speaker 0 | 69:24.180
what can i selfishly do we’re gonna fill you build up um yeah there there could be another model too maybe maybe there’s a better model maybe insurance doesn’t need to maybe maybe
Speaker 1 | 69:41.650
it’s maybe it doesn’t need to exist at all yeah i question insurance you know well insurance tie to people’s pensions and there’s a whole bunch of things The other question that I would say is, does IP need to exist?
Speaker 0 | 69:56.467
I don’t know.
Speaker 1 | 69:57.648
I don’t know either. I’ve become less and less convinced that there’s any value to it.
Speaker 0 | 70:03.598
So explain.
Speaker 1 | 70:05.876
Well, traditionally, IP are patents or unique information that you have coming across there. And you’re given a certain amount of period time before it can be released publicly where other groups can benefit across there. And that’s a capitalistic approach. But in today’s world, honestly, how much IP is truly protected and what’s just out there anyway, right?
Speaker 0 | 70:25.429
No, every time someone comes up with a new golf club, China copies it and we got a new golf club. I mean, it’s not like…
Speaker 1 | 70:31.753
Let’s be honest, right? Yes. throughout. So is there a better way of doing this, of having this? It’s not to say information.
Speaker 0 | 70:42.357
And just so you know, I only say that because every time I meet with an IT director that has manufacturing on mainland China, he’s always asking me, how do I prevent packet sniffing? And how do I prevent this? And we’re like, oh, you probably can’t. You know you can’t. And what kind of encrypting can I do? So it’s not like I’m really picking on China, but I am. I’m definitely picking on China. But just because it comes up, the Great Wall of China, and it’s just, that’s it.
Speaker 1 | 71:03.394
You want to solve problems? you know there’s a difference if you want to truly want to solve problems you’re thinking open source and you know availability and githubs and things for for people to share right the you know the solution making but at the same time you want to protect ip because you’re saying that’s my knowledge and i should own that and i
Speaker 0 | 71:20.749
should have an advantage in business and make it successful or why am i else motivated come across if you’re original enough to you can’t be copied the other thing i was saying about the chat gpt thing the other day i was like it’s only as good as the person behind it asking the questions too
Speaker 1 | 71:35.228
oh it’s that but it’s also what information is being fed into it what’s the source of the data that’s the true you know value of why you’re seeing the metas and the facebooks and others um trying to gather as much social data as possible because that’s what the natural language queries are being based on yes you can ask the questions the answers are going to come back up your data sources and this is the challenge to i.t companies including the googles just give me an idea yeah and the mckenzie’s right because they’re using other people’s data that they don’t own. They’re saying, I’ve worked on projects. I understand your models. I’m done with this AI thing. But guess what? It’s not your data.
Speaker 0 | 72:16.888
I want to farm people. Now I want to farm people. I want to find the smartest people. I want to find the top. Because I’m a firm believer in the 80-20 rule, right? I believe that humans are born. The foundation, the foundations. the foundation of humans is ignorance and it’s only through seeking knowledge and and and reading and you know and things like this that we actually i i think you know move forward so the top 20 and the majority of humans are somewhat guided by desires and i think we see that in um legislation and things like this like you know for example the legalization of marijuana you know remember in the 80s when it was like this is your brain on drugs and an egg in the frying pan and reefer madness and all that and now all of a sudden it’s you know the miracle you know miracle drug and you know it’s you know pharmaceutical you know it’s just like to me that’s a that’s a perfect example um so yeah let’s just farm the top 20 throw it into an ai model let’s get the right data get get the right data
Speaker 1 | 73:35.040
It’s a big problem to solve, and it’s not going to be solved off the existence. Some disruptor is going to come in there and say, I can provide it. And you start to see that you’re seeing Amazon offering to start putting models out there, including education. You’re certainly should just not always look at a Western centric point of view. You should say, so what is happening in South Korea? What is happening in China? And how are they dealing with that?
Speaker 0 | 74:02.092
I really just want to get on a show and ask Jeff Bezos. I really want to do like, can you imagine like, like years ago, did you ever imagine this would go where it went from a garage selling books? Does he think back now? I mean, really, does he think back and be like, wow, what the heck?
Speaker 1 | 74:20.867
You know what? I don’t think he thinks back. I think he thinks, I honestly say he thinks. See, that’s the same question you asked me is it’s like, okay, well I did it. So therefore I’m just going to keep on. expanding on no you it’s probably the same thing that motivated him to go do that is how he probably addresses every day he’s got other problems to solve to keep this thing afloat and to grow and all the other you know trappings right and benefits that come with it but i guarantee you every day he’s thinking what’s
Speaker 0 | 74:46.423
that next thing right and and i’m sure he doesn’t change this person i’d be surprised i was just fascinating to me uh thank you so much for being on the show this has been an absolute pleasure i I find this very, I hope everyone out there listening has been, you know, either renewed or sparked or, or it’s just, it’s been such a great show. Do you have any final words of advice or anything for, for people out there listening that, you know, the, the it directors that are in charge of technology for an organization that may be stuck in a cost center that may be, you know, maybe, maybe they’re, they’ve got old technology silos, whatever it is. What’s your, your final piece of advice to anyone?
Speaker 1 | 75:30.634
Yeah, I think the lesson that I’ve learned, it’s okay not to know all the answers, right? And to go solve for situations where you don’t have everything figured out. And then I would also say that the importance of IT cannot be underscored, right? Everything collapses if the technology doesn’t work. the side is that’s just who we are and where we’ve evolved to and often it’s always been like that to be commoditized there’s that funny joke you know you call the id department they live in cave and you know their answer is turn it on and off right yeah i think that’s pretty brilliant you know um through there um most of them are nerds usually led by a couple business savvy folks and i would say that The idea of those first inventors, you know, the first guy who came up with Semiconductor, the first info of the Internet. That’s great. It was the IT departments that enabled, right? They’re the ones that made it real and actually made it functional. So there’s always going to be IT. It might be a completely different world of IT at what they’re doing. It might be IT for robots and IT for AI and all, but you still need that department. And they’re probably still going to say, did you try turning it up? because you’re going to say what’s the simple solution first before we have to start pulling things apart to get it working right so that’s yes thank you sir it’s been a pleasure yeah
