So Jonathan, tell me about your vision.
Sure. My vision is that we can use artificial intelligence in a way that allows people to do their jobs faster,
rather than taking on extra work, that allows people to recover some of the things we've lost by our overuse of technology,
so that you can spend less time in the office and more time with your family, while still getting all of your work done in a timely manner.
Tell me more about that.
I think that we have become more and more disconnected, that we spend so much time online that most people, when you say how many friends do you have,
they look at their account of friends they have on a social media platform. They have Facebook friends or Instagram followers,
but they don't have human face-to-face connections. They talk about dating, they just talk about meeting through the apps.
When I was a kid, or even when I was in my early 20s, if you met someone online, the first thing you'd say is,
let's come up with a story for how we met. We don't want to tell anyone to know that we met online.
Because it was so negative, and now it's become the opposite. Every single time you hear someone talk about dating, all they do is complain about,
oh, I hate the apps, the apps are the worst. But we've lost the ability to have face-to-face conversations and human conversations because we're so diving in.
But I think the one interesting thing about AI is that now, every time you see a post, you go, did someone write this or did AI write that?
The only way you know you're talking to a real person is face-to-face. So I think one of the interesting results is that it's going to push us to more face-to-face communication,
which I think is a good thing.
I'm kind of confused in things you said. First thing you said, I'm just trying to get clarity here.
First thing you said that we have lost the ability to talk face-to-face.
Yes.
Is that a statement, fact, opinion? What is it?
Yeah, it's my opinion. It's based on more and more people don't have that kind of, we socialize via the internet before we socialize in person face-to-face.
If you've ever, for example, had a long-distance relationship or someone you talk to a bunch online, then the first time you meet them in person,
it's really, there's this disconnect because this person knows a lot about you, but they're also a stranger.
This is what happens. This is literally been my experience many years ago when I first met people online.
The more you talk online, it's very different than talking in person.
I feel like we see a lot of these people, the younger people in their 20s, people in their late teens,
having most of their communications via Instagram or Snapchat, and they don't have the ability to talk in person.
When you do talk to them in person, they can't look you in the eyes.
The number of people who can't order a pizza on the telephone because they're so uncomfortable with making a phone call, they have to do it via an app.
That's the skill that's missing that is a very useful skill, and it's pretty critical to being human.
That could go two different ways, and I agree to you to some extent.
What was the second thing that you said?
I said that because of AI is so convincing, when we see a post on social media now, we first thought, is this a real picture or is this an AI picture?
The only way we can know for sure we're talking to a person now is meeting in person.
I think that we'll see just like when music became ubiquitous with Napster, then with Spotify, music lost its value.
You don't get paid a million dollars to record an album anymore.
You don't make your money as a musician.
You make it from live performances, just like you did in the 1800s before recordings existed.
Live performances going, and this is why everyone talks about, oh, the power of, I much prefer events or experiences than possessions.
We've shifted back to the idea that experiences are really valuable, and I think that sometimes technology gets to a point where it actually pushes back towards an anti-technology,
or we want to see concerts in person to experience them.
So we want to talk to people in person to be sure that it's a real experience.
Wow. That's a very different point of view.
I had never thought about it that way.
But what's stopping, like let's talk about the face-to-face person experience.
We are heading towards where AI is actually coming into a robotic form, per se, and it's getting bigger and bigger,
and it's getting clearer and clearer, and better and better, more looking like a human.
And when that be a face-to-face experience, what would you think about that?
Yeah, I think that's a problem that eventually if you can get a robot that looks convincingly human, there's different ways to solve that problem.
I've seen there's different talk of one way to solve it is to make it illegal for a robot to look like a human.
It can be close, but not enough to convince you, or that they have to work.
You have to do something to differentiate, specifically to avoid misleading.
But that's something that I don't think it's that close. That's maybe at least 20 years away.
So that right now the real problem I focus with is the artificial intelligence problem, which is all via computers.
But I think you're exactly right that the next thing we'll have to face is, well then, okay, we're back to face-to-face, but what if robots are convincing?
It's a legitimate question, and it's something that has to be solved some other way, either by creating a cultural rule or creating something else, or probably just by weighing them.
Like, I can't imagine that a robot will ever weigh less than a human, right? Because it's got metal parts and all that stuff inside.
Maybe that's the solution.
I mean, I bet they'll find ways to make it lighter.
Essentially, I'm assuming the goal here that you're trying to solve stems from people being lonely or not having enough connections with real people that they go use social media, strike, strike, or make a connection with someone else.
And I think that's what the AI is actually doing, because now you can actually chat with AI as human chats. It's crazy. It's getting to that point where it's like you're talking to, for me, it's like talking to a real girl, which doesn't exist, but only exists in code.
And essentially, it's getting to that point.
And so is that what the root is that you're trying to solve, video vision?
Yeah, I think that a lot of the, whenever a new technology comes out, it ends up being used as a, it ends up becoming some part of our dating culture.
So as soon as the Internet came out, it became about adult content, and of course became tons of different ways about dating. There are so many dating websites and apps.
Those are always the worst use cases.
When we first thought, hey, when people first talked about the World Wide Web and the Internet, the idea was, what if everyone had access to all the information they could ever need? What if everyone knew everything that was in the encyclopedia? That's not how we see the Internet anymore, is it?
We've lost that wide-eyed vision of it as a place where only good things happen, where everyone's nice to each other, and no one would ever leave a mean comment or say something mean or cyberbullying.
So there's been a cultural shift now that we've had the technology for 30 years. And more and more, you're exactly right, they're doing the same thing where now, yes, you can have a parasocial relationship with an AI girlfriend or an AI boyfriend.
And that's the worst use case of the technology. Those are the people that, what they're doing, just like there's now people who have made AIs that will robocall people. So now we have more telemarketers.
That's making the world a worse place. The people behind them all the time. Yeah. And when they reach out to be on my show, I was like, you're a super villain.
Why would I want to interview or promote literally the worst type of person you can ever encounter? There's no one worse than the puppet master of telemarketer, right?
Someone was like, what if I can use AI to make the world a worse place? I don't want that. So I'm very aware that there are people using it to make the world a worse place.
But my belief is that when you use AI correctly, when you see it as a tool that you use to accomplish your tasks that you use to strategically improve what you're doing at work, then it becomes something that you can actually have more time to spend doing the things that matter.
Tell me more about that.
Sure. Most people assume that because I'm an AI guy that I love artificial intelligence, I love the computer, that I love the Internet. None of that's true. To me, it's a tool.
And when I'm not at work, I never talk about it. I don't I spend time with my family as soon as this call finishes. Me and my kids at summer vacation, I'm going to take them to the pool. Sure, I'll have my laptop with me so I can do work.
I'm working on a new book. I spend as much time in person with them as I can. That's the most viable way we can spend our time. So when we see it as a tool, which is what it is just like, you know, it's a tool just like social media is a tool, then we approach it very differently.
This is why there's people who, for example, they use Facebook for entertainment, like a consumer, but people who market on Facebook who that's how they find their customers or hats how they run their ads, they never use it as a consumer because it's their work.
So, for me, the Internet is my job.
I'm at work right now like I'm having a good time. This is a nice conversation. These are insightful questions but I'm still at work. So, at the light setup, I have a I dressed up for you I did my hair like all those little elements.
I don't do that when I'm going swimming with my kids I don't stop to do my hair and make sure I'm shaved before I go swimming with the kids that's not at work.
So, when you use AI like the big the recent, there was a recent study from Harvard that showed that AI increased people's efficiency by about 40%.
And so they could get things done 40% faster and the quality of work was about 19% better. So the thing that I really believe is that when you use it correctly, you can get your work done in three days instead of five and then you can reinvest those other two days
up skilling yourself, spending more time with your family, all those other things we no longer have the time to spend.
So what I want to kind of lead a force for is driving in that direction where we use that new time better, we use it on the things we should have instead of just saying, now I have two more days I can do 20% or 40% more work like that's not what we want in the same way that
we used to when we invented the watch, it went from, I'll meet you in the morning, and it's like you look at the sun and roughly know what time to show up so sometimes you're waiting two hours for a rough window to show up now watches haven't given us more freedom because
now I need to be there at nine instead it's actually means we fill up more and more of our time like my family has a lot of lawyers and lawyers build their time in blocks of three minutes. And that's what a way to live or every three minutes you have to write down what you were doing and block out the next
block out freedom that's the opposite like that's not the promise of the watch. So my goal my vision is to help people see it as a tool in a way that can improve communication that can allow you spend more time building those skills that have kind of been lost and that you
now can get your work done faster you can do just as good of a job, use it strategically. And instead of taking that free time we've now getting more free time again every time we get a new technology, let's us do things faster, we have more free time.
And that's what we need to do is that more effectively. Another example is the cell phone.
When cell phones, you know didn't exist when I was a child. First it was pagers that it was car phones you can have a call a phone but it's attached to your car like you couldn't take it out of the car and had a wire.
My kids can't even wrap their heads around what a pager could possibly be or what it could do let alone a phone with a wire.
And for most people we thought it would give us freedom while I can work from anywhere, but it turns out no your boss can call you from anywhere.
Now when you go on vacation we hear all these stories I went on vacation my boss call me and said it's an emergency at work. When I was a kid, we went on vacation, my parents were unreachable.
And remember, even if you call the hotel they were staying at like it was just it did that possibility didn't exist. And I for a while, my phone, I would get like phantom messages like you're so used to the phone ringing or you get a notification where there's a text or an
email that I would get phantom signals in my leg I would think it had I got an email when I hadn't.
So, having learned from that I turned off all messaging on my phone I never get alerts, the only time I turn on sound is if I'm in the middle of a conversation or if my wife is going somewhere and I know that she's gonna have to ask me a question.
So, you think that we need to be always available and it turns out it's never an emergency unless you're a doctor, and you have actual emergencies like most people, you work in an office, there's never going to be an email that has to be dealt with in the next 15 minutes,
it's never gonna happen. And I, I've owned my own business for 14 years it's never happened where it's that level of emergency where it's life or death in seven or eight minutes which for a surgeon, yes of course right that's a different thing but we like to feel important,
but we've sacrificed so much freedom for that feeling.
But that's the thing the surgeons don't even use phones they use pagers.
Yeah, after pages and my kids don't know what those are.
And I'm like, oh, you hit the spot right on like the way you said it, and the things you said. Oh my gosh, I.
And the challenge, the biggest challenge is, they are people, I mean, people are addicted to the feeling of certain things of feeling of getting a message of feeling for watching the new real so much that they don't realize what they lose and what they consume.
Yeah, that is crazy. But let's go to the real life examples, if you and I know the answers to this but for the sake of the audience.
What can you give us some real life examples where people can actually use AI in a productive way, day to day working people.
So, the two tasks that we spend the most time on as workers or employees or even working for yourself is email and looking for stuff.
So, people like you and I who run a podcast or host some type of information or people who have a YouTube channel, spend a study found 10 to 20% of our day just looking for stuff.
Where did they put that recording from three weeks ago where's that clip from that interview with Jonathan.
We don't think about that people don't talk about that with AI because it's boring.
But the boring tasks are the ones I would like to get off my plate the most. Most people they talk about AI and email, their thought is oh AI can answer my email.
I don't think that's a good use case. What if I could sort your emails, so that you sort them into the three categories there's emails that you need the like a notification but you don't even need to look at they're just there if you have to go and look and say,
Oh, what was the login link when I bought that product or where's that receipt.
We don't actually need to read those we just need those as a copy, like when you buy something at the Apple Store they send you the receipt by email.
That's the first category, the middle category is emails that you need to read but you don't need to reply to.
For example, I got a reminder email from you, we have a meeting in an hour. I didn't need to, if I replied to that wouldn't it be you'd be surprised it will be weird and I just tell I'm just reminding you you don't have to tell me.
So, that's the second category, the most important category is these are the emails you actually need to reply to most, I get several thousand emails a day, and I need to reply to seven or less emails per day.
Such a small percentage of emails fall into that category where I actually need to reply.
What if I only saw those seven and they were in one file and the next group or in another. So, I use an AI tools to sort my email so that then those ones I can actually give a thoughtful response to.
And I don't need AI to write those for me because I'm only responding to seven emails a day. If I'm trying to respond to 100 emails a day or a lot of the emails that don't really matter of course then you have to start using AI for that efficiency.
Same thing with looking for files, right, if I can just know, like a lot of my content, let's say you have a lot of pictures, you're a person who does Pinterest, you have a lot of videos.
If you haven't named them very carefully, traditional tools can't find the file you're looking for because you can't just describe it. You can't say hey there's a picture of me and the kids at the Grand Canyon.
The file is named wrong, can you find it, but an AI who can actually look at the images and look at the metadata and see those things can go look at all the images on your hard drive in a matter of seconds and then find it very quickly, or I have hundreds of hours of videos that I've recorded over my career.
So I want to find a video from 10 years ago or even a month ago.
I can describe it and because the AI has watched the video it has the trends created so in transcript, it can usually find it and much faster than a traditional method where I'm very good about naming my files but still, I sometimes forget where I put some project
on. Did I put it on the cloud server? Did I put it on the video server? Did I put it on our video host or is it just on my local hard drive? Did I put it on my desktop or my laptop? Those things, they happen to everyone. So those, in my opinion, are the really most useful places.
It's where any task that you spend a lot of time doing, but that doesn't feel that important. If you, at the end of your day, you answer a lot of emails, you'll feel like I didn't really do that much today.
I know that's how I feel when I spend like eight hours catching up on all my email. I never feel like I accomplished anything. I don't have that serotonin feeling. So I feel like those are the two biggest use cases. A lot of people, and it's unfortunate, think that the best way to use AI is to replace your personality.
I'll have AI post to social media for me. I'll have AI write my emails. That's the worst use case because that's the thing that makes you special. Don't give that up. Don't outsource the thing that's most unique about you, your personality, your specialness, your spark.
Wow, that is, I want to say it's spot on what you have discovered here, Jonathan. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show, and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.