Welcome to the Innovation Conversation, a podcast
about innovators, both in business and real life.
Hosted by myself, Ricardo Rescual and Harry McCona.
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Hi, and welcome to another episode of The Innovation
Conversation. Today we are joined by Mike Tedasko.
Mike, welcome to the podcast. Ricardo, thanks
for having me. I'm excited about the conversation
we're going to have. A pleasure having you here,
Mike. Would you like to introduce yourself to
the audience, please? Yeah, I'd love to. Hello,
everyone. Mike Tedasko. My background is buried.
I started off my career in the world of finance
and accounting. I ran my own business for a few
years. I joined PayPal, was in products there,
worked on some really cool, exciting products
in my time there. But then in my second half
of my career within PayPal, I ran the innovation
group there after we had separated from eBay.
Did that for about six years, and then most recently
left that to work at a university at an AI center
at San Diego State University. It's a quite an
impressive career. I mean, it seems like you're
the right guy to talk about anything to do with
innovation, but also AI, because I was having...
Bring it on. I'm ready for it, Ricardo. Yeah.
Okay. All right. So I think, you know, having
that background and coming from PayPal, I think
one of the first questions is, how important
is it for a tech company or, you know, something
that started and obviously grew into this back
entity company with this PayPal to continue to
focus on innovation? Look, I think, yeah, for
a technology company, you need to be ahead of
the curve. Like I, I live very close to where
Intel's headquarters are. For anybody who might
be following the news on Intel, I mean, it is,
no, it was a technology company that has birthed
so many, so much of what we have today exists
because of that. But they missed mobile, they
missed GPUs, they missed So many things, and
now it's has an ousted CEO. It's a shell of its
former self. And, you know, like that's what
happens in technology. If you're not innovating,
if you are not up on like what the next new thing
is going to be. Yeah, you could still survive,
but you're not going to thrive. And so for any
company in the technology space, you need to
be thinking about what are the next platforms?
And ultimately, like, what are the better ways
that I can use. technology to better serve the
customers who I have now or who I want to be
my future customers? And these are questions
that everybody in tech companies or just about
any company should be asking themselves. What
do you think that makes companies continue to
innovate? Is it leadership? Is it culture? What
are the defining things that actually help them?
PayPal had a culture of innovation because it
was forced into it. I mean, yes, there were some
extremely innovative, creative people at the
top and, you know, Reid Hoffman and Elon Musk
and David Sacks and all these people were, you
know, founders of PayPal or very, very early
employees and, but they definitely created a
culture that permeated. So like there were many
things, you know, on the risk and security side
of PayPal that were being forced into because
PayPal is a company and you know, 2000 was doing
things that the world had not seen before. So
one example that I think is, was an amazing innovation,
which sounds so simplistic nowadays, but you
know, back in the days when people were trying
to add their bank accounts to PayPal, they had
to send in to PayPal, a paper check that somebody
had to actually look at and type in and all this
stuff like total archaic. really difficult process.
Somebody suggested, an engineer, I believe suggested
like, well, what if we had a PIN number instead?
And this led to a thing that's actually still
used today in banks in the United States, where
often if you want to confirm your bank account,
you will get a micro payment. They will send
you 16 cents and 34 cents, like two random amounts.
You type those in and that's a way that they
can actually confirm a bank account. And it's
way less costly to send a few cents to somebody
than it is to have a paper check in this whole
process. And that was just something that was
birthed out of necessity. And so I think a lot
of innovation comes down to, you know, what's
the need, what are you trying to serve? And also
having a culture that's going to encourage that.
And of course, you know, I'm sure we'll talk
more about failure and things like that at some
point, but a culture that is not going to When
you screw up, when it doesn't work, when you
gave it a good faith effort and tried something,
that's not the end of your career. You need to
pivot and shake yourself off and learn from that
and just move on to something else. How you create
a culture that really emphasizes on those types
of things, that's pivotal in making an innovative
company. Well, I think it just led to my next
question, which is exactly that. How do you manage
to create that? Because a lot of people, when
they're working, they're actually quite afraid
of making mistakes and then they don't risk,
they don't, you know, try to do anything new.
It's more, okay, I know this works. I'll keep
on doing this till my dying days. But in reality,
we all need to adapt and actually need to grow
very quickly. So how do you foster that within
the company itself? And how do you promote that
sense of it's okay to make mistakes? And I actually
expect you to make mistakes because that means
you create something new. Yeah. Look, every company
is different. And every company needs to find
their own way to do that. I think leading by
example is a great way to do that for senior
leadership. If you only talk to employees about
your successes, that is going to be a tell for
them that they're not allowed to fail either.
When you are a leader and you're very open in
your own shortcomings, and you get up on stage
and say, Hey, we screwed this up or whatever,
or I'm sorry, not we. When you say, I screwed
this up as a leader. That's a tell to make it
known that like, Hey, it's okay to try stuff.
I mean, we want to learn from that. One company
that actually inspired us a lot at PayPal was
a company called Ben & Jerry's, which for people
who might not know is an ice cream company. And
one of the things they have at Ben & Jerry's
is they have something called a flavor gravy.
So at their, their corporate headquarters, they
actually have tombstones for ice cream flavors
that have not succeeded. Like, you know, the
things that went away and so forth. That's something
that their employees can see all the time when
they're there as part of that. So at PayPal,
this was before, right before COVID, never actually
got to get back to the office and finish it.
Unfortunately, we were actually making a product
graveyard. We were, and it was so great. We had
like a little, like, like a model train sets
with these trees and all that. We were kind of
recreating the PayPal campus on this scaled down
version with little. PayPal products or representations
of PayPal products with QR codes that you could
scan and learn about that. And we were interviewing
the people who created these things that did
not succeed and what they learned from them.
Because again, it's not that. Look, it's not
that you were saying like, oh, well, we should
just keep failing. No, that's not the point.
Failure is a stepping stone to success. You know,
you don't go to school just or learn a foreign
language, just expecting, well, yeah, I'm just
going to hear it once and I'm going to speak
it fluently right back to you and understand.
Like, no, it's an iterative process and how we
learn as an individual or as a group. And you
have to learn from each step and you're going
to get better and better and better as you do
that. And to just say like, You know to sweep
it like I think a lot of companies natural reaction
is like that's a failure We're never gonna talk
about that again. That is by far the worst thing
that you could possibly be doing It's interesting
saying that because I talk with a lot of startups
and also investors and one of the key things
that I think investors always look at is Have
they been able to pivot because they know the
first idea is not going to work out So they're
actually looking for the ability to pivot more
than anything else. And it just goes to show
it's exactly like you said. You need to continue
to innovate. You need to continue making not
just mistakes, but being able to take the risk
and embrace that risk. This is part of the game,
isn't it? There's not been a successful company
that exists today that didn't have horror stories.
They thought they were going to die and that
didn't have to pivot. I mean, like again, to
bring up PayPal again. PayPal was a company for
wiring money between Palm Piles. They were using
the infrared technology between two Palm Pilot
devices to send money. And that's what they were
making. the whole business about. It just happened
to be that Max Leption, one of the founders,
made something as a test where people could send
money to an email address. And frankly, from
the stories I've heard, like the company fought
against that. They're kind of like, no, no, that's
actually, that's not what we're about. We're
about sending money between Palm Pilots. And
all of a sudden these people started to use this
testing thing that Max had set up for sending
money to an email address. And then finally as
a company, they had to realize like, Actually,
I guess that's the business. And then it caught
on eBay and expanded to all these other things.
But like that was a huge pivot for the company.
And again, I don't care what company you are.
You have had these stories. Like it's not always
just up into the rights for growth. You are going
to have pivot. You're going to have to, and frankly,
you have to listen to your customers. That is
the big thing. And 99 .9 % of the time, what
you envision is what your customers want is not
what they actually need. and you need to really
talk to them, understand that, iterate again
and again and again until you start to really
find that product market fit. You know, when
you're leading innovation in such a big company,
how do you get that feedback from customers?
Because sometimes, let's take, for example, a
very recent case, Jaguar, for example, the car
company, right? Yeah. You change the branding
and everyone's kind of against it. The product
market fit still remains to be seen, I would
say, at this stage. Then how do you find, you
know, within your company, how do you manage
to find that? Jaguar is interesting. Like, I
mean, to me, I feel that this is kind of just
like a ruse. I mean, again, not to go too far
down that path, but like, it's been fascinating
the rebranding that they've been doing because
like, look, nobody cared about Jaguar before.
I mean, I don't know what percentage of global
car sales they were before this. They were definitely
not top of mind. I bet you they weren't in the
top 15 car companies. Most people would kind
of rattle off or anything. So like, It's really
interesting to generate this and to say like,
well, we're actually all electric. We're all
this now, and we're, you know, not about the
car anymore, whatever this is. Like, you know,
sometimes, you know, if you were Toyota, you
probably wouldn't make that because they're the
number one car maker in the world. But when you're,
again, number 15 or whatever Jaguar is, yeah,
you can take a risk and do something innovative
and creative. That was not your question though.
Your question, Ricardo, was... actually about
how do you talk to the customers, how do you
get that feedback loop and so forth. I think,
look, you need to empower your individual teams
more than anything. At PayPal, again, we had,
you know, one team that was focused on like charities,
you know, because the needs of a charity for
money and collecting funds and so forth are very
different than the needs of a Small business,
that's just an individual. A medium -sized business
who might have like more sophisticated integrations
versus a large business who like, you know, a
large enterprise. And like all of these had different
teams, focus. And you need to empower the people
in the field to be able to do and build what
is best for their own customers. Like that is
the one truth. Like as a CEO, you can't dictate.
those things. Now, if you're like five person
startup, well, okay, but then you should be the
person that's out there talking to the customers,
listening, asking questions, and again, getting
to what their problems are. And you really want
to solve those problems in a way that is innovative,
unique, you know, dare I say 10 times better
than the way that they're solving their problems
today. If you can do those things, then you're
going to have a successful product. So the one
question to always ask, uh, you know, a customer,
and this could be as you're investing in a company
or whatever else, if, if your product disappeared
today, how would your customers react? And if
it's not like outright forward and Shaw, I mean,
like, oh my gosh, what am I going to do now?
Listen to Spotify on the way here. I just got
my year in review, my Spotify rant and yeah,
there's competing products out there. I love
my Spotify. The 20 bucks a month we spend as
a family plan, like we probably spend a hundred
bucks a month. Easel. You know, I also grew up
in the 1990s where CDs used to cost like $17.
So it's ridiculous to me how cheap music is nowadays,
but you know, given all of that, like that's
a product that has clearly found fits with their
customers. There's built a loyalty and so forth
as part of that, even though there are, you know,
Apple music and other competing services out
there. They do it much more elegant. elegantly
and they know your customer like that are the
those are the type of experiences that you need
to be able to strive for. We kind of touched
upon something interesting which is getting feedback
and therefore learning from your customers. Now
I want to make the jumps for AI or to AI because
I know you're very passionate and vocal about
it. How do you see this this whole AI evolution?
Is it like a massive threat and we should all
I don't know hide underneath our beds or something
or actually should embrace it and just stick
it in? I think the answer is we need to embrace
it. Maybe we should be hiding under our beds.
I don't know. Actually, I actually don't know
how this is all going to play out again. I'm
already kind of teased my age here, but I started
school in the 90s and college and I had never
used the internet before getting to school. I
happened to be lucky enough to go to university
of Illinois. And like the first time I went to
school there, like as a freshman day one, like
in the computer labs are like these browsers
and these blue links and you click on things
and it takes you places. I felt like I just had
entered the future when I was there. And like,
you know, and I went back home to tell my friends
about it, like, you know, over, over the holidays
and everything. And they're like, what are you
talking about? Like it wasn't, and of course
that played out and that's very much the world
we're living in now. What we're seeing in AI
is so much bigger than the connectivity I think
that we've had from the internet. For so many
years when I was at PayPal, there were some brilliant
machine learning engineers that were there. They
were doing amazing things with the amount of
data that we have, with natural language processing,
with all these different aspects of the broader
world of artificial intelligence. And I'm not
an engineer by trade. As I started, I mean, I
was a finance and accounting guy. going way back
when. So like I can never do the things that
they did. But fast forward to today, and you
have the most powerful models in the world that
the world has ever seen, that you can talk to
in natural language, either by typing or by literally
by voice. And you can use these tools for 20
bucks a month. It is just mind blowing at like
the amount of power that we have. I think people
who are really into it, like myself, are seeing
how it changes our workflows, things that we
do with our families and just our lives in general.
And the rest of the world hasn't fully caught
on. I mean, I think chat GPT or OpenAI said chat
GPT is like up to 300 million users now on there,
but that still is what? 4 % of the world's population
or something like that. I mean, it's still a
tiny number if you consider what over half of
the world is online. So most people are not using
these tools. I think you are going to see the
tools continue to improve. I do believe that's
going to happen. And I do think even more than
that, we're going to figure out even more how
we could use these tools more effectively. We're
going to learn from each other. Like even if
the tools didn't improve today, there's so much
more gain that we have in front of us. So what
that means is... Look, they're not taking our
jobs yet. Could they? Possibly. Yeah. Um, more
likely though is our jobs are going to evolve
and they're going to greatly evolve and greatly
change. Um, just like if you were doing things,
you know, if, if you're a sales person and it's
1996, let's say, and you've said, Oh, my job's
not going to change it all over the next 10 years.
Well, you would have been very wrong. of that
because like you're probably doing a lot more
email, you're probably doing a lot more of this
or whatever else like is part of that process.
If you're in sales today, like I think the human
experience, the one -on -one connection does
matter, but you can have an AI that's listening
in on your sales calls and evaluating you on
how you're doing your performance so you can
improve that. You can have it updating your CRM.
automatically based on the notes for those calls
or whatever it might be. And like, there's just
so many different use cases. And I think what's
important for all of us is to stay on top of
this within our personal lives, within our business
lives, to just really embrace the tools that
are out there. Know that they're going to change.
Know that they're going to improve. But even
today, I think no matter what your job is, if
you just spent three, four, five hours with these
tools, You could really start to uncover, oh
my gosh, I didn't know that that was possible.
I used to do things this way. Now I can do things
this way. And that is going to be essential for
anybody who's out there to really, you know,
stay on top of this to, to make sure. Yeah. Like,
like my job is going to evolve. My job is not
going to just go away when these models. I read
somewhere about a comparison to the, and that
was when, you know, cars were in events. and
how in 20 years, but again it was a slower adoption,
20 years everyone went from having a horse and
a carriage to actually having a car. We're thinking
about having a car. And of course with the move
from one industry to the other, you had a lot
of jobs that literally just disappeared. You
don't have that many settle makers, you don't
have that many, you know, people putting horseshoes
onto horses because you don't have them either.
But you do have the transformation of those industries
into becoming mechanics. Maybe now they're just
selling tires instead of selling horseshoes.
And yeah, I agree with you. I think that's probably
what's going to happen. We're going to have a
lot of transformation, but positive transformation.
People will continue being people, so we're going
to need people, right? So that's probably not
going to change. I was talking to somebody about
this just recently. We're using the example of
McDonald's. And now, like in most McDonald's,
there is a self -service kiosk where you just
punch in your order versus a person you're talking
to. So that job has been eliminated. Keep playing
this out and then, okay, well. Are they going
to eventually, if you're flipping burgers over,
if you're cleaning the tables, like all of these
things could become robotic. So what does McDonald's
look like 20, 30 years from now? Like who's employed
at a McDonald's? Is it nobody? I don't think
it's nobody. I think it might just be people
repairing the robots and fixing these things
and restocking and doing the things that actually
are really hard for robots to do potentially.
And, you know, is that going to be more or less
employees than today? I don't know. I mean, it
might mean, you know, just look at the parallel
to the ATM. So the concept of ATM machines, which
was introduced in like the 1970s, people thought
like bank tellers jobs are done. Of course, there
are more in the United States, at least there
are more bank tellers than there were today.
There are more bank tellers today than there
were in the 1970s. And well, why is that if the
ATM existed? Well, their jobs changed. They morphed.
It became something new. And also it enabled
banks to open up more and smaller bank branches
where they don't need as many people. So like
maybe that's true for McDonald's. Like they're
going to have a bunch more McDonald's on there
because like they only need to have three employees
instead of eight or 10 or whatever it might be.
Is that a good thing? I don't know. But like,
like these are the types of changes I think we're
going to be saying. Is this about the knowledge
and access to it? Not just access to information,
but the ability to process information and actually
action information as well. Because when the
internet first started, I was like, oh, we can
now find things online. Now we can now interact
with people. But all of a sudden, it's like,
actually, I can take all this information, I
can take all this knowledge, and actually make
my computer do something for me based on that
and do it exactly what I need it to do. And that
is incredibly powerful, isn't it? Like, I see
through my working day, it's like I do so much
stuff with AI that will take me hours and probably
weeks to do before. And I was like, click a button,
here you go. Awesome. So my ability to work just...
went, I don't know, a thousand times bigger.
So it's just quite, quite powerful. In my workflow,
I write a lot and I constantly am using it for
writing. I will use tools like perplexity to
find information, but then I will use the AI
tools to edit my writing all the time. I will,
I will like, one of the first things I do whenever
I'm done writing something is I'll throw it in
Claude and I'll be like, Hey Claude, fact check
this for me. Which I know seems crazy to have
an AI model do that, but like, if it sees something
I'm wrong, if I'm misquoting something. It'll
usually it'll like lay out. Well, these are what
I think the facts are These are the things like
that might be wrong and I'm like, okay. Well,
maybe I did get that wrong I should probably
go look into that a little bit more and then
you know, it's just turn after turn after turn
that I do on this and You know if I could afford
to have a full -time human editor at all times
doing this would like Just have a free newsletter.
I'm not going to do that, but this enables so
much more to happen and just with really quick
and rapid iterations. And again, that's just
for writing. You're right. Apply this to any
function, any type of knowledge work or function
that is out there. You're going to find so many
different use cases just once you start to open
your eyes and become familiar with what these
tools can do. I have an interesting question
for you because I know you also teach. Now, students,
you know, traditionally were taught to memorize
this and kind of show us what you managed to
memorize. Now, obviously, that's not the right
way to do things anymore. Now, with the intellectual
and intellectual but much of AI models, that
massively changed. Has education, you know, started
to embrace that? The fact that people are more
operated instead of just holders of information?
Or is this still very traditional from your perspective?
Look, I mean, it's like to take the historical
perspective. But if you would say like, what
was an intelligent person 500 years ago, or whenever
it might be, often it would be something like,
it's the person who's memorized the Bible. Like
memorization was that because like, you know,
500 plus years ago was around the time of the
printing press, the likes were not common, they're
extremely expensive. And oh my gosh, the person
memorized the Bible. That's great. If you Memorize
the Bible or whatever, like more power to you.
But like, nobody would say like, my God, you're
the smartest person around. I mean, you might
be, but, but like, like it's more of a parlor
trick today. Like, like, you know, there's a,
there's a book called moonwalking with Einstein.
And it's actually all about memory competitions.
In fact, it was a great book came out, you know,
10 plus years ago. Um, but, but again, it's a,
it's a sideshow because like we, as a society
have set, you know, we used to think that memory.
And memorizing things was the mark of true intelligence.
Now, again, not so much because we have, we have
devices that will memorize things for us. We
have books that are readily available. We get
to search whatever we want to, whenever we want
to on the internet. So access to information
isn't the problem it used to be. Looking at where
schools are at today and where this is going
to go and how we think about that, I think. You
know, let's just take computer science, for example.
A lot of what a university would do in the past,
and even some would say, it's teaching you how
to build programs, teaching you, you know, Python
or teaching you C++ or computer languages and
all this other kind of stuff is part of that.
And I think, look, I think it's great to learn
a computer language, but when you have a model
like Claude or Cursor or whatever bolts, which
is a new product that a lot of people are talking
about. They can code extremely well. So the skill
that will matter going forward isn't necessarily,
I know how to manipulate Excel and all the formulas
in Excel, or I know I need to, I know how to
do this, whatever it might be. I think it's going
to be much more like I know how to think like
an engineer. I know how to have a logical thought
process like an engineer, like an economist,
like an accountant, like a lawyer. Take whatever
discipline you want. And I think what is going
to matter the most going forward is really the
thought process that you have behind these things.
Because the grunt work isn't going to be, you
know, When we look at grunt work, this is going
to be stuff that's easily done by computers.
We're going to be much more directors of whatever
experiences we have. They could be literally
director of a film that you're having an AI develop
and you say, well, let's move the camera here.
Let's do this. And you're adding your taste from
that perspective. Or it could even be, hey, ChatGPT,
here are five different companies I want you
to evaluate. I want to buy one of their stocks.
And it's going to give you that. And you're going
to have to ask the right questions and, and really
think through that process. Cause yes, it could
say, well, this is the best stock to buy. But
in reality, it's never going to be able to fully
get into your head. To know your true motivations
and all this other stuff is part of that. So
I think it's really important, like for us to
learn how to think logically or whatever is the
most important, like thought process. That is
what should be taught in schools. And like that
is really what's going to cultivate that. Not
just from schools, but you know, in your professional
career, how do you cultivate the thinking, the
ability to actually think about a problem, manage
to fix it without just saying, oh yeah, let's
just, I don't know. This is what I was taught
in school. So we always work. Hey, look, if I
was a teacher, I would start the year with, um,
giving my students a questionnaire. I would say,
Hey, who are your three best friends? What are
your, and this could be true for any grade level.
Mind you, now who are your three best friends?
Where do you grow up? What do you aspire to do
in your life? What do you like to do in your
free time? Blah, blah, blah. And let's just say
I'm teaching math. I would then have a large
language model. Basically input all of that information
about the students and every time I'm handing
out homework. I would actually do homework that
is customized for their own experiences. So if
my daughter is into stage acting, which she is,
I would be asking a whole bunch of math questions
to her uniquely that would be bringing in aspects
of acting and all of these things that are really
things that excite her. When you are tapping
into somebody's personal passion, that is what
matters more than anything. And that's one thing
for teachers. These large language models enable
us to do. There's no reason why you have to give
30 students in your class the exact same questions.
You can give them all individualized tests or
quizzes or whatever that are tailored to them
about what it is. Now, of course, you got to
figure out, well, what's going to be fair, whatever,
whatever. We could figure that stuff out. But
like more importantly is like Can you get these
students to learn better, more effectively by
like literally talking to them in their own language?
And it might even literally be in their own language.
Let's say, you know, they're a non -native English
speaker and in school that is primarily English.
Is it more important than that math class that
they focus on their English skills? Or is it
you could actually give them math problems in
Portuguese or in Mandarin or in whatever. And
I as a teacher don't speak that. But like I could
have a large language model. I should turn that
out for them. Amazing. Like let's do that. Like
that will help them. I mean, they can still have
English class, but in math, I just care about
the principles. I care about the thought process
and let's use that as much as we possibly can.
Like those are things that like are really enabling
today people to grow more and define passion
in place. It's like a great teacher matters more
than just about anything that you could have
in life to give you that passion to learn about
that and learn those thought processes. Like
again, I think these language models for the
right teachers can be the unlock to enable those
kinds of things to happen. Mike, I always want
to, I always like asking this question, which
is what excites you about the future? Cause we
have so much going on right now. What's that
one thing that makes you get out of bed every
morning apart from dealing with your phone or
something? Yeah, look, I mean, it is AI. It's
where these models are taking us. Um, and it's
specifically the area of health and wellness.
That's actually what excites me the most. I have
a custom GPT set up, like just set for myself
with ChatGPT. I actually got a DEXA scan. It's
like this thing you lay down on a table, they
scan your entire body. Then it's like how much
fat, how much bone, how much... muscle, all this
other kind of stuff. And I get these every three
months. I load it into ChatGPT. I get all these
other things in there. It knows so much. It knows
more about me than my doctor ever could. Like
just like realistically, but like a doctor in
the United States has probably three, 400 patients
in most offices. They don't have time to know
all of this about you. I see my regular doctor
15 minutes a year. But my AI has infinite patience
and infinite focus towards me. And I could ask
it any question I want about my diets. I could
take a picture of a menu and say, Hey, given
this, like, what's the best thing that I should
eat on here? Um, or like, what are the top three
things or whatever? And it could kind of narrow
things down for me and say, you know, based on
your goals, based on your diet, based on your
latest blood tests, like this is what you should
focus on. There's so many ways you could do that.
And this is just me working with the $20 a month.
off the shelf, you know, chat GPT model that
I kind of created for myself. Like you can have
whole companies built off this and people are
starting to, but I think we're just at the very
earliest phases of like this really customized
experience. And then in the United States, we
spend almost 20 % of our GDP on medical related
expenses. And we're just so inefficient. We don't
have the outcomes that here. And now you. At
least a decent doctor in your pockets and potentially
a doctor that could almost be world -class. I'm
not saying doctors are going away. They're not.
The human element really, really matters. But
like, if I'm traveling the other side of the
world, I can't just have my doctor like on call
24 seven. Like that's not realistic or any, any
little thing that appears on my skin. I'm like,
wait, what is this thing? I can literally just
snap a picture and ask, ask an AI and it's going
to give me. pretty accurate answer. Again, there's
not medical advice. Like people still need to
see their doctor, but the direction that we're
going for this thing. Oh my gosh. Like it's pretty
incredible. I was reading somewhere that, um,
he came down to nutrition and the conversation
was about nutrition at this point. And they said
that whatever you learn in medical school is,
and when you actually start seeing the doctor,
that's knowledge that's 15 years old. Yeah. When
you ask a doctor for nutritional advice. still
tell you the basics that they learned and it
was taught to them by teachers quite a lot of
time. You're learning something from 50 years
ago without actually encompassing everything
that has actually massively changed. People actually
found a lot of research on it and then a lot
of research on it. But when you talk about that
model, you just sucked it up and you incorporate
that into chat GPT or whatever it might be. It's
transformative. They can just say, look, the
latest research actually shows that you shouldn't
eat frozen food all the time and fast food is
actually not that good for you. trying some more
vegetables and stuff like that. And here's why.
Um, so it's actually quite powerful that isn't
it? Absolutely. Well, look, look, I, I grew up
in the 1990s and what are the eighties and nineties.
It was a time of the, uh, like the snack well
generation. I don't know if you know what these
were, but basically this was a time where fat
was like fat, fat was evil. Fat would make you
fat was the belief. There are cookies that they
would remove all of the all of the fat and just
throw more sugar into these things. More and
more sugar. Like there's fat free this, fat free
this, whatever else. And like, and look, these
things get locked. Even if you're not a, you
know, even if you're not in medical school, just
for like, as a citizen, to just be able to say,
hey, you know, based on the latest research,
like based on what we know today, what do you
think about my diet? I'm going to just log what
I eat for a week. Like, what could I be doing
better on that? Like, there's so much value in
that. Just to have, like, and for a doctor, It's
impossible to keep up with all of the latest
research and publications. Like physically, no
one would have the time to read through all that,
but an AI could. And if I'm a doctor that just
has an AI in my ear and or in the room and I'm
talking to a patient and after that, or at the
end of the day, I might say, Hey, like anything
like I can improve on and what I'm saying, well,
like, Hey, you actually told, you know, you told
Mike. that this, well, actually most of the research
today is actually pointing in a different direction.
Do you want me to tell you more about that? And
like, those are amazing types of tools that would
be available. Like again, some people might find
that threatening, like, well, what does this
computer know? Well, the computer has access
to all the world's knowledge, where we as humans
would never be able to access that. So I hope
we can use these for good, and medicine, just
like what you're striving for. It's funny, I
was just thinking about the tic -tacs, right?
Those little small mints. And apparently they
classify it as zero calories. Because anything
in the US that has less than two calories is
literally, it's fine. You can eat it because
they don't classify it as a calorie. But if you
get the whole package, see, that has a lot of
sugar. But it's technically zero calories in
as many as you want. Is that 100 % accurate?
Probably not. No, that's hilarious. Yeah, you
round down. And it's zero and the serving size
is one, which of course nobody does. And then
you just eat the whole package of them. And you're
like, oh yeah, it was, it was free calories.
I'm putting on weight every day. So it's basically
things like that actually make a big difference.
Um, I always enjoy asking this question, which
is what's the latest book you read? Or the most
impactful book you read. Oh, it's actually, it's,
it's really funny. You said that because I'm,
um, I'm going to get two, an AI one and a non
AI one. For AI, I'm actually writing an article
right now, which I'll release next week on, um,
my favorite AI books of 2024. I actually got
one right here. So, so I visual aid, you didn't
know I was going to have that, but I happen to
have it handy. So co -intelligence by Ethan Smollick.
Ethan does the best blog, I think, out there.
He's a professor at Wharton, does the best blog
on AI. And if you're in the world of AI, like
me, I took a lot out of his book. There's so
much great information. But he also explains
things in very readable, human, simple terms.
Like, so just really powerful, impactful. Like
if you're to read one AI book, Co -Intelligence
by Ethan is just phenomenal. The other one I'll
recommend, totally not related to AI, is called
Same As Ever by Morgan Housel. It came out last
year and I just decided, so I read it again recently.
I'm like, I think I'm just going to read this
book every year. Just because there's so much
in it, like the stories he tells are amazing.
Effectively, it's the story of the book and the
thesis of the book is people don't change. Like
what we do, our motivations, all of these things
that we think are new, the desires we have, like
all of these things just been around forever.
And as you start to kind of look at the patterns
of this, the world and especially the future.
makes more sense like he always says like if
you want to be able to predict the future you
should read history and you know these are the
kind of things and and same as ever is an amazing
amazing book he's a great great writer as well
really great stories like thank you so much for
timing for these wonderful recommendations it's
been a great a pleasure having you on the podcast
ricardo and this is a lot of fun thanks for having
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