The Agentic Insider

TAI - Robert Scoble
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Speaker 2: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Agentic Insider. I'm your host, Phillip Swan. In this show, we explore cutting edge ideas and trends in AI and data, as well as hear from. Other industry thought leaders in the AI space. This podcast is brought to you by Iridius ai committed to safe and responsible AI innovation. Let's dig in.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: And welcome to this week's edition of the Agentic Insider with me, and Alistair today is a tech evangelist. He's a futurist, one of Silicon Valley's most recognized voices. He was an author of a successful blog called Scobleizer, and previously ran a YouTube channel with over 22,000 subscribers. He is the founder and CEO of Unaligned. [00:01:00] Robert, the Scobleizer Scoble, welcome to the show.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Thank you very much. Uh, I've had quite a career since being Apple's first child laborer back in 1978, building Apple, two motherboards in my mom's kitchen. But

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Oh, wow.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: around and.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Wow.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: And I sort of launched AI into the consumer world. Siri was launched in my house, and that was the first consumer app to use ai.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Mm-hmm.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: I've been watching AI for a while.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Oh God. We are gonna have so much fun in this call, so I can't get away from asking the question we ask everybody. Robert is what future are you solving for? What are you working on?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: A very weird future. Uh, we're headed toward the singularity. I'm trying to make it happen faster. Uh, and that's brain computer interfaces, robotics and holod eggs, 3D environments that are all around you or on things, uh, that we soon will experience in a pair of glasses that's coming.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: that's great. So What are you seeing your, in the consumer space that you know, in terms of adoption of [00:02:00] AI and how people are thinking about it?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: We, we have ourselves a browser word, people. There's like five new browsers that just shipped in the last three weeks. Uh, uh, perplexes, uh.

Comet is is the one

that seems to be gathering the most attention, although Dia is doing real well and Gens Spark isn't giving up. So we, and in an hour, uh, or two hours open, AI is announcing something new.

So we're gonna probably have

to change, we should have this conversation again in

three hours.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: exactly. exactly.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: That's right. That's, well, actually it's actually in one hour. So it's at 10:00 AM Pacific.

Uh, we're just giving you some advanced notice, we actually know that open AI is going to be releasing something pretty major. So

watch this space.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Particularly for ag agentic thinkers,

and I think the, we're seeing a new, uh, bifurcation in the world. Most people, if you ask them on the street, have no idea what an AHI agent is yet. If you come to San Francisco, there's whole industry building, uh, [00:03:00] for this ENT future.

So.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: So, how do you think about it? So, so give us your perspective. So, so how does Robert think about agents and, and, and how they're gonna shape, um, you know, Robert's future.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: I think we're switching from a kind of computing where you, uh, you have to do everything yourself to a world where you build agents that answer your email or answer your phones or do your research for you, or, you know, put things on your calendar. Right? All of a sudden we're starting to automate our businesses and our lives and. That side of the industry is very exciting. It's, you know, I have lists of all the companies in the AI space. There's 6,600 already on my list, and that tells you something's happening, uh, for, for that world. But most people in the world haven't even. Started thinking about it and when even if they did hear about a new agentic browser, like Comet or something like that, they don't know what to do with it 'cause they [00:04:00] haven't been on X.

And talking to people,

it takes, it takes some mental effort to switch from thinking in an old way to this new agentic way. And, um, you know, it'll grow, but it's, uh, it's. It's a new way of working. It's a new way of living, and that'll be real apparent to people who get glasses in 3, 4, 5 years, and it'll be very apparent when a robot shows up at your front door,

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: That's right. I, I think, I think that's the

And that, and that robot will probably turn up starting next year. So I think

next year we're gonna start seeing the,

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Even the Chinese, uh, who are building the robots telling me it's about seven years for a truly,

uh, generalized, uh, humanoid robot that can do everything you expect. Right.

And not just specific tasks.

Right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Exactly. But it's, it's tangible and it's there. I mean, we're talking about a, we're talking about something that's, that's within [00:05:00] our grasp to be able to do that.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: even if it's seven years away, that's not a long time in human

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Exactly, exactly. And we had this conversation with Uli Homan from Microsoft, you know, and yesterday. And so when we were recording a podcast and, and, and really people are using, you know, agents at the moment or talking about agents in the same way they talk about copilots. It feels to us where it's like, I want an assistant who can book all of my meetings for me, who can do all of these things.

But I think that you, you and Phillip, and I know that. Really the future is gonna be agents talking to agents. Okay. In a, in a, so that, so that basically each agent spins up a swarm of other agents to go and complete a more complex task under that coordinated approach. So what are some of the sort of opportunities that you see as, as agents become more pervasive to be able to, to be able to take on these sorts of things from a consumer perspective?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Yeah, from a consumer perspective, it's a interesting one. I mean, uh, people with an Apple Vision Pro just got an update that lets 'em put [00:06:00] user interfaces on, on every surface in their home. Oh put a,

you can put a window right next to your Nest thermostat.

I have these nano leaf lights behind me that have a computer in them. I can put a user interface right next to the light so I can walk up to the light and change the color.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Mm-hmm.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: If you start. You know, and I, I have a, a June oven that has a computer vision in it, right? So it automatically my toast. I, I'm already starting this, trying

to make my entire life automatic, right?

My, my car self-drive. That sort of an ai, that's an ai, but it's not all stitched together in a really nice way. Um, that's coming with the glasses, right? So when people get the glasses, they're gonna be able to. Put user interfaces on everything and control everything and have everything work together so that if you have an intention change, your whole house can change. Your whole life can change. Right. And, [00:07:00] and. It's hard to explain all that because it's, it's still early. A little bit. Early days in, in the ENT move. 'cause my, like I said, my, if I, when I do consumer research with normal everyday people, they haven't even started thinking about a i

agents, they don't even know why, why, you want one or how to use one.

They don't even know about the new browsers that just came out right. That, that. That's for a future world. Um, you know, for, for, me, for the consumer, consumers only figure things out after there's a troop. Paradigm shift, right? when when we went from, uh, character mode computing to uh, gooey mode, to graphical user interfaces, uh, the brands changed

and big companies went away and new ones appeared, right?

Borland and word perfect used to be big

dramatic companies in, in the character mode world, but they didn't make the switch

into. The Windows 95 world,[00:08:00]

right? In the Macintosh world.

And same thing is gonna happen here when consumers do finally get glasses. And that's probably five years away,

right? For, for everybody,

maybe four, right? Um. For you, for everybody, for all of us next year,

right? But, But, when those glasses come, that's gonna bring the virtual beings to front. That's a new user interface,

really. Uh, it's gonna bring a new way of do, of running your life. Like I said, you can put interfaces on the wall, right? That's a new, a new way of doing computing. when when you get all of that, that's when you're gonna see the power of the agents. And by then the agents are gonna be much more, uh, robust and much more templatized. So you can, you can, uh, go to a store and find a, a, a bunch of 'em and, uh, stitch 'em together easily, which the consumer doesn't like to do a lot [00:09:00] of work.

In fact, it needs to be just, I need to talk to an AI

and an AI has to set up all my agents for me and automate my life, right?

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Yep.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: So when we start, when we started the radius, we, this is, uh, literally exactly a year ago when we started Radius. We're just celebrating our first year anniversary,

and if one of the things we set around the table when we're setting it up was. We have the opportunity to fundamentally change how humans interact with technology, with, with what we're building.

right?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: It is gonna very deeply change over the next decade for, for everybody, right? Having a robot in your house,

uh,

you know, a decade from now, that's a, most of us are probably gonna have a robot,

at least to the front door, right?

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: and I mean everybody, I mean people, people who are listening and thinking, well, hang on a minute. That seems a little farfetched. Maybe it's the Jetsons, but I mean, most people already have a Roomba. Okay, well only so, so we already have a room, a Roomba, we have a, you know, an electronic device that goes around and cleans the floors and follows things around and people can get that.

[00:10:00] Well, okay, this is a taller version of a Roomba that can do more with arms. It's that point. Okay, now it can go up and down stairs and so.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: At Cs, there was a Roomba that had an arm.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Exactly, because you really need a killer, killer lot. You know, this sort of thing from robot war in your house. That's the the trick in all of this.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: So one, one thing that I've, I've noticed, right, especially when you, you know, forget all the political crap that's going on right now, um, you know, in mainland China. I mean, they, society has adopted. AI radically into society already in mainland China. Right. We're, you know, and we don't Well, keep in mind we, I've been to China quite a few times.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: We're only seeing the rich part of China, which is a big, uh, number of people, right? 'cause they have

1.3 billion people, one point something billion people. They have a huge amount of people. We're not seeing the poorest of, of that.

There's about 300 million people there that are living in [00:11:00] poverty. We're seeing the people in Shanghai and Beijing and

and their top 40 cities, which, they're ahead. They're, they're ahead in spatial computing. They take it up more quickly.

They're ahead in, uh, robotics

and manufacturing. Uh, they're a little bit, they say they're a little bit behind in ai, but they're catching up real quick. I'm seeing, yeah. Right now the top of the leaderboard is the Chinese model. Right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: And I, I, think one of the things that we've got there is, um, they, they're very tech forward. So the entire sort of society runs on, on We in, or WeChat as we would call it. So, you know, it's a one app that does everything, you know, from, from, you know, so you go along, I wanna buy something from a street vendor that only costs, you know, 20 cents, you know, tap and pay.

And, and, and we over here go, oh yeah. Apple Pay, everybody does that or, or whatever and, you know, or Android pay, but it's not, it's so pervasive to every other part of their life and the way that they work. Um, and so I think we should, you know, being heavily adopted across the, across the country is a, is a huge thing towards, towards [00:12:00] encouraging people to, to adopt technology.

And as you start adding more and more AI to, to the app that everyone uses is then, is then just an extension of what they're already doing. So I think, you know, you know, identifying or, or ai, you know, that the. You know, their particular, their particular sort of technology choices is so much of a way of, of driving a cultural change.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: In Shanghai, they already have drone deliveries,

right? Drone hasn't shown up in my neighborhood, and I live in Silicon Valley,

which is, has a, has a company here called Zipline over in Half Moon

Bay that's trying to do that. But we haven't seen it spread everywhere.

Spreading everywhere is a hard thing for America,

you know, getting, getting these technologies out to people and getting 'em to be happy with them is, is a much harder thing than in China. Partly because, uh, in China everybody's stacked up on top of each other. So ideas pa pass very quickly, right? If, if you see a drone in the sky, you start figuring out what that thing is,

right? They also have huge markets. [00:13:00] Uh, you know, they have 10 cities bigger than New York,

and that's a huge amount of data that they can have, which makes it possible to do new kinds of robots and ai. We're struggling to collect that, uh, kind of data to, to get to the place where we can finish off a humanoid robot. Right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: I agree. And also from a responsible AI perspective, there were, there were rules and, and, and approaches. And so I'll, I'll be cautious how I talk about this, but rules and approaches, the EU AI Act that particularly limits things that you can do. You can't screen scrape faces, you can't use, um, you know, public, public, um, CCTV and cameras to be able to gather information where the rules are different inside China.

So therefore, you are able to gather data and train. Following the rules inside the, inside the country, um, to be able to build models that are much harder to build in, in, in, uh, in the, the western world in that

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Yeah, it's, they have unfair advantages.

Um. Uh, [00:14:00] and so if we're gonna compete and remain relevant on the world stage, we're, we're gonna have to do a American way,

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: So how so

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: innovate and think different, right?

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Take this to enterprises. So one of the things, you know, that we, we, we talk about a lot with enterprises is there's obviously a fear of, you know, AI's gonna steal my job. Okay? Which, um, you know, is, is a, is un understandable thing. You know, if you're not able to use the new tools, then you're gonna be left behind by people who can use the tools.

Um. And I think that, I think that there seems to be, you know, ins when when people are at home, they have a phone with an app that updates, you know, every day. Um, and, and they're, you know, constant new apps and new changes and people seem to be perfectly okay with, with using the technology there. But when they get into an enterprise, the resistance to change becomes much more significant.

And, you know, this is always the way I've done my job. I don't wanna have. To do very much with that, even, even on a, even on a younger generation, that there's still a level of that resistance because there's too much change going on. So how do you think, you know, so, so how do you see the adoption of the sort of AI happening across, [00:15:00] across the companies that you are talking to?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Uh, well, let's take two. Um, one, I've seen a 20 year old's kid's, uh, uh, uh, new AI that he built. It's real remarkable. Um. he, uh, uh, is working for an architectural firm. So he stuck in an RFQ from an architectural firm to build a skyscraper. It built a skyscraper, it did the earthquake, uh, uh, testing on it, the light, uh, uh, analysis on an local neighborhood and, um, wind analysis. All in less than 20 minutes. And then it built its own 3D rendering system to show you this skyscraper,

right? All in 20 minutes. In other words, Autodesk is dead and

there's nothing they can do to react to that. They're just gonna die over the next decade.

Uh, you know, there's, there's nothing that Autodesk can do about that, that that's coming for 'em.

And so they're, you're gonna see some big [00:16:00] companies fail.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Mm-hmm.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Um, on the other side, uh, Coca-Cola hasn't even really started putting, doing AI yet. Right. That's a huge enterprise company now. They're looking at, they're looking at a variety of initiatives. I know the guy who runs

AI over there just got hired a few months ago.

Right. So they're

starting to see that they have to change. Now Coca-Cola's not going anywhere. It's not like Autodesk. Autodesk is under a direct existential threat, and I don't see how they're gonna, uh, innovate their way out of that problem. 'cause this 20 year olds thing is

just gonna eviscerate them

and there's nothing he can, nothing Autodesk can do about that.

Coca-Cola on their hand we're, I have a feeling in a hundred years, we're still all drinking Diet Coke, some sort of Coke product,

right?

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Yep.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Well, at least, at least the robots in our house will be drinking the Coca-Cola products.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: No, they'll be bringing it to you on the couch,

you know, hey, hey, optimist or whatever, figure, Hey, get [00:17:00] me a Coke. You know? It'll bring you a Coke. I, I have a feeling Coke isn't going anywhere because it's such a. Iconic product and it's just, it has distribution, it has all the advantages in life, but even them, they're gonna be affected by ai.

Uh, for instance, if you take an autonomous car to work, uh, you're not going to stop the gas station anymore. Because if you're taking a gas car right now, you have to stop at the gas station every once in a while and you go inside the mini mart and buy a Diet Coke or whatever, and they sell a lot of product in those little mini marts,

uh, that's going to go away in the autonomous, a hi world.

So

they have to think about how do they change their business to respond to that distribution method going

away. cause that that's gonna affect their shareholders, you know, a little. Piece of their distribution goes away, right?

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: I mean, look, whole industries are going to be [00:18:00] radicalized by this, right? I mean, know retail's another is a big one, right? Retail is gonna be really, like where Coca-Cola's going, mean we saw last night, Coca-Cola is now gonna be doing what? Uh, cane, real cane sugar in their US drinks versus corn syrup, right?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: We'll see how fast that happens and we'll see.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Who, because Coca-Cola really doesn't make, uh, put the sugar in the drink. It, it just makes a very, uh, uh, specific syrup that

they sell to their bottling manufacturers. And the bottling manufacturers are who puts the coke in the bottle.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: That's right.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: It's, it's not owned by Coca-Cola, the bottling. Right. not completely, but,

you know, so it'll be interesting to see how many bottling centers around the world. And so these bottling centers, by the way, are. Complete companies on the themselves. They, some of them have 300,000 employees 'cause they have truck drivers going around

Mexico City selling Coke and putting it in machines and

and you know,

bringing it

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Yeah.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: centers.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: I [00:19:00] used to work, you know, when I was at Microsoft, I worked extensively with Coca-Cola Enterprises, right? So quite familiar with the whole bot. And I actually got to meet a lot of the, the bottling owners as well. And during that process, which just like you were saying,

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: They're evaluating Palantir right now. So they're gonna see that as they bring AI technologies into the enterprise. you know, you know how hard it is to get people to change and, and adopt

new things, but once they do, there's gonna be a. Uh, it's gonna be a more agile business.

It's gonna be more profitable, right? Uh, and, and they're gonna be able to open up new business lines and see new things and respond to market threats like this,

right? The autonomous cars is a market threat to them. They have

to respond to that and figure out how to develop new products and new, new things to counteract that, right?

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Uh, so have, you've been, you, I'm sure you're very aware of a lot of the work that's going on in the, in the medical field, um, and. [00:20:00] You know, I had, uh, my, my, one of my nieces has suffered a TBI, she almost died. This was what, several years ago. And, you know, she's still suffering from, one of the things that I'm, I've been personally thinking about for my own philanthropic activities is, you know, is around brain computer interfaces and human augmentation. How AI goes there. How would you evaluate the risks and opportunities for brain computer interfaces?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: That. Yeah, I, I had in my head a, a, a trip I took to Sully ai, which is building AI for doctors and nurses and the, and the hospital system

to automate the hospital system. And they're doing a real interesting job, and that can make the hospital system more profitable, more agile, and much more customer focused.

Even while doing all that.

Right, because, uh, it answers the phones. So now a nurse doesn't have to be answering the phones. A nurse can actually be paying attention to you as a patient and [00:21:00] providing a better level of care, Right.

Um, and, and you're gonna see that ripple through the hospital system. Then we're gonna see a, another new. A newer kind of medicine, a preventative medicine. We're seeing it, a taste of it. If you ask a chat GPT about, you know, some, some problem with your health, it answers you pretty well and you can even take pictures of. You know, skin rashes or, or sutures and it, it tells you the information. Just like a surgeon would it.

I did this with my friend. It's really remarkable. But we're soon gonna be wearing devices that predict our health. Cannot almost warn you that you're gonna have a heart attack tomorrow. Right.

And that is going to. Also improve the level of care for the hospital, for the healthcare system. It'll make us healthier if we really pay attention to it. But it'll also give our doctors, um, much more data about what's actually going on with [00:22:00] us. If we have a little, like, uh, sensor on our ring, on our wrist or on our finger, um, brain computer interface are a whole nother ball of

wax. Um, there, there's, they're gonna split, first of all, um. They're gonna split into a few different, uh, areas. Uh, mark Zuckerberg in October is, uh, bringing, is announcing an armband that listens to the electricity going down your hand to your fingers, right? So if you're trying to shoot a gun in a video game. Uh, electricity passed up your hand from your brain to your fingers, and so now it can intercept that and do new things with it, right? And have maybe eight arms in a video game where all you're all shooting, right? Uh, having a much more. Precise control of your fingers in, in a 3D environment because right now, if I wear my Vision Pro and I'm, uh, trying to click like on things in X Pro, [00:23:00] the camera can't see the tip of my finger very perfectly.

So it's sometimes frustrating to get. The, the right li like, well you have a sensor here. It reduces that error rate. Right? And it gets more precise. Um, there's also devices that stick behind your ear to make you feel learn left and right. So a little minor, uh, brain computer interfaces and there's gonna be some earphones from Apple that listens to your brain at some level, uh, uh, uh, to. To understand your intentionality a little bit better and or understand how you're hearing the music better. Right? Uh, so I can. Do all sorts of fun things. We're gonna see little minor ones like that. And then we're also gonna see, uh, a difference between the brain computer interfaces that actually are wires on your brain, like the current neural link, right, where they have thousands and not wires that were, or threads they call them, placed onto the brain, inside your skull by a robot. [00:24:00] That's gonna be a hard thing for normal, everyday people to accept because you have to sign a waiver that it

could kill you. Putting that in, right?

There's a chance that that process can go bad, and even it can go bad over time because your brain, the neurons in your head don't like these little wires, so they start scabbing up and

pulling away from 'em.

So the efficiency of the wire talking to the brain is not quite there. We also, the. Current. Neuralink can only read from your brain. Can't write to your brain. But I, we know that they're developing technologies to write to the brain as well. Uh, Neuralink calls it eyesight to write, uh, visual information into your visual nerve so you can make a blind person

see or something like that.

And so, and, and, and for a while, I think that's where, it's where the internal brain computer interfaces are gonna be. They're gonna be medical devices. For people who [00:25:00] don't care about dying so much, the, they, the, this device is gonna bring 'em such a big improvement in life. Like, like we're seeing with the first seven patients who have Neuralink, it dramatically improves their life, right?

Uh, all of a sudden they can communicate with their family, they can control things, they can inter interact with us, right? Uh, on online. It really, really dramatically improves their life. Those people will sign up for this kind of thing. Uh, me and you? Probably not for years,

right?

15 years from now.

Yeah, I may, well, I'll sign up earlier, but

but unless, but you know, 15 years from now it seems like, uh, right. There's other approaches that take an external only approach, uh, to brain computer interfaces. There's a

hack coming out that I've seen that has 70,000 sensors that sits on the outside of [00:26:00] your skull. Right. It's a hat and you put it on. And now you have basically what the neural link people have right now, and that's coming in two years and it should be about 500 bucks.

The people who are making it say, so let's say it takes four years and it's a thousand bucks.

I guess everybody always underestimates how long the stuff it takes and, and um, how it can get to market and how, how to manufacture it. Um, but they're coming

and

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Yeah.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: I had idea. Can only read from the brain. I can't write to it yet. Um, so, uh, you know, it, it'll be a fun device to have and that'll take us into a new world. To healthcare there. I mean, I, you're gonna see these brain, brain computer interfaces embedded in people, uh, who have deep medical needs already, right? Um, I just interviewed, uh, Mayron Gritz who, uh, has a brain computer interface that, uh, [00:27:00] uh, solves a deep depression.

So if somebody's. Severely depressed, like can't get out of the house, kind of depressed. Um, they can get a little thing notched into their skull. The surgeon covers it back up and it fixes that problem. And if you have that kind of problem, again, it makes a dramatic improvement in life.

So you're very willing to put up with, uh, the little surgery you have to do to have that implanted

and. Keeping it running, and every day you have to hook a little thing up to it for 5, 10, 5 to 10 minutes to charge it and to get the data out of it and put a new program into it and stuff like that. So, I don't know, where should we go with this? Because, uh, it does, I mean, if we talk about the you know, 20 years from now, what

does this thing look like? We're in a brain computer interface world that can write and read from our brain,

and that's,

that's the singularity.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: to, to your, I. [00:28:00] To your point, I mean, people with, you know, Emmy or chronic, you know, chronic fatigue syndrome, who maybe have 10 to 15 usable hours a week where they can function and the rest of the time they really can't, you know, they're bedridden. Finding it hard to even be able to get out to go to the bathroom and things like that.

The ability to be able to understand what's going on and rewrite that in order to be able to give them, you know, a, a longer window, a greater, you know, quality of life. This is huge. Okay. For absolutely that. So I think there's, the opportunities are, are endless, let alone, you know, being able to early detect, you know, some of the diseases and you know, so they, they don't, you don't find them out at stage four.

You find them out at stage zero or one. Okay. And then, and then again into prevention.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Well, and, and then if you're somebody who's like, uh, paralyzed at Stanford University, I saw Fifi Lee, uh, give a talk, and she showed a video of a guy wearing a cap with a bunch of wires coming off of it, and he was controlling a robot. He, he was just by thinking the robot was cooking him dinner. Right. [00:29:00] And that, that shows how deeply when we do get to this singularity world where we're merging with AI in such a way, right? We're where we're, we're gonna have AI in our head. In a world where it's writing to our brain and reading from it, that's gonna be

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: So,

so in 20 years, what will it mean to be human, do you think?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Uh, that's a good, interesting, uh, question for, uh, many, many words will be burned on that question

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Right.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: By philosophers and

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: The and

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: human, everybody

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: by bit.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: an

opinion on it. I I think, um, when, let's say I got a Neuralink right now and I was just waking up, uh, of this kind of note. Um, the AI is in your head and that gives you superpowers because now you can think to the AI far faster than using your mouth.

I mean, I just, just yesterday [00:30:00] I got chat GPT Voice so I could talk to my computer and have the computer do things right? And, and, and there's a few other examples of that. My Chinese lights have microphones on.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Right.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: It's gonna be a weird feature. Um. In that world, you're gonna be merged with ai. I, I think that's the best outcome where we actually, the biological beings that, uh, who are at the bleeding edge merge with ai.

And we've talked to the AI in our head, right? And the AI is always there to assist us, make our life better, right?

Stuff like that. And. That's going to, if we had a true brain computer interface on, we could have that conversation at a far faster rate

than me talking to my screen, uh, the way I have to right now.

Right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Absolutely.

so Phillip and I, I mean, you're using, you know, um, uh, ai, you know, just like you are all of the time. But I mean, I have, I have, apart from when I'm podcasting [00:31:00] Okay. When it's not co-hosting. Okay. I have, I have, um, you know. Chat GT and others open listening and talking to them sort of constantly throughout the day.

Okay. So it's just, it's just second nature. It's like working, working with a colleague in that respect. Okay. And so you're collaborating in real time, Hey, what about this? And do that. And they go quiet for a while, then ask a question. So, and it's just, it's just sitting there. It's just, it's just part of life at that

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Yeah. It's gonna be more so, particularly as we get into glasses and have virtual beings that are gonna be, uh, you know, assisting you. I mean, I, Elon Musk did the FU this week, which is sort of, uh,

a lame example of that. But within, uh, 18 months, we're gonna have millions. Different kinds of, you could probably have me be your digital assistant if you wanted to. 'cause you can clone my voice Now. That's coming today from from Loom, from Hume.

Right? I, I

was playing with that yesterday. Cloning my voice. You can clone my body. That's come, that's almost here or here. Um, and you certainly [00:32:00] can have, um, me at least be a digital twin of yours. right. Uh, if you ask Rock, uh, any, you can have a. Gr, um, ask, ask Grock or chat GPT. Hey, can you have Robert Scoble interview, uh, Elon Musk,

and it will lay out an interview

for you. It knows how I write, 'cause it read all my blogs. That's how it was trained.

So it knows me very deeply. It knows me better than I know myself. In fact, when I started asking specific questions about what I did in the past, I, it reminds me of stuff I forgot about right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Absolutely. Well that, so, so here's a question then. So let's take this in a slightly different direction. Um, ethics. So responsible, safe, and responsible ai. It's, uh, you know, I'm gonna be slightly controversial here, but if, if, if we're going to be able to have, uh, to use your example, avatars inside the glasses so I can see somebody that, you know, that's, uh, that's virtually there, there's, and to your point, I can scan somebody, I can look down the road.

I'm gonna be very controversial here. Look down the road. [00:33:00] And see children playing and decide to use one of those as my avatar and this sort of thing. So there's a, there's a level of, of AI ethics that I think has to come into a, to this from a responsible perspective. And I think that, you know, all service to the great God mam, and we all wanna be able to make money, but we need to be able to do it in a, in a way that's, that has a set of guardrails.

How, how do you think about that?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: there's, there's people in Silicon Valley make, uh, little tiny models in their basements with this, you know,

seven Nvidia h 200 cards in their basement. I mean, how are you gonna regulate them too? And how are you gonna regulate the Chinese? And uh, uh, I think we've opened up Pandora's Fox and I don't

know how we're gonna get it closed again.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: So regulation probably isn't the answer because regulation is never gonna keep pace with, with what you know, with what Bob and Susan in a basement can do right now, uh, with an N 200. So at that point then the question is, okay, if you are, if you're wanting to say, well, good news, we'll, we'll trust that everybody will do it correctly.

I think that's not gonna work either. So regulation [00:34:00] isn't there, trust isn't there. So what, what's your, what's your thought around this?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: It's a bunch of new

problems coming for human beings, and I don't have the answers. Um, you know, brain computer interfaces are gonna bring new problems. So if it takes away your free will, if you have wires on your brain, the person who put the wires on your brain controls, you could

make you pick up a gun and shoots somebody else

in, in theory, right?

And you can't fight it. Right. If, if there's a wire on your brain that's always on and it's forcing you to do something, you can't, you can't fight it. I could fight the little strips behind my ears when it, it made me lean left and right, and I could fight what it was doing to my brain,

but it, it did force me to lean left or right, and, and I could, I could fight my own brain. That leads to a new problem. Also, if you have wires on your brain listening and writing. Yeah. Reality changes.

So now we have a new diff uh, misinformation problem. 'cause you, if, if you [00:35:00] have that device on, you don't know what what's real anymore.

Right. A Coke can in front of you could change to a Pepsi can and in your visual field, right?

And there's nothing you can do about that.

You have, and, and AI actually lays out these new problems. Uh, if you ask, uh, like rock or chat GPT about cognitive sovereignty in a brain computer interface world, they lay out, we need new regulations for this new world coming. Toward us because we need humans to protect their humanness by having a piece of software that gets in between Elon Musk and your brain.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Mm-hmm.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Absolutely.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: And.

and watches. And watches to make sure it's not changing reality this way and not forcing to pick up a gun and shoot

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Sure. Well, today, today was sponsored by Pepsi, so that Coke can is now Pepsi. You know, you walk into the store and all of the Coke cans appear to be empty. There's no, no, there's all the Coke. The shelves that we're selling Coke are all empty [00:36:00] Right now. The only available drink is, is sold by the Pepsi Corporation because you are, you can't see the things that, that, that are

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Oh, you'll see the Coke cans. They won't play nasty like that, but the Pepsi can will have a Skrillex concert on it,

and that'll be very attractive to, oh, Pepsi is cooler today than the Coke. You know, it's.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Exactly.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Um, we. we, also are gonna have a new inner dialogue problem with brain computer interfaces because it's listening to our inner dialogue.

So think of a kid who has conservative parents who's deciding on his sexuality right now. Uh, the brain computer interface could figure out he's, uh, gay before he even realizes himself.

Right. And could tell mom and cause all sorts of problems in a, in a dystopian,

uh,

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Absolutely.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: mirror world, this is possible.

Right? So, uh, do we, uh, step in and say, that's not allowed. Right?

Um, you know, don't, don't report inner dialogue to anybody else [00:37:00] and keep it all encrypted. We have to worry about a new. Quantum kind of attack on our encryption. So

you better be using homomorphic encryption or some

quantum resistant encryption to keep, uh, the, the government, the church, the, the corporation outta your life,

right outta your head. Uh, so that's a whole new wi problem. Um, on the ethics, it's a, it is a real problem because the AI was created by stealing my content and not asking, and not paying. So right there, it's an unethical, uh, uh, system if you look at it the right way. Right? And, and how do we make an unethical system ethical? That's a, that's a real problem because it was created in an unethical way, right? So how do we put that back in the box? I don't know.

We're heading into a new future and we're all gonna have to have, uh, conversations about what's

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: all have to have responsibility. It's not just, [00:38:00] it's not just the corporations. We, you know, humanity also has cannot abdicate the responsibility

to technology

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Yeah. And, and there's a deeper problem too, coming. These things are gonna be highly addictive.

right. you Yeah, Absolutely.

Yeah.

You think I, I, I'm studying,

you know, the world and people are addicted to a, a little four inch piece of glass in their hand,

right? Wait, Wait, until, that's a wrap around screen on the entire Warhol,

and, uh, it is doing stuff everywhere for you. Uh, you are never gonna take these glasses off if

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: No, I mean, the metaverse was early, right? It was

just way too

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: but. But every human is also gonna have to make a a decision. Do they play slot machines all night long or do they go to the library?

Because there's gonna be a fantastic library, but there's also gonna be a fantastic slot machine.

And a lot of people are gonna choose just to gamble their lives away and not do anything else [00:39:00] right with their lives.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Or, or there'll be a group of people who'll be gamifying the library. Okay. So you can, you can, that's right. So you can, but you can, you can serve it up in bite-sized, you know, TikTok capable chunks that allow people to be able to consume this without their attention span, you know, dying within the first 28 seconds.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: that, that, that's a good point. We're gonna change as human beings because we're not used to sitting down and reading a paper book anymore. Right. We we're used to this world of doom scrolling through acts for, uh, TikTok or Instagram

and looking at little, tiny. Clips, which are

highly, uh, tuned to create dopamine in your head and

therefore to addict you.

This is what the whole

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: And I do w and I do worry that, you know, we're losing cognitive abilities as a hu as humanity from using these, you know, using these tools.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: You can, You can, gain cognitive abilities if you ask the right prompt, right.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Yeah, well, I think it's prompting, and I always say with with Phillip it's discernment too. So being able to ask [00:40:00] the right question and then being able to discern whether what you are getting is what you were really asking for, and then being able to analyze that and, and collaborate backwards and forwards to get what you're looking for.

Those are skills that are gonna become so crucially important.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Yeah. I I think, you know, every human's gonna have to make this decision. Are you gonna be a builder or are you gonna be a consumer?

Right.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: you

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: absolutely.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: And, and if you're, if you're, gonna be a creator, it's gonna lead to a happier life. And, and also the people you hang out with are more

interesting. Uh, I can

tell you that than hanging out at the, at the, uh, slot machines in Las Vegas.

I've done both.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Yeah.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: know, those

people are fun, but they're, uh, generally not nearly as interesting as somebody in a machine shop building something,

right? So, um. I think we're all gonna have to decide, are we gonna be a builder or, or a consumer. And people like me will be mostly a consumer and sometimes a builder.

Right.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Yeah.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Yep.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: So we're, we're, we're running close to time here. We've got a couple of rapid fire [00:41:00] questions for you and we'll just, and then we'll finish up. So, what's one prediction you've made that you're most proud of and one that you got completely wrong?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Uh, my first book was, uh, written in 2005. Well, I worked at

Microsoft and it, um, was about social media and how business would use social media. I took so much shit for saying that every business is gonna have to use social media soon, and now every business does. Right? Pretty much. I have 6,600 AI companies in social media, right? And so I'm. Pretty proud of that. All eight of my books have properly predicted decade long changes. Um, you know, even the latest one is about spatial computing and that still hasn't happened to, you know, even with me, I mean, I have a pair of, uh, digital glasses from even realities, but. Um, they only have a small glass, green and black screen in, um, they, you know, they don't have a, a [00:42:00] full on, uh, for full color display like the, the Apple Vision Pro. Um, meta is coming out in October with a pair of glasses that has a

full color display. And, and that's gonna be a radical change.

riverside_alistair_lowe-norris_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0020: Mm-hmm.

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. And then what's next for you, Robert? You know, any of, any big projects you're working on, ideas you're working on?

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: My goal in life is always to see a different entrepreneur every day. I, I'm putting up a video with a, a company that's making digital clothing this morning. Uh, I like talking to people who do things like that. ILI love visiting robot companies. I love

robots. I think, uh,

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Right.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: Um, that's, that gets me going in the morning, so I'm trying to understand. Where, where that industry is and where, what's coming for companies or business or people with robots? Um, yeah, I'm just trying to, I mean, my business is trying to understand what's going on at the bleeding edge, where the puck is going. So [00:43:00] I can give

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: Yeah.

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: VCs advice and entrepreneurs, uh, strategic advice and

help them go forward and help this future happen faster, which

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: And, and so, and where can listeners follow your latest work and your I, I mean, I'm everywhere, but really on X, uh, X is where the AI

riverside_robert_scoble_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0019: industry is. If you really are in the AI industry, you have to be on X, uh, uh, you could try to tell me it's over on Blue Sky or Reds. It's not. It's on X.

That's where I can watch 6,600 companies and 28,000 people all in real time, all on one screen. And, uh, that's where we all are at the moment. Um. And that, yeah, that's where I published most

of my stuff yesterday. I put published 64 things. So I'm, I'm watching that stream, uh, a lot and then sharing the best of the, of what I see in the community.

So

riverside_phillip_swan_raw-video-cfr_the_agentic insider_0018: So Robert. Can't thank you enough for being so generous with your time to share [00:44:00] your thoughts and vision and uh, wisdom with our audience. Thank you so much for your time. To our audience, thank you so much for being part of this wonderful episode, and we look forward to seeing you next week. Thank you.

Speaker: That's a wrap on this week's episode of the Ag Agentic Insider. Thank you for listening. For show notes and more, please visit AgTech Insider Show. To learn more about Iridiuss visit Iridiuss.ai. We'll see you next time.