AI as a Digital Assistant, Not a Threat

Trevor Sumner joins Richard Lowe (The Writing King) on Leaders and Their Stories for a sharp, optimistic conversation about how to actually use AI.

Trevor makes the case that AI is best understood as a digital assistant, that the real value is going from advice to action, and that, like every technology before it, it will shift jobs rather than simply destroy them.

Trevor Sumner is a technology and AI leader who works on the investment and strategy side of emerging tech. He focuses on the practical application of AI as a digital assistant for individuals and businesses.

For more conversations like this one, see the Leaders Hub. Richard ghostwrites digital transformation books.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the interview follows.

Richard: Hello, welcome to the leaders in their stories. Podcast. I’m Richard Lowe. the writing King and the ghostwriting. Guru. Thank you for coming to the podcast I’m here with Trevor, who’s going to tell us all about his business and AI, and how that can help you and how that can help a business, and what to look out for, and things like that. Trevor, why don’t you give us a little short introduction.

Meet Trevor Sumner

Trevor Sumner: Hey, Richard! Great, great! Great! Great! To to be here! Thank you for having me on the pod. My name is Trevor Sumner. I’m the CEO of I Genie, which is an AI company that’s transforming consumer insights, consumer insights, huge market very dependent on survey based data. It’s increasingly unreliable data sets, you know.

Recently there was like a 10 million dollars fraud case. And you know, there’s a lot of human bias. So what we do is we synthesize trend, spotting, brand equity, tracking, product, benchmarking and innovation by synthesizing tens of billions of Google searches, reviews, social posts, videos on Tiktok and Instagram for companies like kenview, Unilever, Coca-cola buyer and the like.

I’ve been a 25 year veteran of the tech space. So I’ve seen a couple different hype cycles and caught the 1st Internet boom in 1998, I’ve been through an Ipo and M. And A started my own company, which I grew to over a hundred people. So also an angel investor advisor to startups, so been around the block.

AI as a Digital Assistant

Richard: Yeah. Your persona here is good. Alright. So AI is the big thing now. And obviously you’re you’re working with AI a lot. Now, you’re familiar with the Gartner Hype cycle. And I think we’re actually still going up to the peak and about to hit the fall because basically the hype cycle for those who don’t know is you have your products.

So AI came out. Everybody’s all excited about it. They start investing and goes up up, up, up, and then it doesn’t meet the expectations or whatever happens, and it just crashes investment we’re talking about, and then it goes down to almost nothing, and then it pops back up to a new normal, which is then becomes the normal.

You saw with it, with cloud. You saw with all kinds of different things technologies. So I think we’re still on the big spike. and we’re about to hit the top of that. What do you think.

Trevor: On the investment side of the house. I think there’s certainly something there right in that. Some of the valuations that we’re seeing out in the market are just crazy. Right? Like pre revenue companies, like, there’s a robotics company that’s pre-revenue that was valued at 40 billion dollars right?

Pre-revenue. I’m seeing a lot of AI disruptors who have a couple 1 million in revenue and are raising money at 250 million, like, you know, 5,100 X revenues. So on one hand, I think like that is definitely hype cycle. I’m a little more of an East Coast cultural investor right where I look at real, you know, kind of economics and multiples at the same time.

We’re seeing some companies really have exit velocities that are unlike anything that you know, we’ve seen before, you know, companies that are 30 people and driving a hundred 1 million dollars in revenue and being able to build that in 3, 4 years. So there’s definitely something to a new growth trajectory around software and product led growth with self-serve models that end up going into the enterprise that seems to be working.

So the disruption is real. And then the other thing I would say is, you know, I remember, you know, kind of when I caught the 1st Internet boom, and you know everybody rebranded. Ibm all of a sudden became ibm.com. We changed everything right like you know you haven’t but it was, you know, we invested, but nobody was really spending, you know, had moved all their spend to e-commerce, and and not all of media had moved to the Internet, people still had cable TV.

And what’s different I think about this is a lot of people are using AI, whether it’s perplexity for search, or that Gpt marketing teams are getting cut and using creative. You know, tools for blogging for image generation. My designer uses AI based image generation tools. It’s just, you know, we can do a lot more right now.

And I think that productivity is very real. Now, whether the hype that it’s going to change the entire world. And you know, the cut budgets by 80% tomorrow like, that’s that’s a little overblown. But the amount of usage I find to be very real.

Richard: Well, I I know that I I’m on chat gpt all day long, and I stick with chat, gpt, because that’s what I I know, and I don’t really have the time to learn new things at this point. Sometimes I jump into new things, and the learning curves can be pretty high but I’ll get to them eventually.

But I’m literally on chat Gpt all day long, and I get my money out of that $20 a month.

When AI Gets to Know You

Trevor: 100%, a hundred percent. And you know, it gets to know you over time. I just like.

Trevor: I just did post it on Linkedin, you know. I asked it. You know a couple of personal questions about what it thought about me, and there’s a lot of flattery there. But I also asked, Where do you think my insecurities lie? What do you think of my management style?

And then it was like, do you want to know what you know, based on your management style, what some weaknesses and blind spots might be, and it nailed it. I mean it really nailed it. And like that’s that was just like a wonderful reminder of, you know, some things that I should be looking out for as I approach big and new problems.

And you know for it to be to you, to the way you like answers to the way you do work, to even create your own, you know, Gpts for for specific types of tasks that’s actually remarkably easy. And so I think everybody should be starting to use it right now to kind of build its capability personalized to you and like you said, like, I would say, I’ve reduced 80% of my Google searches to perplexity or chatgpt. At this point.

Richard: Well, I’ve I did an experiment. So I went to my doctor for my doctor and my doctor did the usual. This is a physical usual 15 min physical that was pretty pretty lame, gave me some results. I took all the tests that I’ve done in the last year with the doctor.

I took all the my diet exercise program. I do everything that I’m doing now in my life. Put it in chat. Gpt took me several hours And then I said, Okay, based on what you just learned. I want to extrapolate 25 years into the future. So if I keep doing what I’m doing, what happens?

It gave me a timeline. and I said, You have a heart attack this, this tears out, and you have this happen. And this happened. And this happened probabilities. And then I said, Okay, what do I need to change to prevent that outcome? And it said. Of course, eat better and exercise.

And I was amused. Because that’s that’s basically what I keep getting told. And it gave me why and wherefores and stuff to do, and a plan, and blah blah, and I’m starting to follow it even because it was far better than going to the doctor I got I got real results, and it actually listened.

Trevor: Well, I think actually, you know well, some of the conclusions in in this case might be obvious. It also it also can detect more nuanced things. But what I really loved about what you said was, it created a plan.

From Advice to Action

Trevor: Right. And so this this is the wonderful thing about Chat Gpt is going from advice to action. So, for example, when I started at Igeny. You know my background is in retail tech and marketing tech. but not a big background in consumer insights. Luckily, Igeny was founded by the head of consumer insights for Unilever and Coca-cola.

And the team’s amazing. And they have real depth there. But I said, Okay, let’s say I want to become an expert in consumer insights in 60 days, 90 days, 120 days, put in whatever you want at, you know, suggest a set of reading and exercises over the course of the next 60 91, 20 days.

Create a plan. Tell me which books I should read, which blogs which you know kind of magazines or online blog sources, and it puts it all together week by week, and creates a curriculum. And so like that action plan customized to you is really exciting for personal development, and that could be your health.

That could be, you know, knowledge base that could be. If you think about how it’s going to transform learning for kids who are right now primarily using chat, gpt to cheat on their homework and not do the writing and etc, etc. but could be used to actually enforce learning plans.

See how well you’re learning along the way and adapt right, and adapt that plan by like, Oh, you know I missed this week, or I did this instead of that readapt, you know, kind of rework the plan from here, or I took 2 weeks vacation. And now but I need to hit this new deadline rework the plan so that.

And it does all of that right. And I think there’s just a fear factor of of using a lot of these tools, a fear factor that they’re going to tell us what to do. And God forbid, you know, like, you know, create a difference in action. People hate the notion of change. But the action plans are tremendous.

Richard: Yeah, what I found is they tend to sometimes be overwhelming. So what I do is, I say, Okay, that plan looks good. But I can’t do it based on what I’ve got and going on in life, it’s going to overwhelm me. And this is okay, trims it down.

And this is the essential one. This is optional. This is essential. Look at this. Don’t bother with that. I told you that before, but it’s not necessary. And you just basically get in a conversation with it. That’s what’s cool about it is is you’re in a conversation. You talk to it.

And you say this is going on. This is what I need to fix. Can you help me with this? Oh, sure, of course it always says, sure. And and here’s here’s the answer. And then you say, well, that answer doesn’t make sense to me. Okay. what? What’s what?

Am I missing? Oh, okay, here’s the answer. Well, that answers a little bit better. But still, it’s a problem for me. You just keep going back and forth, you know. Adjust that date to be 2 weeks instead of a week. Okay? You know, yeah.

Using AI for Strategy

Trevor: And it’s actually also good, you know, bringing this back to business in thinking about strategy, you know, I wouldn’t take the strategy just out of the box. But, for example, if you’re doing competitive intelligence, I’d buys a company called Competitor Genius, where, like they’re using AI to, you know, kind of basically allow you to map out your competitors.

See how the reviews from clients on G. 2 Capterra. All the b 2 b type sites can provide some insights. but also to figure out how to do that in a structured way. I think that’s also like you know how we deal with like the unstructured output of Gen.

AI is like, and then and then measuring it month to month. But you know. if if you’re looking at an analysis of your website. You can put that into Chat Gpt or Claude, or these others, and say, tell me what you think of this website. How do we make it better.

What do I need to do to start attracting this audience versus that audience? What tweaks would you suggest? And it’s phenomenal. Now you know the level of suggestions and detailed, and granularity, you know, is is just, impressive.

Richard: I actually actually did that my website and my Linkedin profile. And now I’m working on my Facebook because my Facebook is a different market than Linkedin, and it gave me some details in my. I was amazed to find out. It can actually tear apart graphics and didn’t know it gotten that far, and it told me, well, this this picture is fine, but it could use this and this and this.

This banner looks good, but it needs this, and the background’s a little. is the background drowns out the text, you know, and stuff like that. It was really neat, not having to send that to other, to round to 50,000 people, or whatever to look at and get their opinions. I’m not getting opinions here. I’m getting. It seems like more grounded information.

Trevor: Yeah, no, absolutely. And actionable and specific.

Trevor: Say, you know, like, Hey, you should tweet this text to be more professional. Okay, great. With that in mind. Please recommend some edits for this specific paragraph, and it’ll give it to you.

Richard: Yep, yep. keeping in mind that you you have to tell it. I don’t want it to be robotic. I want it to be not take out the AI crap. I always tell it that. Put in active voice. All these kind of you have to tune it. Otherwise you’re gonna get AI crap.

Trevor: Yeah. And and I think that’s where like again, the paid plans. making sure it gets to know you and some of the keys that you can put in. It’s like, you know, hey? The voice for this website is professional, but a little bit cheeky, it’s, you know, without being silly.

We always, you know, like Apple’s guidelines, you know, we never say mobile phone. It’s always iphone. We. We say we say these words, but never these words, you know we want to be helpful, but also want to be engaging and a little bit entertaining, like whatever those brand guidelines are, and you could even upload a brand presentation right?

And then and then it has that, as it’s, you know, kind of North Star for all future prompts. You don’t always have to put that in there right. And so I think that’s that’s a little bit of the key about, you know, just jumping in and using those things.

And then, you know, working with your teams like, I think the other thing is. it’s a little overwhelming, because there’s so many different areas right now where this can be applied. And you know, as a leader, you’ve got to figure out, you know, how are the teams feeling comfortable about adopting the shopify, you know.

Put out the shopify. CEO, put out an amazing post on Linkedin, and beyond just talking about you know how they’re going to become an AI first, st you know company and how you know everybody’s. you know, kind of personal plan. And you know, annual review will include, you know, kind of how are they adopting AI tools?

How are they pushing the organization forward on AI tools? Every new hire is going to be questioned, based upon whether that can be automated through AI, and there are other approaches to it. And and you know, it’s an incredible world. You know, I was talking to a lot of marketing people I know who are currently looking for work.

And it’s a it’s a terrible time to be looking for work, because you’ve got a lot of professionals who have been who’ve left Google and Facebook and and Meta. And so there are a lot of people working like like 1,000 people applying to jobs, you know, on every post on Linkedin, in part because they’re using AI to personalize every message and every cover letter to submit to to jobs.

So there’s a lot of that going on. And so I’ve had a couple of people ask me, and I was like, Well, what do you think I should do, Trevor, and I was like, you know what I’d be looking for. I’d be looking for a marketing person saying like, Here’s like the stack that you need right, like, so marketing is increasingly becoming a like a tech.

And it function. Right? So you want to run a podcast here’s, the podcast ais that will clean up all the background noise in your audio that’ll cut it up into snippets that’ll prepare little images based upon.

Trevor: Can you know kind of encapsulated in the snippets and all of a sudden? I have a full content and marketing plan based upon an hour long podcast such as this. And it does it, you know, in 20 min for you to review as opposed to 10 h of work.

Okay, so that’s podcasting. Here’s the AI you need for blogging. Here’s the AI, you need for email outreach. Here’s the AI I need for ads. Here’s how they all work together, and I can put that together for you. So just tell me you know the stack, because I don’t know the stack and a lot of the, you know, people who have marketing teams.

Everybody’s kind of like a little bit siloed, and they have their own AI Stack, but it’s like hard to to figure out how they all work together, and some leadership about how to build. That, I think, is what’s missing for a lot of you know, companies and marketing and other areas, too. And it’s hard to measure the progress of adoption. There.

AI Matures When We Stop Calling It AI

Richard: Well, AI, is not that old? And and when I what what to me is the clue that AI is mature is when that stops being stressed when it becomes just normal, much like the Internet and having a mobile phone. I mean, nobody looks. Are you mobile phone ready? You know when you when you’re hiring somebody. It’s normal now.

Richard: And when AI gets to that point where it’s normal where Ibm doesn’t say we’re AI it’s just it. Better be AI. You don’t have to say it, then then it becomes more mature. That’s where the mature point for me.

Trevor: Yeah, no, I agree with that. But I I also think you know I I would expect it to be a question of every interview. You know.

Trevor: Over the next year, you know, and again shopify also. Klarna just recently announced this, too, as a fast following. that that. You know, what? How do you use? AI? But you know, in your job function in your personal life, that’s You know. AI is not going to replace us. People who use AI better than you will replace you.

AI as an Electronic Person

Richard: People who use AI as a digital assistant. as somebody, as a actually an electronic person, to help them out, get their job done and replace all those silly tasks that people have been doing in the past like I had a spreadsheet to fill out with 1,000 names. I just said, Chatgpt.

Help me fill this out. So what do you need? Here’s a spreadsheet. I need the data filled in. I was really vague. And it said, Okay, build in half an hour. I have to give it a couple more instructions, like, Okay, or is work, you know.

Trevor: Yeah. And there’s this like primordial struggle between those who say, you know, if that is going to put a lot of people out of work versus that’s going to make a lot of people more effective at their job and able to accomplish more and drive more revenues. And this is where you get, you know, kind of very lean organizations getting to 100 million dollars in revenue versus, you know.

You know. Hey, we’re going to put 10 million truck drivers out of work, and the answers are probably a little bit of both. And you know anybody who tells you it’s not going to put anybody out of business. We’re all just going to be kind of higher level, higher order, because of this, I think is being intentionally techno-optimistic. And anybody who says it’s just going to put everybody out of jobs is being techno-pessimistic. And as always, the answer is usually somewhere in the middle.

Digital Transformation and Jobs

Richard: Well, I’ve written 4 books on digital transformation. And all of them went into this. that the idea is AI and and technology, and some of them are more robotics based is not based around obsoleting people. It’s based around making more efficient people.

Trevor: Absolutely. And that’s that’s happened. You know, The typewriter and the personal computer. We talked about how that was going to bring all the secretaries and note takers and typists out of work. And the reality is it created millions of jobs. or Instagram? Right? You know, Instagram as an app was going to put all professional photographers out of business.

But what actually happened is, yes, on the, you know, kind of artistic, you know, highly paid Annie Leibowitz type of photographers. There’s a lot less of those. But we also created literally billions of people who now consume photography for 2 to 3 HA day, and influencers. My wife is an influencer, right?

And and makes a tremendous amount of money doing. you know, kind of influencer, marketing and helping clients produce a tremendous amount, more of content that that gets consumed. And so, like, you actually create the step change of consumption which turns out like the photography industry in terms of revenue has never been higher.

And it’s probably a hundred x higher right? And so, you know, we have to figure out, where are these like 100 X growth opportunities that happen? But a lot of them are just kind of you know. You can’t see it coming. It’s a little bit unintended, because, you see, these massive shifts shifts in consumer behavior, professional behaviors and things like that.

Richard: Well in the writing industry, which is, I’m in as a ghostwriter. The thing that’s affecting me or affecting writers is it’s cutting out the bottom of writers. So if you’re if you’re an entry level writer or you’re, you’re a writer who’s barely making a living. If you don’t know AI, you’re doomed for higher level writers.

It’s the same thing. You better be using AI not to write. but as a tool to help you to help speed up that writing cycle and make it better. You know you’re you’re stuck trying to think of the next thing to write about. You got writer’s block. AI is great for that.

I got writer’s block help. Tell me how to get out of it. Simple, prompt, and it will give you all kinds of suggestions. and it’ll ask you, you know what’s going on, and you well, this and this and this and this and you just you’re out of writer’s block writer’s block is pretty common for writers.

You know what usually causes it is just staring at the screen too long. It’s fixed. It’s a fixed stair. and you get almost hypnotized. So you got to get out and go for a walk. Silly, silly thing! Silly, interesting answer! That’s in my case. I found that you.

That’s usually the solution. Just go for a walk. take a break, get on the exercise bike, probably too fat, anyway, because you’re sitting on your butt riding all day. That’s what I’m doing, I mean for me.

Trevor: Yeah, I. But I think that’s an important point, right? Like, you know, you know, One of the things about Gen AI is it’s going to output a tremendous amount of content. And the question is, how good is that content? Right? The the people with the the kind of if you look at the long tail of content.

It’s just going to explode out, but the high value at the the head is going to be more and more important. And you know, I think it’s just a hard challenge, right? Because especially for people just come, you know, like, early on in their career, because what’s going to happen is the people who have the wisdom and the experience to know what great content is.

10 x. Content is what Rand Fishkin would call it right. It’s like just content. That’s so much better than everything else out there. And you know whether it’s, you know. outputting a ton of imagery, knowing what the best imagery is and how to get it. Just a little bit to that level and to that next level, you know, entry level.

You don’t have the experience or wisdom to do that. And so I think you know, a lot of these kind of transformations are very difficult for various different people where you talk about like moving from coal miners and telling them they should become coders, which is, you know, obviously unrealistic.

You know. How do we deal with these kind of rapid changes, and for the current generations we’re going to need a lot less of like some of the grunt work paralegaling, you know, base copywriting. Those things are going to get, you know, wiped out. But those were the jobs where you got the experience to realize.

Oh, I provided this, and then there were these edits, and then it made it better. And then I saw the process to get from okay, content to fantastic content. And without that wisdom and experience like, how do you know, bridge the gap now that your efforts are not needed for that entry level?

And so how do you get from here to that, you know, kind of wizardry status without that pathway. And I think there are. You know, we talked about ways that you know Chatgpt or others can build learning plans and get you there. But you know, how do you do that without a great deal of experience? That’s that’s something we have to solve.

The COBOL Problem

Trevor: It’s a couple things. So so one I would challenge. And I would say, if if you think of natural language as a programming language, or excel as a programming language, as increasingly, it’s becoming. you know, in terms of daily usage, and everywhere like, I think, that would explode out over cobol.

But this is also something Gen. AI is really great, at which is, you know, migrating code. Right? So the big challenge with the cobol, and why we still have cobol is. It’s just such a huge, huge effort to migrate it over. And now Gen. AI can do most of that.

And so I think we have a real opportunity to sunset some of the legacy technologies that we were terrified of removing. So.

Trevor: I’d be surprised. I actually think, you know, these days the technology focus, especially in finances, is pretty deep. I think they know they just don’t know. Like, when’s the right time? How do you go about it? And you know, how do you? What like? What’s the right way to go system by system and get there.

And what’s the plan? I think you’re going to see in the background a lot of this transitioning going on. And there’s some companies I was trying to think of. Klarna, I think, was one of them where they didn’t like, you know, one of the systems, either through salesforce or workday, or something like something along those lines.

So you know, because you highly customize these platforms. They cost, you know, tens of millions of dollars a year to customize, or even, you know, kind of support. And they use Gen. AI to basically rebuild the system using custom software and said, like, this is exactly what I want us to do.

Here are the specs, and then they built it, and you know they they don’t have to pay the giant license fees right? And so I don’t know how realistic that is, you know. You know, you have to be a pretty big organization to be able to want to create your own custom, Crm, etc.

But the notion that these Gen. AI tools can actually build that for you and remove the licensing fees which are.

Is SaaS Dead?

Trevor: Yeah. And and so like, there’s a lot of talk about Sas is dead because of this. And how large scale companies are, you know salesforce and workday, and you know the oracles and sap are going to be under significant amount of threats. Look, I think they’re going to respond.

But I think it’s going to erode at their margins, and they’re not going to be able to charge the same amounts that they are in the past, so we’ll see.

Richard: Yeah, same here, same here. I think sas, is just fine. It’s just gonna evolve.

Trevor: Right? I mean again, you know, taking the Instagram, you know, it’s like, Oh, it’s gonna kill photographers. But it actually created all this new demand right? You know, from a marketing perspective like, I never thought I needed podcast. AI. I never thought. I needed blog AI. I never thought.

I need sales. Outreach AI, and you know, all of a sudden you kind of add these things up. I’m like, I need like 10 new marketing softwares just to run a modern marketing stack. So obviously, it’s creating a lot of new demand for tasks that I never really even thought of.

And the question is, is that new demand. gonna you know, is that like 20% of what you know, what, what I’m replacing? Is it a hundred percent? So it’s, you know, apples to apples? Is it actually going to create twice the amount of spend or 10 times the amount of spend?

Because I don’t have to pay somebody to do that, or because I get 10 times the value out of it, and I can get to 100 million dollars in revenue with 30 people. and the answer is, we don’t know.

Trevor: Camp. I think we’re gonna do a lot more with little and I think you’re gonna see, you know, companies need less and less capital to get there, and then you get back to your original question. Where are we in the hype cycle? Well, if I don’t need to raise as much money to get to 100 million in revenue.

You know. What is the value of my company when I need to raise a couple 1 million dollars. Maybe it’s a lot more than the traditional multiples, you know, have indicated.

Solving the Demographic Problem

Richard: Well, this, this AI and its related technologies actually solve a huge problem that humanity is having right now. I don’t know how much awareness you have of it, because most people don’t. It’s called demographics. I mean, the world is involved in the demographic collapse right now, and it’s it’s in China.

It’s death, I mean, they’re in a demographic collapse. They’re not. They can’t recover literally. Japan has been in a demographic collapse since for years and years and years. Russia, Germany, these countries are all collapsing, and the United States is even feeling it because the the you need to have 2.1 children born per cup per per couple to keep, at least even to.

I imagine that slicing and shit. No, never mind. And America is at 1 point us is what 1.6 right now. Well, Japan is actually below, not Japan. China is actually below one and falling. and their numbers that they. They say they have 1.3 billion people, they probably will more likely have more and like less than a billion, maybe even 700 million, because they’re not reporting their numbers right?

Well, what Japan is doing is they’re automating everything. using AI like crazy. So they’re able to make up for the. We don’t have people to run our country anymore. Because there’s not enough young people. Let’s automate. So they’re becoming like masters of automation. And that’s gonna solve that solves one problem.

The other problem, of course, is. what do you do with all these people when you’ve got an inverted demographic pyramid which we’ve never had in human history before. where there’s too many old, more, much more old people than there are young people. How do the young people support the old people anymore.

These are that problem is a problem for the economists. But the technological problem of how do you? How do you run a country? If your population is falling. AI and and other technologies, especially robotics and things, can solve that problem.

Trevor: Yeah, look, I mean, there’s so many problems outlined in that demographic shift. Elder care is big one. I’m an investor in a company called Norbert health, which kind of like from 3 to from 3 feet away, can take all your vitals, your your blood pressure, your heart rate, your oxygenation.

Things like that, and what that, you know helps is for geriatric care facilities to to better help care for the health of people. But they’re going to live longer. How do you deal with Alzheimer’s? How do you deal with mental acuity? I think we’re going to get more care there?

So hopefully the cost will go down. But then, to your point, like, you know, what do you do with the, you know, kind of leadership and and other things, and then like what actually changes that from 1.6 to 2.1. I mean. one could argue that in this age of potential abundance all the goods get cheaper because they’re robotically produced.

And you know you don’t need truck drivers. So the cost of trucking delivery logistics falls through the floor. So everything gets cheaper. So you know, we don’t need to spend 5 days a week working, because it’s just not that kind of amount of work to do. So, okay, well, what do you do now that it’s cheaper to live?

You have more time. Maybe the answer is, you have children right, and you know one of the things in this country that you could argue is like, you know, we made it really expensive and difficult to have children right. Whether it’s. you know, the cost of schooling, the cost of childcare, the the lack of tax credits, for you know, the middle and lower classes, and we could talk about policy, and I don’t want to get into politics, but we’ve made it really expensive and difficult to have children.

But what if all this makes it very easy to have children, that you have more time, and it’s inexpensive. And then maybe we reverse the trend. So all these dynamics have huge, profound effects, right? Especially 1020 years in the future, and you know I think it’s very easy to get caught in the trap of uncertainty.

And oh, my God! The sky is falling when the reality is, we’re really bad at predicting these things. So you got 2 choices. It’s like I could just be a pessimist and say, the world is falling apart, and there’s going to be nuclear winter and robot overlords, or Hey, it’s going to be this like, you know.

Utopian Nirvana, where you know, I can have as many kids as I want. I spend as much time with them, and I don’t have to do much work. And again, the answer is probably somewhere in the middle. The question that you have control over is like, What’s your mental state in the in the near term?

And so like. I like to be an optimist. I just find it’s a better way to go through life. And there are terrible things happening in this world, less of them than ever before, arguably by most metrics. So you know, try and have a like, try and be part of the future.

You know the best way to predict the future is to create it. So like, you know, you know, work on things that are exciting, bringing new things into into the future adopt these things, really understand them? You know, harness their potential. And hopefully, you know, keep the worries away and keep your focus on the good things.

Trevor: Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, we’re much better off. And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be diligent about solving the world’s problems, and and where there continues to be suffering, and yes, there’s still a lot of it, because there are a lot of us. but but look look at what Bill Gates has done with his life, and how he’s dedicated his life to solving things like toilets and malaria and things like that.

And we and we have solutions there, and we can solve them in part because of the age of abundance and the fact that, you know we’ve created such such wealth from the accelerations that we’ve seen to date. And again, you can argue politically about, you know, concentration of wealth, and whether this can be government or philanthropists, and whether that’s the right model.

But the reality is, we’re saving people from malaria. We’re solving people from dysentery. And you know, that’s that’s pretty exciting. That’s pretty.

A Wonderful World, With Caution

Richard: It is. And that’s that’s a positive note. It’s good to end this on. I think that that as humanity, we’ve solved a lot of problems that if you had been back a hundred, even 200 years ago. who could imagine that we would have these solutions in place? Who could imagine nobody, not a single Science fiction author imagined the Internet or the mobile phone being ubiquitous, like it is.

Yeah. Dick Tracy had a little TV on this thing, but not everybody had a supercomputer literal supercomputer in their hand. I mean, it’s a it’s a supercomputer better than the the old craze used to be. Imagine when quantum comes out and becomes common. Oh, my God!

Trevor: Yeah. Now, now, you’ve got the smartest person in the world at in your pocket available to answer any question, to analyze your health records to your point to help you create a plan to for self betterment, to help you create a better business, a great better marketing plan to update your website to help you in hiring all those things, and like what a wonderful world that is!

Richard: It is a wonderful world, and it’s nothing to be afraid of. It might be something to be cautious about. to be, to use, to make proper decisions. I mean, I’m I’m certainly not going to use AI, for example, to write for me. for my for my clients. That that would be silly.

That’s not what they’re paying me for, but I’m going to use it to help. I just had a client that I have. I have over a hundred interviews. Do you know how much work that would be to put together by hand? I just told told Aidas, okay, can you just put this together in some semblance of order, and it did. and it took it like 30 min to chug through it all. But that’s fine.

Richard: It’s true. Well, that’s a great note to end this on. Any final, any final words.

Richard: Yep, yep. Well, thank you for appearing on the show. This has been the leaders in their stories, podcast I’m, Richard, Lowe, the writing king and ghostwriting. Guru. Thank you very much for coming.

Quotable moments