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Mind the Model: Episode 005: SXSW Recap (Extra)
30 Plays17 days ago
In this special episode, Nate and Em talk all things SXSW Sydney - no guests, just their POV on the event and what they learned about AI.
Special mentions:
Ethan Mollick blog post: An Opinionated Guide to Using AI Right Now: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/an-opinionated-guide-to-using-ai
Ethan Mollick’s Book is called: Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI
You can find him on X @ https://x.com/emollick
His substack is great: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/
Note: Open AI have since changed their corporate structure, converting its main business into a for-profit corporation, run by a non-profit. Yeah it seems to make little sense to us (or many other people out there).
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/28/openai-for-profit-restructuring
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Transcript
Experiencing South By Southwest for the First Time
00:00:11
Speaker
How's it going? Hello. It's good. We had an epic week last week and I can't wait to dive into it with you. Was that your first South By? It was, yes. So even though I'm from Texas originally, I've never been to the OG South By Southwest in Austin.
00:00:26
Speaker
So yeah, it was fantastic. ah Where in Texas are you from again? I never remember. Apologies. Yeah, so originally from Austin, actually. And so, you know, I was around when the festival was kind of growing up.
00:00:40
Speaker
And back in my day, it was a um ah music festival. Yeah. And, you know, food and, like, culture. And then, you know, big money tech and advertising came in and, you know changed things a little bit. So, yeah, it was my first South by Southwest, as it always does,
Navigating Conferences and Venues
00:00:56
Speaker
because...
00:00:56
Speaker
First South by experience in Sydney and it was great. i um I was shocked at the sheer size of it. So I don't know. i knew it was big, but it was really big event and you know took over all of the ICC. But to be fair, there was also two other conferences going on at the same time. I think both of us were walking by the... and Was it like Roadworks?
00:01:21
Speaker
Yeah, there was a Roadworks conference for a day. There was an NVIDIA conference for a little day. Yeah, there was a lot. There's a lot of people in high-base gear. Yeah, there's a lot going on, but and so many different rooms, a lot of a lot of content, which I was actually catching up with some friends last night and just remarking on how um yeah, how how it was quite difficult to choose.
Comparing Austin and Sydney's South By Southwest
00:01:42
Speaker
And then you had to bounce around from UTS to go to the ICC and yeah Clear Hayes House. So it it was difficult to get to everything. But I made it on Tuesday yeah and had a full day of sessions, which I can recap for our listeners. And yeah, of course, we did our recording with Paul Blackburn on the Thursday, which was epic. Yeah. Now, it's interesting you say this is big because, of course, I have been to Austin, although I haven't been in like...
00:02:07
Speaker
10 years, something like that. um Maybe even longer. And this feels quite small compared to Austin. And I don't know what Austin's done in the last 10 years, but I'm sure it's not any smaller than it was. So ah yes, it is very exciting. And yes, it was um kind exciting for Sydney, but I also feel like there's a lot more growing we could do to kind of really reach the kind of heights and levels of the original so ah South by Southwest.
00:02:34
Speaker
Yeah, agree. And, you know, it's interesting because were talking last night about like ticket prices and, you know, a one-day ticket would go for like $800 and it's just, it prices so many people out of it and, you know, everyone's budgets are kind of being cut left, right, and center. Yeah. so companies aren't as apt to be, you know, sponsoring their employees to go. so I don't know what the future of it looks like in Sydney, but hopefully it's around to stay because I love the experience and it was, yeah, so much learning yeah and great speakers being flown in from all over. so
00:03:05
Speaker
I really enjoyed it. yeah But all' um i'll kick I'll kick it off. And I i started my morning. and i was able to go on Tuesday because I was, i guess, a publicist.
AI Hallucinations: Creativity or Deception?
00:03:16
Speaker
ah So... and My first session was in the, I think it was Le Checkpoint, at Publicis Group, the lounge there. And it was from someone, I forget their names, I apologize, but someone from AWS and Publicis Sapient in conversation specifically about hallucination, which I found really interesting because the whole point of what they were trying to talk about hallucination.
00:03:44
Speaker
You know, a rebranding of the word hallucination in artificial intelligence, you know, outsiders out of the industry typically hear hallucination and think, oh, hallucination equals bad because the AI should always be right.
00:03:58
Speaker
But what they were trying to do is reshape the conversation to instead be, no, let's use hallutin hallucination to innovate and for things that need that like degree of um uncertainty and nuance.
00:04:12
Speaker
So, you know, for... ah For people who are going to you know have an x-ray reviewed, they don't want any level of hallucination in the AI thinking to you know not be as correct as possible.
00:04:26
Speaker
But you know in more creative applications, perhaps there is a role for a hallucination to kind of stretch the thinking. So, yeah, I thought that was a really interesting way to start the day.
00:04:37
Speaker
um And, you know, I was able to see some friendly faces in that room and kick off learning about hallucination and why it matters for innovation. It's interesting because I do feel like it's the... remember hearing that and I thought it sounded a lot like um
00:04:56
Speaker
creatives trying to rebrand something. Because...
00:05:03
Speaker
I would say what they're actually wanting to play with is the level of creativity of an AI as opposed to hallucinations. Because for me, yeah hallucination still is a bad thing.
00:05:14
Speaker
If an AI, and I was literally using an AI yesterday, and one of the things, one of the commands I gave was make sure all of the yeah URLs you give me are real.
00:05:26
Speaker
And the second yeah URL I tested was not real. um You're just making things up. That is not a helpful hallucination. Now, yeah what I might play with instead is the level of creativity of the result and saying, actually, i want you to be very creative. I want you to think outside the box.
00:05:46
Speaker
um And one of the interesting things I was reading yesterday or the day before was around, um and it it was, i always love capturing new prompt ideas and ideas generate ah how people are prompting things increasingly because I think AI is getting so good at prompting and understanding and interpreting your prompt that you don't really need a lot of the hacks.
00:06:08
Speaker
But this was an interesting one. And what they said is, is give me five responses um with varying levels of of certainty or creativity or, um you know, ah diversion from the mean or something like, you know, a way of basically adding, know,
00:06:27
Speaker
spice variety variety to the the results and that's what they're asking for right that's what they're they're not asking for made up bullshit they're asking for interesting different approaches Yeah, no, I love that.
00:06:41
Speaker
and Yeah, and I think i've I've noticed that as well, when you start to like stretch the thinking of AI and have it be more create, that creativity gets exposed a little bit more.
00:06:55
Speaker
and it It could just be that hallucination was being rebranded as creativity and innovation. But nevertheless, I think was a great way to start the day. nice.
AI's Impact on Work and Society
00:07:04
Speaker
And then and after that chat, you and I actually met up and explored the festival for a little bit. And we went to a really good chat um ah from, in my notes, it was the ServiceNow guy.
00:07:19
Speaker
I believe his name was Brian Solis. and He was flown in from the U.S. and you know he was raving about how much he loves Sydney and how he's um you know a digital anthropologist and a futurist.
00:07:35
Speaker
I think his role at ServiceNow is head of global innovation. So it was quite interesting to hear him talk. It was very, and I will say this about South by Southwest is basically the the theme of the year was AI. A lot of it was the same, you know, it's the same stuff that we've heard over and over and over again.
00:07:51
Speaker
um But the thing that I found to be quite ah interesting on Brian Solis' chat was that um push and pull of augment versus automate.
00:08:02
Speaker
So leaning um into AI to help automate things is kind of, helping our past and then leaning into AI to augment our thinking is more of like future applications.
00:08:15
Speaker
yeah I really wanted to ask you like what did you, what did you get out of the chat? Equally, I thought it was an interesting construct, the augment versus, it? Augment versus automate. and i think
00:08:29
Speaker
A lot of what we do is talk about augmentation, but what we do is automation. um And in fact, if you think about like the changing nature of jobs and what we're asking people to do and how um the world is changing, a lot of that is around automation.
00:08:46
Speaker
And I think his point was really that augmentation, ah moving into the things that are new and interesting is where businesses will really thrive.
00:09:00
Speaker
but It was a packed room. It was a very popular session. yeah And I think for because it was a great pretty good reason. um A couple of other like interesting stats. I think he shot he flashed up like there something around... um Is it 94? Yeah, 94% of CEOs admit that an AI agent could provide better or equal counsel to their board members.
00:09:24
Speaker
Now, I thought that was interesting, both... in how little people appreciate their board or how much they love their ai I'm not sure which one i which way you take that, but I thought it was an interesting point of view. And the real power behind that is is your AI is always there.
00:09:42
Speaker
If you believe that an AI can give you that positive counsel as a business leader, then you've got somebody on tap all the time to bounce ideas and and questions off of. ah yeah And I think that's interesting.
00:09:53
Speaker
Now, the flip question would be what percentage of CEOs are currently using AI? And I think that would be much smaller. Yes, yes, correct. But, you know, it's funny because, ah you know, there's often chat ah about, you know, the tech innovation, the way that the world is going with AI.
00:10:11
Speaker
There's now going to be some one person billion dollar companies. And ah the way that they're approaching it is because they have ah these you know, custom um AI, we'll call them agents or company, affiliated agents, um in, you know, act as a CCO, as the COO, CIO, and all the different ah varieties of it experience, and that's how they counsel. yeah um So I think that's, you know, that future of that augmentation of, you know, what can we do differently
00:10:42
Speaker
previously would have relied on headcount of a deep board experience, but perhaps it's now room to you know grow and develop into being these very successful companies with less people and more agents. Yeah.
00:10:56
Speaker
It's one of the interesting things that management theory needs to get to is what does it look like to manage a group of people plus a group of agents? Yeah.
00:11:07
Speaker
um And should we be teaching that to anyone? Because actually, could a junior IC be just as powerful using ah a fleet of agents as a you know mid-level manager?
00:11:19
Speaker
It's a great point. And you just reminded me because I went to go get my notes earlier and in the back of my desk was like a management theory book. like, oh yeah, i need to read that. But it's now perhaps a bit outdated in a world where we're moving away from that human connection and relying more on the technology to kind of provide that and level of support for us.
00:11:41
Speaker
So or what was your next chat? What was the next thing you went to? I think we did the same one, didn't we? Well, we did. so we So after that one, I think we went around for a bit of a walk around the festival, if you remember. um We have some photos to share and we'll pop them up in the video. But I remember and we went to the KPMG house.
AI in Art and Creativity
00:12:01
Speaker
Mm-hmm. And that one was quite exciting because ah we walked up the level and kind of, it was almost like a timeline and how artificial intelligence has impacted us.
00:12:13
Speaker
yeah um And yeah the yeah, we took a ah picture of you with the Google Glass and you recounted your story of um being around the OG Google Glass in London, which was very interesting to hear.
00:12:28
Speaker
Yeah, I think that was one of the first 10 people to have it in the UK. And um it was very, i had very odd experiences. People buying me drinks in bars because I was wearing Google Glass and people talking to me funny on the tube, which never happens. Nobody ever talks to anybody on the tube.
00:12:45
Speaker
And then what did we do? We went for a little walk. I did that um that experience at KPMG House where I tried to decide what if the photo was real or AI generated. yeah And I think my score in the end was four out of 10. And it was quite hard because I remember thinking, okay,
00:13:02
Speaker
you know, the picture of the landscape. Do the leaves look too perfect? Yes, it's AI generated. And then it was like, no, it's a really nice photo. And then we're we're starting to blur the lines. We're getting to a time where it's getting so good. It's scary where I can't distinguish between real or AI generated. did ah Did that surprise you? It didn't surprise me at all that it was going to be incredibly difficult to make that decision. Like I'm already at the point now where I believe everything is, ah I'm incredibly skeptical of everything. So yeah, i'm so were you surprised?
00:13:33
Speaker
I'm surprised because, you know, when you see, I i think that I'll um counter this, but the difference is when I see AI generated video, i and it's really like bizarre odd or odder out there, I'm like, yeah, that's definitely AI generated. But with photos, it's like you still want to think that you have that like bullshit indicator in your gut feel of whether it's real or not. And so, yeah, I was just a bit like spooked after that. It was very, um it wasn't a haunted house, but it kind of felt like it after we were going through like all the levels of different ai um applications um but then after that we walked we walked through tumblong park yeah and we ended up at adobe it was really fun um because there's that game that we played on the ipad where it said draw a picture and you have like you know ah minute to draw and then we'll use ai to yeah generate an like an
00:14:26
Speaker
Expanded version of it. Yeah. And I drew a cactus with like a sunset. It's very on brand for me. And drew robot and it was... Also on brand for me. The arms came out. Yeah, very on brand.
00:14:39
Speaker
um But yeah, I thought that was so cool. Like I can... you know My daughter loves to draw, and one day, she like what if that was a game where she could draw anything, and then it built it out to an AI version of that same photo? love that animation. Is that a good thing or bad thing, though? i mean like Do you want your daughter to be able to actually draw and learn to properly create art, or do you want her to just be able to come up with a concept and have AI deliver it?
00:15:04
Speaker
There's always going to be a place for like that analog design. you know, pen to paper um or crayons to and the wall or the floor in my household.
00:15:15
Speaker
and But yes, I, you know, my mantra convenience always wins. So like, you know, if it's just that easy to make good, decent quality art, will anybody be painting in the future?
00:15:26
Speaker
Now, course people will be, but like, yeah, well, people, a lot of people will forego the pain and the effort of art. I think if they can do it it easily, on the other hand,
00:15:37
Speaker
people like me who can't draw, ah my robot was pretty awesome, I think. Your robot was fantastic, so we'll definitely pop picture up on screen. It's, yeah, it's funny, because I think when we talk about art and creativity, I can't draw for shit. But, you know, the fact that I can draw, like, my version of something, that happens to be, you know, AI kind of takes that and runs with it. I'm like, oh, that's nice. You know, it's better than what I would have done, because I'm not a great artist. But, yeah.
00:16:08
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think it will replace the art. And then what didn we went to see Lou Cummins. is that right? We did. we saw Louise on stage. She was fantastic. She was a recent guest of the pod. And um she was talking about Generation Beta.
00:16:23
Speaker
And I didn't realize this, but it was... um It begins for anyone who was born in 2025. and So my daughter just misses out on it. But the... um It is a quite confronting to think about the challenges that will face the future generations in this world of artificial intelligence, the impact it could have on kids learning and developing.
AI's Influence on Education and Access
00:16:52
Speaker
So depending if you have access to a laptop at home versus not, or perhaps a a better, a higher tiered model than those who are on a lower tiered model, how the impact of education early on in a ah young person's life
00:17:07
Speaker
and you know can take them in two drastic different ways and you know sure there's studies that have focused on this for kids who have access to laptops or not um but i think access to artificial intelligence and llms that are able to help us like you know quasi-tutor kids um yeah it was a bit confronting i knew it would be going into it because as a parent of a young child myself i was a bit nervous uh what did what did you get out of the chat what did you like about it You know, i am i agree. I felt... i mean, the thing that I took away from it was just the equity piece. i mean...
00:17:41
Speaker
the The fear piece is interesting that parents have been afraid of their children's world that they're growing up in since Socrates time. I mean, they're always afraid of those newfangled gadgets and with the new technology. So again, this is maybe my techno-optimist angle, but the equity piece I thought was an interesting shout out because I sort of felt, historically speaking, that, well, I've always felt that AI has a potential democratization um capability.
00:18:11
Speaker
Correct. 100% agree. But then the interesting idea around equity and whether or not people are gonna have access to a better model, does giving you access to a better model equal better tutor equal you're gonna be a farther ahead in school than everybody else.
00:18:25
Speaker
And you know then I start spinning out into books like the diamond age and where that goes. But then I also found an incredibly interesting article yesterday from one of my favorite AI opinion makers, Ethan Mollick.
00:18:38
Speaker
I don't know if you've, have I shared Ethan with you before? Have we talked? Yes. yeah Yes. And I want to say that I've followed him on LinkedIn because he is a, is it Harvard where he teaches? No. He put out an article yesterday, which was all about a user guide to how to use AI right now.
00:19:00
Speaker
And it was an interesting, what he looked at is he looked at the research from ChatGPT on how people are using AI. Yeah. And then he used that to overlay how to get the best from different models, but also whether or not you needed the free or the premium version.
00:19:15
Speaker
Interesting. Took me back to that, that, um, that talk from Lou and that, that, what were they talking about that equity piece in terms of, are we going to be continuing to create more and more differentiation between the haves and the have nots from an AI perspective?
00:19:31
Speaker
On the other hand, my long held belief is that, and that we've had this conversation before. I think AI is going to be more like electricity in another five or 10 years because every model already is pretty much following every other model.
00:19:45
Speaker
And while the top tier foundational models, the big four are by far better than everything else. I'm not sure how much better they're going to be in another five or 10 years even.
00:19:56
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. there There's, it's, they're quite similar. There's nothing too profoundly different between one to the next. Did you see anything else that was particularly inspiring for you? I went up to a room that was sponsored by Accenture and their whole point of this session was to talk about the future of the customer and living with intelligence.
00:20:18
Speaker
So some of the key points that they had was, you know, work smarter, not harder. How can AI kind of automate some of the work that you're already doing? Agent or agency. So AI, through its efficiencies with automation, has really unlocked so much time efficiency and freedom back to us. So like yeah what does that mean for us? What what are we going to do with that time that's back in our life?
00:20:43
Speaker
um Did they have a consensus view that we're all going to be ah working three days a week? and is that Was that what they were Yeah. Not necessarily the com conversation. I i wish. and But they were talking about that hustle culture, you know, like it's the grind. um In some cultures, I know ah in the US, it's similar to this. I've heard, ah you know, several Southeast Asian countries like Singapore, it may be the same way like that grind and that hustle culture.
00:21:10
Speaker
um But with AI, it gives you that time back. And so will we then fill it with more work or what will we do? Where will we find meaning? with that new time found.
00:21:21
Speaker
and They also talked a lot about and imagination rewilded, which was very, you know. sorry Imagination what? imagination rewilded. oh So it's very illustrative phrase, but you know, what if we had permission to use all this ah extra time provided by AI to be imperfect and into experiment? Very, you know, lofty, but it just the the point of that was talking about lifting the collective creativity. So the floor it will rise, but then also the ceiling perhaps might lower because we just will all kind of cap out at that same
00:22:00
Speaker
level of creativity. So what can we do to make us different to yeah kind of set ourselves apart?
Embracing Mistakes and Tradition with AI
00:22:07
Speaker
um They did actually touch on hallucination um in the form of best ideas can come from mistakes.
00:22:14
Speaker
yeah So, you know, the ah strain from perfection, the nuance, the hallucination, that's where you often find like those gems. So I found that to be quite interesting and in a world where everyone, you know, is wanting to be ah the best version of themselves and we're all using the same tools to be the best versions of ourselves. It's starting to look like the CSAness on LinkedIn with all of those bloody em dashes.
00:22:38
Speaker
But what can we do that just sets ourselves apart? And it's kind of going back to that core of what makes humans different. And it's like humanity and um independence. And so, yeah, it was very, um it was interesting. They had a lot of like provocations and very like. yeah And no answers.
00:22:58
Speaker
and And no answers. They just wanted to like inspire, I suppose. And what I thought was very interesting um throughout this entire presentation, they had flip chart. So they didn't use a ah presentation or like a ah screen or anything.
00:23:12
Speaker
They literally, they had a little handout. On your seat. And then they had the flip chart where it was beautiful drawings. Of course. That really illustrated concepts. So I found that fascinating because they're talking about artificial intelligence and innovation, and yet they're literally showcasing creativity going back analog to the flip chart.
00:23:33
Speaker
Yeah. So i thought that was a nice juxtaposition. Well, it's, you know, it's workshop 101 is every workshop is better when you've done flip charts as opposed to slides. is Is that just your personal opinion? but by fact I've done a ton of facilitation work m and a lot of facilitation training and every training I've ever been to talks about um It's being better to do flip charts than slides.
00:23:59
Speaker
Interesting. Here I was thinking like, oh, they're so clever. Like, you know, the analog and the digital, but it was just going back to facilitator 101. Yeah. How clever. It is.
00:24:10
Speaker
So you actually went to a couple more days than I did. What sessions did you attend that you quite enjoyed? Look, um if I'm honest, I got the most out of the those sessions that we went to. I did a couple of other interesting things. I did weird, bizarre stuff.
00:24:25
Speaker
I went to a, um I did all the things that, as I tell everyone when they go to South by Southwest, take the time to fill your cup. So I took my son on Saturday and we went to the gaming convention and heard a talk on voiceovers.
00:24:41
Speaker
Um, and my son was desperate that I do not put my hand up, uh, to volunteer to, to do a voiceover. Um, and I did, I, I, well, i I did at one, but, um, I, I, I, they, they wanted really authentic Aussie accents.
00:24:59
Speaker
And, uh, my son was very uncomfortable with me doing my fake Aussie up there on stage.
00:25:08
Speaker
So I, um and he was probably right to be suspicious of my fake Aussie accent, which is not particularly good.
00:25:18
Speaker
I got so much out of just the conversations I had with people. um What i was a little bit surprised with was just the sheer volume of AI.
Overwhelming Presence of AI at Events
00:25:27
Speaker
i would, I'm actually, I really wanted to, and maybe there's a way to, someone else can do it, but what percentage of talks had AI in the title or in the description? I would love to understand that because it felt like 90% of the stuff that I heard, certainly on the tech and innovation stream was AI something or other.
00:25:47
Speaker
So one of the final sessions we went to together was the debate, which um I know the founder of Debate Club, Orshi, quite well cause I used to work with
Regulating AI: Government or Industry?
00:25:55
Speaker
her. And it was fascinating because this is one that i feel strongly about. So the topic for the debate was AI moves too fast for government. Only the industry can regulate it. So there's team industry and team government.
00:26:09
Speaker
What was your take on the session? What did you like about it? I thought it was certainly one of the more fun sessions I went to. I'm not sure that I walked away a whole lot more educated on the topic afterwards. I feel like the ah the government team had an easier task, ah in particular because of that word only.
00:26:29
Speaker
um I think the truth is, as we would all probably agree, that there is a role for government regulation, but that an industry that is taking care of itself and looking after itself is probably also a healthy thing as well.
00:26:45
Speaker
um But I found it very interesting that, for example, um one of the big top ah reasons that the um industry team gave for not trusting government was the United States and the belief that, you know, do you want a government like they currently have in the States running things?
00:27:05
Speaker
Or do you trust a government like that? Which is such a bizarre place to be from where we were five or 10 years ago, or even 15 years ago, where everybody always said the U.S. was was a model democracy.
00:27:17
Speaker
And so that was one of the interesting takeaways for me from that debate was more ah just about the slide of ah democratic norms in the U.S. and what that means for trust in government. It was interesting. I think I agree that the government team had an easier approach because of that word only being in the topic. I knew I was always going to vote for them, though, because as we discussed with our recent episode with Louise, I feel very strongly about government should be taking a role in and having some level of governance and governance.
00:27:50
Speaker
trying to ah create some impact. um the The team industry was very, very ah funny. They used humor a lot, which I, it was just an enjoyable session.
00:28:02
Speaker
And, you know, so calling out the government for, hey, remember that time how you bungled, ah you know, the robo deck calling scheme or yeah ah this mistake. And yes, it's very public, but, and you know, there's the chat about you know,
00:28:19
Speaker
ah Like planes are flying in the air. They're not dropping out of the air because government has kind of stepped in to help regulate the industry. Yeah, seatbelts and all of that. Yeah, seatbelts. And it's just, it's some it was a really interesting session. i quite enjoyed hearing from both sides.
00:28:34
Speaker
And it it made me realize that ah it can't only be government. It does need to come from industry as well. But I don't necessarily think that if we think about it as industry equals the companies themselves, because I don't really have full faith in OpenAI, Meta, and Google being able to police themselves, um because we've seen kind of a history of what that looks like. Well, and even if you had faith in those, if you have faith in OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Anthropic, do you trust...
00:29:10
Speaker
Grok, do you trust Elon Musk to regulate himself? I mean, I think he's shown time and again that he's not got any ability to be, um put any brakes on his own ambition.
00:29:24
Speaker
it was interesting to hear the discussion of um investment in safety. So they called back to the example of when seat belts were first invented, car manufacturers really pushed back against that mandate and were not happy with it.
00:29:39
Speaker
um And you look at now, cars compete on safety. yeah And so now it's a point of difference to be the most safe car. um And that ah fact that safety requires innovation can still be applied to how we work with tools like artificial intelligence, because there have been clear cases outlined where we need guardrails and governance.
00:30:03
Speaker
yeah And that's where that innovation needs to come in to help play role in providing some level of safety for users. Yeah. And it was interesting, even going back to that Ethan Mollock article, the one he just just released, he talks about um different models having different levels of guardrails and things.
00:30:18
Speaker
ah you know And we've talked about it before, but I mean, and And again, I'm always hesitant to say positive things about Google because I know I'm biased, but I feel like they have more to lose in the air AI race. And as a result, can probably more safety measures in place than someone like an open AI or certainly than a Grog. And you know what? We've talked about it and I think you've convinced me and I agree because ah you think about the plethora of products that Google provides. they ah They're very well ingrained in the
00:30:50
Speaker
you know, a lot of consumers' habits online. And yeah for them to have ah a royal buck they would, you know really see um the drastic consequences of that. Whereas a company like OpenAI, other than Chattapity and Sword, buy them.
00:31:07
Speaker
What else do they have? Yeah. Well, none of the other major companies, um, len let's push meta out of the way. Cause I'm not calling them a major foundational model at this point, but none the other companies are even public. So as a result of being public, even that makes the responsibilities significantly higher.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so funny you say that because I was just listening to a podcast the other day talking about the fact that OpenAI is still considered to be a a nonprofit, which I don't know if people actually know that to be the case.
00:31:37
Speaker
um They set themselves up as a nonprofit to you know for the betterment of society. But if... you were to look at it now would you consider that to be a betterment of society that the way they're acting and behaving ah you know allowing for erotica and porn and you know uh that synthetic um relationships within it's not like it it is slippery slope yeah um Yeah.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yes. and I feel like we should end on a positive note.
Community and Connections at Events
00:32:07
Speaker
Okay. So, um and let's just say, um what was your top takeaway from the week that was South by Southwest?
00:32:18
Speaker
I just loved the construct that um we talked about at the very beginning of thinking about, is this AI automation or AI augmentation? um And all of the stuff that that unlocked for me was, I think, just a and slightly different way of thinking about what you're trying to do with AI.
00:32:38
Speaker
And I found that to be a really um useful construct. I'm going to take a completely different approach. And my favorite aspect of the week was not session, but it was actually the people. It was a great... Yes, am a people person. That's cheating. It's always the people.
00:32:56
Speaker
It is always the people. and I saw so many ah old friends and new friends as well. ah You and I are part of the Secret Society WhatsApp group chat all about AI off the record as well.
00:33:09
Speaker
And to to meet people for the first time that I've been talking to for months on end and about AI is in what's up like it was just it really fills my cup going back to your point of you know what south by southwest is about yeah um and you know we we got to spend time together kind of adventuring around and i just i really appreciated that connection um with the community so yeah that was my favorite part no i look uh i'm not going to argue that with you at all um It is always the people. it is always the connections that matter.
00:33:43
Speaker
So um yeah I don't disagree, but I do call it cheating because I think that's... Yeah. I'll take it. I'll take it. Well, Nate, i'm I'm so glad we and spent time to kind of have a bit of a recap of the week that was because, um you know, it's like we mentioned, the tickets to Sapphire are quite expensive. We're both lucky that we were able to attend.
00:34:03
Speaker
um So just wanted to share some of the learnings with our listeners of the pod today. Well, thanks, Em. I couldn't agree more. i had a great time and I'm looking forward to the next South by Southwest, whether that's in Austin, London, or here in Sydney. I'd love to attend to all of them. So if anybody wants to sponsor us, we're're we're available.
00:34:21
Speaker
But in the meantime, please remember, ah the intelligence might be artificial, but the wins are real.