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bravo charlie club x the space between AI deep dive
12 Plays1 month ago
A special 90-minute AI podcast for the Bravo Charlie Club, hosted by Ben Flintoff & Richard Uren with special guest Ben Slater from The Space Between podcast.
Its 12 segments — covering AI's real-world impact on work, education, creativity, and the next generation, without the usual hype.
Equality vs. Division — Ben S argues AI could collapse global inequality or widen it, and the difference is a fine line.
Teams & Talent — Richard explores how AI breaks team rhythm in software, and why non-developers can now outbuilding developers.
The Next Generation — Ben F brings a father's perspective, asking his co-hosts hard questions on behalf of his IT-student daughter uncertain about her future.
Real Concerns, Real Actions — The episode closes with each host's genuine near-term AI concern and one concrete thing listeners can do this week.
Contact
hello@bravocharlie.club
https://www.bravocharlie.club
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbAxzYk4tRrk1rfYcT3I
The Space Between - check it out
https://open.spotify.com/show/4WRdZiyElz4eEbwUdVdcrS
Recommended
Transcript
AI Special Edition Introduction
00:00:08
Ben
Welcome. So for listeners of the Bravo Charlie Club and the Space Between, this is not the normal format you're used to in those podcast series followings.
00:00:19
Ben
You may find us in those channels, but this is specifically an AI special edition deep dive.
Meet the Experts: Richard Duran and Ben Slater
00:00:25
Ben
We're looking forward to sharing the time with you. Thanks for joining us. Today, I've got my my mate Richard Duran with me.
00:00:32
Ben
He's always with me on these on this journey. But Ben Slater, a longtime friend, has has jumped into the saddle to to have a look.
00:00:36
Ben
Good
00:00:41
Ben
And I think... You know, for those who who are joining us, again, this is definitely going to go past 12 and a half minutes. So stop it. Stop now if you've got us on your commute. but We really want to get into AI, sometimes known as Alan Iverson. Sorry, artificial intelligence.
00:00:58
Richard
Yes.
Why Our AI Take is Unique
00:01:00
Ben
For basketball fans out there, that one's for you. Hey, Richard, why does this show exist? Why do we think that we've got a better or different take on AI when it's just got absolute global media saturation going right now?
00:01:15
Ben
Why do listeners stay tuned?
Richard on AI's Technical Context and Potential
00:01:18
Richard
I think stay tuned because i think the the challenge with AI, while the tech's very interesting, I think it's it's putting it in context and pushing the the the limits of what what it can do, how you can use it, how you can apply it, and and then and perhaps maybe reflecting on some of the experience we have and leaning into sort of like what it means, where it might be going, those kinds things.
00:01:43
Ben
And and you're you're a software developer, right? So you're deep in the weeds of of
Ben on AI's Exciting Era
00:01:48
Richard
We like to call ourselves engineers, Ben, software engineers, because it's more hoity-toity.
00:01:48
Ben
AI.
00:01:50
Ben
Engineers. Okay.
00:01:52
Ben
Nerds, you're nerd.
00:01:54
Ben
Yeah, but you sound like a nerd.
00:01:56
Ben
Nerd, yeah.
00:01:57
Ben
Yeah. And and the the the shots from the cheap seats are coming from Ben Slater, who's also deep in ai weeds, but more from a marketing angle.
00:01:58
Richard
Pretty much.
00:02:06
Ben
Can you just tell us a bit more about that, mate?
00:02:06
Ben
Mm-hmm.
00:02:09
Ben
30 years of doing this and the last three or four months have been the most amazing of those 30 years like serious seriously amazing like i can i think every day i come up with an idea and i go i want to build that and then by the evening i've built it
00:02:17
Ben
Really?
00:02:26
Richard
And you've got it.
00:02:27
Ben
and And you've got it.
00:02:27
Richard
it's It's incredible.
00:02:28
Ben
And it it is and absolutely amazing.
00:02:28
Richard
It's a magical time, isn't it? Yeah.
00:02:31
Ben
Interesting.
00:02:31
Ben
Yeah. and But then again, you build it and then you have another idea and then build something else. And 17 projects later,
AI in Professional Efficiency
00:02:37
Ben
you've launched none of them. but well or Or half of them. probably i'm probably I'm probably on 50% strike rate so far.
00:02:43
Ben
Yeah.
00:02:48
Ben
Thank you.
00:02:52
Ben
You know, the whole, you don't pay the heart surgeon for the 10 minutes your heart is open, you you pay them for the 30 years it took learn learning what to do when the heart is open.
00:02:59
Ben
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
00:03:02
Ben
So that's that's you right now.
00:03:02
Ben
Yeah. That's me right now. bet This is 30 years worth of experience in this in this industry and marketing and technology going. Finally, it's coalescing. I actually had that discussion with my daughter the other day when she went and got some nails done.
00:03:12
Ben
m
00:03:12
Richard
Yeah.
00:03:18
Ben
Got a nail stone? and and you know it was 80 bucks and for 40 minutes work and actually said to her you're paying for the skill of the technician you're not paying for the time that you're sitting in the chair they look really good it's exactly the same but to the power of one billion now it's yeah yeah
00:03:28
Ben
Yeah.
00:03:34
Ben
Got it. Interesting. Interesting. And so someone playing on the marketing side, someone playing on the engineering side. and and of course myself, who's like the amateur.
00:03:47
Ben
And and interestingly, i have a Claude account and inside my own organization, I'm probably, you know, further along the, you know, the, the, the path than, than the average colleague of mine.
00:03:59
Ben
yeah,
00:03:59
Richard
You're the champion, Ben. You're the champion.
00:04:00
Ben
Yeah, I'm having have a crack.
00:04:02
Ben
but But if anyone is, and I didn't want anyone to take me too seriously, so I put on my Australia, New Zealand, Hawaiian shirt. So as if anyone on YouTube youtube is is wondering who the clown is, I'm easily identified because i I'm not pretending to be giving artificial intelligence in in this one.
00:04:10
Ben
Okay.
00:04:21
Ben
So hey let's let's dive in. Okay, so... Ben, let's start with you. i don't want to hear about the hype. I want a distinctive and grounded read on where is this all heading and and what what are the signals that you're catching, especially in that last three-month comment that, you know, the average bloke has said, no, no, we've all been building up to this point.
00:04:41
Ben
It's taken 30 years to get here. Like, what's the game?
00:04:43
Ben
Yeah.
00:04:46
Ben
look I think that we're at a stage at the moment where the product release cycle is just happening at a rate of knots.
AI's Impact on Society and Spirituality
00:04:54
Ben
It has never happened as fast as what it is now.
00:04:58
Ben
There was Anthropic, which is behind Claude. They had 54 releases in 74 days a month or so ago.
00:05:05
Richard
It's crazy, isn't it?
00:05:06
Ben
It's it's insane.
00:05:07
Richard
It's so crazy.
00:05:07
Ben
like and and And X was just blowing up because everyone's like, hey, just can you just give us a chance to settle in on what we're doing before you release something else?
00:05:15
Richard
Yeah.
00:05:16
Ben
But there's an arms race going on. So to look at the future, it's actually you've got to look beyond what the tools are doing right now. And you've got to look at how humanity is going to cope with the broader picture.
00:05:31
Ben
that that's the we're getting to a point where we're starting to think about this in a much more spiritual spiritual way rather than a technological way and that's that's creeping into into the day-to-day discussion now we're talking about job losses and education and and changes and and all that kind of malarkey so i I would strongly suggest that you have to start somewhere, though.
Integrating AI into Personal Systems
00:06:01
Ben
Like, it's quite overwhelming. It's quite overwhelming. You're like, you've done something. And even, even like, you find, Richard, you you spend hours and hours and hours trying to work some new feature in, and then suddenly it's like, oh, it's now a button.
00:06:15
Ben
you know because at the moment i'm building an operating my own operating system the bos the nos i started i started i started about three weeks ago and it knows everything about me and every project every like i spent about three hours actually just talking to my ai to my open claw about me the person so that when my operating system makes a decision it does it for me the person not me the program or me the marketer
00:06:21
Ben
Love it.
00:06:22
Richard
Nice.
00:06:22
Ben
Love it.
00:06:45
Ben
Can I ask you a question about that? Because to on that specific project, you would have had to have given Claude full disguise case.
00:06:45
Ben
But then, here you go, man.
00:06:54
Ben
like I don't, yeah. If you're looking to me for any kind of sort of security advice, I'm pretty careful. However, when it comes to, i've not how that sounded terrible.
00:07:07
Ben
Security, yes. Access, I will give it access that it requires. So as an example for that, I gave it because I gave my Claude instance complete access to my email.
00:07:23
Ben
Like I've got 15, 20 years with a Gmail, all right, whatever it is. And I said, go. Like it doesn't have the ability to to delete. has ability to read and place into drafts. Can't send.
00:07:35
Ben
Okay, so can't go and delete all my email. can't do anything like that. But I sent it in there and it went through, i think it was about 800 emails to individual, to individual And yeah sorry, just let me go back.
00:07:46
Ben
To do that, you have to go through a whole bunch of hoops, or you're used to. had to set up an MCP server. I had to do a whole bunch of nerd stuff to get it to do that and get access and permissions and things.
00:07:56
Ben
And about a week later, it's like, now you can just add a connection, a connector. But, okay, cool.
00:08:00
Ben
Wow.
00:08:01
Ben
But anyway, know,
00:08:01
Richard
Yeah.
00:08:02
Ben
yeah
00:08:03
Ben
Anyway, so what I did is that, so what it did is it went through and, let's see, do we say it, do we say he, don't know, what Claude did, yeah, yeah, was was it went through and it looked at all of the communication that I've made to certain people and grouped it.
00:08:12
Richard
Yeah, Ty.
00:08:20
Ben
and then came up with the Ben personas against all of those people. So each, eat yeah, it's so cool.
00:08:26
Richard
Oh, wow. Yeah.
00:08:27
Ben
wow
00:08:27
Richard
Interesting.
00:08:28
Ben
So when an email, so it knows how I talk to Tracy, my my partner, it knows how I talk to Ben Flintoff, it knows how I talk to clients, and that's not only talk to,
00:08:29
Richard
Fascinating. Yeah.
00:08:39
Ben
how i act what whether i use g'day whether i say use emojis like it actually went through and said if when you talk to tracing a partner you you have a lot of in jokes like that was one of the things that it it recognized but so why would i do that i do that because in my inbox gonna let out little bit of a secret hashtag is that when an email comes in, it will automatically draft an answer for me already and put in drafts.
00:09:08
Ben
But could it has the entire context of what we've been talking about.
00:09:08
Ben
Nice.
00:09:11
Ben
It understands my persona.
00:09:12
Richard
no
00:09:13
Ben
And then I look at it and go, yeah, I'll just change that, whatever, and make some changes. And so it's...
00:09:17
Richard
And how do you find it, Ben? Like, how do you find how do you find the accuracy?
00:09:20
Ben
it's eight out of ten man it's an eight out of ten it's an eight out of ten and the cool thing is that when i send it back uh it's going and looking at what i've sent back and adjusting from that point on so
00:09:21
Richard
Eight out of 10. That's awesome.
00:09:23
Ben
Wow.
00:09:23
Richard
That's awesome. Yeah.
00:09:33
Richard
Hmm.
00:09:34
Ben
uh it's a it's learning it's constantly learning and but i i needed to tell it to do that i needed to tell it to do those things now one in one sense you could say oh you're sort of you're cheating in your comms but i'm actually not
00:09:34
Ben
So it's learning, which is what the idea. Yeah.
AI in Workflow Automation
00:09:46
Ben
i'm outsourcing what would normally take me 10 minutes to go okay what am i thinking about there what was the context of the thing i can't write that i'll check my other email i'll do that whatever whereas i can just go through it yep that's perfect cool i'll just add a little funny thing in there or something that's you know me more me
00:09:53
Richard
Yeah.
00:10:00
Ben
and send uh like today i sent an email to a client and instead of calling him rob like know i could call him roberto i've never done that before and i'm sure claude when it replies next time it'll call him roberto and i'll go and i'll change that because that's not what i'm feeling today But 90% of the email was written, and it was it was a response to an AdWords campaign.
00:10:16
Ben
Interesting.
00:10:21
Ben
So my Claude, which is running the AdWords and running running the campaign, doing all of the ad creation, doing all of the posting, doing all of the everything, I literally said, hey, can you just give me, write an email to Rob giving today's updates and chuck it into drafts. I went through and I think the one thing I changed was,
00:10:41
Ben
hi roberto like that was it that was the only thing so the rest of it was fine yeah did answer your question did i answer your question
00:10:48
Ben
That's interesting. That actually segues nicely into our next section, but I don't want to jump there yet.
00:10:50
Richard
That's awesome.
00:10:53
Ben
No, you haven't. No, you haven't. that's That's why I'm not jumping. So the...
00:10:59
Richard
So Ben, tell tell me, i'm i i'm so I'm so curious now.
00:10:59
Ben
long story long story short yeah
00:10:59
Ben
other
00:11:03
Richard
like to Tell me a bit about your about your stack then. Like you've got, I've got
00:11:07
Ben
well we're going to so we're talking stack already
00:11:10
Richard
i've got to get into the details. I'm detail oriented.
00:11:13
Ben
Right?
00:11:14
Richard
You've got it connected to your email. You've got it like you've mentioned AdWords there too.
00:11:17
Ben
Oh, how long you got, Rich? Seriously?
00:11:20
Richard
just maybe maybe the just the the like How many services do you connect it into?
00:11:20
Ben
How long you
00:11:25
Richard
So as an as an example.
00:11:43
Ben
Yeah, you go, there's part of the stack. And one one of the people asked the question around cost because there's there's a cost. there's There's an API cost, there's there's running cost, there's...
00:11:53
Ben
It was costs, you know.
00:11:54
Richard
Yeah. Yep.
00:11:55
Ben
and he said, why why would I spend $80 on that? And I said, well, and I put my hand up and I'm spending about two and a half grand a month now on AI services. But the actual value that I'm getting out of that from output, like, and I know, I know that if I was to build a website like the website I built last night, when I was developing and had an agency, that would have been 70, 80 grand.
00:12:21
Richard
yeah yeah
00:12:21
Ben
That would have been four, five, six, seven, eight months for the work. It would have involved art directors, developers, client meetings. Literally was driving home from AWS last night and went, that's a kind of cool thing.
00:12:29
Richard
yeah
00:12:33
Ben
I don't know to do that. And then by two o'clock this morning, I had a an active working service that I could sell. So the actual cost of these services, if you lean into them in the right way, it pales in comparison to output.
00:12:52
Ben
pales in comparison so to your point ben about you know uh having using one of the services paid for within your business like that's a drop in the bucket versus what you can get out of it and it's not it's and i'm not talking about efficiency efficiency just breeds more efficiency and this this is the thing especially within in our marketing world you know you get more efficient you have to be more efficient and you can't build for more efficiency
00:13:06
Ben
Yeah.
00:13:18
Ben
It's just you've done something quicker. Therefore, it has less value. But when you're producing a tool, an actual tool, that's when the game changes. So, you know, a stack, do three Mac minis.
00:13:31
Ben
I run my MacBook as well. I've got multiple servers that I'm running things on. i use codecs.
00:13:39
Richard
And are you running local models on those they're running running local models on them?
00:13:42
Ben
I've started i've started the the new the new Google, Microsoft, what the hells it called whatever it is. yeah have No, is the short answer because I'd need to spend more time on it. and For the moment, I'm spending time rolling out stuff.
00:13:56
Richard
Yep.
00:13:56
Ben
But in saying that, I looked at that because when I was running my open claw, when I set up open claw in the first couple of days, I spent so much damn money.
00:14:07
Ben
Like it was ridiculous.
00:14:07
Richard
Yeah.
00:14:08
Ben
I think I burned, I burned about a thousand bucks in tokens because I just was just using it to do everything. And then, oh shit, wait a minute. I need to not do that anymore.
00:14:19
Richard
And so you were using that via the API then?
00:14:19
Ben
So then, yeah. Yeah, so, yeah, yeah i was because because I didn't want to, look, yeah.
00:14:21
Richard
You were paying API rates instead of, yep, plan rates. Yeah.
00:14:27
Ben
that look
00:14:30
Ben
anthropic let you do it but you had a chance of being banned so i just didn't connect it up i just went frick it i'll just punch in my open ai api and get stuff done and then looked at kimmy as well and then started using that and then you know it is what it is i i this is part of me is just having a crack and seeing what happens i was saying before just have a go like there's a there's a
00:14:35
Richard
Yeah, I get it. Yeah.
00:14:56
Richard
I think that's where you start, right? Yeah.
00:14:58
Ben
It is, yeah. So running Codex, I'm running Claude, I'm running, had Play with Perplexity Computer, although I've moved away from that now. That had a bit of hype, but it hasn't grabbed me.
00:15:10
Ben
I think the Codex is amazing, OpenAI. Ben, do you
AI's Role in Global Knowledge and Equality
00:15:13
Ben
know about this? You know about Claude. and Yeah. Ben, you're all over the Codex.
00:15:18
Ben
Yeah. Well, i'm I'm into it.
00:15:19
Ben
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:15:20
Ben
Yeah. In fact, now you are going to segue me into the next next question.
00:15:21
Ben
yeah it's like
00:15:25
Ben
Do you see ai as a great equalizer or is it a great divider? You know, we've never had a we've never had access to this kind of intelligence and communities that have never had access to this kind of intelligence and are getting it for cheap.
00:15:30
Ben
Oh, this is the...
00:15:35
Ben
Oh, man. Oh, man.
00:15:40
Ben
So so are we are we going to collapse global inequality or is it going to become a massive problem?
00:15:47
Ben
No, quite the opposite. So I look at this. It's such an interesting question. I look at this. So we we look at how we came up through technology, right? so big flipping, big boxes that took up rooms.
00:16:00
Ben
And then it went to so beige boxes that took up half a room. Then it went to, for us, it went to, you know, there's a desktop to PC. And then from PC to mobile. That was that was Western sort of progression, all right?
00:16:12
Ben
Whereas if you look at India and and and Asia, they went straight to mobile.
00:16:16
Richard
Yeah.
00:16:16
Ben
it's straight to mobile. And that just changed things. like I went to India and they'd just, there was pay, what was it called? Pay something or other. And that was basically all all payments go through your mobile phone.
00:16:29
Ben
And that was, you know, 20 cents, you'd pay through your mobile phone. we were like, that's a micro payment. Why would you get charged 25 cents and bank charges? They're like, no, just use that. And that was primarily because mobile phones were cheap and accessible.
00:16:43
Ben
Now, i'm I'm guessing and putting a punt on this that the way that we are next going to move to the knowledge base that AI has is going to fundamentally change because of accessibility from cultures that that have not had access to the internet, to information, to data like they're having with AI.
00:17:09
Ben
So every every bit of knowledge that we have that is currently being filtered through AI, so we you know global knowledge that is happening, all of that has come pretty much from Western and Chinese, all but that that that kind of information that's soaked into it.
00:17:16
Ben
Thank you.
00:17:28
Ben
Whereas you've got some Kalahari Bushman who's never never seen a mobile phone before, suddenly has a mobile phone, not with internet access, but with AI, and can punch up information that goes into the general knowledge of the universe,
00:17:46
Ben
of something which they've been doing for generations or millennia which we've had no access to there might be something some kind of bush something that cures cancer and they just chuck it and chat gpt and you know so this will i and then chat gp goes wait a minute that protein that enzyme if we marry that up with this then suddenly we've got that so the the out
00:18:10
Ben
And then we all end up taking ice baths.
00:18:13
Ben
with wolf wimp was it line yeah but you know what i mean it woho yeah that chap yeah so that i'm so exactly that's ven what episode was that on where you talked about your ice bath go on recall uh early early days it was brilliant well done
00:18:13
Ben
Yeah. Yeah. Wim off.
00:18:17
Richard
With me, Pa?
00:18:17
Ben
Yeah. Yeah.
00:18:20
Richard
Nothing wrong with that.
00:18:27
Ben
Oh, early, early days.
00:18:28
Richard
Oh, that's a while ago. Yeah, early days, yeah.
00:18:29
Ben
Yeah.
00:18:30
Ben
So I'm actually so excited about humanity's knowledge. So excited. You know, we I think it's...
00:18:40
Ben
Interesting. What about you, Rich? Do you do you see a risk? Can you speak on the other side or are you as excited as Benny is?
00:18:48
Richard
You know, actually, I'm pretty pumped.
00:18:48
Ben
A little...
00:18:49
Richard
and i'm I'm pumped because i'm pumped because
00:18:54
Richard
creates so much opportunity. Like like it to to just to buttress what what Ben was was saying before, you know, you have an idea at 2pm and at 8pm, you've got something mocked up.
00:19:08
Richard
It mightn't be perfect. It's got rough edges. It might break down in a few areas, but you're like, ha, that's the kernel of an idea, you know.
00:19:12
Ben
Mm-hmm.
00:19:15
Richard
And so i think... It just so it so fundamentally changes how quickly you can build stuff that it's a different game.
00:19:27
Richard
Like it used to be a team sport, but but now you can, we said weta you know with some nows and a bit of tenacity, you can you can go a long way.
00:19:27
Ben
All right.
AI's Advantage for Small Organizations
00:19:38
Richard
And so things that people wouldn't bother building because they're too long, too complicated, you know,
00:19:42
Ben
Thank you.
00:19:44
Richard
You know, why does my Roomba keep falling down the stairs? I'm going to fix that, you know, or whatever. You can you can literally you can literally do it.
00:19:52
Ben
Did you see that article that dude tried to do the, and he exposed all of the cameras globally for the the vacuum cleaner?
00:19:59
Richard
dearie, really?
00:19:59
Ben
Yeah, yeah, he did exactly that.
00:20:00
Richard
No, I didn't say that.
00:20:01
Ben
he wanted to He wanted to make a change to his, I think it was D-Bot. He wanted make a change to his own personal D-Bot and managed to expose if every single in every single robotic camera in the world he had access to.
00:20:09
Richard
think I found that it was insecure. Oh, my God.
00:20:14
Ben
Brilliant.
00:20:15
Ben
And because he he just did exactly what you're talking to.
00:20:15
Ben
Brilliant.
00:20:16
Richard
yeah
00:20:18
Ben
But we'll talk about, yeah, it does.
00:20:18
Ben
The world needs that. Yeah.
00:20:20
Ben
Although there's something scary about it.
00:20:20
Ben
Well, let's – want to zero in on that team sport comment, you know, because is is it true that AI is sort of messing things up a little bit?
00:20:32
Ben
They're accelerating the workflow unevenly?
00:20:33
Richard
Well, I mean, I...
00:20:37
Ben
Like, what's –
00:20:37
Richard
So I think the...
00:20:39
Ben
What's happening if I've got a Claude account, you know and I'm working a traditional business, right? We're retail, we're QSR. But I've got a Claude account and my mate doesn't. Like, I'm probably i at as a strategic advantage right now.
00:20:51
Ben
Is that a fair comment?
00:20:52
Ben
Thank you.
00:20:54
Richard
I think it is. And I think the thing is that the, like you used to have a team and things had to go through process. I think it's still very incredibly useful to be deep in some areas, but you have a breadth or a working knowledge of the sort of adjacent areas. So I'm a software engineer.
00:21:15
Richard
wouldn't call a software engineer. i wouldn't call myself a you know, interface designer by by any stretch. But, you know, with with it with some with some decent prompting and some decent examples, you can you can drop those things in, right, and get something that is pretty damn good, you know, just by knowing. But you've still got to have an opinion. You've still got to have taste. And you've still got to sort of know what good looks like. But you can you can go pretty far. Now, i'm I'm not... going to be a product strategist or anything like that. But AI can get you a long way without without needing dedicated talent in those areas. I think the challenge in big organisations where you've got a lot of stuff that works in lockstep it is that is the organisational inertia behind trying to
00:22:06
Richard
ship things and get things done.
00:22:08
Ben
Mm-hmm.
00:22:08
Richard
And so I think what's going to happen what's going to happen is that the the future probably belongs to smaller, leaner organisations who can innovate quicker. And Anthropik is probably the world's leading example of that at the moment with their with their current pace.
00:22:23
Richard
you know And that's largely because they've got AI building AI now, right? They're using their own tools to sort of accelerate their own development path.
00:22:34
Richard
And just like Ben was saying before, and it's created this this quickening, right,
Creativity and Originality in AI Design
00:22:38
Richard
in terms of not only their output, but in terms of other people's output as well.
00:22:38
Ben
Yep. It's an arms race.
00:22:43
Ben
and i'm storie
00:22:44
Ben
So can we, do you want to comment on the on that Ben or because
00:22:45
Richard
Hmm.
00:22:49
Ben
just it was just one tip that i wanted to give you you picked up then rich on on design so there is a what i've been seeing is that people who design things in ai just go design this make it look good whereas from an agency perspective
00:22:57
Richard
Yeah,
00:23:10
Ben
you actually have to go through brand brand decisions. You have to look at what is good, what is bad, but what what exactly right You have to look for inspiration.
00:23:14
Richard
yeah star guide and yeah. Yeah,
00:23:18
Ben
You have to look for differences. So you still, I believe that you still need to go through that process. Otherwise, we just have everything looking exactly the same. So spending almost the same amount of time, if you are developing something, designing something in AI,
00:23:34
Ben
to actually walk down to the shops, say, you know, take photos or or get products or look in the real world and and look for inspiration that's not just the same thing that everyone else has Otherwise, you just end up with the great unwashed.
00:23:39
Richard
Yeah. Yeah.
00:23:48
Ben
You know, there was a period where all design looks the way, you know, the internet went through a green period, went through a lime green period, went through a dark period, it went through the apple white period, all the rest.
00:24:01
Ben
So there was fashion,
00:24:01
Richard
yeah
00:24:03
Ben
But I would just absolutely give advice to someone exactly like you said. Take the time to brief in properly when it comes to design.
00:24:10
Richard
Yeah.
00:24:12
Ben
You just have to. And it doesn't have to be any...
00:24:13
Richard
Otherwise you just lose so much time too, because you, you, if, if you start off with poor direction at the start, it's, it, it multiplies out into, uh, and you just, you just get to a place where you just, you're almost better off starting again.
00:24:16
Ben
Yep. Yep.
00:24:26
Ben
Yep. That's absolutely right.
00:24:28
Richard
yeah.
00:24:28
Ben
Yep.
00:24:28
Ben
and for listeners And for listeners at my end of the knowledge base, you you actually have a knowledge base in AI that you can feed with style guides and directions.
00:24:28
Ben
And I've done that. Mm-hmm.
00:24:30
Richard
Yeah. I think we all have,
00:24:40
Ben
So you don't have to be continuously updating it.
00:24:40
Ben
correct yep
00:24:43
Ben
You give it at once and it can lean into that.
00:24:46
Ben
well funny you should say that because that's part of my bos is that i i have a a particular.md file which is what ben likes in relation to style so even though i feed in here's the inspiration from here's the photo here's the whatever It knows that I love clean space like love white space.
00:24:57
Richard
Nice. Yeah.
00:25:06
Ben
It knows that I don't like that particular font. It knows all of these things. And over time, it's not only taking in inspiration, but it's taking in my own personal.
00:25:17
Ben
And I can take say, throw that out. If the brand needs something that I don't particularly like, but it needs it, then it'll do it. But it starts off in that place. So it's it's continually learning. But it's learning about me.
00:25:29
Ben
It's not learning about Richard.
00:25:30
Ben
Interesting.
00:25:31
Ben
It's not learning about Mr. Flintoff. It's learning about me. Yeah.
00:25:34
Ben
Interesting. Now, Richard, something you mentioned just before reminded me, last time you and I were in Melbourne together, you were telling about a training session that you'd been running. And if I remember it correctly, half of them were like developers and half of them were non-developers.
00:25:48
Ben
And there was really, really interesting insights from what they were producing.
00:25:49
Richard
I did, yes, yeah.
00:25:55
Ben
Do you want to do you want to talk about almost like being a non-developer? And this is specifically for listeners who are like, oh, I don't know anything about software. You found that being a non-developer almost had an advantage.
00:26:07
Richard
That's right, yeah. So it was it was it was really interesting. So we had a, I guess you'd call it a half-day AI workshop at work. Everyone got a Claude code account, we had a brief that was to build sort of like a parallel function to what we had in in our consumer app using a stack that nobody had used before. So we we have iOS, Android engineers, we have backend engineers, Ruby on Rails, and we've got you know a design QA, a product management and and someone from marketing who was there in the workshop as well.
00:26:44
Richard
that We were just building a Next.js front end. So that's kind of you know a basic kind of a front end app. But none of the none of the developers had, while they were all programmers and they had that programming background, none of them had direct experience in that app.
00:27:01
Richard
all different sorts of levels of AI use there. Some people sort of using it for work, some people are using it more for marketing than than tech. And yeah, look, it was it was fantastic. So we had about four hours. everyone Everyone successfully built an app. Everyone successfully shipped to the to the brief.
00:27:23
Richard
But the the really interesting thing that I found was that the the the non-technical people, the people that that probably have more brand or more design awareness or even qic QA awareness really,
00:27:41
Richard
actually came out with kind of a bit a bit more interesting mix of features, a bit better color. like like you know Design's not all all something, how something looks too.
00:27:49
Ben
I love that.
00:27:52
Richard
Design's how something feels and how you use it and and the and the the button placement and things like that. and i just thought I just thought it was a really interesting exercise in that, you know, I mean, everyone succeeded, everyone got something done, so everyone everyone kind of felt good.
00:28:08
Richard
But just when you sort of like took a step back and looked across the breadth of all the things that kind of got made, that that was that was that was fascinating because you'd you'd often say, well, we're doing programming here, so we need programmers to to build this.
00:28:22
Richard
But, you know, perhaps maybe...
00:28:24
Ben
not the case.
00:28:25
Richard
Perhaps maybe not the case.
00:28:25
Ben
Yeah.
00:28:26
Richard
Or or or certainly, like a a a working prototype is a fantastic brief into like a tech team if they have to build something out. If you have to, let's say, if that had to be included in our app, then something that that that that is works and is fully functional is goingnna is going to be way better than a bunch of static mock-ups or some figment designs or or something along those lines.
00:28:43
Ben
Functional, yeah.
00:28:49
Richard
And so, yeah, so it was it was was quite quite eye-opening, I
00:28:54
Ben
I've got a theory on that though. After 30 years of running an advertising agency and having, we were the tier one digital agency for Nestle for seven years.
00:28:56
Richard
Yeah.
00:29:04
Ben
So I had nerds and account managers and account directors and art directors and all the rest. And
00:29:10
Richard
Yeah.
00:29:11
Ben
the the And when I say nerds, I use that phrase with complete love. like so Some of my best friends are nerds. And the the the way that a developer's brain works is, okay, what's the this one excuse me but what's the thing that's going to give me the least amount of trouble down the track?
00:29:32
Ben
Okay, what's what what what's the thing that's going to allow me to do this thing right now and not have someone come back to me in three months and say, well, that button doesn't do what it used to do anymore because we've updated the thing.
00:29:33
Richard
Yeah.
00:29:43
Ben
So they're always going to go for the lowest common – it's function.
00:29:45
Richard
Very functional. Yeah.
00:29:49
Ben
it's It's function over form. and And yet, like you say, the marketers will go, okay, what –
00:29:51
Richard
Yeah.
00:29:56
Ben
I mean, I'm dumbing it down, but what looks good, you know, what, what it's, it's its form over function and the amount of times within my agency life that you know, the, the butting heads, you know I'd have an art director saying, no, that button needs to be for a website where that button needs to be there. And my dev team will go, well, I can't go there because if we do that, then we've got to change the mobile layout and we've got to change that. And then that means I've got to redevelop the whole stack and my art director is going,
00:30:26
Ben
But the button needs to be there, you know.
00:30:28
Richard
Yeah.
00:30:29
Ben
and
00:30:29
Richard
Yeah.
00:30:30
Ben
and then and then, to be honest, more often than not, it would be a 3 o'clock pizza, a 3 a.m. pizza session, you know, just to get the button from the art director moved to there. Because at the end of the day, the people who are using the platform are the ones or the whatever are the ones that are going to actually make the decision.
00:30:48
Ben
and And they will revolt by not pressing that button if it's in the wrong place. So that that's that's my theory.
00:30:52
Ben
Yeah.
00:30:53
Ben
that's it's It's just yeah long-term time-saving.
00:30:53
Ben
Interesting.
00:30:55
Richard
yeah
00:30:56
Ben
Yeah.
00:30:57
Ben
All right. Well, that brings us into an interesting place. Richard's had this training session where non-developers and developers were building, in effect, the same app with different results.
00:31:08
Ben
So how do you hire someone now in the age of AI?
00:31:11
Ben
All right.
00:31:12
Ben
Like, what are we what are we looking for? Anyone can build something in a few hours. Right. what what Do we have to judge them on you know their their fashion taste or is it do they genuinely solve problems versus some sort of AI output? are we Do we sign them up and say, here's your Claude account and get going?
00:31:31
Ben
lot like what what's What does HR and hiring look like these days?
00:31:39
Ben
I'm out of the loop when it comes to this in terms of the the the the processes that are involved. But I can tell you a quick story. when i east When we used to hire developers and they get through to the first round, remember there was one particular instance.
00:31:53
Ben
This chap came in and he was talk the talk, walk the walk, like had the gift of the gap, said he knew every footin language under the psalmite.
00:31:59
Ben
Thank you.
00:32:02
Ben
damn kid you're good you're young but you're good you know i was like you straight away but i thought no better not just hire him straight away i'll just get him to do we we had a test set up right we had my devs had put together a test and i said okay cool man look happy to happy to bring it on board you know we'll we will talk go to the next stage and talk about it but just can you give me an hour of your time to do this test yeah absolutely yep put him little room about 40 minutes later he comes out and goes no i've decided i don't want the job hung number one i haven't offered you he didn't know what to do he was bluffing his way through the entire job and said all the right things i would hired an absolute lemon and like my dev guys just looked at what he did and it was like
00:32:36
Richard
Oh yeah. yeah
00:32:45
Ben
what was he using a crayon on the keyboard what the hell was going on so so when when it comes to actual development i mean you know this rich and and ben you do as well there is this big black box going on under the bonnet big black box when you develop something and i love looking at the code and the conversation because you can see what people knows you can see what the the actual codex is writing and the decisions and the internal process i love that stuff going oh okay well that's interesting
00:32:58
Richard
Hmm.
00:33:12
Ben
but there's a whole lot happening that you just don't know so when you're hiring i actually think develop if you're hiring a developer it's actually about being more well-rounded than anything else than actually being specifically nerdy nerdy i mean but then again people who are ai people are getting you know hundreds of millions of dollars and i'm sure they don't know what they look at peter steinberg or whatever his name was
00:33:38
Richard
Yeah, I know. They're crazy. Absolutely crazy, those wages.
00:33:42
Ben
Well, yeah, he yeah he he who developed Open Claw, like in an evening, basically, off the back of back back of an idea. and He'd already sold a business for $100 million, so he had that going for him.
00:33:53
Richard
Some pressure is off.
00:33:54
Richard
Yep.
00:33:54
Ben
Yeah, exactly. Well, it was actually. It was exactly right. The pressure was off but whether he took a job at OpenAI or Anthropic as well. And, you know his legacy is agentic, the agentic models that are working at the moment. He doesn't need to do anything else. He just fundamentally shifted the dial. But how would you test Peter's skill set to bring him on board as an employee? You just can't.
00:34:16
Ben
You can't.
00:34:17
Richard
I think the thing is, think the thing is you have to look for deep experience. And so, and I think when you, because I've, you know,
00:34:21
Ben
Yeah.
00:34:27
Richard
been through a couple of interviews that he's given. And just, you know, just you can tell by the fact that he spends about 75% of his time in conversation with the AI before he hits build, which i which i and i think that I think that's the kind of perspective you get from spending a lot of time working with the tools and understanding
00:34:38
Ben
code. That's exactly right. Yeah.
00:34:48
Richard
why you spend that amount of time upfront before you actually start to build. and And to do that, you've got to know what good architecture looks like. You can't just race in and start building stuff.
00:34:59
Richard
Otherwise, you you know you get the the sort of AI slop you know that that is unmaintainable and doesn't scale and has has all sorts of bottlenecks. And so i think that you still need that deep understanding
00:35:08
Ben
Yeah. Hmm.
00:35:16
Richard
of what's happening in the internals for for things like that to for things like that to work. you if you're if you're If you're part of a a large team and other people are taking care of that and you know like it's it's day one, you've turned up and you're kind of going to use AI to sort of start shipping some sort of small bugs or bug fixes or other sorts of things straight away, then then then fine, you're probably sitting at a different part of the stack. But I think if your if your remit is is is more broad and you're responsible for for how it runs, how it's maintainable and those kinds of things as well, then I think deep skills are still very helpful.
00:35:53
Ben
<unk>ve You've hit the nail on the head when it comes to planning. So Anthropoc released today the Ultra Plan. So they've, they've and this this will date really quickly.
00:35:59
Richard
and Yeah, i saw that.
00:36:01
Ben
The Ultra Plan's cool, Ben. Basically, it's it's like hardcore planning in the cloud. So you're not using, you know, your local resource and everything for doing that. But it is it's it's almost a response to exactly what you about before, Rich, in terms of this, this this like you say, the slop that was out there.
00:36:18
Ben
The ability to just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should do it or at least you should think about it.
00:36:23
Richard
Yeah. Or if it's right. Yeah.
00:36:24
Ben
If it's right, exactly right. So this ultra plan, which I think is brilliant, and I actually think my my thought on that is that it's a – pre-response,
00:36:36
Ben
getting out ahead of Mythos and this release of of of this model, which is fundamentally just going to change the universe if you listen to everyone from security perspective.
00:36:46
Ben
And what's mythos?
00:36:47
Richard
Yeah. It'll be so interesting. like I can't wait till that's in our hands.
00:36:48
Ben
So,
00:36:49
Richard
Yeah.
00:36:50
Ben
So Mythos was was essentially leaked a couple of weeks ago, when which is hilarious, when Anthropic made a code change and released their entire dev stack by mistake.
00:37:04
Ben
like
00:37:04
Richard
accidentally published the whole clo code.
00:37:06
Ben
The whole, all of the code, some someone made an error at at a nerd level and published everything, not the size of their models or anything, but exactly how Anthropic works.
00:37:07
Richard
effectively
00:37:20
Ben
But that was like 12 months ago or something.
00:37:22
Ben
No, that was only like three weeks ago, maybe?
00:37:22
Ben
Am I right?
00:37:23
Richard
No, no, no. That was a week and a half. Yeah.
00:37:26
Ben
Yeah, we can have whatever it was.
00:37:26
Richard
Yeah.
00:37:26
Ben
Oh. Okay.
00:37:27
Ben
Yeah. yeah so And that was just that was a quick little side note.
00:37:27
Richard
Two weeks ago.
00:37:27
Ben
Okay.
00:37:28
Richard
Yeah.
00:37:32
Ben
I saw a tweet from one of the leads saying, this was not a failure of an individual. This was a failure of our process. And and there's there's no blame being cast here.
00:37:43
Ben
we didn't do have We didn't have our process internally, so that's why we released our entire company stack. But anyway, Mythos. So when when it was this there was this thing called Mythos that was released, and I don't
00:37:53
Richard
It's good PR.
00:37:55
Ben
Yeah.
00:37:55
Ben
Well, that was the other thing that people said, come on, you're getting it. I don't think so. They released way too much.
00:37:59
Richard
No, i no one wants to publish the crown jewels accidentally.
00:38:00
Ben
No, that was a mistake.
00:38:02
Richard
Yeah.
00:38:06
Ben
Mythos is essentially a model that they, I think they spent about $10 billion dollars US developing, all right so not not small. And they discovered that it was exceptionally powerful at breaking down security, like being the world's most incredible hacker.
00:38:27
Ben
Hacker. Yeah, right.
00:38:28
Ben
yeah so and there was there was some things that had found like programs that have been what systems have been running for 30 years it went oh wait a minute that's broken I can go in and change everything and I'm like what the hell so they've they've released Mythos to very select few bunch of organizations uh in fact the I think the six big banks in the US were called by the bid
00:38:38
Ben
Mm-hmm.
00:38:49
Richard
US tech companies and stuff mostly.
00:38:51
Ben
Yeah, but the banks, the banks were called by the Federal Reserve, head of the Federal Reserve over there, and to call together specifically to go, hey, banks, you know, traditionally you've been a bit shithouse at this whole security thing.
00:38:52
Richard
yeah
00:39:04
Richard
Yes.
00:39:04
Ben
So you need to to sort it out. And we we all, we know that, you know, banks, so they they say the things, but we've all had experiences where the credit card system's broken fundamentally. I just, fun I think that, actually just as an aside, I think there should be a agentic currency layer.
00:39:15
Ben
Why?
00:39:15
Richard
Yep.
00:39:24
Ben
I think Stripe were talking about doing it because you talked about it before, Ben, about what would you have what would you give your AI access to? I'd love it to have access to my bank account.
00:39:34
Ben
Like, seriously, if if I just –
00:39:35
Ben
why
00:39:37
Ben
because it can do things that i haven't thought about like it can i wanted to spend money i wanted to manage my accounts i wanted to do all of the things i'm a shithouse it it's i spend way too much money on things whereas if i had a layer that actually was my personal account layer i went matt no wait a minute that you know that that extra service you know you're not having that i'm not giving that to you i i
00:39:48
Ben
Interesting.
00:40:00
Ben
Is that when we get a text message saying Ben can't come out tonight because Claude won't let him?
00:40:04
Ben
yes is vam money we cut back Yeah, exactly.
00:40:07
Ben
Got him
00:40:08
Ben
but but but but but As soon as my creative soon as my credit card gets picked up by hackers, because it will happen, then I'm locked out.
00:40:10
Ben
Can't wait for that moment. LAUGHTER
00:40:17
Ben
I've got came to cancel my cards. I've got to not use things and all the rest. Whereas if there was an again agentic financial layer that ran along the top, it only had access to a certain amount of funds.
00:40:20
Richard
Hmm.
00:40:27
Ben
Like I've got a credit card, which one of those prepaid visa things, which I've bought so that I can give it to my open claw and say, go and do some stuff. don't I've bought dinner.
00:40:37
Ben
Decide, you know what you know about me. Ben, we had this discussion the other day. So Mr. Flintoff came over for lunch and he he said, what do I like? And I said, well, just go and ask your AI. Go onto my Instagram and find out what I like.
00:40:48
Ben
And turned up with burgers and chicken wings. So, you know, pretty good.
00:40:52
Ben
win yeah that's truth you know and that's what i like
00:40:53
Ben
Yeah, exactly. Yep. so So, yeah, it was just a nice correlation. But if i if I gave my AI and said, hey, I'm planning to have someone around for dinner in a couple of weeks, can you just go and order a whole bunch of stuff that turns up from Willy's and I'll cook it. But i don't want to have to think about it. But it needs access to my bank account to do that. It needs access to accounts.
00:41:19
Ben
So what was the question? know what we're talking about. Okay.
00:41:22
Ben
Doesn't matter. i'm i'm goingnna i'm going to circle back.
00:41:25
Richard
I think that's fascinating because I think someone like Apple is probably best placed for that, right? So like Apple Pay, right?
00:41:31
Ben
oh do you want to hear
00:41:33
Richard
Because it's a dynamic credit card that kind of gets generated on every transaction.
00:41:39
Ben
it's token based yeah yeah i can i can i give you my apple thoughts can i give my other thoughts this is something that i thank you i'm gonna get on my soapbox because i i tweeted maybe so i
00:41:39
Richard
And so, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's...
00:41:44
Richard
a
00:41:45
Ben
Go on. Yeah.
00:41:46
Richard
I'd love to.
00:41:52
Ben
and Don't hit your head on the ceiling fan behind you.
00:41:55
Ben
don third i absolutely am backing for apple to take over everything because their their moat their defensible moat is hardware
00:42:05
Ben
Good.
00:42:11
Richard
Yeah, I totally got the audience.
00:42:11
Ben
It is absolutely hard. we're at them But well not only do they have the audience, at the moment when we use any of these IDEs, whenever we use Claude, whenever we use Perplexity, we have to agree to do things.
00:42:13
Richard
Yep.
00:42:24
Ben
You're constantly pressing allow, don't allow, give permissions to do this or whatever. okay So it's working in an environment that is not its natural environment. Apple's OS level is the environment. It's a hardware layer.
00:42:39
Ben
It's an OS layer. It's an integrated ecosystem. So you've got your phone, you've got your iPad, you've got your your your glasses, you know, you'll have your next year your actual office, you know, your normal glasses coming out.
00:42:46
Richard
no
00:42:53
Ben
You've got Vision Pro. All of these things exist within a hardware layer and you exist across all of them and it knows exactly what you're doing. You also got to remember, Siri's been around for like 20 years.
00:43:05
Ben
So even though it's crap at the moment, it won't be crap for for very much longer. And i when they released their new MacBook Pro, what was it, three, four weeks ago, and it's like a $7,000 laptop. You could use it like a $40,000 server to literally put massive models on and run $7,000. Everyone's like, damn, this is an expensive laptop. I'm like,
00:43:26
Ben
That's a cheap server. So they did that.
00:43:28
Richard
Yeah.
00:43:29
Ben
And then a week later, they came out with the the Neo, so which was an night in Australia, $900 laptop.
00:43:33
Richard
Yeah.
00:43:37
Ben
Like, holy, and it's incredible. It will be the default laptop for all school users from now on in. So they've suddenly just all sudden, they've grabbed the top of the range $7,000 laptop.
00:43:50
Ben
for all the people doing the hardcore agentic stuff, and then they've swooped in and now they're getting our kids again through their OS with a $900 laptop, which they're probably making money on anyway. But what they're doing is introducing the next generation, which disappeared off to Windows, back into the Apple ecosystem and give it maybe, reckon, 12 months. They're going to go, okay, the next OS is just an agentic OS.
00:44:13
Ben
So instead of saying,
00:44:13
Ben
is this Is this like the Commonwealth Bank giving out school bank accounts to kids?
00:44:17
Ben
it is it really is that's how it works but but instead of instead of me saying claude can you do x i'll just say hey i'll be turning people series but i'm hey sorry can you just open up oh there's my series talking now sorry sorry can you just open up the i found some web results yeah i can show them if you ask no
00:44:19
Ben
Yeah. Interesting. mean
00:44:39
Ben
no
00:44:39
Richard
perfect.
00:44:40
Ben
Brilliant. So it's working.
00:44:41
Ben
Now it's open up my phone and show me some web results. So thanks for that. So, but I can, I can direct through voice something to happen on my screen, you know, to do something or whatever, all of, and it knows, it knows exactly all the context.
00:44:52
Richard
Yeah.
00:44:55
Ben
It's like I was saying before about my email. I, my agent, my Claude knows all about me. so Apple knows way more about me than, than,
00:45:05
Richard
Yeah.
00:45:05
Ben
No friction points.
00:45:07
Ben
That's exactly right.
00:45:07
Ben
Interesting.
00:45:08
Ben
So that's that's going to be the difference. It really will be.
00:45:11
Richard
that's That's a very interesting thought. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:45:14
Ben
yeahp It's going to happen.
00:45:14
Ben
i want I want to circle, Rich, I want to circle back onto this this source mapping accident at Claude because you said it was like a week ago or two weeks ago.
00:45:14
Ben
It will happen. It's definitely going to happen 100%. Okay.
00:45:24
Richard
Yeah.
00:45:26
Ben
Now, if that had happened 12 months ago, that would have been an absolute disaster, I reckon.
00:45:27
Richard
yeah
00:45:31
Ben
But right now, with the pace of what we're talking about, is it is it even a problem? Like, are we...
00:45:37
Richard
Well, it's it's it's I think what it's done is it's it's bought, you know, so much proprietary knowledge has gone into building the harness or the the app that you're using, right?
00:45:49
Richard
So you've got, if you sort of, you know, people talk about AI in in these broad terms, but it's actually a whole bunch of, it's its own little stack and there's a whole bunch of different apps and things in there doing the work.
00:45:49
Ben
right.
00:46:02
Richard
You have the LLM, which is the large language model, which typically runs in the cloud and that's doing all of the processing. And then you have, they call it the harness these days or the or the app.
00:46:13
Richard
That's what Claude Code is or the Claude app that that you run on your on your local laptop. And you have this kind of like dance between the two. the The local app is kind of remembering the context and other sorts of things. And then, you know, every, the, know, you have that kind of couple of seconds wait while it goes away to the cloud and then comes back with it with its answer or the generated code blocks or or whatever it is that that you're doing.
00:46:41
Richard
I think what the leak has done is it's, it's shown the internet how Anthropic builds and and what the components of their local harness are, you know, how they manage memory, how they manage context, how they, you they.
00:46:59
Richard
I mean, they and they publish some of these things for you to get access to with skills. You know, there's kind of like hooks and other sorts of things, but you never really get to see under the hood. And now it's kind of like everyone's sort of had a look under the hood.
00:47:10
Richard
And what it's it's kind of meant is that i think a lot of competitors are can can can poach ideas from that from that accidental leak and sort of see how things like, and how does memory, how do how should I manage local memory?
00:47:23
Richard
how do What parts of a conversation are important? How do I stack those things for, you know, for
00:47:27
Ben
yeah.
00:47:28
Ben
Will they only ever be the second best Claude, though?
00:47:32
Richard
Yeah, no, and that's the thing. that I'm not sure if it if it, the velocity is such that I'm sure that they've got, you know, another, you know, 80, 100 ideas that, you know, in in in three months time, those things will kind of be old hat.
00:47:47
Richard
But yeah, it's fascinating to look at and and sort of see. I mean, there's many great, LangChain has just open sourced their stuff too, which is also, pretty awesome.
00:47:57
Ben
Oh.
00:47:59
Richard
So, and of course there's, there's open claw. So there's lots of projects you can look at to sort of understand how these things work. It's just that clawed code is such a complete product that it's just, just fascinating to see how they, how, how that works and sort of, you know, sort of do a bit of a tear down internally.
00:48:18
Richard
And so i think, you know, it doesn't impact, it doesn't impact their share price or the the valuation because their velocity is so high.
00:48:19
Ben
and when And where do you sit, Ben?
00:48:28
Ben
And so so it hasn't it hasn't impacted in the last two two weeks.
00:48:28
Ben
Yeah, but they're
00:48:34
Ben
Is that right?
00:48:35
Ben
yeah but there
00:48:35
Richard
I don't think anyone's canceled an account because of it.
00:48:38
Ben
No, no, not at all.
00:48:39
Ben
Interesting. Yeah.
00:48:39
Ben
quite Yeah, i think yeah the but people got got their got a bit annoyed with regard to the token use recently with Claude because it was just being stupid. Like people have burned, I was burning my tokens in like two hours and previously would take six or seven.
00:48:49
Richard
Yeah.
00:48:52
Richard
Yeah.
00:48:53
Ben
But I honestly think part of that is just the fact that I'm leaning so much more into it that I'm actually not necessarily understanding how much I'm using.
00:49:04
Ben
But um'm I'm going to go back to my previous comment about Apple taking over and being the one winner, which I think they will. But I also believe that where we always look for, okay, who's the biggest in the market or whatever. all of these All of these deliverers, the Googles, the Microsofts, the Claudes, the OpenAIs, the Anthropics, the OpenAIs, they all do things slightly different.
00:49:26
Ben
They've all got a different approach to doing things. And what I've started doing is actually getting them working together. So my OpenAI, my Claude code, and my codex, I'm starting to pull them together so that they all have, and this is what I'm doing with my BOS, they all work within the BOS because they're all using.md files.
00:49:48
Ben
and they all have their little little roles so my monterey oh so my my open claw person is called monterey talon monterey because hendrix and talon because claw so she she and i talk to her like a person i'll bring her and speak to her and she does things and all the rest like it was quite fun choosing her voice but she watches what I'm doing in my Claude projects and then is actively tasked with going out and going into X and looking up things that relate to that.
00:50:22
Ben
Now, I could get Claude to do that, absolutely, but I want different model to do something different and bring something different to the party.
00:50:30
Richard
Yeah.
00:50:30
Ben
And and in the last couple of weeks, I've started to use Grok a hell of a lot more because she has a wide, Grok for me as a girl, like Monterey is a thing here.
00:50:31
Ben
Interesting.
00:50:39
Ben
uh has she's less filtered you know i've got cannabis clients if i talk to my if i talk to claude about cannabis i get it's so boring whereas if i talk to grok about cannabis and trends and design and things like that she swears she tells me just stuff that and it's all amazingly like grok's model is just to the second
00:50:43
Richard
Interesting.
00:51:05
Ben
to the absolute second in terms of news and and releases and things. So all of these models are doing, all these tools are doing slightly different things and you put it in and you just get something exceptional. So I don't think there's going to be a winner. there's go Apple's going to win. But...
00:51:19
Ben
but to to your To your point, Ben, you know, it's at the moment Anthropics essentially at the top, but, you know, that's mainly because of the defense contract thing that went on with the with the US.
00:51:32
Ben
Interesting.
00:51:33
Ben
So, yeah.
00:51:34
Ben
All right.
00:51:34
Ben
Use the tools.
00:51:35
Richard
I think Apple too.
00:51:35
Ben
All right.
00:51:35
Ben
Use them all.
00:51:36
Richard
Apple's played it strategically very different to the other companies as well too. They haven't, i yeah, yeah.
00:51:41
Ben
They've just done what they always do. It's a pack.
00:51:44
Richard
And I think that that's that's actually a competitive advantage for them for sure.
00:51:44
Ben
Yeah.
00:51:49
Ben
Well, in my opinion, Apple is just a little bit slow to act.
00:51:49
Ben
Yeah.
00:51:52
Ben
No, no.
00:51:53
Ben
And I think that's because they have a duty of care in terms Interesting.
00:51:56
Ben
No, it's not. It's how they do things. No, it's not. They don't have a junior care at all. They don't give a shit. They do not care. They want to get all of this crap out of the way so that they can actually release something which blows people's minds. The next level of control for us is definitely hardware. It's glasses.
00:52:15
Ben
It's 100% glasses.
00:52:16
Ben
Interesting.
00:52:19
Ben
that That is where we're moving. I've been using the Snap Glasses from when they first came out, you know, what, 10, 15 years ago or whatever. owned every version of those. I've owned every version of the Meta Glasses.
00:52:30
Ben
The Apple Glasses, which will apparently launch next year, not with displays or anything, just a way of having – it's invisible AI.
00:52:40
Ben
My second favorite piece of tech are my Meta Ray Bans. Like they are just that the the invisible nature of these damn things is just incredible.
00:52:50
Ben
And so de do we ask what your favorite piece of tech is?
00:52:50
Ben
So hardware is where it's at.
00:52:55
Ben
or
00:52:58
Ben
but I'd be wrecked if it wasn't for my my phone, that that fundamentally.
00:53:01
Ben
Yeah.
00:53:02
Ben
But in saying that, the glasses, like, I had to drive down to the Gold Coast today, and I spent, what, because I got caught in bit traffic, three hours talking to Grok on my glasses.
00:53:02
Richard
Mm-hmm.
00:53:03
Ben
You and most. Interesting.
00:53:15
Ben
like three hours, just just doing that.
00:53:16
Ben
Interesting.
00:53:18
Ben
And yes, I absolutely could you know use my AirPods or whatever, but it was just, I didn't have to put my AirPods on. I didn't have to use my, you know, connect my iPhone to my car and use my stereo. I could just, and and when I got out of the car, I just continued the conversation. I didn't have to put sunglasses on. I just got out of the car. Everything was seamless.
00:53:39
Ben
That the I am.
00:53:40
Ben
You really are a nerd.
00:53:43
Ben
But it, Yeah.
00:53:46
Ben
There's a topic I'm going to come back to.
00:53:46
Ben
Help me cook dinner the other night too. Sorry.
00:53:49
Ben
I'm going to come back to a topic, but I want to talk about arts. You music, arts, creativity.
00:53:53
Ben
Cool.
00:53:55
Ben
Like, are we going to be less crafty because AI can just do this stuff for us?
00:54:00
Ben
Yeah.
00:54:02
Ben
Like, I've seen, like, short-form videos fully created by by AI, which would blow away some of even the recent release movies that we've been doing. talk Talk to us about tools like Suno and Coachella and and where it all fits in on the creativity angle. You go first, Richard.
00:54:23
Ben
This is going
00:54:29
Richard
So like, you know, I write my skills very close to zero, but I can turn up on Suno and i can I can bash in a few words and and mess around with the prompt.
00:54:39
Richard
And it comes out sounding pretty good, you know, like I...
00:54:44
Ben
to be a good chat. This is going be a good chat.
00:54:45
Richard
And... and And like, you know, it's, it's you you start that at 6pm on a Saturday, and then you get to 2am Sunday morning, and you're just like, I've got to go to bed.
00:54:54
Ben
Thank you.
00:54:57
Richard
You know, you made you've you've made four or five tracks, like it's a blast. It really is. And, know, You know, I mean, you know, I'm i'm not trying to make a record. I'm not trying to share that with anyone.
00:55:08
Richard
It's just it's just pure personal enjoyment there knocking out, you know, a country and Western hip hop song or whatever you want to do.
00:55:20
Ben
That famous famous genre yeah.
00:55:22
Richard
right Yeah, with some banjo and cello in there. Why not? You know? it's And yeah, I don't know.
00:55:28
Ben
and
00:55:30
Richard
I quite enjoyed it. And as as for... As for sort of you know doing doing you know movies and stills and and images and stuff like that too, that that is – mean, a lot of that stuff has been around for for a lot longer, I think. But it is – yeah, it's it's it's just you can get such a such a sort of an output with such a small amount of time that i just find it very satisfying and you know personally enjoyable i'm not trying to make commercials or anything like that but it is it's a hoot i love it
00:56:10
Ben
and just And for reference, you wouldn't consider yourself normally an arty or musical person. You've actually been brought to yeah that hobby, if you like. Is that is that a fair comment?
00:56:22
Ben
So it's actually worked in reverse.
00:56:23
Richard
well yeah I would probably say, yeah, in in in some sense. Like if if I had to, if I had to, in like i'm I'm not going to spend the amount of time it would take to to become proficient in instruments, right?
00:56:41
Richard
or Or anything like that.
00:56:42
Ben
Yeah.
00:56:43
Richard
I'm not going to sit down there and learn how to use animation software because the time investment is is just too high. But in terms of prompting something, sure, i'll I'll give it a go.
00:56:55
Richard
And I'll mess around with the tools, jump jump in. I mean, you've got, there's almost no downside of having a crack, right? So the you can you can pick it up and and run with it.
00:57:05
Richard
If you get stuck, there's a YouTube tutorial for everything these days. So you know jump on there and find the one that's the shortest. just five minutes, tell me everything I need to know. Okay, great. You know, I go and and and have a play around with it.
00:57:20
Richard
Yeah, it's, it's awesome.
00:57:21
Ben
Interesting.
00:57:22
Richard
It's very, very, very rewarding, very satisfying, I find. Yeah.
00:57:26
Ben
now Now, Ben, you are musical.
00:57:29
Ben
How long have you got?
00:57:29
Ben
So where sit?
00:57:30
Ben
How long have you got?
00:57:30
Ben
Yeah.
00:57:31
Richard
It's just actual talent.
00:57:32
Ben
How long have you got? we yeah we'll say one thing first. The personal experience of art and music is personal. So Rich, if you have joy in doing exactly what you're doing, that's all that matters.
00:57:48
Richard
Yeah, yeah.
00:57:48
Ben
It is all that matters. if there is if you If you create something that actually makes your soul sing and you've put your hand to it and it's AI or it's hitting a tin can or whatever, that's it.
00:58:03
Ben
That's all that matters on a personal level. However, there's always a however. from a commercial perspective, that's when the game changes.
00:58:15
Ben
That's when the game changes. And I lent heavily, so I'm in a couple of bands and I've played music for a long time and I'm gonna disappear off camera in a minute and grab something to bring back to camera, but I'll keep, I'll keep talking. It'll only take me a minute.
00:58:28
Ben
If he plays a song, I'm turning off the...
00:58:28
Ben
No, I'm not gonna play a song. I'm gonna show you something. All right. so the the the So I leant heavily into electronic music in terms of creating. i I play guitar. I sing in a couple of bands. I've always been in garage bands. Huge Jimi Hendrix fan. You know, his signature's hanging on my wall. I've named a firstborn after him. I've sat on his grave.
00:58:52
Ben
you know I've probably got the largest Hendrix LP and 45 collection in Australia. So I'm in my music, but I'm also in my technology.
00:59:03
Ben
And i actually had this exact same discussion with with Larry Mitchell, the grammy Grammy winner, Larry Mitchell, because my perspective was, okay, if we're giving musicians the tools to to to do these things,
00:59:21
Ben
we can produce better music. We can do things faster. And I also said that if we have, if there's less jobs, then there's more time to be creative and, you know, universal basic income is going to bring us around so that we can sit there and be creative and,
00:59:37
Ben
roll out all this cool stuff and he he just flat out disagreed with me and i had to agree with him afterwards said if if you haven't felt pain or suffering or been on some kind of journey the music is not there the best songs come from experiences And the best songs come from bad experiences.
00:59:57
Ben
they They just do. The best art comes from actually feeling you can't have a low without, you can't have a high without having a low. so art is about, essentially, about suffering and and journey.
01:00:13
Ben
And if we're in a position where we're all just happy and on a universal basic income and can make as much music as we want to by pushing a button, that's not art, that's not music.
01:00:22
Ben
Interesting.
01:00:22
Ben
So so i I do come around to that. But in saying that, the tools that are being used by musicians with AI are helping.
01:00:33
Ben
I released a song. i I normally release songs that are rock and brock and grunge and stuff like that. I released my first ever R&B song. Because I took what I'd written with my guitar, with chords and lyrics and and awesome stuff, and chucked that into Suno, and it threw me back an R&B stack. was like, that's flipping cool.
01:00:56
Ben
But I took that.
01:00:56
Richard
That's awesome. Yeah.
01:00:57
Ben
It is is, but I took that, went to the studio. And I used my Fender Strat to play the the strum that it made, play the chords and sat with my producer and layered my audio and and and put on my vocals.
01:01:05
Richard
Hmm.
01:01:12
Ben
And the only AI part I used was was choir vocals, which is sort of for the for the BVs, which you can do programmatically anyway. That's not...
01:01:21
Richard
Hmm.
01:01:22
Ben
ai that's just something you know back in the day you'd have to have a choir come in but now you have choir pads so i wasn't i was using ai as inspiration and i can tell you right now i would have never have released an r&b song unless i'd put that into ai and did exactly what you just said then you'd released a country was a country rock and roll or whatever it was country hip-hop yeah yeah i would I would never have thought to put my blues song and turn into R&B.
01:01:43
Richard
Yes. Yeah.
01:01:49
Ben
Make that R&B. That's a damn good song. That's very, very cool.
01:01:53
Ben
So you're seeing it as an enabler of creativity.
01:01:53
Ben
But
01:01:56
Ben
It's and it's an it is absolutely an enabler. And it's it's if if you were to give me a set of oil paint and some brushes, I would do a terrible painting.
01:01:59
Ben
Interesting.
01:02:11
Ben
Like, I've got those tools. I would do a terrible painting.
01:02:13
Ben
I'm pretty sure i can paint black, black poles though.
01:02:17
Ben
yeah yeah yeah Yeah, you do that.
01:02:17
Ben
Like that's, there's, there's not a lot going on there.
01:02:19
Ben
yeah but
01:02:20
Ben
yeah But i've i've that the the whatever gets put because I know I'm a bad painter. I could learn it. I could be great. But if I was to give Picasso or or even just some bloke who's out there who's a better painter than me, exactly the same tools, they could produce art.
01:02:35
Ben
yeah
01:02:35
Ben
So what we've what we've got is a scenario where we've all got the same tools. but the ability to be able to create is in the experience it's in the person and and i think that's that that's fundamentally the same with coding it's what we're saying before it's the same with coding it's you have the tools
01:02:51
Ben
well the paint the the pain and suffering to be a great artist probably explains why know kids that our kids love taylor swift and what
01:03:01
Ben
She's, don't know, she's amazing. She is an incredible artist, yeah. Like, she that she's she she her her ability to be able to create music now is is exceptional.
01:03:05
Ben
Yeah.
01:03:11
Ben
But she she did the hard yards. She's got scars all over her hands from her guitars.
01:03:14
Richard
Yeah.
01:03:15
Ben
Yeah. A hundred percent.
01:03:16
Ben
that have so You know, yeah, so she she has gone through that.
01:03:18
Ben
I
01:03:19
Ben
We now see her as the antithesis of, all the flu no, that she has everything wrong with pop, essentially. But that's not where she was.
01:03:26
Ben
think she,
01:03:27
Ben
Now, keep talking because away and come back. So just keep talking.
01:03:29
Ben
Yeah, I think she's amazing. And yeah speaking of kids, I think, well, let's circle back onto... AI and education, Richard, because you've got a school-aged daughter. Ben's got school-aged kids. My girls have just finished high school but are in in university.
01:03:48
Ben
In particular, one daughter is navigating an IT degree. And you AI has has actually got her questioning her future.
01:03:59
Ben
You know, there's some genuine uncertainty about where the scale and speed of AI leaves, you know, someone doing an IT degree.
01:04:10
Ben
And, you know, we're talking now about next generation's reality, I guess.
01:04:10
Richard
Wow.
01:04:14
Ben
And I'd love to not get distracted by a guitar in my face. Go on, talk talk us through this.
01:04:22
Ben
So this is an InXS owned inacceowed guitar So this was owned by InXS, the band, all right, and played by them. Okay. This is a hand-carved Maori guitar from New Zealand with power inlays. It's got teeth.
01:04:40
Ben
it's yeah it's It's a wooden, made of wood, but it's got all this beautiful power in it.
01:04:45
Richard
That's incredible.
01:04:46
Ben
It's absolutely amazing. So like say, owned by NXS. I'm trying to find the the the carver at the moment. Now this, what I was saying before about when I picked up this guitar, it has an energy, it has a magic, it has the embodiment of creativity that is absolutely just in this guitar for everything it is. and When I play it, I play differently.
01:05:11
Ben
Now I can absolutely...
01:05:12
Ben
Just move move back to your microphone, mate.
01:05:14
Ben
Sorry, when I play it, I play differently because of what it is as a tool.
01:05:18
Richard
Hmm.
01:05:19
Ben
Now, I could type into Suno, give me a riff or whatever, but it wouldn't be able to play. wouldn't be able to produce what I can produce when I play this guitar.
01:05:29
Richard
Hmm.
01:05:29
Ben
Interesting.
01:05:29
Ben
So there's it's it's, like I say, with we're even though all these tools exist, they don't necessarily bring out the humanity all the time. Sorry, anyway, back to education stuff.
01:05:39
Ben
Interesting. Yeah, no, no, that's that's a nice a nice piece. Thanks for sharing it. So where we we were sitting was I was talking about my, I've got a daughter who's doing an IT degree and just questioning you know, the value that could possibly be extracted with the rate of, you know, change, you know, that AI is showing. And I just wondered, you know, as someone who's, you know, working in the industry, Richard, and someone who's deep in the weeds, Ben, where do you sit on AI and education? Like, how should we, how how should i talk to her about this?
01:06:15
Ben
which mm-hmm
01:06:16
Richard
Well, yeah, I mean, I think you've got to be you got to be across the tools, right? First, no question. And so I think if the degree...
01:06:28
Richard
if the degree because university degrees will kind of like lag, you know, what industry is doing and particularly seeing as the pace AI is moving at.
01:06:34
Ben
I
01:07:04
Ben
Unsuccessful.
01:07:09
Richard
And, and, you've got to know what good looks like as well. If you don't know what good looks like and you don't have taste or you don't have a point of view, then it's it's going to be really hard, I think, to generate that success because you you need that accomplishment of of producing something that that that that you're happy with.
01:07:31
Richard
You've got to have a North Star, I guess, is kind of what I'm saying when you when you start working with these things. And if if there's like interning or if there's some other sorts of, you know, environments that that can be layered in there to sort of help, you know, provide a reason to to work with these things, because there has to be a point to to what you're doing, then then that's that's that's probably a value to you as well.
01:07:55
Ben
I
01:08:00
Richard
But that's that's what I would say. You've you've just got to take it on on yourself. and And it's really helpful to be deep in an area, like understand design, understand colour, understand this the classic Steve Jobs story of of how, you know, he took a detour and sort of did calligraphy classes when he was cutting stuff that he was supposed to be doing.
01:08:06
Ben
like...
01:08:09
Ben
Mm-hmm. Yep.
01:08:21
Richard
But it turned out that that led to the the Mac having all these incredible fonts because he understood stroke and width and, you know, all these other sorts of things that that that people didn't, you know, the the Mac was ahead of.
01:08:30
Ben
Interesting.
01:08:33
Richard
Windows for years on that sort of stuff. it's It's why it took over multimedia and graphic design, desktop publishing, all those sorts of things.
01:08:41
Ben
So it was known as sort of the art, you know, the arty computer for a long time. i think that sort of label's been lifted.
01:08:45
Ben
Yeah.
01:08:47
Ben
Now, Ben, over to you. Like, my daughter loves building things. She's deeply curious, very, very hardworking, you know, almost to to a fault. Do you think there's a meaningful difference between a graduate who's spent three years learning to think like a programmer, you know, debugging, learning those principles, system thinking, like what Richard's suggested is going to be valuable?
01:09:11
Ben
Versus someone who' just learned how to prompt really, really well. Like in 2029, when she graduates, an employer even give a damn?
01:09:21
Ben
Well, i actually think even the the prompting scenario is just going to die away. You know, every all of the AI courses and things that are out there at the moment talk about making the perfect prompt.
01:09:26
Richard
Yeah.
01:09:32
Ben
It's not about making the perfect prompt. It's about having the right idea. it's it's It's about actually having that vision like you're saying, Rich. It's it's it's about understanding the little things because the little things make all the difference for the big things.
01:09:45
Ben
I do worry, however, in saying that. I do worry. I've i've got a 19-year-old who's graduated from school and then doesn't necessarily know what he wants to do with his life. He'll he'll go in to do something with his hands, which is which is fantastic, and i actually think that's that's probably where most of the world's going to go.
01:10:03
Richard
Mm-hmm.
01:10:04
Ben
and my my 16 year old who graduates at the end of the year out of year 12 he literally did he's had he never said anything about doing anything related to the trades at all and independently decided that he was going to do a cert two in plumbing because he's like well i'm going leave school he saw it coming going leave school i can straight away go into a trade that is going to earn me money while i
01:10:27
Ben
decide what I want to do with my life. Never mentioned plumbing, never mentioned electricity, never in his life. But let him tell it's a great choice.
01:10:34
Richard
I think it's a great choice, actually.
01:10:36
Ben
o
01:10:36
Richard
It's probably the most defensible, right?
01:10:36
Ben
But he doesn't want to be a plumber. But he and literally we had the graduation the other day and people were talking about, I'm going to go into plumbing and I'm not going to plumbing, but I could. don't want to, but I now know. And one of his tutors said to him, that's some of the best welding I've ever seen. I've never done welding before.
01:10:53
Ben
So I think right now they're at the best point of just trying stuff like literally trying stuff. I firmly believe that the humanities is going to come back into into being. There is going to be a huge explosion in people to people,
01:11:13
Ben
people to people discussion. the The arts are going to come back. Live music is going to be absolutely massive. And precisely for you were saying before, you know we've got generated music, which is good. We've got DJs, which are great. But there's nothing like sitting down in front of a band and seeing them play something.
01:11:27
Ben
And it's almost the same scenario that the reason punk came along, the reason that grunge came along, they were a pushback on on what was you know seen as... gru when When grunge bands came out, when Pearl Jam came out, they didn't care about singing out a tune.
Generational Views on AI and Perfection
01:11:45
Ben
They didn't care about playing the songs 17 different times over 17 different sets. They just didn't give us stuff.
01:11:52
Ben
So i I firmly believe we're going to see a pushback against perfection, against AI. This generation below us is going to go, well, it's's you've had it too eat you've got it too easy now.
01:12:03
Ben
i don't I don't want something to look pretty. I don't want something to do the right thing. And you can see it with memes.
01:12:08
Ben
Interesting.
01:12:09
Ben
The meme culture that exists. Like I see memes and go...
01:12:11
Richard
and
01:12:13
Ben
was that done paint but it serves a purpose it's it's you it's it's an entertainment it's it makes someone smile it makes someone laugh it proves a point you know and it's what it's what the iranians are doing at the moment with all these lego you know things that are going out it's entertainment but but i i so i i think the best thing that someone can do in education at the moment is not necessarily hang their hat on something
01:12:20
Richard
Yeah, it is.
01:12:38
Ben
Interesting.
01:12:38
Ben
don't Don't be a generalist.
01:12:38
Ben
Be a generalist.
01:12:40
Ben
You have to be a generalist at the moment because at the moment being a specifist, if that's a word, will will yeah it will absolutely just pigeonhole you.
01:12:46
Ben
Yeah, we'll run with it.
01:12:49
Ben
So specialist, that's the word i was looking for.
01:12:49
Ben
think specialist is the version we you would use. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:12:53
Ben
Yeah, don't be a specifilist. Yeah.
01:12:55
Richard
Yeah.
01:12:55
Ben
so
01:12:56
Richard
Hmm.
01:12:56
Ben
i
01:12:56
Ben
So Richard, richard if you if you're advising my daughter and you know her and she's not going to be a plumber,
01:12:57
Richard
but it's disruptible
01:12:58
Ben
yeah
01:13:05
Ben
So i want I want actual advice now. What would you tell her to focus on for the next two years that I think AI is unlikely to replace? you She loves IT. She loves design. From a big, big school in the States, she was the IT student of the year. So that's sort of in her blood. Where where should she be focusing her attention?
01:13:25
Richard
You know, I think understanding the roots of the craft. So you yeah yeah you're thinking about design, but youre you you rewind that 50 years and looking at like data rams and, you know, sort of like go right back before,
01:13:30
Ben
Mm-hmm.
01:13:43
Richard
before computers like understand understand function understand like just you immerse yourself in you know the the the experience that that you're trying to deliver and you so and so much like ben was saying before you you have that emotional bedrock right that you're then layering things up up on top of and that delivers the experience and so it's it's kind of like
01:14:00
Ben
Mm-hmm.
01:14:07
Richard
really easy to use AI to deliver the cosmetic things at the at the top because that and because it can it can turn out so much of you know variation there. But if you've got the if you've got the bedrock underneath, then I think that's what makes it that's what makes it unique. And that's what mean that's the value that you can layer into the equation that is that is is is is very hard to to duplicate. And so I think it's it's it's the fundamentals, I would say.
01:14:36
Richard
So like, yeah explore explore out outside the field. Yeah, just kind of like but conton like we Ben said before too. you know and Understand the the things that sit around that.
01:14:46
Ben
Interesting.
01:14:52
Ben
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
01:14:55
Richard
what we're actually trying to do here. Okay, you say you want this to look good, but why do we want it to look good? Okay, we're trying to we're trying to sell something, we're trying to improve conversion.
01:15:05
Richard
Okay, what is it? What are we trying to deliver? Is it, is it you know, if if it's if it's if it's health, is it Formula One? Is it, you know, sports? Is it, is it you know, what what are we trying to do?
01:15:16
Richard
And sort of, you know, really understanding the customer and and the the target user and yeah, those sorts of things. And so I think it's,
01:15:23
Ben
You've hit the nail on the head there, dude. it's and It's understanding the audience.
01:15:25
Richard
It's a bit more understanding the audience. Yeah, it's it's more core and more essential.
01:15:29
Ben
Yeah.
01:15:30
Richard
And I think that takes time to develop, right?
01:15:31
Ben
Yeah.
01:15:33
Richard
Because you you you need you need empathy. You need those very human skills as as a sort of a as as a foundation for for for that type of stuff.
01:15:43
Richard
But there's a lot in craft as well. There's a lot in a lot in history. Like, go to the places, read the classics, you know, do the do the turn up, those those kinds of things wherever wherever it is.
01:15:52
Ben
Yeah.
01:15:58
Richard
You know, if it's if it's art and and design, you know, you you go to the Smithsonian, you you go to you go to Milan, you go you go to the Tate Modern, you know, you look at you look at those things and you kind of like, you know, you you take on the experience of of those things.
01:16:04
Ben
Yeah.
01:16:16
Richard
and i I think it, yeah, I think it contributes to to to to how your, to what your output's like at the end of the day and sort of probably too on some level how you know,
01:16:29
Richard
how you relate to those sorts of things as as a person.
01:16:32
Ben
Take a breath. Take a breath. Like literally take a breath and just breathe in the world. Yeah.
01:16:38
Ben
I like it.
01:16:38
Ben
Yeah.
01:16:39
Ben
I like it.
01:16:39
Ben
Yeah.
01:16:40
Ben
You reminded me of of an experience where I went to a famous museum and, know, you walk into the first room and you, like, stay there for half an hour and you soak it all in.
01:16:49
Ben
And and by the end of the day, you just sort of stick your head into the room and go, yep, I get it. And I...
01:16:54
Ben
yeah
01:16:55
Richard
It's like the Louvre, right? You go to the Louvre and it's got all these wings and all these rooms and you're kind of like, it's closing time and you're like, I've gone for four rooms.
01:17:02
Ben
a
01:17:03
Richard
I haven't even made it down a wing yet. It's like three levels or something, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
01:17:08
Ben
i so but I reckon we're sort of getting towards the the end. I think listeners have stuck with us. Thank you.
01:17:15
Ben
All three of you.
01:17:15
Ben
well can what What keeps you up at night?
01:17:16
Ben
Yeah.
01:17:18
Ben
yeah Yeah, all three, we can name them.
01:17:21
Ben
<unk>
01:17:21
Ben
what's What's keeping you up at night?
Quantum Computing and Future Tech Concerns
01:17:23
Ben
like I'm not talking about an an apocalypse, but is there a real near-term worry that you know you you think about in relation to AI?
01:17:33
Ben
Quantum computers.
01:17:35
Ben
What do they do?
01:17:36
Ben
They, like, the the computers that we've got at the moment are like one grain of sand versus a beach is what a quantum computer does.
01:17:46
Ben
okay
01:17:48
Ben
And we're getting, it's been talked about since the, the lesson for for decades, but we are getting so close to quantum computing and the changes that that will make to everything that we've is scary, like not scar scary in the most amazing way, but the power that certain governments, corporations, individuals will have, it will base, when when quantum computing becomes real in the in the commercial sense of the world word, encryption will be nothing, like nothing.
01:18:27
Ben
just generations of doing things in certain ways will be gone. Like Bitcoin is nothing because it can be solved by quantum computing. So that's the, and it's and that's a real nerdy thing to say, but you can go deep into that field and you will see what's what's coming. And to pair that with AI,
01:18:50
Ben
It's going to be incredible. like We will either have the most fundamentally amazing term of humanity or not so much.
01:19:05
Ben
So, yeah,
Experimenting with AI Tools
01:19:06
Ben
look look like like that that went hardcore nerdy and scary, but, yeah, look it up.
01:19:10
Ben
where Where do you sit, Richard? Is anything that you're you're thinking about?
01:19:16
Richard
You know, I mean, often what keeps me up at night is is actually... learning something exciting at the end of the day and then not being able to sleep because you're, you're trying to unpack the meaning of that while you're supposed to be sleeping.
01:19:27
Ben
Oh, two remercie days.
01:19:31
Richard
Right. So you're like, it, it, it'll be, you'll, you'll be, you'll be wrapping something up, you know, you're doing a a bit of prompting or or something. It's nine 30, 10 or, you know, a I've got to get a bed.
01:19:43
Richard
got get up, you know, in the morning, the kids off to school, whatever. And then you'll, and then you'll, you'll, you'll, come across something and you'll think, huh, that's, I wouldn't have thought of that like that, you know? but particularly from, you know, using, say using Claude code to to code things up. Often Claude will make different choices to the choices I make.
01:20:05
Richard
And sometimes you're trying to steer it in a direction because architecturally you think that that's the right direction to go. And other times Claude will make a suggestion and you go, huh, that's a really interesting way to think about a problem.
01:20:17
Richard
and of course, you know, Claude's been trained on on the on on the world's world's code. You know, I'm an industry professional, 40 years experience at writing software.
01:20:22
Ben
No.
01:20:28
Richard
I've seen a lot of stuff, but I haven't seen everything. And so you'll you'll get an idea and it's just like, and you and sometimes you just can't put it down so that's what gives me awake at night is the is possibility i guess and I find that very exhilarating and and and very exciting I mean you know
01:20:47
Ben
Interesting. So, yeah, so the question was supposed to be keeps you awake and not with worry, but you're actually staying awake with excitement. that's That's an interesting take. for For me, I just, I like to know that I can unplug it.
01:21:00
Ben
Like, i'm I'm happy to work with AI and I'm accepting, but I'd i'd love to know
01:21:03
Ben
would you do that?
01:21:06
Ben
the
01:21:07
Ben
What do you want to do?
01:21:10
Ben
i't I don't know.
01:21:10
Ben
Yes.
01:21:11
Ben
i haven't my My toes are in the water.
01:21:12
Ben
I was...
01:21:13
Ben
I haven't dived in yet. so that's that's where I sit.
01:21:16
Ben
The idea...
01:21:18
Ben
it's hey It's about me, not about you. so All right.
01:21:24
Richard
You'll be all in.
01:21:24
Ben
was
01:21:24
Richard
I'm looking forward to the next one, Ben.
01:21:24
Ben
you
01:21:27
Ben
yeah
01:21:27
Ben
we've speaking of the next one there is a chance this will become a there will be a follow-up podcast we'll see what the listening engagement's like but speaking of our listeners what's one thing a low barrier action like what's one thing that they can go and do even in the next seven days just to engage with ai to to get themselves either to my level which i know i'll give a suggestion but you know fit to your level band if someone's playing in your field and richard yourself as well like What's something that a listener can take away right now and just go and do?
01:21:35
Ben
Yeah.
01:21:59
Ben
what What do you recommend, Ben?
01:22:02
Ben
I think sign up for a service that's not the service that you've already signed up for if you've signed up for one. Like actually try something else. if you If you're firmly in the Gemini camp, have a crack at OpenAI, like just do something different, run the same project in a different way. Although probably the main thing that I would say apart from doing that is just use your voice more than you use your fingers.
01:22:30
Ben
Interesting.
01:22:30
Ben
your Your brain works in different ways when you're talking. So if you're if you're used to typing in prompts, like we're saying before, people have still a prompt, the prompt life is real.
01:22:42
Ben
Instead of typing in the perfect prompt, just sit there and close your eyes and and use your dictation. here Every phone's got dictation. you hit the heart Hit the microphone thing and just talk. where We talk for 30 seconds, 13 seconds, three minutes. Just it. It doesn't matter if there's spelling mistakes and I think you'll find you'll have a different outcome.
01:23:02
Ben
So try a different tool and talk to your
01:23:02
Ben
Interesting.
01:23:05
Ben
talk to your ai Yeah.
01:23:07
Ben
What's your what's yours low barrier action, Richard?
01:23:12
Richard
Mine is is pick up a tool and mess around with it. Like, you know, grab grab mid-journey or something.
01:23:16
Ben
Yeah.
01:23:20
Richard
Make it make a few images. just Describe an image and and see what it comes back with. Finesse You know, I want out of space flying ant bananas or I want, you know, what want whatever.
01:23:32
Richard
Just cup just just dump dump dump it out there.
01:23:34
Ben
I'm totally topping that in.
01:23:36
Richard
See what it comes out with. It's it's crazy. Or pick up Suno. Make a song. i think Suno, you can make, what, four, six songs or something for for free?
01:23:47
Richard
Yeah, and just get kind of used to tinkering, I think. and then And then I think that the applications will reveal themselves. You know, you'll then you'll then you'll you'll have something. You'll have you'll you'll have some some problem. Maybe it's a repeating report at work or maybe it's some some little little thing you have to do, a proposal or a PowerPoint, or you've got to present something next Tuesday. You know, just chuck it chuck it in and start.
01:24:18
Richard
Hmm.
01:24:19
Ben
I like it. And that's, that's where I i sat. I'm right at the bottom of the food chain when it comes to this. But, you know, I signed up, it was 15 minutes a day that I committed to, and I signed up to a 28 day course and I got like eight days in. I was just like, holy shit, I can actually do this. There it is. There's your ant bananas.
01:24:38
Ben
there's your outer space flying out but andized that's there you go there's there's the title title graphic for the the podcast yeah yeah outer space flying ant bananas yeah well done i'll just use gemini for that it's fun gemini yeah yeah yeah that just it does that's insane
01:24:41
Ben
That's crazy.
01:24:41
Richard
Awesome. There we go.
01:24:44
Ben
That is nuts. What was that, 30 seconds? a
01:24:49
Richard
Fantastic. And what did you use? What did you use for that, Ben? Gemini. There we go. yep
01:24:57
Ben
Unreal. Unreal. so get started, commit to 15 minutes a day, and use voice. There's the three actionable takeaways for our listeners.
01:25:08
Ben
Yeah, absolutely.
01:25:10
Ben
Look, i don't know about you guys, but I've thoroughly enjoyed our chat. This is far and, and like, this is like, what, eight Bravo Charlie Club episodes.
01:25:18
Richard
Super long, super long form.
01:25:19
Ben
Are you going to divide them into 12-minute episodes? Is that what happens now?
01:25:22
Ben
Yeah. So, yeah, we've we've absolutely yeah leaned into that one.
01:25:24
Ben
Serialize it.
01:25:28
Ben
It's been great being
Engagement and Conclusion
01:25:29
Ben
the the amateur in the room, which I very very often am, but it's in a topic that I'm completely uncomfortable about listening to you guys riff on.
01:25:39
Ben
It's been awesome. Thank you so much.
01:25:41
Ben
I
01:25:42
Ben
How can people get in touch with you, Ben?
01:25:45
Ben
i would say LinkedIn, but everyone can find me LinkedIn. Just Instagram. I'm Ben Slater on Instagram. I'm that old that my name is actually on Instagram.
01:25:54
Richard
Nice.
01:25:55
Ben
actually Funnily enough, i was with a whole bunch of really
01:25:55
Richard
The OG.
01:25:58
Ben
really cool sports people in Fiji like international Olympians and everything and I was exchanging Instagrams and they were like I'm tdog7 tdogtwizzle7 or 87 or whatever I was like I'm just Ben Slater and they they didn't care like okay you haven't got a gold medal yeah but I've got my name on Instagram so there you go just look me up on Instagram yep there you yep
01:26:14
Ben
yeah
01:26:19
Ben
there it is that's the one and do you respond to dms or is it like
01:26:25
Ben
Yeah, occasionally. It depends who's asking.
01:26:27
Ben
Yeah, from time to time. Yeah, fair call. Fair call.
01:26:31
Ben
I do. I will.
01:26:32
Ben
Richard, listeners can get us from hello at Bravo Charlie Club. I think, is that their email address? bravo Hello at bravocharlie.club.
01:26:41
Ben
is that I don't even remember my own email address.
01:26:42
Richard
There we go.
01:26:43
Ben
Doc Club, hello, Charlie. Yep.
01:26:46
Ben
Yeah. Or, hey, we'll put links in the show notes anyway. Yeah.
01:26:49
Richard
Yeah. Yeah. We'll put it in.
01:26:50
Ben
Thank you so much. AI deep dive pilot episode is in the bank or in the ether is probably more apt. Any closing comments, Richard?
01:27:01
Richard
No, thanks everyone for listening.
01:27:03
Ben
just we'll do one tomorrow because it's all changed tomorrow so i'll meet you same time same time yeah yeah there'll be another 17 anthropic releases in the next 40 minutes so we'll just we'll speak you in a couple of hours cool
01:27:06
Ben
Yeah, all right.
01:27:08
Richard
us tomorrow
01:27:14
Ben
Absolutely. Well, I'll say deep dive out.
01:27:19
Ben
see you know
01:27:25
Richard
Rogue One!
01:27:26
Ben
Where's my dramatic piano?
01:27:29
Ben
There it Dramatic, if you don't mind.
01:27:30
Richard
very
01:27:31
Ben
Thank you, dramatic piano.
01:27:31
Richard
and i