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Happy Holidays! Our listeners are the greatest gift!
0 Playsin 22 hours
It's a holiday week, so turn off this podcast!
But if you'd like to tune in all the same, then we're here to say think you. You, the listeners, have been the greatest gift this season as we've made this turn in our format from security to looking more broadly at the human impact of technology.
You've stuck with us. We've gotten a lot of great messages of support, and we love the direction of the show and love that you love it!
Happy holidays from BKBT! May your time off be peaceful and energizing for the new year.
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Transcript
Season Four Updates and Listener Appreciation
00:00:08
Speaker
Hey, welcome back. This is Bare Knuckles and Brass Tacks, the tech podcast about humans. I'm George K. I'm George And if you are listening to this, you need to stop because it is a holiday week.
00:00:20
Speaker
You got to turn it off. Go be with your families. But while you're here... We'll say thank you for listening. The listeners are the gift to us that keeps on giving. We really appreciate you sticking with us during this turn in season four where we have broadened our conversations. I've gotten a lot of great DMs, a lot of messages. Really appreciate the support.
00:00:43
Speaker
Yeah, i'm I'm super thankful for our audience who have stayed us on this journey.
Guest Highlights from Various Fields
00:00:48
Speaker
ah We've tried to find the coolest, weirdest, most interesting people that we could throw on here who'd be willing to talk if possible.
00:00:55
Speaker
I mean, we had everything from a porn star to a life coach to a psychologist. To Amnesty International. to 404 media, like to have duties to play in the NFL. i The world is just our oyster right now, but we do this for you. um George and I both have exceptionally busy lives. We are blessed with career success. That's like a really net new progress this year for both of us.
00:01:20
Speaker
um This is the one thing, like our our last little Alamo of creative sanity where we're doing something just for fun. Again, we we don't get sponsored for this show.
00:01:30
Speaker
That might change if we find ourselves blessed on YouTube and I can actually afford good equipment to get us on YouTube. if I'm being honest. But I do really, really appreciate the time that we get to spend with our with our
Acknowledging George's Impact and Aspirations for AI
00:01:46
Speaker
listeners. And George, bla thanks for pulling in some pretty cool people too. because you I'll be real with you, man.
00:01:53
Speaker
We are blessed with your success at the Society and at Confide because I think that keeps opening new doors every week and new people keep popping up and listening. the Yeah, I would say this show keeps on giving back to us, which is amazing. So in a more humorous segment, George, what is on your wish list for 2026 if money was no object in the world of tech, people, all the things we usually talk about?
00:02:23
Speaker
Oh, it's hard to say that because I'm living founder life. So like your money no object. I'm like, but my one, my $20 million. dollars ceo I'm not joking. He's not joking. No, he is not joking.
00:02:35
Speaker
But no, I think in all seriousness, i I actually would just wish that the AI bubble would actually burst in and the self licking ice cream cone of our industry would absolutely collapse. And we can go back to, you know,
00:02:50
Speaker
Doing real problems. Real value and real problems. And like we we have ah we have a hilarious outtake reel of just people saying AI. i think I think I'm in there like at least six times saying AI over different episodes.
00:03:04
Speaker
And I would love if next year we just not have to talk about it as much anymore because i just think it's dumb. and i And I want to be humorous about it, but the fact is that it's just you can't do anything in tech without reading about it. We can't do it scale without hearing about it.
00:03:21
Speaker
I want to go back to a world where we stop having it there as an excuse for people to lose their jobs, for people's compensation to be renegotiated. I want things to be good. I want there to be real opportunity for people.
00:03:35
Speaker
Tech is still a place where social mobility could happen um if we simply stop being assholes and stop being so profit-based. um So that's that's my dream is that basically the odier class that have driven this profiteering around ai get kicked square in the nuts and lose their shit.
00:03:56
Speaker
ah We can go back and getting people good jobs and people having good careers and doing technology that actually solves real problems and makes life better for everyone.
00:04:07
Speaker
Truth,
The Role of AI in Tech: Real Solutions vs. Profit Motive
00:04:08
Speaker
truth. ah Very similar on my side. I think when... AI is incorporated correctly, it just is like a normal feature, right? Like I posted about this that of all the startups I saw and all the features this year, the greatest thing that happened last month was just seeing voice-based rule design, right? Like you just spoke into the tooling and said, this user needs access to here, here, and just provision and then built the rules. At no point did they say AI because it's clearly there's a speech-to-text
00:04:46
Speaker
machine learning model that's chained together with a coding model, but they didn't have it it just makes people's jobs easier. Like mid-market security teams would save literally hours of shitty drag and drop clicky work.
00:05:00
Speaker
I read that and I'm like, dude, first of all, You are still like one of the best marketers in the industry because like I didn't even know what that product was. And based on reading that post alone, I was like, I would buy that shit. I would buy that shit. It would save as it was save so much fucking time. And it was just like, this is brilliant. You didn't have to say you'd have to sell me on shiny agentic, whatever the fuck you just did the thing that solved a person's problem. I want more of
Focusing on Real User Problems and Simplicity
00:05:27
Speaker
that.
00:05:27
Speaker
I want more of that. ah that was And that was such a good, refreshing post too. like i I don't know who those guys are. i don't know if you want to shout them out at all, but not but they this is the kind of thing that I'm happy you're doing the work you're doing because you're actually discovering this shit. Because every time i walk through a trade show and I try to go the Startup Alley and just get attacked by all these people pushing AI solutions, I'm like, I i don't know. i just I want my snack and I want to go home.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yes, my snack and my t-shirt. Give me the socks. Get the fuck out of my face. Yes, i I've told a couple of startups that I'm advising, like, if you are cold calling people and saying we're an agentic cybersecurity company, you might as well just say we're a cybersecurity company. Right. Because if you're saying the same thing, you're not really doing anything different. Right. And you go got to really lean into differentiators. And those differentiators, to your point, are ultimately human. It's like, how well do you understand the end user's pains?
00:06:22
Speaker
And are you making them click nine times to do something cool? Or are you like solving the main thing? Keep the main thing, the main thing. Yeah.
Final Thanks and Holiday Wishes
00:06:32
Speaker
But yeah, so we're getting a little close to ranty for the holidays. So we'll we'll stop it right there. But thank you, everyone, for listening. Again, you are the gift. And we will talk to you next week.
00:06:44
Speaker
Be safe, Paul.