WH139: ๐ Abran Maldonado, OpenAI Ambassador, Digital Human Designer ๐๏ธ
67m 4s
The podcast episode opens with the host introducing guest Abran Maldenado, a founder, creator, and speaker known for his work in tech and startups. The conversation blends casual topics like whiskey and drinksโincluding Abranโs preferred espresso martiniโwith discussions on technology, business, and sports. Abran shares his early advocacy for AI tools like ChatGPT, highlighting a demo he presented years ago featuring an AI-powered Miles Morales character, which demonstrated interactive conversations with digital avatars. He explains his company Create Labs and its focus on AI-driven digital humans, such as the avatar "Claire," emphasizing applications in gaming, fan engagement, and entertainment. The dialogue also touches on sports debates, comparing legends like Michael Jordan and LeBron James, and notes how AI is evolving to create more immersive experiences. Overall, the episode blends lighthearted humor with insights into AI's growing role in innovation and culture.
We are back the Whiskey Hew bringing you the latest in tech business and startups mixed with whiskey and a ton of sarcasm. Q the music. We're back everybody. This is part of the prof P series released to the whiskey hew stream. We talk about tech, business and culture from sports to media. You know this and how you can invest in this space and win. Today you're in for a treat. My guy, Abran Maldenado, I screwed it up. Abran Maldenado is back with us. Actually you've been to a lot of our events and we've been to, we showcased you as a phenomenal speaker, founder, creator. But it's first time on the pod I think, right man? Yes sir, first time. Okay, this is great. You're in for a treat audience. Because he's great, he's real. So real, he's going to mention us a drink. So we started to record and he's like, hold up, let me go pour up. And then you run into the grocery store three hours later he comes back with a beautiful drink. I was just kidding. I'm like, where you at? Where you at? You don't know. I'm skinned. We'll fake it till we make it. I'm kidding. But he's got a beautiful drink in front of him. We'll get into that. But let me, let me, what is your drink at the day? Now that I announced it, man. It's a homemade special recipe, a special martini by my wife. Okay. She's working right now, but I pulled her out of her office and they've been a special martini for this show just in time. That is hilarious. How did you arrive at that drink? I'm curious. I think I might have tried it. Oh, I tried it in Hollywood. Not to try like starting or anything, but I was in LA having like it, bro. I was having meeting with with another tech guy. You know, that we were, you know, taking my opportunity to like just do all the meetings while in, while in LA. So ended up in West Hollywood at this really dope spot and I had like three that night and I've been hooked ever since. And then my wife and I, you know, traveled out to Italy for a couple talks that I was giving out there. And every stop we, we went to out there. We had like four or five different versions of a special martini while out there. So now there's versions to it. There's versions too. Oh, yeah. What does that mean? Yeah, man. They're getting, you know, nice with it. So you could out the gate. Most spots will ask you with or without Bayley's if you want it to be a creamy espresso martini or if you want it, you know, black with the contrast with the foam. The foam is the most important part. Okay. But now I've seen like, you know, crusted or topped with like toffee. Interesting. And we're on Puerto Rican. So if any Puerto Rican is listening, you know, our holiday drink is coquito. So I've had an espresso martini with coquito in it as well. What's coquito? What is that? Coquito, you know, I don't want to y'all to massacre it by just calling it Puerto Rican egg nod. But it's our holiday style drink where it's coconut, one fifty one rum, a whole, you know, a bunch of family recipe ingredients thrown in their cinnamon. And it's how you get warm for the holidays. So I've had an espresso martini this holiday season where the wife you just did win the coquito in this espresso martini. Of course, keep it. It's not sexy, man. Oh, you could just cut up somebody you love or just drink yourself to you don't can't. Wow, drinking the coquito. Yeah. Coquito, I like it. My wife had something, man, I'm going to butcher. I can't remember the name to butcher it. But if I had remembered it, it's a beautiful, she loves it. It's like a, but it's not a liquor drink. It's a, some sort of coffee, but we get it at this Argentinian place. Okay. Which is very Italian and fused, feud, right? Their whole diet is obviously because of the history. But man, what is it? But they also have the best cannolis and dulce del leche at this joint. It's up, what are we? West side. Damn, camera of the drink. I'll ask her. I'm pingering a minute. But thank you for coming on, man. So okay, okay. His name is a bra. All right. This is my corny ass joke. You know, you know my history, everyone on this pod. You see me do this 180 sometimes. So first time I met a little bond. A bra we met through a dear friend. I think James. I was trying to remember where we remember. So James Barude, great guy. He's actually coming on next week, I think. Oh, nice. You actually came on before him. He's been on once before I've been on his pod. But I think he's coming back on next week, I think. Just because he's big into this space too. But you're actually down there as a creator. But the funny thing is when you and I met for the first time, it might have been a person might have been zoomed. And I've had you speak everywhere. Could you just great? He goes, I say, how do you say your name, a bra? And he goes, a bra without the L. All right. Here's my corny assed mine. You know how it goes. I say it. So I said, a bra without six. Like I said, a bra without six L is like Michael Jordan. And the final's, I'm kidding. He's like, it wasn't a knock on a bra on the bra on the bra on the bronze of beast. Lebron, I even said it everywhere I go. Lebron's a beast. He's just ain't this guy behind me. You know, my picture got my Jordan. Of course. No Jordan Jordan's number one as much as I hated him as the next fan. Yeah, I get past Jordan. Dude, next look hot, man. Like third and fourth and the, you know, on the, in the east, what am I doing? I'm putting my NFL terminology, but I'm the east. For them, for them, it doesn't matter where they're seated, as long as they get in and then they get their work, once they get in the postseason. So this trade might have been, I didn't know if it was going to work. Cause I thought you had hot chemistry last year. And I mean, and then Randall wasn't playing for a lot of it. And then you trade home your win. Looks like he's getting traded out of there. Now that's spot. It looks like it's a simple way. Yeah. It's the rumblings, man. So I'm talking to some NBA cats and they're telling me something. So I don't know. But like this seems to be working out for you. That was a heavy contract to take on. Should get him back. You know what I mean? Oh, that's fair point. You think he would fit in the rotation? I mean, don't give away the key pieces that you got now that are working like magic. You know me have them as a six man. He might not like that. But you know, everything is working right now is working. So if you want to be a part of it, jump back on. We can give away a draft pick or a couple other, you know, pieces. I think the NBA needs the mix to be hot. MSG is hot. Of course. You're talking to Chicago guy right here, right? So like an ambit, MSG. I was at the United Center. We went back for Christmas. We watched. My boys are less boys, both fans are more, they were playing the books. They wanted to see Yaris and Lillard. Damed time, right? Both of them sat out that night. So I felt bad for the kids, right? But we got our statue of Jordan. But United Center is great. I love it. It's home. It's just not MSG. I'll even say that. But every sport, right? And this is a sport. So show show, right? We can talk sports on here. So like all day. So every sport has their teams, their franchises. They're like, it just, it's just different when they're good. You know, and I'm, I'm primarily a college football fan. And I'm a, a, a, a, a, a, Cain's fan. So it's the you all day in this house, you know, my season ticket holder. And every, every pun didn't will tell you on ESPN, on down, the Fox Sports, that like college football is just different. When Miami is high and USC is high, right? It just changes the whole culture of the sport. More people pay attention. And the same way, we're, we're basketball. More people pay attention when the balls and the nicks are running it. The balls nicks and lakers, if they're running it, then, then it changes the sport. Yeah, I'm the man, the bulls, and it hurts to see this man. And as I love this, because as a bulls fan, growing up, so that's, you know, and I always thought like, you know, the ewing's of the world, the bark, there's the world, they should have gotten a ring. Because those guys were that good, right? And, and then there's a lot of people that just couldn't get through Jordan at the time. And that's why. Yeah. And that's that, that's the thing I put out there. And I sound like I'm knocking on the ground again. But there's a lot of people that should have gotten a ring during Jordan's time that didn't get it because of Jordan. Right. A lot of people during LeBron's time that should have gotten a ring. And they went right through his ass and got it. You know what I'm saying? But, but that's saying what, but Steph, you know what I mean? Like Steph's stopping a lot of people from getting there. Well, he's the one that stopped him and he got him, right? Steph changed the game more than LeBron did. LeBron is a beast and you can't knock anything about that dude. Maybe mentally he's just not like Jordan Kobe-ish. And he's got a freaky, she bad ass big body. But he doesn't have that like that gut wrench. I want to keep assassinating. Well, no he. So LeBron and I don't know how people are going to feel about this take. But like LeBron is like like Kareem and like Wilk Chamberlain, like those guys were like they didn't necessarily change the game. They were just physical specimens that you can't stop them because of how they're uniquely built. But as soon as they leave, it's back to all the normal body types. Sure, sure. Where Steph changed like with his small stature. Yeah. He changed out all the people with his body type and physical abilities, play the game. And now everyone is changing how they play the game by like shooting from the logo. Yeah. It's just crazy. So might come into like now a big man might come and who can shoot might come in and change it up. Say, hey, look, let me get these easy points in the paint until they start changing the game because now that's own defense is difficult. If you to play against that right. So I'm curious to see how it plays. It's going to continue to evolve, right? But I like this word right now. It's all about points. I think if anything LeBronch changed like we need a big man at the one, which is like just weird. That's fair. That's fair. Big guys dude to play that role. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. And he's done well in it. And dude, all credit to him last year, I think was it in the playoffs? Wasn't the finals clearly. But in the playoffs, wasn't he he was shooting threes? He was playing great D. I had never seen that from him. Like the year prior, he wasn't doing any. He's never really been a great defensive guy, right? And I'm not knocking on him. That's not his thing. He's focused on offense and he plays like the two or three on the other side. Where Jordan Covey would take the ones out on defense too and be the one on offense, right? That's why I just they catapulted him into like a different sphere. But he was playing LeBronch hitting threes from everywhere in the playoffs. But you know what I appreciate though from LeBron and me and a couple of fellows were just talking about this the other day that like passing now is just amazing. But like I couldn't stand that like mid 2000s like 2010 era like to be honest, the metal era or just like ice all ball fair fair. Just like give it to the one score on the team. Everyone just like sit down on the floor and just like get out the way and see if they score or not. Like it was no panic.
in that. Yeah. So that's where it's gotten pretty intricate. And that that opens up. There's less hand checking. There's more open zoning defense. So you got more space a little bit. And then you create more space with this great passing. I completely agree with you. And you can see all those guys who played focused on ISO didn't really win chips. So it's great. I love it. All right. We're here for a reason. We gotta let the world. You're doing some amazing things, man. So I've had bronze speak everywhere. He's a, so I'll be honest, you're the first people that turn me on to one of the first people that turn me on to open AI, right? Because you he is an ambassador. He's been for several seven, eight years, something like that. For, um, since, well, they started the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, we started the release of GPT in 20. Well, let me correct. Chatchy BT came out two years ago. We just passed the two-year anniversary in November of 22. Um, I was using it at least two, three years before that. So, but I was on the, even pre-Chatchy BT, I was screaming it to the world right from them from the mountain tops. I was dying on that hill. Like, guys, you gotta get ready. This is coming. So a lot of people heard me talk about Chatchy BT in like 2021, 22. Yeah. And had no idea what I was talking about. And then now look at where we are now. Let's, let me tell you this. So like, no one knew about it. 2022 November is when it hit the world. As you just said, right? Yeah. Uh, 2022 October. You pitched, I used to hold these hosties. Ballerass startup showcase. You got, I'm gonna go into how you got kind of your, your group that year got, because it was the first one after the pandemic kind of as the first one that was in live in person after the pandemic. And we had it later in the day after lunch. So everyone bounced. But always ours was always rated the previous six years, hundreds of people. We would fill that stadium like three, four hundred people and then stadium, the room. And it's all these executives and decision makers and investors that I would have. And it was all because of we'd have baller judges, right? We had a money to them. We're super bowl champ. Had a bunch of executives, you know, big time radio host, big time. Investors from private equity groups and all that. We had some superstars on the stage as judges. Your year was the first year where we had it was right after that. People, I guess people weren't attending conferences that first five, six months back, ish. Uh, and they bounced, right? I was out there. I went to see yesterday year too. It was, it was quiet. It was amazing because it was so quiet. Exactly. She probably got better relationships. So a brand. He's like, you, you put on this thing and it fascinated everybody. We had some good companies presenting that day, but you want it. Uh, and they're nothing against the other ones. You just had something that was a game changer. And now we know why. So he had Spider-Man reacting to any live question you put in. I'm just going to leave it there. All right. And so this, you could ask any question and then, and then Spider-Man would respond to it. And then a month later, we understood how and why, but we were baffled by it, right? Then you opened up to me and then I actually hired an intern who taught me more than I've ever taught any intern in my life. Most interns when you bring them on, it's a lot of work for the employer, right? This is the first time I got like a, and I love doing it because it helps these young, young cats. People helped me along the way and they're still helping me. So I, but this guy last year really got me well groomed. I'm creating case studies, dick, decks, all kinds of shit through chat you, and I focus on chat you, more than I know Gemini is coming up again and the people are loving that as well. Some of the other platforms, but I'm, I'm here. Uh, so I, I love it, man. But you've been, you've been ingrained with them for a long time. Create labs, create innovation labs are, uh, you're going to get into it. Yeah. Yeah. Just create labs, create labs is your baby. You came and spoke about you. So when we first met several years ago, you were talking about doing a lot in sports. I mean, this, this industry, agnostic technically, you could go any way you want. So you're doing Claire that AI, that R.I. So Claire, but you spell it CL dot AI dot R dot a. I'm just checking that whole thing up. They expect that for me. Um, but so it's this beautiful woman. Uh, and can I call it an avatar? Is that you kind of call it? Yeah. Digital human or our AI influencer avatar. So, so to be not like the Megan Fox movie, but not live yet, because that would be fine. That would, that damn, but the CES, they had some kind of examples of that happening. Well, three, she technically is three days. Like she can't turn around. She can't move around in different environments. Uh, but then she's not a robot. If that's what you mean, yes, not physical. Yeah. Thanks, thanks for clarifying that. So like, um, and we're getting there. And you, and I'm going to have you bring up. Did you go to CES, CES this year? I did. And I didn't have a need to, to be honest. Okay. Gotcha. But, you know, I, I paid attention to the new announcements and the things that got unveiled there. But it was stuff that I knew that was already coming out. Fair point. You know, it's a little different from me because I'm plugged in. You know, I mean, I'm a little locked in than most folks, but do clean up, man. Um, sure. I want you to clean up. I threw like a bunch of things at the, at the fans and the fans, the, you know, the consumers of this pod and then we have some brilliant people here. Clean up all the gaps that I left out there. Like what you, what you're doing with create labs and man, we want to know next year, two, five, 10, what you how you're going to impact this space? Sure. I mean, well, if we go back to that event, you know, and we can dive into like the history and everything, but if we just go back to that event where we, where I was able to present and, and pitch. So what I developed specifically for that event, um, was Miles Morales, which, and he was rocking those kicks right behind you too. Uh, the Jordans. Um, and I wanted to show everyone what was capable with an AI powered, um, Miles Morales, and for whether it's a video game or just the amusement experience, you know, at Disney World, like the Marvel experience for in person or just fan engagement in general with your favorite characters, but AI powered, meaning like you can have a conversation with your favorite characters. So that's why I showed on stage there. And Jensen Wang from Nvidia just had a similar demonstration of that type of technology like last week, right? So we're talking three years ago. I'm showing that on your stage. And now the industry is catching up with those kind of capabilities, you know, from a gaming perspective. Um, and then you've taken it so far. And you know, the reason I wanted you on stage, because it was such a game change when I saw your demo, we spoke several times before that. I saw your demo like, oh my god, isn't he's going to knock out of the park? And the reason I wanted you there is because man, they have spikely at that event before your prior two years prior, they had Michael Bivens when they did the BET series on new edition. He came and promoted our showcase, our startup showcase was always rated as higher higher than those than I would rather see them than me. I'm be honest, because I love those two dudes, but um, we were rated. That's why you deserve that state. That's why I went when it was the first or after the pandemic. We didn't have this audience that we usually had. Um, I wanted to find other opportunities for you, because I made you deserve that from me. So we have, we found some more opportunities for you. So man, you've been crushing it in this space. So how is it? So you got clear that I, what of the things that we discussed back in the day? Which ones are you, can, are you doing the whole sports thing? Let's work with like a Michael Strahan type and having been in Dubai and New York City and several other cities at the same time. Hologram, ask. So we actually are, we went city government first, actually. Um, you know, cause, you know, in this space, and this is what happens just in general, when you are so cutting edge, and I don't claim to be a futurist, but everyone calls me a futurist because my predictions are accurate, you know, and, or we build the things that we say are going to come in the future. We're like, we want, it's not prediction. We're actually building it already. Um, so the things that I demonstrated there were actually real life things that we were building. Yep. And we get a lot of interest across different industries, entertainment, education, uh, we do demos for everyone to show them what's possible. The one of the first that really took the chance to execute this for for live production was city government. So we're building, and we have built, um, an avatar of a mayor in Portugal, who wanted to create a digital representation of himself so that all the constituents of that city can have access to him and the information of that city. Um, and think about what that means of like, you know, how often do you get access to your mayor, right? Maybe town halls or maybe some social media questions that you submit or emails to like your local council member. But like, no, like we train in a complete model on, on the city services, his data, tourism, and now everyone, we're just a click of a link can interact with his avatar and ask any questions native to their language in Portuguese. And it's him 100% in every way. Um, so, you know, our digital human work has not stopped. We're doing a lot of interesting stuff there because we do believe it's the future and it will be soon. Every one of us is going to have a digital human that we either work with or is a representation of us that we send out into the world on our behalf. And then besides from that, you know, the, the brain architecture of how we build those digital humans show up in a lot of our work. So whether it's a chatbot. So one of our biggest clients right now, um, is Mastercard. We built their small business. We built their AI product, their first AI product that is a small business mentor, uh, a chatbot. So the small business AI product for Mastercard is to be simply that to just be a mentor in a coach to guide you through the whole process of starting your small business. And it's trained on small business expertise along with Mastercard products and their partners. Uh, and it's been a great project. And we have projects all over the world. Like before this, I was just on the phone with a Qatar and the Middle East region, the Gulf Coast region to, to bring more this technology out there. I just got back from there on Monday. Um, I was doing a whole bunch of talks out in Qatar. Um, as well. Yeah. So I remember I spoke at a university in North, Northwestern has a sister college there. And my body used to be a professor there. So I came in, but I did, I had to do, I had to do through Zoom because it was pandemic time and I couldn't fly me out. I'd be hot. So give us a case study. So let's go back to the one in the mayor of Portugal, some city in Portugal, which city? Yes. Uh, Braga. Yeah. Okay. B.R. A.G. A beautiful country, by the way. It's when last year. Um, so only Lisbon, then we hit up Spain for the rest of it. But it was, so dead. You could put a face to it. It's the mayor of that city. So then you could feed a lot of content into him. And then basically they can ask and query all the things they want from him, his background. And he can answer that. So that's a case. That's a use case that you've seen. And it's probably going bananas out there. Yeah. And the, so
So you'll get a conversational answer, but you'll also get a pop-up window with more like informational text to follow up, you know, because you don't want what you get from like a Chatchee BT is, excuse me, a lot of data that you don't really need in a conversation, right? You'll get bullets, you'll get like a list of things. And that's part of the experience of Chatchee BT that we don't like is that we don't want to just read a list of things. So the conversation is more organic. It's natural as if you were talking to him in real life. And then yeah, there is like a pop-up window that gives you that additional information that you can click through for tourism or for additional resources, you know, but the capability of these things is just on taps. Like we could build in, you know, we'll get to it, you know, we can build in agent capabilities into our digital humans, like what's agents? Like agents now is the next evolution, the V, the 2.0 of Chappads of like they can now perform tasks on your behalf independently. Like you can assign them things to do autonomously without you, you know, asking them, you know, interacting with them. I want to do a whole section. We'll double click on that in a moment. I want to do a whole section on that because I think that's phenomenal. So you want to roll these, the best ways to roll out kind of new tech is kind of high population density areas varied economic backgrounds, you know, with a consumption mindset. They want to try new things. So mostly urban centers, depending on what product category could be rural as well, clearly. If you want to do something farming or something like that, right? Or something with people who have no teeth on plan. I was bad. I do that. But no, so like, so this city that you rolled out in Portugal is pretty highly dense, a density populated. Yeah, it's a density populated area, but it's like so mayor Rio, you have to understand like different mayors take different approaches when it comes to cutting edge innovation. Some kind of wait to see someone else do it first. All the ones want to be at the front lines doing it. And when you're a mayor in a term, it's more of a risk to do it at the beginning of your term, right? To be so risky with new ideas and innovation. You kind of want to just like write the ship. You want to get things going. You want to address the most pressing needs by your community. But then when if you're later in your term and you're kind of like in the twilight of your term is an elected official, you start thinking about what's called like legacy projects, right? How can I leave a lasting impact past my term to leave a mark here that's going to live outlive my term and my time here? And mayor Rio, who's the head of now has been appointed the president of the global parliament of mayors. So look, all of the mayors from around the world. Now he's the leader of that organization. So for him to demonstrate this, like, look, I'm doing this as my legacy project. I'm going to leave a lasting mark with my avatar. And then all you other cities and countries can do the same. It's big for us from a business development standpoint, which is like, he's laying down the groundwork and showing everyone what's possible in that collete to so many other countries taking on and doing the same thing. So let's go there for a second, man, because this is going to come up. I had no idea there was an organization from all the mayors to communicate. Is it like a central portal or they can communicate? There's obviously like, yeah, it's cool. Yep, GPM, global parliament of mayors. So that's hot. So then I was, okay, let's get back to this broader question. If we're looking at high level, you want to know, hey, the time of this market, then you want to get down to your soul, eventually, your service, obtainable market. Now you just accidentally increased that. I was saying, oh, you had a case by case. You got to look, you got to do it with this mayor for Portugal, educate him and or her on how to use it. Then you take it to the next lady or male mayor of any other town. But now you can plug in here, boom, use case. Let's say 10% of the global mayors adopted, take 2%. That's hot. That's huge. That's massive. Okay. Are you one of the first groups into this? Absolutely. And we have been from the get and the way that we also specialize because so, you know, your audience who's listening via audio, they might not be able to tell, but, you know, we are a black and brown founded company. You know, I'm 100%, you know, Bodicua, New York and New York City. And we were social impact specialists and like, diversity and DEI specialists prior to even our work within AI. So people also come to us to, to, to spend to definitely address bias in AI, right? They're like, if I try and do this on my own, I'm going to be a little bit more honest. Then bias might show up in the AI. The, they don't know how to control for like the outputs. And so when different countries come to us, it's because they know that we are experts in making it culturally representative, culturally authentic and accurate to their region to represent them because they don't feel represented in the Gemini's and the chat G.B.T.s and the Clothes of the world. So they need to come to us to do something custom, whether it's a digital human or just a chatbot to just represent them in the right way through AI. And let's, let's go back. So that's a very customized solution, obviously, for that particular mayor. Do you want to jump back to Claire, Claire, to do this or do you want to go here? So you tell me, what are your internal metrics? Because you want to say, hey, how, how we know that we're succeeding in what we're setting out to do? You get a month, one month, six month, one year check in, two year check in with us to see what metrics are, a, there's going to be some scalability as far as revenues coming in and operational costs and operational behavior and strategic motives that you got going on. How are you measuring those things internally? Because that's what I think a lot, because in these innovative spaces, you got to peg your own kind of metrics. How are you doing that? Sure. I mean, for us, it's, you know, partly, if we're talking business, partly it's, it's the margins, right? Like, are, is this, you know, when we take on a big client like a master card, right? Like, is the time and the demand for the amount of work that we're doing for them making sense? Right. For like, how much they demand of us, are we losing other clients because we're giving so much of our time to, to master card? But, you know, when, and they're all doing all the big ones are doing it. So like, AI companies right now, like, for instance, runway ML, who are the leaders in like, creative AI, so AI generated video, AI generated images using AI for film, they partnered with Lionsgate very much in a way that we partnered with master card, right? Yeah. And a big enterprise that wants to be the first to take on your technology for their industry. And you got to say, all right, does that make sense for us to like, give them the amount of time and attention that they need? Does it make sense for our margins? What's, what's going to be the impact? What's going to even be like the brand impact of that partnership? And to be honest, yeah, like that deal with master card has opened up other doors for us, regardless of what the, the financial numbers are. Just saying that we have master card as a client has opened up, you know, opportunities for us. And even the same way, Mayor Rio saying that we've actually contracted, because people know how hard it is to get a contract with the city government. So knowing that we landed in AI contract, regardless of what we're doing with the AI, with the city government. And, and we understand how to do that process in other cities. We understand how to work through government pipelines as a vendor and as a technology partner. So that's all worked out. Yeah, I mean, a lot of what we talk about when, when it's a big partner, you have to do a lot of custom work. We can't do that for everyone when we release like a B2C product. Sure. So when we release B2C products, they do the same thing for the general public, then we can get to look at like usage metrics and, and, you know, how do we price that to everyone and scale it out and make it make sense for us. But these other projects, when we partner with big, you know, partners and enterprise or cities, it's more about just showing like, Hey, look what we can do with a first to do it in this region, with a first to do it in this country, with a first to do it in this industry. And the rest is downhill, the rest of you know, the dominoes will follow it where they may after that. It's so it's, there's pros and cons to you being in this space. So every industry knows that they need this. Be they don't know what they need, right? So they don't know what they're, what the capabilities are. So you have to go in and educate. Yes. And then you have to inform and then it's, it's hand holding throughout the entire process. A whole lot of hand holding. As a developer back in Monday, it's difficult, right? And I get it because you have to tell them, Hey, this is what you need. This is how you can do it. This is what you, you know, this is what you can do. And this is how we're going to do it. They're like, okay, but you got to keep it. And then I'll ask you those things that you can't do yet. Right. But maybe it'll be available now. These things are available then two weeks. Exactly. You know, so yeah, go for it. You're about to get it. So, so the good, the good part for us and strategically, you do waste, now I don't want to say waste a lot of time. You do spend a lot of time doing that, the education part, but we don't do outbound. So I don't go out and do all these cold calls to try and educate a bunch of folks, to try and convince them that they need AI. Right. I'm a, you know, I'm a keynote speaker. This represented by, you know, global agencies to go and travel the world to give these talks. And the business comes to us. So like they, they'll see me on stage. They'll see me demonstrate something like a Miles Morales or a Mayor Rio. And then they'll catch me off stage and be like, you know, we want that now. Like now that we've seen you show it on stage, you know, now convince us, not even convince us, but like show us how we can leverage this for our company. So my inbox, my LinkedIn, my inbox and, you know, the attention that I get off stage is all from people coming to us rather than us trying to waste our time, barking up a tree and convincing someone that doesn't even care about AI and moving in that direction. So we, we have no marketing spend whatsoever. I get paid to go travel to go on these stages and we get tons of business coming off the stage. So it's been a great model for us in that respect.
But we have a lot of agency partners out there in the world that represent big clients that when the conversation comes up around AI, my name comes up or create labs comes up and says, hey, we have a partner that can execute on that when we'll set it up. I've said to you, like people who ask me, hey, who can I get as an authority to speak on the subject? I always forward your information to them. So yeah, it's easy. It's just easy, easy lift for me. What are, who are some of these brands? So like MasterCard, okay, cool. They're in. What are some brands that we'd be surprised by that are in this space doing something really beyond what you would be thinking of, like something incredibly innovative. So I'll give you one. So an agency came to us on a rocket mortgage pitch that I was like, okay, what we talk about, they're like, oh, can you make us an avatar, a Latina avatar for rocket mortgage? Because they've seen Clara. So now let me step back a little bit and kind of like talk on Clara. So Clara, you know, I'm a Marvel geek. I'm a Star Wars geek. Looks guy Walker has C3PO and I have to D2. So I needed my bot, right? I needed my AI. And in the hood they call me Body Starks, you know, Body Qua, you know, Starks. So I needed my own bot. So I made a create labs AI rendered assistant. So that's the acronym for Clara. And she's in Afro Latina AI, you know, that is, you know, she works at create labs just like everybody else, but she's a digital human. She's, you know, a bot. And so they've seen her on stage, they've seen what's possible. And, you know, I think what rocket mortgage wanted, what I learned is that the Latina market of Hispanic women is one of the fastest growing markets of home buyers in homeownership. Okay. So they wanted an avatar that spoke to that population. Interesting. And then in addition to that one, which was going to serve as their like marketing ambassador, Rock Hell, they called her for rocket. So I was like, okay, I see that. So I made that for them. Yeah. So I made that, I made that avatar for them. And then on top of that, they were like for every listing, like home listing, they wanted like a QR code on each listing that would pull up an avatar twin of each of their mortgage brokers and each of their, their, their real estate brokers. So they wanted this to scale. They wanted, you know, if they have thousands of people as real estate agents selling their homes, they wanted an avatar for each to that people can interact with to learn about their property that can take them through virtual tours that can tell them all the specs about the house and everything. Then any conversation that you would have in real life with that agent, now you can have 24/7 without having to physically bother or text, you know, a real estate agent off hours. You know, if you, let's say you were driving home and you was drive by a house with a listing, you just talked to the avatar, you know, the whole time and close that deal. That's amazing. So this part, you can close the deal and everything. Close the deal completely. So like there's this so many opportunities, untapped ways to, to leverage these, you know, these agents, avatars, you know, in a way that we have, we haven't really thought about. And I'm going to just be, you know, just be me for a second. So you created it. I remember seeing the demo and she's beautiful to the center and she can relate to many different demos, demographics, right? Yes. People say, oh, she could be representative of us. Now your wife didn't say at some point, can't you just get an auntie Hopkins looking, you know, like avatar, you got to get this beautiful woman. I'm playing. She auditioned. She, I mean, she was the first. I tried. I was like, do you want me to make it a view? And she was like, no, thanks. She auditioned to be the voice and she was like, yeah, this is weird. So she was like, okay, go do you. I love it. I love it. And then so like this is it. So from the venture perspective, investing the space, you might, you know, a term that you wanted to pull back from. I'm going to use that term from the investment side. There will be a lot of waste. We're chasing this market that is every evolving. We don't know how to peg that tam or the total address will market to the sense that it's changing, like it's just changing that whole 30 seconds. I said that statement, right? So there's so many different use cases that are just coming to fruition because the technology is moving so incredibly fast, right? Usually the idea is there. Then the tech catches up. It's happening pretty efficiently right now. So from an investor's side, we're chasing these things and then it could be kind of like even a hyper-hype cycle of what sun, you know, sun roofs and all that used to be. I'm sun roofs. What a solar power panels. Because that technology would change every two years, essentially, and gets extremely better. So you would invest and then two years later, not obsolete, but just a very inefficient factor. So this is on hyper speed of that. So here's what I want to say to like, I guess you're investor audience that's listening and this happens to us when we talk to investors. The traditional mindset as an investor is like, all right, with everything that you're doing, what's the product? And people will tell me, just pick one. Pick one and I'll invest in the product. You can't. When you're an AI company, like myself, or an anthropic, or an open AI, we're building so many different things for so many different use cases. You can't sure if you want to invest into our avatar product, go right ahead or you want to just go along for the ride for the company as a whole because we're going to be tapping into so many different things. And we do have to stay nimble because we are competing with, you know, the Googles in the open eyes of the world where like they could come out with a product that's in the similar name is one of our products. And then okay, we make the hard decision of like, cool, we'll dissolve our R&D on our product design on that particular product because Google's got that. Let's move on to the other things that we're working on. If you put all your eggs in one basket, you don't know when open AI's next announcement is going to be to just kill that startup. You might know because you're an ambassador. You might. But I'm paying attention. Yes, exactly. So as an investor, if you invested into just like one particular lane, right, let's say a healthcare AI chatbot that all doctors, you would sell to all doctors with this healthcare chatbot on like how to diagnose. And you're like, yeah, this sounds like a great space. You invest in it a week later. I'm not even kidding. A week later, Google could say, hey, we have Google AI health. Well, boom, there goes. You know, the whole startup needs to dissolve now because they picked one super specific niche vertical that Google just killed, you know, instead of going back to the team, like, well, I invested in the team. So now you guys just pivot to a different vertical. Pivot to different products. Yeah. And my investment safe because it wasn't into the product. It was in the team. Right, right. And that's why from an investor standpoint. So outside of that, because you have a very unique situation where you invest in the, in the poor and sections of the portfolio. Yes. Where generally that's not the case, right? So a lot of people, unless you're in a decent whoreways or some of the big shops, it's very difficult for the smaller shops, you know, sub 100 mil type to invest in this space and know what, and it's not difficult. But you have to just be very, you know, you have to understand the climate very, very well. And then you have to be very, very honest. And then you have to be very honest. So Google, and you agree or refute with the, I want to get a good sense as to how you feel about this. So you understand this makes better than I. So Google was one of the, they should have been running with this thing, right? Because they kind of put this all stuff in the map. They hired with a deep mind. They acquired them back in the day, right? So they had this all in house. They didn't act upon it. Microsoft jumped the gun, got behind open AI, and really crushed it because they had to catch up. So they had to spend. That was a phenomenal investment. That and probably Elon Musk into Trump is probably one of the best, it returns. And then the last, right? A couple of years. And I'm not saying a political stance. I'm just saying, hey, you put a hundred fifty million to some dude. And all of a sudden you got a hundred fifty bill more to your, your name. That's, that's a pretty good investment, right? Yep. That's venture like returns at the billion. I'll click.
But what was what I always at this theory maybe Google is trying to be responsible and not put it out or they didn't want to you know Their cash cow is searched as you just you know mentioned They didn't want to eat that on lunch or but these companies are smart enough to know that they got to play with what's coming and And have a defensive moat of sorts, but search they thought maybe maybe they thought they had another 15 years 10 years Let's call it. It's been truncated to probably a couple years now, right? Because the public actually is offering and other groups are coming what was there? What do you think the main reason it was like Google didn't jump in was it they wanted to be safe because this thing can quickly get out of hand like terminator Ask that's probably 10 years away potentially Google was always doing AI research. I think what changed was open AI was the first to introduce AI as a product as a Good as a consumer product be the same time. Yeah exactly AI was the first to release a B2C and their method of how they released it too was like This isn't a complete product like something so sophisticated is AI and they're like hey, it's not it's not perfect It's not even finished being built But we're gonna release it to public anyway and see how you guys respond and give us some feedback and That was not a concept people were used to in tech. It was always such a like an exclusive Closed-in gated technology and when it comes to AI that was like back-back room Research that was being done. They're like yes We have AI, but you're not gonna even see it on the front end. That's just that's like on the back end of how we process like our search algorithms So AI open AI releases chat to be T and then It opened up like oh wow like no one was allocating Product design resources product development resources facing the consumer around AI and then Google Called back all of their AI folks their product folks around AI say hey, we need to prioritize this now So no one prioritized it until 23 and then come 23 is when the AI product market from a consumer standpoint Just blew up and everyone was coming out with their own version But I remember pre you know in the early days when it was just us messing around with AI right I learned that The intelligence community the the economy of like Intelligence and academics and scientists was not in the AI space yet. They were doing other stuff and then Once all of the attention came to AI now you have the world's greatest minds all jumping into AI So then that increases the pace of innovation in this space because now everyone is in this space before It was a bunch of nerds and geeks like us just messing around yeah trying to first levels of prompt engineering and it was our Initial prompt engineering techniques that like informed how to use this stuff that now everyone follows and best practices like my mentor Andrew Maine was like the first prompt engineer in history I could probably claim that I'm like the first like one of the handful of the first like prompt engineers in history in the first like Of color you know in the space and now everyone is following those best practices and building upon it and now scientists Coming up with different prompt engineering Approaches and and if people don't know what prompt engineering is is basically how you talk to the machine Yeah, right and create the instructions for what it performs and they're all text language based It's not coding basis just how you Communicate with the machine. You know so funny under double click on what you just says there's a guy I think it's a Scottish guy David Burst or something like that. He's on LinkedIn He had this core LinkedIn course so before to my get the access to these LinkedIn learning courses I took him he goes chat cheap TV's chat you're communicating with the AI to give it to get to what you want so tell it who it should be this is initially it may have changed now It's tell who you want it to be tell the tone what you want it to return all of these things you have to you know Tie it up, you know got to get that layup in there so you get that dunk from the GPT to get the information you really need I want to know you brought up an incredibly important point. I love what I love Look, this is a product that is unfinished. It was released the world But think just see how productive it made the consumption all of us humans on planet and it's not even anywhere And it's probably like not even a tenth not even a percent of what it's going to be five ten years from now because it's evolving so quickly And just don't think how productive it is as a first iteration which was completely bullshit compared to what it is now But think of think of this model right so if you don't understand why this was so different and and and why I Appreciate it as as a as a minority in this space right get all we ask for we don't ask for money We ask for access and we ask for a seat at the table when you're an underserved Community when you are the underrepresented in a new space. We're like you know just give me access Let me show you what I can do with this thing is is the fact that you gatekeep so much and keep us out is the frustrating part and Nor do you take our our feedback as Consideration because you don't we don't even have a seat at the table open AI gave me all that open AI was like Yo, we want you to have a seat at the table. We want your feedback and Any I any ideas that you have Directly impact the product engineers and the and the developers and we take everything consideration Who does that? So now if you take that and apply that to like Tesla's robots, right? Like Elon is you know, and I say Dika, you know Supposedly building robots because it's not really him building robots. So his team is building robots Tesla's building robots do they have a prototype of a robot or Boston dynamics even that they're just gonna like Pilot to the community and say hey, we're gonna ship out a Thousand robots to anyone that wants one and then give us feedback on what else you think we should do with it and test it out And let us know how this works. They're not releasing robots and beta They're not doing that with EVs and saying hey here. I want to give you a free EV Drive it around the neighborhood for six months and let me know what you think and give us some feedback and then we'll take that back and improve it People don't do that with technology. Yes, so the most powerful technology in the world AI It was 75% done and they said here you go here go play with it. Let us know what you think and Whatever feedback you give us we're just gonna you know quickly update and get that going it was it was a revolutionary Approach to technology. I love it, man I want to pay into certain industries you and I we share love We've actually been in the music industry before. Yes, I had someone on here a couple weeks back You know, one was threatened by Dr. Dre. I'm not not not Dr. Dre should night from death row like not a cause that Hey do this or else and it was like oh we're on our way Alex he's actually coming to speak my class in a couple weeks But and then another guy, you know, we were talking about the hey the AI is gonna change it Taylor Swift Let's go with the most ubiquitous name that everyone's gonna know whoever's listening Candor Lamar people may not know in certain parts of the World but Taylor Swift you know, probably Taylor Swift and Drake and right now you know, but I'm seven is moment. Yeah Yeah, I gotta I gotta wave that flag. Yeah, absolutely go for that And then so like if you put that out there so let's say they were saying there's gonna be a version of music that hey It's gonna be Taylor Swift for brisinal's then there's gonna be AI generated of her in the likes of her and then people are gonna be monetizing that so they're gonna have to figure all these fee structures. I'm thinking from an investor standpoint Okay, and I'm that's very That's the way I have to look at things right how do you how do you figure out how to monetize that space because it's you know because it's It's gonna be really tricky and the blockchains gonna have to help solve some of that right to track because it's tracking It's gonna be incredibly difficult But they're they gives it gives the rise to a bunch of new artists, you know, whether it's a whether producers and DJs become creators as well I like that's what that's happened last two decades. Let's call it. Well, what do you see how do you else do you see it impacting that particular space? Well, yeah, it's very it's very clear to me and I've had these conversations with Breckle labels and I had this meeting with Sony and Explain the same to them in the the head of innovation at Spotify. I'm like One of y'all are gonna sign a Nine figure ten figure deal right hundreds of millions of dollars even like a billion dollar deal with Drake or Taylor Swift for example Yeah, to do a complete AI scan Of their likeness their voice their their catalog their discography You're gonna train a model on them for your platform and then you're gonna offer to all of your subscribers You're you're like take Spotify for instance on your streaming platform. This is gonna be generate your own Drake song feature on the platform right and It's gonna become normalized at that point the idea of like defakes is only a defake because the contract hasn't been signed Yeah with that artist. It's a legal issue not a AI issue right? So once Drake signs that contract. It's not a defake anymore and then he's gonna give his likeness in his permission To to generate this music and they were just gonna get used to being able to just generate and prompt our own Drake songs or on Taylor Swift songs but the premium of his work that he puts out himself will go up the premium of seeing him live will go up And it's just gonna make more money for him. We're live now you can charge double for access to songs that he made now You can charge double for seeing him live in in person because you've commoditized you've almost made a new Almost like what H&M and O Navy and target do for clothes they call they actually call that disposable clothing to be honest I mean well 30% of it ends up in a dump being burned exactly to be honest with you So it's like you're gonna have that for music soon like I could just make my own songs of the artists that I want because this Generation is gonna become the on-demand generation and my partners in AI made the same product already for television Called showrunner AI where you can generate your own TV show, okay, and Think about that like if I want to see a TV show If I want to see more a whole Marvel universe of superheroes
from the Bronx and a bunch of like black and Puerto Rican kids who are superheroes in New York City. What's my choice right now? I got to wait for Marvel to decide that that's a priority for them. Right. Or I could just go and generate it myself and make that whole show myself or make that movie myself. Or if there's a collab that I want to see, like M&M and Wu Tang, I got to wait for these cats to like get their legal together and team up and actually do that and have social media demand it. Or I just go and make it just generate it myself. So I think of the opportunity for people to just make the things that they want to see rather than waiting passively as a passive consumer for these folks to get their stuff together. I can't wait to a lot of this stuff and a lot of it is hitting the thing. So, which I love. How far away from like this Megan Fox type robot, you know, African forefran, don't tell me why. I was kidding. So like, I know they're released to some of these at CES. Yes. And they're talking about it and they're cool. They got the vibe down. I don't know how they are in human practice. I've just seen YouTube's, but like, how are they over like a year long period? They go nuts on you. So I'm represented by the same agency that that represents Sophia the AI robot. So she's one of the first AI robots out there. And we've hit the stage together with Claire. We've had Claire out, speak to Sophia, have a AI conversation. So I think the uncanny valley, what they call it of like, how realistic can you feel your experience is with a robot? We're still maybe five to 10 years away from like the physical experience. I think what robots, you they still look like, you know, they still look like wax figures were like the eye contact and the facial expression is where you lose the most. Okay. I think now the brain, the conversational element because of Chatsubt and the APIs to Gen AI, I like, I can program that right now. Like if you give me the brain of one of these like, sex dolls or just like companion dolls, I could program a personality that would not be any different from a human personality like today. Right now, if I got one of those contracts and they did have someone from the adult industry approach me after a talk at with CAA saying, Hey, we work in this industry. Do you want to partner? I haven't taken it, but I've been approached. Well, they're the, I mean, it sounds well, it sounds ironic, but they're one of the most innovative industries. They attack internet, releases of content. You know, that was them. They've spearheaded a lot of the industry moves. They'll probably do a lot because they're the freakiest. They think the most innovative because they got the freakiest consumers. Right. Listen, to be honest, like I have designers that have helped me with products. They're like the whole idea of like what we call now, like the infinity scroll. Right. Like we have like a bunch of thumbnails that you just keep scrolling and it just doesn't stop. You don't have to change pages. First time we all have seen that is really like the adult industry with like porn websites of like they don't want you to leave. They don't want you to feel like you have to like change to another page. This is page one of like 100 pages. Like the whole idea of just keep scrolling, keep scrolling and it's just not going to stop with content. You know, that's a design approach that we've seen first and like the adult industry. But I think yeah, the person, the combination between a chat you be T and a sex style, you will see first thing the adult industry as they innovate and you'll likely see it first at CES. And the one that we saw this past year, I think was a good example. But again, as someone who represents, you know, different cultures, what they showed was not representative from a diversity standpoint. Right. Like the hair, the hair textures, like we worked really hard on even clairs hair texture and like the different types of personalities, the skin tones. Again, the first thing you see at the CES unveilings is like a blonde, blue, wide, you know, Barbie doll, like a mask, but and I think the variety to address different cultures before you get like the making fox one, I guess they've got to see that movie. It's cool. It's going to get crazy. I want to bring up something you're the best person to ask. And obviously you get you come from that industry. I'm not you. I'm saying that this a lot of it will stem from that industry because they want to they want to just every all eight senses. They want to, you know, touch their consumer and then it rolls out to hey, the clean my dishes or take off the garbage or vacuum the floor, like, you know, or communicate with me, be my therapist, whatever it is that people are looking for. You're the best person to ask for this when, okay, right now we're manipulating AI to get what we want. Yes. When does it get to the point where it speaks this old language and a can come after us, B can mitigate us, C terminator type shit. I know that I don't want you to be in that space to scare you because this is your space. But how far are we from that where it can create its own language that humans are understanding? We don't know what the hell is coming. It's still relies on our instructions and we still have to control what they call like the guard rails. And so when I write instructions and when my team writes instructions for what Claire can do or one of these bots can do, the amount of instructions of what we tell it to do, the amount of instructions to tell it what not to do should be just as important. Right. So if I'm writing 10 pages of instructions, five of those pages should be telling it what I wanted to do. If the other five is like, don't do this, don't do that. I'm staying away on that. 30 on that. 30 pages on that. Right. Exactly. Right. And then to keep it a hundred, like we build additional bots that are just security and safety bots to check and quality control the safety of the first one to make sure that it follows in the instructions. It's like a supervisor. So we know there's, we know there's hacks, right? So like someone can help you and then allow it to then he override certain. So that's an evolving list of like what it's called prompt injection of like, how do you jailbreak a chatbot? That list by researchers is constantly growing of like, here's a new approach to jailbreak it. And the list of how to address it needs to grow just as much to adapt and address those areas. So yes, that's always going to be there. And that's why like the role of, you know, if you want to pursue a new career, like I just saw Forbes maybe say like the fastest growing jobs at either AI developer, AI consultant. If you're like an AI safety specialist, no, guess up. That's a bag. There's no, there's no college degrees in it yet. So you got to go out there and let's just go do it. But that's definitely going to be a growing field as a safety specialist because if the bot is programmed to say, Hey, just adapt and evolve as you see fit, then it will do that. But if you tell it, you know, to follow these instructions and don't deviate from the instructions that I gave you, then you'll be fine. And making sure that you're, you still are the human and a loop that can always pull the plug. Okay. But if you, if you do program a thing and say, Hey, I want to program you to just evolve as you see fit, regardless of my instructions, where you get to like T2 type stuff. Give me so, okay, and now we're going to wrap soon here because we get what is the most extravagant use of this that you've seen right now. And once you, what are you dreaming of in your imagination, 10 years now, we're going to have. So I pray for all the real life use cases that impact terminal diseases and terminal disabilities. And there's a lot of great work happening in that space. My brother has one prosthetic eye and I'm paying very close attention to what's happening in Australia, I believe, around the studies of restoring vision with AI to, you know, the optical system. And, you know, whether it's paralysis, like Elon is crazy as he is. He is on, on, on the right track with the neural link with BCIs. Yes. Because if you program those the right way and if they can address, you know, dementia, Parkinson's, paralysis, even being enhanced by AI, that's, that's a game changer. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's a complete game changer. And now with agents and having it autonomously work on these things, right? You could program a cancer research agent that just works, like how much time does a research team actually have to spend on this, right? Like I'm sure 40 to 60 hours a week off of like research grants. Right. Could you imagine a thing that's just 24/7, just like churning and calculating formulas and experimentation and simulations to, to solve for diseases? I mean, why wouldn't you? Yeah. And then put it out there into market where people can access it. And let's, you know, maybe we don't have to crazy monetize everything. Let's get it out. Keep up a healthier, the make more productive. Then we don't have to worry about other stuff, right? Oh, that's cool. I love it. So that's your dream thing. But then we're not, it doesn't seem, well, we're probably far from a lot of these things, but some of these things seem very obtainable, right? Because, you know, as great as I had a lot of this stuff is obtainable because a lot of this is open source. And because you're not, man, you're not just relying on four or five academics to research this in an Ivy League institution. The whole world has access to these tools. You're going to have like an 18 year old in India, saw for cancer. You're going to have like a 20 year old and like Kenya come up with this solution because they're just building in their house with open source technology. I love that. And that's so that's phenomenal. I love it. Any parting thoughts, man? We hit a lot. I know you got to, I would love to keep going with you, man, all day. But any parting thoughts we should have on this. I'm good on time. Yeah. I would, I would just say for folks to pay attention to, I would tell everyone, you, I have like parting words when I give my key notes and I'll try and see if I can remember them. So one, like, don't let your fear get in the way of your future readiness, right? The long you stay in the sidelines because you're afraid of it. The more you put yourself behind the April, you know, continue to adopt and adapt. And don't make a decision on something that you haven't tried yet. A lot of you folks may be listening to this are like in leadership positions that are either restricting your team's use of AI or deciding whether to purchase AI. And like you can't make a decision on something like that.
something that you haven't researched or are indeed yourself and let your team are indeed. Don't leave that to just like one guy in IT, like have a whole organization try something out and come to a decision. And really your only way to really adapt to these spaces, you know, if you're worried about your job is just staying creative with these tools. Yeah, your resume will, will have that section where it's like, oh, I know word and I know PowerPoint. That whole section is going to be replaced with like, I know these AI tools. Yeah. How do you become more productive, you know, being fluent in these tools? What's okay? Well, I like, you're like the source of, you know, depth of knowledge here. So what's one thing? So if I'm going to give this, let's say I'm going to give this to some students as well to listen to. Yes. Um, what are some things in the academic space that they could really just ramp up their knowledge base, what they get extract from an efficiency standpoint? Cause I want them to get out there and party. So I want them to learn fast just they can get out there and party the last couple of semesters. Yeah. I mean, to be honest, I mean, this is a conversation between faculty and students. Where this is the calculator moment for text and language. So the same way that you use a calculator and math classes, just find the appropriate moments, you're like, look, there are certain things that I want you to develop the muscle memory for. So I need you to do this by hand. So let's put the put away the chat to be T and put away the calculators. But they're going to be certain problems that you're going to try and address, like climate change, like cancer research, they'll like, use every AI in the book to help you come up with a solution to these bigger global problems. And don't restrict the tools that they use to address something that's bigger than a grade, you know, or an assignment in class. And forget about, you know, we a lot of it is a paradigm shift. You have to get away from like, Oh, I assigned a written report and it was written to judge it. But he, well, forget about written reports, just like have them retain the knowledge, whatever way possible. I did that. I did that. I used to have a midterm or they used to write something. I noticed someone she didn't have a, and our sheer heat, I'm like, I tell who was. I didn't have the greatest grasp of English students, she was an international student. Damn, I said it again. He or she. But I could tell it was changed. You know what? Next semester, I'm going to, so I didn't call her on it. I said, Hey, let's just have a meeting. I see this. And then she made it up some other way now as far as answering some other questions around it. So she, to know that I just demonstrate she could grasp materials. Now I mitigated that. I've gotten rid of that midterm report. We're doing a quiz in house. And we test it another way. Why don't they have to have a knowledge base to answer the questions? And it's not that. So you just got to work around it. But I want them. I have full on use chat, use AI in classes. Let's walk. You just check it if they retain the knowledge. Like, look, do the report, right? Even if they use chat, you can do the report. Yeah. Did you do the report? Great. Now put the report down. I'm going to interview you on your report to see how much you retained from that report. And these kids, these students are smart, man. So like I'm telling you, you're going to do it. You're going to do a pitch to the right to the class at the end. That's your final. All of you are going to do that. Create it and tattooed to you, man. I'm using that as an example. Create, I tell them how to put information in, extract what you want. And here's the here's the market gap. Here's the what you're problem with solution and all the answers right there. I'm teaching about a goal slide by slide. Then you pop that into Canva, make a pretty, whatever you want to do, whatever your, your source of choice, right? Your platform of choice to make it pretty because you can't do all that in, at least check it until you can't make it a beautiful slide. You get the last. And I think the other way too, and I speak to K122 at the lower level too, not just at the university level, but like there's one syllabus for all the students. There's one curriculum that the state gives in August for them to run all year, for like a thousand students. That's an archaic way to approach this, especially now with Chagy B. T. Every student should have their own personalized curriculum, right? Two there needs because so many students now are neurodivergent and the same with the, with the syllabus. If you have 50 kids in your class, there should be 50 versions of that syllabus, all run through and differentiated by Chagy B. T for that particular student, because of the best way that they learn into their learning styles of their neurodivergent, if they need accommodations because they have 504s and IEPs, then you are personalizing that learning curriculum and that syllabus that you planned just for that end of one for that one student. Oh, love it. You're rocks are in this space, man. Any one last thing. All right. Where can they go? Where there's a website that has all of these things listed so they could find, hey, this one addresses this happening. Perplex, you brought that up. Okay. This is great for a long term where it shares all the information. It's not linked, not straight out like link and Google's that you can, the counters, can they, where can they go measure all these things and see what's best for their solution? So I every, I tell everyone to just open up four tabs right now, at least for of like, you have Chagy B. T. open, you have Gemini open, you have Claude open, and you have perplexity open. Okay. Anytime you have a question, you ask it across all four and then come to your assessment of like how you feel the response was, how they were addressed in all four platforms. You don't just rely on one because you'll find when you put it in Claude, separate from Chagy B. T. Claude is going to come out with a varying, much drastically different answer because they're programmed to outdo each other. Because they're all competitors to each other. So all they, they're all going to give you a bit more value. Okay. And you need to be the recipient from the consensus of all four, not just relying on one versus the other. There's no, there's no interface right now where you could go to one website and it hits up all four of those platforms and returns it and you can see that. There are some, some interesting ones out there. I don't know them off the top of my head. Pi maybe is one where there's a few out there. Okay. The individual independent developers are creating where there's just like a drop down where you can switch between the models as your questions. Brother, man, you were like, there's like a, I could ask you 15,000 more questions because you're just like, you're studying this space. So we've got to run. We got to do that. No, but you're great. I finished my drink. So that's all they matter is right? You went espresso. What did you call it when you, I want to say what you said? I don't want, I don't want to be on PC. When you said you expressed some artini. I'll be on PC, but I don't want you to know. No, no, no. Yeah. I'm just saying I'm, I'm not meeting the cliche, you know, demographic for this drink. But you know, that's great way to say it. Okay. No, but I appreciate you, man. Love your work. Love, I just love falling. You're just what your work and just seeing what you're going to be to keep continue to do. I want you to come. I'm maybe it's too small, but I would love for you to pop into class one day and just peak when Columbus circles. That's something you do. Yeah. Let me know, man. I'm local. I got an event next week where's a bunch of NFL athletes and be athletes. Pop it's family office and a bunch of athletes and restrious. If you want to pop in and say the word, come on stage with me, man. It's a Saturday, though. You know, I don't like this. I'll fix it up. Okay. I'll hit you up, man. Thank you, man. Thank you. Have a great week.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The podcast episode features a conversation between the host and guest Abran Maldenado, covering topics like tech, business, sports, and whiskey.
Abran discusses his background as a founder and creator, his early involvement with AI (including OpenAI and ChatGPT), and his company Create Labs, which focuses on AI-powered digital humans like the avatar "Claire."
The dialogue includes casual banter about drinks (e.g., espresso martinis), sports comparisons (Michael Jordan vs. LeBron James, Steph Curry's impact), and reflections on how AI is transforming entertainment and gaming.
Summary:
The podcast episode opens with the host introducing guest Abran Maldenado, a founder, creator, and speaker known for his work in tech and startups. The conversation blends casual topics like whiskey and drinksโincluding Abranโs preferred espresso martiniโwith discussions on technology, business, and sports. Abran shares his early advocacy for AI tools like ChatGPT, highlighting a demo he presented years ago featuring an AI-powered Miles Morales character, which demonstrated interactive conversations with digital avatars.
He explains his company Create Labs and its focus on AI-driven digital humans, such as the avatar "Claire," emphasizing applications in gaming, fan engagement, and entertainment. The dialogue also touches on sports debates, comparing legends like Michael Jordan and LeBron James, and notes how AI is evolving to create more immersive experiences. Overall, the episode blends lighthearted humor with insights into AI's growing role in innovation and culture.
FAQs
The Whiskey Hew podcast covers tech, business, startups, and culture, including sports and media, often with a mix of whiskey and sarcasm.
Abran Maldenado is a founder, creator, and speaker in the tech space, known for his work with AI and as an ambassador for OpenAI.
Create Labs is Abran Maldenado's company focused on AI innovation, developing digital humans or AI influencer avatars for interactive experiences.
Abran demonstrated an AI-powered Miles Morales (Spider-Man) that could respond to live questions, showcasing interactive character technology for gaming or fan engagement.
He believes AI is a game-changer, having promoted tools like ChatGPT before they became mainstream, and focuses on practical applications through Create Labs.
Sports are frequently discussed as part of culture, with comparisons of athletes like Michael Jordan and LeBron James, and how teams like the Knicks or Lakers influence the sport.
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