Anu Atluru: Will AI Change How We Use Social Utilities?

30:43the most pithy way I can think about taste is that it like taste is discernment, probably discernment expressed in some way. That's a good quote. Have you written that? I don't, I don't think I've written that. I mean, here's the, here's the benefit of all the discourse. It has made me refine my own thinking about this topic. Kind of where I was with that is I think AI will recommend things to us and that we might say, hey, this AI is recommending me things that I think are quite tasteful, you know, or align with my taste. But I don't think the AI itself will have taste. I think discernment is like a very human quality, at least in how we think about it.

31:27And it's different than judgment or selection. Discernment is more like I'm able to tell the differences between a lot of things and the nuances between things and with the awareness of those references i am both assigning a value judgment of better or worse and i am also assigning a personal weight of like or dislike and so that's where the human element comes in and so i don't really think you might have similar aims like a person can recommend you something based on taste and an ai can recommend you something based on its understanding of quality and aesthetics and judgment and cultural context, which we will teach it.

32:10But I don't know that they will ever be the same, which is maybe the meta conversation about AI and human in general. You can't make some like overall score based on the current state of culture or whatever. You have to take that and then run it through the lens of an individual. Exactly. Because otherwise it is just trend forecasting or trend spotting or anti-trend or future trend. Like, you know, if you're talking about what's niche or what's pre something or early to something. So, you know, I think on the creative side, there's a very fascinating conversation there. I don't know how much all of it is required in terms of building a quality product that people will like.

32:49I think that's probably like a slightly lower bar because, I mean, not to go on a tangent a little bit, but I think technology itself in general is aligned with the value of scale and so if we're talking about building tech products and we're talking about taste with reference to tech it is somewhat a bit like butting heads by nature because at least with venture related companies we're trying to think about scale and like i said earlier with like it's almost like taste feels like it's more personal and more specific. So maybe at the early stages of company building and craft, tastes and technology are more aligned, but probably or can be more aligned.

33:34But at later stages, I think there is a discordance, which is maybe why this is somewhat of a hard topic to pin down in this community in general, because I think if you took the taste conversation to fashion or took the taste conversation to art, like it would be a much different conversation and people would be talking about it much more as a local or narrow interpretation. Whereas when you're putting taste next to scale, I think it creates a lot of conceptual and practical discord. One thing you wrote about, which I've also been thinking a lot about, other people have talked about, thought about, is this notion of software creators and how they will change as a result of AI.

34:19AI is obviously making it way easier to write code, thus to create software. What shape does this take? I kind of analogized it to content creators in the sense that, you know, in the last era, content creation was much more gated, was more expensive. You needed tools that are not as easily accessible. You needed a place to publish it that's not as easily accessible. And obviously, UGC has kind of blown that out the water. Everybody is a content creator now. And I think I make the similar parallel to software, which I don't think is necessarily itself, you know, not something a lot of people have talked about.

35:00Like for probably 10 years plus, there's been like a wave of low code, no code, which is kind of the bridge, I think, now to, okay, actually just making it a lot easier for people to build from scratch. It's kind of like content in the sense that just by the nature of the lower barrier to entry, there will be a lot more people creating it. And I think we also have lived in kind of a software-nominated world. I think tech has become much more central to culture and everyday life in the past 20 years than it was before as well. So maybe 20 years, I wouldn't say the democratization of tools for software would have necessarily made it as abundant as I think it would today.

35:37So I think there's like a timeliness aspect to that as well. And so then the question becomes, okay, if everybody can create software now, who will create software and for what purposes and how valuable will it be? And I think that's where people differ more on what shape they think that's going to take. One thing that I will plant down as a flag is that I think that there will be just like a non-professional class of software creators or builders, however you want to term it. And that means they are not the people who could get jobs at companies building software or who would get jobs at companies building software.

36:14So it's like expanding the base of like hobbyist builders. And what will that result in? I think it'll result in people using more software for personal use cases. I think it'll result in more like local kind of in-network software. So there's some few barriers here still. But for example, like if I were to make Locket, but just for you and I to use, I still have to go through the whole, you know, Apple app development process, get it reviewed, publish it to the App Store, you know, share, get you to download, like the whole, you know, we know the whole kind of process. Whereas it'd be nice if I could just like do a share link to you and you could automatically start using that software.

37:00I think there has to develop, like a whole ecosystem has to develop that kind of enables that. But I do think that will be a hot center for people to explore. I think there might be, I don't remember what the company is called, but there's this, you know, everybody's been tossing around different words. One of them I think is like spontaneous software. I don't know. There's somebody building a company around this where I think it might be in the vein more of these like utilities for like close networks and thinking about how to do that kind of from like a bottom-up perspective. um so there's that and then i do think the question of how valuable is all of the software that's going to be created is a is a good question and worth meditating on um what i don't think is that we're all going to be you know using n of one software and we will no longer be using you know software that is common to a lot of people because even with software I think there is like a network effect of you know even if it's not a network-based product there is like a network effect of confidence or like a network effect of brand or trust or just like you know it's like we all want to watch the same movie because we can talk about the same movie and we have a shared experience in understanding like how we engage with this thing there is like a high barrier still to make a little tinker software that you can now make and then have a lot of people use it, there will still be competition for what people end up using.

38:32So I think what's more interesting, maybe to me, in terms of like an enterprise value perspective is not like the small piece of software that is going to be made, which there will be millions of, but more so what is the ecosystem that will develop around that to enable creation and distribution of that software. And so it's kind of like, you know, is there going to be a new Apple App Store or something like a new Apple App Store? But for these like, you know, software creator little apps that are made at the marketplace level, basically, there is some big potential company or platform that I think will be the most interesting in terms of investing potentially and then obviously on the creation side you know things like replet and whatever the future versions of replet are going to be uh i think are interesting as well so like it's always at the end like what are the big things that help people create and what are the big things that help people distribute will be where a lot of big company value is created um and then i think kind of more on the artistic side it's like there's this conversation of like oh is there going to be like an Instagram for software, like where you're sharing, putting software in like a grid instead of like pictures in a grid.

39:47I don't think it'll be quite that easy. Like I think a picture is instantly consumed. And so I don't really need the user to do much to deem that to have been a successful thing that was created and put onto the world. A piece of software, if I'm intending to share it and it's not just for personal use, then that means that it is intended to be used by somebody else. And so, you know, just putting it on my like software shelf, you know, if I'm making a Goodreads analogy or just putting it on my Instagram like feed, media feed, if I'm making that kind of like spatial analogy, it does not like achieve an end unless somebody actually wants to use that thing and get the utility out of that software.

40:34And so I think that's where there's a bit of a gap where I don't quite see that it's going to be this exactly like content creation in terms of like how you share and build a following or get status from it. But there will be a lot more people experimenting with which one of the 10 or 50 things they might want to create can be the thing they would actually want to build more on top of and get it to a quality level and a utility level that a lot of people will use. The first part of what you said, which I totally agree, was there's going to be an ecosystem that sprouts up to support this. And maybe that's a marketplace and maybe that's tools for distribution, marketing, whatever.

41:13And then taking it all the way to the end of what you just said, you don't think there's going to be sort of an Instagram for software. The one way I would just like, maybe challenge that, not that I believe there's going to be an Instagram of software, but it does seem like in the past when these things have gotten democratized, the things that end up being the most successful are the platforms that own the sort of end-to-end creation all the way to consumption, distribution, because then there's this flywheel, right, that happens, which one side drives the other side. So I could see that happening.

41:47I don't know what shape it takes. I kind of agree with you. Like, I don't think it's like, I'm going to add this piece of software to my grid, you know? I agree with the like, you know, end-to-end kind of like consumer marketplace. Yeah, create in the same place that you consume. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. aspect um the question is more around what the nature of consumption looks like to me and i don't think it's the same to like consuming a piece of software is not the same as consuming a picture that's put up or a video and so i think that's the part where i think about okay if consumption looks a lot different then it probably by nature doesn't look like instagram you know maybe looks more like a good reads in some way where it's like more about discovery but you're actually going and now downloading this book somewhere or buying this book, and then you are consuming that book elsewhere, right?

42:38With Goodreads. And by nature of that, the attention is not all accrued to that platform in terms of like time spent, which makes that much more niche in a way, in terms of like eyeballs equaling dollars. Yeah, that makes sense. We're not just like sitting there consuming it on goodreads as it were so that something between those two i think and of course things that we can't anticipate like it'll look a lot different than we think but that's the distinction i make with the instagram thing it's more about the the nature of consumption than it is about the end-to-end thing which i do agree with yeah it doesn't feel like in this future you're just gonna have this dock of apps and you're sort of like launching launching apps like sort of in the same way you do now it has to take a new shape or a new format for this analogy, the sort of Instagram or the platform sort of analogy to hold?

43:33I think a lot more creative people are going to be creating things that require code. And so maybe it'll look more like art, but it actually just has code in it. And so we actually blur the lines between what we even call software versus art. And so like, then maybe it's not this like kind of rigid paradigm of an application that we download and use or we use in a browser or something like maybe it's actually just about that there will be code you know or programming or however we want to think about that embedded in more things that we are consuming that's probably another area where i think there will be an expansion but we might just like talk about it differently i'm pretty excited about all this it feels it feels inevitable like the notion of the software creator changing feels inevitable i think the thing that is like all of this is very exciting i think what's putting a damper on it and you know depending on who you are maybe like it's very exciting and inspiring or dampening is this lack of certainty about where value of creating anything is going yeah the whole abundance thing we were talking about earlier and like the whole AI singularity, like human jobs.

44:45Like I'm like zooming out one level, which is like, if this was simply an evolution on tools that humans can use and will use to create, there would be like one reaction. But I think this evolution comes with another evolution on top of it, which we are kind of thinking about and grappling with, which is like, okay, cool, everybody can create software but so can it like all the bots so why would even why would we even be doing it or like you know i can now be sure yeah well that implies because human because humans will value human things yeah that's what that implies and there will be economic value in the things that humans value yeah so if we don't believe those two things which is up for debate then the thing preceding it wouldn't necessarily matter um but i think that's a whole like what is the future of human work is a big theme and i think even like yc's you know recent requests for startups and stuff like are all like they've zoomed out so much not not that they are the only you know kind of standard barrier of where the world is going but what was the request well you know they put out like a list yeah of a lot of things and i think there was one about like the future of human jobs and wanting startups that will in some way be thinking about what this is going to be.

46:13And maybe it's, you know, they don't know what it is. They're just saying, this is a thing that we think are going to be important. So a request for people who are thinking about that. And then I think a lot of the other requests are around, you know, they're moving to a lot more tangible, real world things like government, like regulation, like space, like defense, like all these things that have obviously become popular. But I think anything in the digital realm is quickly being intermixed with the AI conversation. Rightly so. So I think that's a little bit of like the asterisk to, we will be able to do so many things, which is, will it actually matter?

46:50I want to jump to a topic that I don't know if you'll want to talk about. I guess I'm about to find out. Sort of along the lines of artificial superintelligence, the singularity, the asterisk, I guess. You are, I believe you are an actual medical doctor. That's accurate. Is that right? That is. I am a licensed physician. Yeah. I do not practice. By the way, fascinating that a licensed physician is making social utilities. Yeah. I think, you know, without unpacking my entire origin stories here, I would say that all of my interests that I have today in the abstract sense predate, you know, the previous paths that I was in.

47:32So it's, I feel like it's coming back around to something as opposed to going to something new, but obviously the world has changed. So things look different, but. Makes sense. Do you, even though you're not practicing, do you think much about the future of medicine and healthcare and personal health as a result of AI? Yeah, I do in an abstract sense From the human level, I think AI is going to be great for understanding of diseases that we only have a marginal understanding of today. I think it'll be very useful for rare diseases that we haven't had enough of a population and enough of an economic interest to really be able to fund often.

48:15So I think the long tail of health will get better as well. scientific research, this upstream part is going to get very good, very fast. And there's already, you know, a lot of things that are suggesting that. I think one of the, I'm not sure if it's a Nobel Prize winner this past year or something was related kind of to this movement in this direction. Broadly, I'm very optimistic about what it's going to do for our ability to understand health, to understand diagnosing it, and somewhat to understand, like, treating it. I think that's harder than the actual understanding of the problem, which will get a lot better.

48:50I think on the side of being a doctor as a profession, there are a lot of things that are going to change. Some welcome, some not, depending on which side you're on. Like what? Overall, I would say that I think AI is going to make a lot of knowledge work, which I would consider historically doctors, lawyers, a lot of that to be. In many cases, much more like a trade profession. Historically, we think of trades as kind of like the they require less education and are more physical in nature than the non-trade professions which tend to require far more education and tend to be more cerebral in nature and i think the mix of that will shift a little bit in a world where ai is doing a lot of um a lot of the kind of like information gathering with more information than we would have had before.

49:45A lot of the computation, a lot of the analysis, so like, you know, all the differential diagnoses, the probabilities, the, you know, the likelihood of a therapy to work, and in particular for a specific person in terms of personalization. So I think there will be a lot more data given to us by AI or whatever we want to call that container that will then be kind of assessed and applied by physicians. And so from that perspective, physicians will do less of that cognitive work themselves. And also because we're going to learn so much more, it's going to be impossible for humans to learn all of that, like as rote memory and then compute all of that.

50:24So I just think that it'll become a little bit more trade-like in the sense that a lot of what you're doing is more the implementation aspect as opposed to like a holistic assessment independently it's almost like more like service oriented and yeah i mean like because you are doing you know the relational aspects will become much more important especially like i mean this is a great thing scribe like ai scribe or whatever and all that stuff i think is going to come in which will relieve like the burden of documentation which has been like terrifying for physicians for the past 10 years at least, but probably like 15 or more.

51:02It's terrifying that the burden of documentation has gone up. They have to document more. They don't want to have to do that. Right. It takes a lot of time more than anything. I mean, I think, and there's always argument about, oh, my doctor's never talking to me. Well, it's because they're documenting most of the time because they have to for like insurance purposes and for medical legal purposes. So AI will do really good things in terms of reducing the burden of those things, but it'll also provide tools that'll offload some of the cognitive stuff they're doing. It's like autonomous vehicles or something.

51:33With healthcare and with physical health and safety in general, we are very skittish about adopting tools if there is one death that we're going to see to that. And so whether it's autonomous vehicles or healthcare, I think the same thing will apply. So I do think this is somewhat of a long arc of implementation, but I do think over the long term, yes, it'll become much more like a service profession. And that's not necessarily bad, but it'll change a lot of dynamics. So we started like zoomed out. Then we've talked about interaction with the physician becomes more assisted, becomes more of a service.

52:13Is there a world in which the human doctor goes away for 80 % of interactions in the near future? Like maybe just much more simply, like how soon until we have the AI doctor on our phones that we're interacting with for, you know, 80 to 90 percent of most times we would have previously scheduled an appointment with our physician. I might argue we already have the AI doctor on our phone. Yeah. You know. That's ChatGPT or that's Dr. Google? Or that's Dr. Google? Well, Dr. Google was pretty bad. So I would say, yeah, chat GBT or whatever the future model of it, or, you know, pick your LLM that's going to become specialized for this thing.

52:52I would argue we already have that in the sense of the decision points are really when do you choose to seek healthcare within the healthcare system? And the system today is a people driven system. So the question becomes like, when will some authority say it's OK for you to use this chatbot or LLM instead of going in to see a physician? That can happen culturally, though, right? I mean, that doesn't have to happen through the rubber stamp. Culturally, I think it is already slowly happening for very low acuity or, you know, as generally we talk about acuity of like how serious severe. like for triaging, like low acuity things like a cold or do I have strep throat?

53:36I think right now what it's actually doing is telling you on some probability basis, should you go seek hair? And I think that actually people have been working that for a long time, but it's just AI is going to be so much better now. It really just seems like the only thing stopping it is nobody's just built, nobody's built the great consumer product yet. Somebody can do it. And I think what they will have to do is kind of what telehealth did, which is have experts or credible, trusted people who are in on kind of quality control or something for this product. Like it can't just be a bunch of Silicon Valley.

54:14You know, and some of this is optics and trust-based. And trust is very kind of fluid. It's obviously not very scientific. And somebody probably will do it. I don't know why someone has not done it yet or maybe somebody is working on it. I'm not skeptical about the value to the user. I am a little skittish on the ability for this to be executed as a consumer product. It will take the right team that knows both sides and cares about both sides. And usually it's just one. You can kind of pull this off now if you're willing to put up with some hacks and sort of like an imperfect consumer experience.

54:53I've personally been doing it with Claude. for just health stuff. What's a non-private query that you... A non-private query? Well, I mean, you're welcome to share the private queries as well. My time in healthcare rearing its head, not wanting to violate patient confidentiality. I don't mind sharing this. Let me take a step back before I share the query with you. I have created a Claude project inside of Claude. I don't know if you know what that is, what a project is. It's basically like a contained workspace where you can not only prompt it and ask it questions and it retains memory of those questions, but you can also stick a bunch of files and things in there that it will be able to reference and know about when you're asking questions.

55:38And so I have a Claude project and I've uploaded all of my health data to it. So my recent physical blood work, medications that I'm on, I recently, like not that long ago, did all of this like longevity stuff, like VO2 max, all that. And so it kind of knows what I want to accomplish from a health standpoint in terms of, you know, whatever, like levels of fitness and things like that. And so one of the things that I've been doing, again, we need, we need a great consumer product built for something like this, but sometimes I'll take photos of my food and it'll immediately make assumptions about, you know, calories, protein, things like that.

56:25And it will tell me whether or not it recommends it based on my health history and the goals that it knows I'm trying to accomplish. But this is after you've already chosen to eat it, right? No. You're taking a picture of food where at home? Yeah. Right before I eat it. It's like, Hey, tell me about this. I'm about to eat it. I'm about to have this meal. like tell me about it how often are you then making a decision about whether you do eat it or not afterwards well the thing i learned about this specific use case and there are other things that i've done but this has been great at helping me learn about kind of what i'm eating and my patterns and my behaviors and how they fit in to my overall goals such that in future meals or whatever i don't have to always whip out my phone.

57:13Well, there's that Cal AI app, right? That's been on a tear as a single purpose, kind of doing the similar thing. I think take a photo and I'll tell you all the nutrition facts. Want me to give you one more example? Yeah, absolutely. You know, something showed up on a test, not a bad thing. And I was able to prompt Claude about this thing that showed up and it was able to answer me and make recommendations based on other things about me, like my age, my weight, my overall fitness level, whereas the recommendation might be different for just like a pure sort of generic sample of the population.

57:54Does that make sense? It makes total sense. I guess my, so this, I think, already works. And again, sufficiently motivated, curious, health-conscious people in certain communities are probably already doing this yeah it's a pain to set up by the way to be clear like it's a lot of work yeah i believe it well yeah that's where the custom you know customer experience would be helpful of course the wrapper around whatever the scary wrapper but that actually is very useful for specific use cases but the question is like how does this modify the care you seek within the quote unquote healthcare system.

58:34That's like the leap of the question that I have. Okay. Not that I would do this today, but if you play this out, and again, let's assume that there's this great consumer experience wrapped around this and it's way easier and maybe it somehow gets the data automatically. So I don't have to go chase these things and upload them like you could imagine a world where my annual physical and all of the questions and comments they may have about that can happen strictly between me and the ai yeah with the exception of like actually getting the blood drawn that that seems like a very near-term possibility what time frame do you think is near-term two years outside the system to be clear.

59:21I'm sure it could happen now if somebody builds the product that is the nice experience that, you know, has memory. Maybe not, though, because they have to prescribe the blood tests and stuff, right? Right. So then you're actually saying what you want is the AI to become a licensed, quote, quote, licensed physician that can do what only physicians can do, which is, or often prescribe lab tests and prescribe medications and prescribe interventions that require the healthcare system. Like, it's funny because, you know, there are these, um, these companies that are independent right now that allow you to get like order labs for yourself without seeing a physician.

1:00:05But the way that it is technically set up is that they actually do have physicians that work inside their company that are effectively signing off on these labs, which are just like general purpose labs, you know, like they're not really collecting any information about you. It's not like a serious liability for them. And so in some ways, it's the technicalities of like, you just need the doctor to sign off. And that's what all these like Rho and HIMSS and all of these things in telehealth have been doing for a long time. And there was some controversy about that at the beginning. Obviously, there's less about that now.

1:00:37But for the lower acuity, more standardized treatments or diagnostics for things, they have already been outsourced into these specialized consumer companies where there is a physician or a group of physicians that work inside that to sign off effectively and assume any risk or liability that might come along with it. And so what we're talking about is just abstracting it one more level, which is set up that company, but then actually have the interaction not be with a person through telehealth, but just through an AI. I think that is not that hard to kind of extend that. It's people these days actually just like they're kind of offended if they're like, oh, I don't even get to see a provider or something.

1:01:24But then there's obviously, you know, like flip on a dime that people are like actually irritated that they have to talk to someone. Convenience. Okay. So that's the like small transition. Otherwise, I think it's actually a lot of what some of these consumer companies are already doing. But it's just not as generalized as what you were talking about, because they're focusing on very narrow use cases and very narrow diagnostics, very narrow prescriptions. And this is much more general. I think it'll just like the burden of making sure the quality is good across all use cases will just be higher.

1:01:58But yeah, I don't doubt at all that it already can be done today. It's just a matter of like the company is feeling comfortable to assume the burden of quality across all use cases or a broader range of use cases. I just think that to become truly general purpose, it's just like a much higher burden. And then on the flip side, will like hospitals actually start using this stuff? That's going to be much harder. I don't know. Because that I think is less about capability and just more about, you know, systems. the systems that they are. I feel like the interpretation is that it is possible today.

1:02:33It's just a matter of putting it in the right form factor and giving it the right trust, whether it's that physicians involved or some, you know, randomized control thing eventually somebody decides to do and then selling that to people, of course. I think that's right. I, yeah, I'm very bullish on the technology. I hope it happens. Like I just, healthcare is just really hard. It's really hard. But if you come across a person who's doing this, I don't invest in that many healthcare companies, but consumer healthcare is the one area I still have the soft spot for because I'm just like, man, it's like if somebody can actually unlock things there, I think it's like a big service.

1:03:13I will definitely let you know. On the physician using it for scribes and things like that, which we were talking about a little while ago, it does feel like it would be wise if possible let logistically legally anyone in this field it feels like should be experimenting or utilizing these tools in some way a just to get leverage on their time and be also kind of like to mentally prepare for the future i'm sure somebody is or a multitude of people are making granola for physicians a bridge is is the big one they've been there for a while right they've been around for a while yeah yeah but they've you know past couple of years they've really uh landed on this and it's it's it's been really successful yeah yeah i know them from when they were around before a lot of people were doing this and i'm sure the things that have come out have only helped them like you know it's kind of like if you're already there you can ride the wave when it when it comes out so um no doubt but i think like that's just a matter of time and the reason hospitals will adopt this stuff is because it'll make their physicians more efficient.

1:04:15And so they can actually, you know, presumably get more value out of the physicians without having any issue as far as like who's signing off or doing these things, you know. It's like in many ways, like in teaching hospitals or academic hospitals, you know, there's like attending physicians and then there's residents. Like AI is going to be the residents, you know, residents or PAs or what have you. And the attending physician will just be a physician who's kind of signing off on what's being written there, what's being suggested there and that sort of thing. I wonder if there will be adoption of like unsanctioned tools, you know, just doctors being like, oh, you know, my friend told me about this, whatever, a bridge or granola for X and they're, or just Chachipi tea, right?

1:04:58And they're just like sort of using it. And if that groundswell is the thing that gets the hospital or, you know, the system to adopt some of these things. You're talking about bottoms up software in hospitals? Yes, exactly. Bottoms up AI adoption in hospitals. I think, never say never. Let's do a quick lightning round. I'm actually just going to make up these questions on the go. So it's a little bit of lightning for me as well. What is the most recent app you have added to your home screen? It's like the all in or all out question. That is true. Okay, fine. Most recently you've installed, period.

1:05:33Most people that I've installed is probably Nikita's app. Hate to give him more, more juice than he already has. He definitely doesn't need it. He doesn't need it. Okay. What is the most recent annual one year, you know, commitment subscription that you have subscribed to? There's an app called Copilot. Do you know it? It's kind of like Mint. I was going to say Microsoft Copilot. No, it's like a, it's kind of like, you know, Mint, like managing your finances. like you hook up your bank accounts credit cards whatever it's just kind of like a nice easy dashboard like on mobile that i just find easier than logging into my credit card and my bank account often and and then the dovetail to that is i used it to look at all the recurring charges that i've been getting um on credit cards because i kind of did this like over the holidays or whatever i was like okay i'm gonna purge the recurring subscriptions and i probably like purged like 200 plus dollars i mean i hate to say that it's kind of like unfortunate but you know i'll throw your past employer adobe in there as like a as a as a subscription that is pricey that i did not even know that i was paying for um and so i purged a lot of other like subscriptions a lot of streaming and then i i said unsubscribe or go annual perfect perfect transition into what was going to be my next question what current favorite sub stack writer there's two things too that are very popular so there's a long time popular one this like astral like what is it called astral codex like i don't know they had a previous blog astral codex 10 okay what is that um it's just a blog that's actually like it's been it's funny enough written by a physician but it has nothing to do with medicine okay you know recently they kind of write about anything to be honest but recently they've had some really good posts around like the future of kind of ai and like Like, just like it's, you know, the archetype of person that is a really good synthesizer of everything that's happening in the world.

1:07:33And like they seem to understand tech, culture, economics, geopolitics. Like this is a particular archetype of person, actually. Like I kind of call them synthesizers, like just in my mind. Those type of people, I feel, are very interesting to read in times of change, whether it's like political change or technological change or what have you, because I think they have a nice way of pulling a lot of things together in a cohesive and still like nuanced way. So that's one example. And then on much more on the like cultural fun side, which this has become a very popular blog, but there's this blog called Feed Me that Emily Sundberg writes.

1:08:15You know, links based newsletters have become quite popular. Like I love links. It's the links, but it's actually commentary on what's happening in the world in topics that I care about. And I think that's actually still quite an underexplored. like I've always loved commentary on content even like YouTube channels that are like reviewing TV shows or reviewing films like I think that is like a very compelling form of content favorite New York City neighborhood other than the one you live in probably Flatiron Flatiron yeah I don't know if that's probably not like some niche unorthodox answer doesn't matter but i like how centrally located it is i kind of like the mix of nice and not all nice things that are there two last questions favorite you said you listen to music on youtube and it's like background music favorite you know passive music experience on youtube so this will be like a deep cut i don't even know if do you know this like song called intro but it was like it's old like it's it's intro and it's like by the xx have you ever yeah of course it's the intro to the first album right first album it's instrumental there's no vocals right like that's one of my very long-standing like deep work type music just put on repeat well there's like there are many versions of it that are just hours long okay so it's like it's like a lo-fi girl situation or something but it's like got it so there's like maybe 10 different tracks or something that are kind of in that vein that I have like a playlist for.

1:09:54And I just like, you know, maybe I'll choose one over the other depending on the day. But that came to mind as like an example. That's like kind of an old one. I saw Jamie XX in the city over the weekend. Very good show. As a premium and frequent Spotify music listener, what's your artist and genre of choice? Well, if you were just to look at like what's probably on my recommendations, It's probably Taylor Swift because my daughters just are obsessed and we just listen to it constantly. But no, I mean, because I went to that show over the weekend, I've been listening to a lot of Jamie XX and the XX.

1:10:30Let's see. I just pulled up and looks like the last song I listened to was Barry Can't Swim. I'm a child of the 90s. I listen to a lot of 90s alternative hits, whatever. I'm also very generic. I listen to like whatever. So I'll ask you because I care about this film and TV or series. Okay. What have you recently watched that you liked or currently watching? Yeah, this is probably going to be really cliche. I feel like everyone's talking about it right now. I am obsessed with Severance. I just rewatched it because the new season's starting. It's incredible. And I rewatched it. It's even better on the second watch.

1:11:09It's really good. That's a series. So I guess a film. I watch a lot of kids movies with my kids. We watched Wicked. We watched Moana too. What about you? Series and TV or series and film. This is niche cliche. I still watch Survivor. Nice. The reality TV marooned on an island tribes people out show. And the 47th season just wrapped. 47? Yeah. I guess it makes sense because they do multiple per year. Yeah, they do multiple per year. yeah yeah um and it's still really good you know i mean i'm not ashamed to say it it's the microcosm of human nature you know and so still very good probably still one of my favorite shows and the most recent like full series that i just finished watching um and then films i have a bunch of films to watch like i usually always try to watch most of the like you know oscar best picture like nobody cares about the oscars anymore but it's still like an interesting filter through which to decide.

1:12:13Anu, this has been awesome. Great conversation. I appreciate you doing this. Thanks for carving out so many hours of your day. I hope that was enjoyable and not a long monologue. No, it was great. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to Generative Now. If you liked this episode, please rate and review the show. And of course, subscribe. It really does help. And if you want to learn more, follow Lightspeed at LightspeedVP on X, YouTube, or LinkedIn. Generative Now is produced by Lightspeed in partnership with Pod People. I am Michael McNano, and we will be back next week. See you then.