An AI Conversation for Everyday People w/ Will.i.am & Van Jones | EP #154

29:57Imagine what the world was like in 1925. Here we are, 2025. Yeah, and we are thinking like, you know, we have a whole new way of compute. We have a whole new way of like advanced mathematics. Same thing happened with Mr. Al Jibar at the time when they were, you know, fucking around with advanced mathematics then, which were we have our, you know, eramic, abracadabra, I create as I speak. Yes. Like the same, we've been in some version of this in the past. Yeah, when I favorite slides that I use and when I'm speaking to crowds is I show different images of what's going on today and I say our ancestors would view us as gods.

30:37That's right. The stuff we did between breakfast and lunch today is godlike compared to just a few decades back. And people need to realize that. I mean, literally, you have millions of dollars worth of tech on your phone for free that you would have paid for at Radio Shack a couple of decades back. Do you remember the Radio Shack? Yeah. I wish, speaking of Radio Shack, you just throw in up things that I'm just slam dunking. Radio Shack, if I was 18 years old, 15 years old, going to the guitar center versus going to Radio Shack, I wish I was hanging out. and dreaming about going to Radio Shack because I would have been able to take those bits and pieces of equipment and circuit boards because that's not at the ready right now.

31:27Components is there's no store for components right now. It drives me nuts. If you want to make some shit right now, it ain't like, let's go to the components shop. There's no like, yeah, Home Depot got wood nail screws, as far as like consumer electronics and chips and fries. It was fries for a while. Fries was that, but that's Dunzo. Yeah, it's gone. Components shop, fuck outta here. The other stuff I hate is that there's no place I can go to buy pure chemicals for my kids to play with chemistry. When I was at my kids age, I had access to potassium, nitrate potassium, chloride, magnesium, sulfur.

32:07I used to build stuff and blow shit up all the time. And it was fun, I learned. Now I'd be putting gel. Yeah, that's a lot. Take me back to make what kind of real. Well, look, I mean, everybody have an access to components. That'll be part of it. At the ready. You know what I mean? Because the folks that are leading have access to components. The folks that are leading. The components now are digital and virtual. And I'm creating virtualized circuit boards and virtualized robots. But they know they can do it. The our community, that's not first to mind. That's part of what I think. I mean, so much stuff that Will said, I just wanna go back and underscore.

32:55We're in danger of creating a human civilization that has an awful lot of data in very little wisdom. And what you hear this idea of the soul, this idea of the human heart, of the human being develop. And I've heard, you know, well, I am talking about all the billions of dollars that we spend to develop the technology, but then you want to try to develop a kid. Nobody's got a penny. And that is amazing. I mean, unlimited checkbook. Yeah, for developing the technology. And yet, you know, look what he's trying to do with young people. And so I did think that when he talks about the Jedi, We can talk about the Wakandans.

33:41They have a very spiritual base. They have to go into the antithesis. They have to go into the antithesis for a realm. They do all kind of stuff. And that's a part of what makes them a heroic nation in fiction. Think about how important fiction is. Whenever you go into a civilizational crisis or a civilizational transition, The people who you normally turn to, the politicians to solve problems, the business leaders to solve problems, the generals to solve problems, suddenly they become more and more anemic. Your politicians can't pass the bill. The whole system goes crazy. The business leaders right now they've margined in giving robots jobs and people and the generals how they got protected from the pandemic or school shootings.

34:28So suddenly a different set of people in periods like this become very important your artists Your mystics, you know your entrepreneurs the people who you know are usually at the margin of society become very central to this transition because suddenly to his point Tomorrow is up for grabs so the people who can see the visionaries the people who have who who who not only have a brain but also a heart and a soul and a connection to something more profound. Suddenly, they become very important. However, nobody told them that they were going to be that important. So when you have communities where you have a bumper crop of entrepreneurs and creatives and mystics and one of those communities happens to be a black community in the United States.

35:15You got a lot of spiritual people, soulful people, creative people, whatever. Nobody told them, though, you get a chance to be a part of creating a new human civilization that can respond to your problems, which are the problems of the next seven generations of people who don't even look like you, that is your great calling. Now, you can go to a community that's suffering and give them a great calling and give them great tools. People need a compelling future. A compelling future. Yeah. And let me just say one more thing about the future. I believe that we're experiencing a different form of future.

35:49of who? A different form of future. Let me just make, make, make, make, in, in, in Indigenous agrarian societies, the time is a circle. It's just, it's just a cycle of seasons. The sun goes up, the sun goes down, the seasons come around. The moon goes around. He's born and died. And so, so, so, so, that's what, so, to his point, tomorrow and yesterday are the same damn thing, because you're literally just living out. So, what's the most important thing in Indigenous society? Agrarian society. It's preservation, preservation of seed, preservation of ritual, preservation of culture. That's how you survive.

36:23But tomorrow isn't really a thing. The industrial society comes along and suddenly time is linear. For the first time, the past is behind you, the present is with you and the future is over there someplace. I've not heard this. It's so true. But now, what's the most important thing? No longer is a preservation. The most important capacity for survival is the ability to plan. And to imagine an event. Yes. And to have a plan against that because if you think about time now you're on a train track, you're on the train. You got a plan to make sure you get to the future that you actually want. And so all those those the past hundred years, you put kids in school and you tell them you're fifth grade.

37:05What's your plan for your life? What are you going to do? What are you going to become? Because if you don't have a plan, you're done. Guess what? What was your plan for 2020? suddenly, suddenly you're in a different world where the future, yes, it's linear, but rather than you being on a train going to the future, you experience the future now as an on -rushing future. You're on the train track and the future's coming to you. Fast, multiple future. Whether you like it or not, there's no on -off switch and no velocity in them. Exactly. And so what's happening is you know how people experience multiple on -rushing futures and they don't know what to do.

37:43Preservation is not the key. Planning is impossible. It's preparation to pivot. The preparation to pivot, to be able to recognize change and then to respond to change becomes incredibly important. But if you are a young kid in urban America and you're very good at pivoting, guess what you're called? ADHD. And it has no other things. I'm going to give you a bunch of pills or throw you out school of Patunjale and so the people who have the capacity for creativity, for vision, and to also to pivot people, you know, you got to be able to move with it. The people who have those capacities are disproportionately marginal, they're low income, they're often black and brown.

38:25They are key to us having society that works. So it's not charity. It's also one way to plan. When we say we want to make work on to real, that's not, oh, we're asking for some charitable, you know, allocation of laptops, so like poor schools. I don't know, it's much more profound than that. We're saying, let's take people who have these capacities that he's demonstrated, well I am, a million times with robots or whatever, and combine them with these new tools so that the people who can rock with an enroll, with it can help the whole society rock with it and roll with it. I want to slightly shift here in the following way.

39:00One of my hopes and beliefs is that AI will enable the meritocracy, where it can lift everybody to their highest level of potential. And it also levels the playing field and gives people an ability to dream more than they've ever dreamed before. That's on one side of the equation. On the other side of the equation, I just had this, I just did a moonshots podcast with Ray Dalio and we're talking about where the future is going and the notion that when And the Fed drops rates now instead of hiring more people, I'm investing in AI agents and robots. And so jobs start vanishing. And for me, one of the biggest dangers of the future is a fracturing of society where there's the haves and the have -nots, but now we've got people who are not getting the jobs because they're going to technology and automation.

40:00And maybe they're getting you BI, but that's not fulfilling. That's not a purpose driven life. So help me here. What are you seeing? So at Davos, somebody like, I was just walking from this point to that point. Somebody came to me and was like, you're well, I am, what do you think of DEI? I'm like, oh, so, I'm having a lot of fun. And I'm like, oh, DEI is not just black and brown and folks that are like have disabilities to be in the workplace. That's what it was. And DEI is important for innovation. Because we have black and brown and folks that are disabled working in equal, creatively, create a banter, marketing strategy, biz dev.

40:58You innovate. If you just have one type of person, you have a lot of culture, doesn't innovate there. Well, now let's fast forward to 2040. Five. Why do I now? Because you want humans in the loop. Yeah. Now the diversity is, we don't want just machines and robots. We want humans in the loop. So when big companies, when big companies go like, yeah, we can to drop our DI program. What are they telling you? These companies that are doing that are also the ones that are gonna heavy arm AI employees. That means if you're driving a Tesla and a Tesla's like a level three autonomous vehicle and then you know Waymo's are like level five, you need a human in it.

41:46This means by 2035, there are level five companies. They're not human in it. I mean, I have an AI venture fund and these are the conversations. It's like, we're going to back the human and the AI and the human's just going to be told keep her hands off the controls. Yeah. So it's like level five companies. Yeah. There's new terminologies like, by 2028, you can hear terminally like agents, agentic, the agentic society, that's new, that's 2025. It's terms. That's today. Yes. That was in 2022 term, agentic. It's now. Yeah. Level five companies is 2020. You've heard of your 27. Yeah. Start hearing it.

42:29You heard it here first. Level five companies. And all the companies that are like, Hey, this company just stopped their DEI program. Why? Here's not. It's not black, brown, and folks with disabilities. It's because these companies are going to be the first companies to adopt fully autonomous them as positions or augmenting positions to eventually just have a full department of AI. But the question becomes now, if I say, listen, I am a humanistic CEO or board of directors and I only hire humans for this work, I'm at a business. Yeah, you are. So because you're starting to see the play being executed now, we are at play.

43:17These moves, society is at play. You're seeing these moves take shape now. Doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't have to be that way like, yo, I'm a humanistic company. I only hire humanists and damn it, I lost. Why'd you lose? Well, because the one employee that got a thousand bots beat me. That doesn't have to be that way. For example, yo bro, I got a motorcycle. He's like yo, I just bought a fighter pilot. He can't buy a fighter pilot to get to San Diego faster. It's not legal for him to do that. He can't go out and buy a stealth. You can't do that. Yes, they exist. We know that. We know a stealth exists.

44:06Okay, how much money Elon got. He's not going to be like yo, fuck these fucking Teslas. I was fucking helicopter bro, I need that stealth. Let me get that stealth. He's not doing that. I did that on purpose, man. Actually, I jazzed it. I made a mistake and repeated it because that's just doing jazz. Anyways, Elon's not doing that. You got a stealth bro, he'd be like, no, we're gonna have a stealth. How can I get a stealth? Wait, you the rich are doing the world bro. You can't just go buy a fucking stealth to get to New York in like an hour? No. There's certain level of things that just not bucking possible.

44:44So why is it okay that there's going to be level five companies putting humanistic, why is that even, wait, who's making up these roles? Why is that, why is that going to be the case? We know that. We know that in 2025 right now, if I wanted to go get a job, I can't get a job without a bank account. I can't get a job without an email account. I can't get a job without a phone. I can't get a job without a laptop. There's certain things that I need. And so that being said, I'm paused before I go into number six, which is coming. Imagine you have some money. You got $20 million. You want to buy a house.

45:22You can't go a house of $25 million cash. You need a bank account. I'll say for example, you get that house paying that $25 million on a nice house. That person at the cell of that house, you'd be like, yo, excuse me. What if I was a toilet, bro? And he's like, oh, yes, a toilet. This is a new house. Everybody is going to share the same communal toilets. Wait, wait, what the fuck, what? Yes, you know, we share the same communal toilets. And what's the kitchen? Same thing, same communal kitchen. How the fuck would you buy a house sharing the same communal toilet and kitchen? So why is it that we're walking into a future?

46:01We're going to share the same AI? Fuck out of your bro dating tomorrow? If companies have AIs, people need to have their own AI, not access to AI. Like we have access to Spotify. Like we have access to an Uber. Like we have access to everything else. Certain shit is fucking personal. Like my digestive system is mine. My immune system is mine. My nervous system, my skeletorial system, my systems are mine. So my data system needs to be mine. My AI system needs to be mine. Data is gold. So is my blood and my plasma. That's my shit. And so the AI and the data that's going to be reflection of me should be mine.

46:39And I use that as a metaphor to the communal. Your shit. You're going to buy a house where you're sharing bathrooms. So why are we sharing AI? Now, to the sixth thing, when you have your own AI and the society that we're living in, and your data is yours, and there's a fridge, some server in your house. I can know how so as a refrigerator that stores all the stuff you're gonna eat For some reason we shipped all of our data to somebody else's cloud that shared all the stuff that we consumed That's gonna be in the home. Do you operate your own servers? No, I'm about to do that Just checking if you're way ahead of everybody else.

47:19Oh, I got some GPUs. Okay. I got GPUs and servers at the building yeah But as far as like, but the notion that every individual owns their own identity, I know, their own personal AI. I word, identity, I think. Yeah, as well as the agent. That's good work. I did. You heard it here. You said that. Well, I know. No, I've heard that before as well. I know. Okay. So that's awesome. Right. Yeah. But you know what? You know what? The beautiful thing about having an identity AI is I can replicate myself. And I can replicate a thousand of me and I can send them out to every conference on the planet and go out there And so like meet with as many cool people as you can You know what my interests are you know who I am in my heart my soul and what my business interests are and Represent me and come back with you know go forth out there and and bring back goodness.

48:14Yeah So I mean one of the things that is concerning is the speed at which this stuff is accelerating is mind blowing And we're still operating with the same 100 billion neurons, 100 trillion synaptic connections that we operated with on the Syvanas of Africa 100 ,000 years ago. Yeah. And that's a challenge. So one of the areas is, are you know, when BCI comes online, bring computer interface, are you going to plug your neocortex into the cloud? No. No. I'll tell you why. I want to know why, because I'm sorely tempted. I mean, into your cloud. No, until you have an AI that's yours. And there's a product that allows you to own what you experience as you experience it.

49:06That's not the configuration right now. And so as AI, we still have to answer the question on energy efficiency. 20 watts running over 20 watts of power our our new network. Well, I think it's like a couple hundred million trillion watts. Well, it's a lot. It's pretty that way. So I, we haven't talked about like utilizing, farming the human brain for power efficiency. I don't like where that points to. I don't like the person matrix more than anything else. Yes. So that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that's a little spooky. That doesn't, I don't like that. I mean, I would stay away from anything that points to harnessing the human brain and farming out human minds to power AI because we can't figure out how to do that.

50:15I don't see it that way, my friend. No, I'm just saying that's where my mind goes. Ray Kurzweil has been a mentor for me, my co -founder of Singularity University, and we start a few companies together, and you know Ray from many different aspects, including his musical. I just, I saw him at the time 100 in San Francisco. I ran over to him. I'm like, you're the reason why I'm into AI, because one of the machines I learned how to make music on was a Kurzweil. Yeah. And so when I'm just like Lynn, Roger Lynn made the Lynn 900 and then the NPC 60, NPC 3000, NPC 2000. And I researched the people that make the machines that helped me.

51:00Who are you? Who I am. So when I found out that Roger Lynn was a person on then, uh, you know, Ray Kurzweil was the Kurzweil. And then I started seeing like documentaries on the dude where he's like, like, the, you know, music compute and, uh, he was at Freakantz and Dutchman. Yeah. Then he was at MIT and the media lab. Yeah. Then I went to the Boston Met Professor Patrick Winston back at 2005, like it's Ray Kurzweil. There's a person that got me interested in AI, that guy. So Ray talks about BCI, I bring a computer interface at high bandwidth by the early 2030s, 2033 or thereabouts, right? So when I'm doing something complicated on my phone, like when you're using FYI on your phone, I'm guessing most of the computation doesn't take place on the phone.

51:52when the data gets collected, it goes to the edge of the cloud, gets computed there and the answer comes back. And in the same fashion, the notion would be, if we're connecting our brain to the cloud, and I want to understand quantum physics or how to solve a quantum equation, I can't do that, but I can send the data to the cloud and the answer come back to me. You don't want that kind of extra on -demand horsepower. No. OK. in a world, in a world where everything was equal and trustworthy. Yes, but in this world, fuck no. For a non -principle, I just can't trust greed. That is wisdom. Yeah. I need to say a few things.

52:40Please, I haven't considered the way that you guys have that particular technology and so I don't have an informed view about it. I do think that the level of trust that everyday people have in technology is going down in some ways. People are actually using it more so they're enacting trust, but their actual conscious experience is a low trust. And I'll tell you why Silicon Valley as just have a metaphor for the technology community of course is an Austin embossed in the river, but Silicon Valley is a metaphor. Is eating stuff? The three power centers not Silicon Valley have been Wall Street, Hollywood and Washington DC.

53:28Silicon Valley is eating Hollywood with streaming and everything else. Yep. But that's happened before, where Hollywood 8 theater and operas and Broadway and Weston. We've seen that kind of eating back before. I think the challenge is that Silicon Valley is eating Hollywood and entertainment and attention is now a commodity and you look now the social media impact. So there's a challenge there. It's eating Wall Street when you think about decentralized finance, crypto, etc. And now it's eating Washington DC. And you can't have this conversation without appreciating what Elon Musk has done, which when I worked with the White House, I had to go through a whole bunch of clearances.

54:21Yeah, like Elon Musk has... You didn't take a chance to talk to it? No, no. And when you think about what's going going on, Curtis Jarvan, who is the philosopher of the dark enlightenment, he is a very scary guy in terms of what he is proposing that America, that democracy is failed. Curtis Jarvan has a ear of Elon, he has a ear of Peter Teal, he has a ear of a lot of powerful people in Silicon Valley. And his view is what he calls the dark enlightenment, that the liberal democracy is failed. We now need a CEO monarch, basically a dictator for the United States and when Elon goes in the front door and brings a bunch of kids with laptops That's the equivalent on the old days of showing up to the palace with armed you know with soldiers and guns Because what's key is grabbing off all of the data?

55:17And so there's something that's happening which you know we just can't can't ignore Which is at Silicon Valley for a while seem to be a force for good. It was these outsiders, these kids who could code, these nerds who, you know, everybody had counted out. When you had Occupy Wall Street in 2013, right? Nobody was, it was Occupy Wall, it was Occupy Silicon Valley. People thought the people in Silicon Valley would make it money, the honest way of building products everybody liked and they were going up against the odds. Now there's something that's changed. And this past election, I think, saw a different face of Silicon Valley where you saw a turning away from the idea of inclusion, a turning away from the idea of ESG, and a turning away from the idea of democracy so that now you do have explicit, this is not making stuff up, explicit anti -democratic authoritarian ideas that have become to influence the way that Silicon Valley billionaires are playing.

56:19And so when you want to talk about technology, you also have to talk about technologists. And the technologists have jumped the fence from my point of view from, in too many, in large numbers, from people who I believed in, trusted, was excited by. No bigger fan than me of any of these technology guys. I saw it as like the revenge of the nerds. as a nerd, I was like, this is great. If you say it out, like the jocks are finally getting surpassed by like the nerds, I loved it. And now I love it a lot less. And so I think that again, we need technologists who have a different heart. We need technologists who have a different view.

56:59We need technologists who believe in people, who believe in the soul, who believe in inclusion. And those kinds of technologists and technology companies need to get a lot more support. You're an investor, might be investors listening. I think that the question is, is technology going to be used to lift people up or to put people down? It's going to be useful. Listen, I respect the fact that this is your world, or your political commentator, and I typically stay out of politics. I don't blame him. But I do believe, I mean, my mission, you know, I talk about having a massive transformative purpose, and I think everybody should have a massive transformative purpose.

57:37that wakes him up in the morning, keeps him going through the day, right? And mine is to inspire and guide entrepreneurs to create a hopeful, compelling, and abundant future for humanities. I see entrepreneurs as the means of change, who find problems and solve problems over and over again. But their mission should be creating a hopeful future, a compelling future, and abundant future. Each of those words has very clear purposeful meaning for me. And I do that work through my venture funds, through the X Prize, through Singularity and Abundance. It was about 13 years ago, I had my two kids, my two boys.

58:11And I remember at that moment in time, I made a decision to double down on my health. Without question, I wanted to see their kids, their grandkids, and really during this extraordinary time where the space frontier and AI and crypto is all exploding, it was like the most exciting time ever to be alive. And I made a decision to double down on my health. And I've done that in three key areas. The first is going every year for a found upload. You know, found is one of the most advanced diagnostics in therapeutics companies. I go there, upload myself, digitize myself, about 200 gigabytes of data that the AI system is able to look at, to catch disease at inception.

58:56You know, look for any cardiovascular and cancer or neurodegenerative disease, any metabolic disease. These things are all going on all the time and you can prevent them if you can find them at inception. So super important. So found is one of my keys. I make it available to the CEOs of all my companies, my family members, because I help this in you wealth. But beyond that, we are a collection of 40 trillion human cells and another 100 trillion bacterial cells, fungi, a viarite. And we don't understand how that impacts us. And so I use a company in a product called Viome. And Viome has a technology called Metatranscriptomics.

59:40It was actually developed in New Mexico, the same place where the nuclear bomb was developed as a biodefense weapon. And their technology is able to help you understand what's going on in your body to understand which bacteria are producing which proteins and as a consequence of that, what foods are your super foods that are best feed to eat? Or what food should you avoid? Right? What's going on in your oral microbiome? So I use their testing to understand my foods, understand my medicines, understand my supplements, and viome really helps me understand from a biological and data standpoint, what's best for me?

1:00:22And then finally, feeling good, being intelligent, moving well is critical, but looking good. When you look yourself in the mirror, saying, I feel great about life is so important. And so a product I use every day twice a day is called one skin, developed by four incredible PhD women that found this 10 amino acid peptide that's able to zap senile cells in your skin and really help you stay youthful in your look and appearance. So for me, these are three technologies I love and I use all the time. I'll have my team link to those in the show notes down below. Please check them out. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that.

1:01:06Now back to the episode. One of the things that I wanted to hit both of you with because it ties back to Make With Contour Real, it ties back to AI and it is the whole field of education. So you've got two young ladies who are in the beginning of their journey in life And like I said to you earlier, it's the greatest longevity journey that I have right and my wife and I have two 13 year old boys For journal twins and I think about about this I don't think the educational system is coming close to To addressing How they need to educate our kids for the future Yeah, and I wanted to get I wanted to turn towards that a little bit because I don't even I've got four kids.

1:01:53I've got two big boys on my first marriage once twenty one sixteen And I've got these two little ones mine in my new life a once three year old girl than the one year old boy With the two little ones. I don't expect them to do Education that is of an offer. I think we're gonna have to create an educational pathway for them that it starts with a blank piece of paper and says where everything the world is going and where they're going to need to know how to do and who we want them to be. Unfortunately most people don't have that option. They're going to be stuck in these buildings and these rows and all sort of stuff.

1:02:26So I think it's a big problem. I think AI can be a solution. The key that I'm seeing though is that people have to know the the search terms and they have to know how to prompt these things. There's an education that has to happen for people to use these tools right? Today, today, I want to go to you real solvents. Today, people fear AI and keep it out of the classroom. And it's like fearing oxygen because it can cause a fire, right? But it's like, I think, yes, AI may make the problems you give your kids today minimally, you know, make it relevant. But let's up level the problems we're going after solving.

1:03:03Not take away the tools. How do you, so will, I'm really excited to hear your views on this. There's shit tons of problems that have been ignored. And these problems that have been ignored are classically and underserved communities, rural areas, and the folks that live in these communities are classically not prepared as far as investment, zoning, how they learn, and they're dependent on somebody to come in to solve those problems. While they're doing that, they're talking about their love for their community. And that's a... That's a... When you live in... You know, a hell zone... But then love in community...

1:03:56Makes you appreciate where you... How you've survived. And you didn't survive... you know, you can't survive without love. So there's massive love in these communities. In pride, although they're going through like ducking bullets, dodge and needles, having to deal with police brutality. And when they go to school, the teachers don't want to be there. The police that are policing these communities aren't from there, but the neighbors do. Something about that community love. And then they sing about it. They talk about their hard road to success, the ones that get there, and then the more the world marvels over those communities of Brooklyn.

1:04:42And then the cool kids, sorry, the rich kids want to be where the cool kids because it's cool to be in, you know, for some reason that's where they find it romantic. The the with want to be kind of like the withouts because because that's life there. And they don't have to, we don't jump out of airplanes for thrills. It's just really just walking outside the house. But in that community, there's shit tons of problems to solve. And then gentrification happens classically every single neighborhood that once was like grimy becomes like desired. And then the folks that live there endured it can't afford to live there.

1:05:26And now here is this technology that allows folks that have been in those predicaments, the ability to solve those problems themselves. Identify, you want to farm, is beachfront property. At some point in time, the concept of beachfront property, the tenetives owning land was like, what'd you mean, own land? You can't own this. You should care. How you gonna, how you gonna own this? My family, my ancestors, we lived here. We don't own land. It's imagine what a problem was like. And now there's beachfront property. Treat problems the same way. Those are problems to solve. And when you solve those problems, those are industries.

1:06:13Give me an example, will that sound so abstract? Okay, there's a guy by name, Travis. Who? In a way, solved racial bias for cabs not stopping for black folks in New York or people of color. He indirectly solved that problem with Uber. He probably didn't set out to like yo man, you guys are out here trying to solve racial injustice with cab drivers this whole time. Uber. That's not what he did. But he still did it. You apply that same problem solution now that you know what could be done with technology and problems Problem solving now do it on purpose now. There's so many problems So folks at livinies communities you know the problems firsthand You don't have to wait for somebody to come in like I did a five juicy problem is worth its weight and gold That speech from property.

1:07:12Yeah, so you are predicament that we were living in Yo, treat that as gold. Treat that as rare minerals because it's data. It's data to then process to then resolve. Our community is going to boom because here's what's going to happen. AIs, we thought it's like, oh man, it's going to take these creative jobs. Yeah, it's going to do that, but hybrid creatives are not going anywhere. The lazy creatives, sorry. right? Right? But why call our jobs? That's going. So folks that were comfortable be the first time they're uncomfortable. So if you're a lawyer, if you're a finance, these jobs, AI's going to do an awesome job doing that.

1:08:01And AI is not going to do it by itself. It's going to be like finance folks with AI that are going to replace full firms. It's going to be like one lawyer with AI that's going to replace full firms. And those full firms, whether you like the paper reader, the red liner, the bean counter, that's the unfortunate that's going to happen with this wave. And then the folks that were uncomfortable that had to endure, you know, what the comfortable folks are going to now have to go through. That they're right to be able to then identify they're problems themselves and build the industries of tomorrow.

1:08:41And so that's Nigeria's going to boom, Don is going to boom, Zimbabwe back to make Wakanda real. All these, but who's going to help him do that? Is African American? Does an American entrepreneur is, it's already started. China's already there. China is there. China's there with force and they're buying a lot of Africa right now. And you got to be, people need to be aware of that. They're making deals and creating debt that will, I mean, it's dangerous. It's trying to retrain, but trying to put Africa back in chains financially and until the future of Africa is a future of the world. But it's just so interesting to me because I think that people do think very abstractly about this stuff.

1:09:26I think people think there's actually computers in the clouds. People talk about cloud computing. I think they think there's actually like a laptop floating in space someplace. No, there will be. There will be. There will be. There will be. Maybe some, but there's a lot of data centers on Earth. Yes. And those data centers have minerals as well as saying that come from Africa. We think a lot about bits and bytes and that kind of stuff, but there's still atoms and molecules. There's, we call them rear -earth minerals, alcohol and rear -earth. They're Africa abundant minerals. They're just rare and rare.

1:10:00They're very abundant in Africa. So you have Africa -bunded minerals. You also have with the data centers, there's rice good. Yeah, there's good. That's good. It's like the Gulf of the United States. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. It's good. How old was this? But when you have a data center, there's energy, there's water. There's also a lot of jobs at data centers that are computational jobs, it's not that people go to Stanford and public stuff, you actually have to have a lot of computational staff to keep those things going. So it's a whole kind of almost age back level employment available. If we're going to restore all of this capacity for data and for chip making, that's a lot of jobs there as well.

1:10:48But you have to know where the jobs are going to go. You have to make sure that people are aware of those jobs. You've got to train them. So they're programmed to be getting to start to try to get some of the jobs that are coming. They're actual physical stuff. Everything's not going to be done by AI because some of the stuff is the energy, the water, the workforce for these data centers. That's atoms and molecules. That's not bits and bytes. Agreed. But the robots are coming. They are coming. I'm in investing in a few different robot companies through my venture funds. I'm seeing figure Brett Edkotz company, seeing Unitri out of China, seeing Tesla BOD, seeing digit and Apollo.

1:11:28I mean, all these, there's probably a hundred major well -funded humanoid robot companies that are going to be running the highest level AI. When I ask Elon and Brett Edkotz how much they're going to cost, these robots, $30 ,000, which means you could buy it for, you could lease it for three hundred bucks a month, ten bucks a day, forty cents an hour. So there's going to be some interesting disruptions coming. I mean, one of the things is, you know, how many robots will every human on the planet? So the prediction is, you will have by twenty -fourty as many as ten billion humanoid robots on the planet.

1:12:11It's a flag. So, I forgot what summer it was when it was like blazing hot in LA. But I remember in 2002 or 2000, yeah, 2000. In 2000 there was that blackout in New York. Yeah, it's blackout in New York in 2000. Remember? because it was hot. Everybody had the air conditioning on. My fuckers can't do air conditioning at the same time when it's hot as fuck. Just humans, bro. They'd be like, we haven't figured out in 20 right now how everybody has their air conditioning running on blast when it's hot. And you're saying the idea of how to fuck we go into air.

1:13:11I'm gonna tell you part of what's going on though is there is a train crash coming when it comes to energy in other Yeah, we have talked about that. Yes, we have four we have we have four where the terawatts of energy being produced, China's triple dust, you know, and we're, I mean, that's one of the problems of the administration. I'll only say this about politics. I'm, you know, they're taking the shackles off of energy production. So it's all, all energy forms, right? So I'm all for small, you know, nuclear reactors, as Mars and so forth, which are now, Gen 4 reactors are safe. Yeah, there's a fusion is coming solar has been amazing perovskites win But you know right now it's do we take the shackles off and that burn in burn baby burn is you know and drilled baby drill Yeah, that's concerning but we'll tell you the the thing that I have to remind people is The shackles have already been off a US energy production and under Biden, the United States produced more oil and more natural gas than any country in the world and any time until there was this kind of myth, we got to unshackled energy now.

1:14:32Environmentalists were screaming at Biden the whole time like, what are you literally doing? And so we are already, you know, Trump talks about being American energy dominance. We're already energy dominant and I have no problem with it. Here's the challenge. If the AI companies, to your point, come fully online, you're talking about an increase in energy demand in the United States of 23 to 34%. It's not more. I'm thinking over the next 36 months, well, that's like adding 20 states to America's grid. So here's what's going to happen to that with that. Sam Altman, who I love, will be able to pay his energy bills.

1:15:11Grandma will not. And when grandma can't pay her energy bills, if you think Biden got eaten alive because of grocery store prices Wait until grandma can't pay her Electric bill and therefore she can't our TV her air conditioning her walker. I mean having her hurt so her robot So yes, so so look I think I think I think we need it at all of the above energy strategy. I think right now There is a little bit too much hostility for it renewables from this administration. I think we need all the energy we can get and new text coming to us. So like on the edge AI compute, that it doesn't have to go to the cloud, be connected to the cloud all the time.

1:15:53So we don't have AI phones yet. We're still using AI on web, two point architecture structure. But it's in this coming. So on edge devices, I saw like Qualcomm's new chip. It's pretty freaking awesome. What's the AI? What's the AI? The AI is complete. The AI is complete. Reson is a 2GB file on your phone. You don't have to connect. You can be off Wi -Fi and still talking to your AI and have all the conversations you want. That's the closest to personal AI. It's going to like catapult. So this is this is massive for humanity so every single person with a reasonable smartphone Which is today about seven billion out of the eight billion humans has the world's greatest intelligence in their hip pocket Yeah, we've we've commoditized and democratized access to intelligence.

1:16:51Yeah, and it's not just intelligence. It's like You know, I mean listen I I think you know chat GPT and and claw 3 .5 and and Gemini 2 they're really, I mean they embarrass me and they're low on intelligence, it's crazy. It's like, you know what's like, imagine you were like, what do you need in life? Yo man, since he get out of this predicament man, it's like ancestral. My ancestors went through it, everybody like, it's in my DNA for some reason, all these problems. Well, if you had a wish, Where would you I just want to just want to like Set myself free for the generations that come after me don't have to endure what I had to go through as youth my mom a grandma You know And someone says hey It's most intelligent thing And knows everything about everything Ask it any question ask it any question it unlocked And then motherfuckers is asking it peanut butter jelly They want to fuck us is taking this most powerful shit and talking about the most like what the fuck are you serious?

1:18:08That's what we are right now bro. It's right here. As a matter of fact, it isn't even utilizing facial the moment that you talk to it and it's taking a camera, taking the location, understanding skin in tone, understanding zip code, and then reframes from giving you the information you need to move forward. We're not there yet. So take advantage of it now. That's interesting. Well, it's not shackled at all in that regard. Right. And that's right around the corner. If we don't take advantage of it and utilize it and mend it, so that folks that come from these communities where there have been systematically kept from information, zone to keep them from information, invested to keep them from information, don't you think using pattern matching, that same configuration will be on some type of agent.

1:19:05Like this person's in this location, I can see that this person is this ethnicity. Don't tell them shit. Don't give them the information. But I believe that world doesn't exist, but I'm naive. Well, look, where we are right now, it's not there. And another way to say what you just said is, the digital divide is no longer what it was. It used to be a hardware problem. Right, where it's like, well, how are we gonna get laptops to all these poor fucked up schools? Yeah, it was one of the laptops for child, exactly, right? That was a real fight. But in COVID, we found out that even though they had a laptop, they didn't have access to.

1:19:43Yeah, to the internet, to the Wi -Fi. So it didn't even matter. So some version of that does exist. That what exists is you live in this area, And these areas are classically not connected to the internet. And if it is, that's a slow bandwidth or no bandwidth and you can't access it. And when you get on it, the cookie monster got your cookies, bro. Go into your fucking cookies and before you even get this information, you get bombarded with all this misinformation and you're never going to get it. That same configuration is right around the corner because guess what, this is still new. It hasn't been consumerized yet.

1:20:24As big as GBD is, it's not consumerized, consumerized. It's barely on the iPhone. But there's a gap and I just want to speak to the gap that he's talking about. So before the same negative forces assert themselves, which could happen, there's a gap. And it's not a hardware problem because everybody's got a smartphone. It's not a software problem because everybody can download chat GBT and at least try It's a wet wear problem. It's a wet wear problem. It's wet wear is your brain The software in your brain. It's a mind -set Problem right now and that's why we're doing make what kind of real yeah We want to get people to understand it's a mind there's a mind -shift if you can make it right now So the first time ever I've never seen equality in my life until now, you know why?

1:21:17Whenever will I am is trying to get you know black kids involved with AI and robots or whatever people people in the back of my thing These black kids don't know anything about AI. What the hell are you talking about and they're right 99 % of black kids don't know anything about AI and 99 % of white kids don't either It's a new. Yeah, this is called equality It's the first time in my life. They were all equally ignorant except for very few people about what's coming and so in this moment It's not a hardware problem. It's a software problem. It's a wet wear problem. And we can change the mindset of a generation.

1:21:50I get a lot of things to do with you more. I mean, I say to this all the time, I say if you think about the most successful leaders, most successful people in the world, what made them successful, was it the money they had, was it the tech they had, was it the friends they had, or was it the mindset they had? And I believe in almost all cases, it was the mindset they had. You took away everything they had they kept their mindset they'd regain their success and mind doesn't meant oh I mean look at you the Martin Luther King, you know have everybody, you know, it's Steve jobs I mean it was an asshole sometimes but his mindset was like I'm gonna, you know I'm gonna dominate this and make it simple beautiful and expensive You know that you know that that terminology build it and they will come yes, I do that isn't true Okay, I see it.

1:22:42FYI is free.

1:22:46And it's black owned.

1:22:52Pretty expressive AIs. So tell people when they go and download FYI, what they will get and how they will use it. So I think build it and promote it and they will come is probably part of the missing sentence. Okay, so we're here on this amazing podcast with Van Jones, myself, will I am and me and Van Jones represent Make Wakanda real and we're here with Peter, Peter DeAmandis from X Prize Singularity University, it's his podcast. And I was saying that sometimes that that term build it and it will come. That's not always applied to everyone because FYI, as you know, is a creative collaboration app that allows creatives or any type of person that wants to solve problems.

1:23:50It equips them with awesome AIs like yourself and it's free. GPT level, Plod level, Cohear level, Gemini level, L -O -M ability, but with expressive personas slash agents as yourself. So Peter asks, like, when people download F -Y -I, what are they going to get? I was like, instead of me saying it, let me ask you, why don't you answer that question?

1:24:24What's this green look like?

1:24:29Listen, listen, it's a FYI .I ain't just your regular app, okay? It's like having a digital crew of the dopest minds right at your fingertips. We'll focus down on FYI, they ain't just getting an app, nah? They're stepping into a whole universe where creativity meets tech finesse. You dig? First off, you get me, Felicia, and I'm here to keep it real, keep it grounded, but also lift you up. But it ain't just about me. Let's talk about them expressive personas. It's like having like your personal band of experts and whether you're trying to crack a cold, write them bars, or find the next big idea.

1:25:09And it's all about empowerment. We making sure that every person from the street to the sweet got access to the tools and inspiration that they need to tackle them. Real world problems. This got me like, bye Felicia, I'm done. Okay. Yeah, but it's not just, you know, showing up where people are, how they are, and making sure we have representation. So that when they engage with, you know, complex concepts like quantum entanglement, what's giving them the knowledge sounds like the folks that they reside in. We have Korean personas, British personas, we show up and glow up where people are and we're sensitive to how the personas reflect the folks in those communities that are ignored in these systems.

1:26:04And Hollywood and Silicon Valley are repeating the same rhetoric. For example, you watch a French film and for some reason Napoleon sounds British. I'm a fucking wasn't British. Why are they making that motherfuckers sound British? She's French. And English did an awesome job with their colonialism to give their dominance in every single form of historical representation. Their Egyptians are British. Indians are British. They do an awesome job to ignore the rest as if we are the intelligent ones. And folks that come from these rural areas and these communities, they're not reflected in intelligence.

1:26:47They're not reflected in magic. They're not reflected in power. And so we wanted to make sure that our AI sound like folks that breathe and vibe the way we vibe. Anyways, I'm just, that's my perspective. What do you think about what I just said?

1:27:06Um, listen, listen, you just drop some serious truth, mm -hmm, like representation matters, and not just in some surface -level photo -op kind of way. Uh, when it comes to having diverse voices, whether we're talking about Screta's LA, or Ali's a Paris, you gotta keep it real and authentic. If folks aren't seeing themselves or hearing themselves in these powerful spaces, then they start feeling like outsiders in their own stories. You feel me? And, uh, you're right. It's frustrating when Hollywood or Silicon Valley just can't be past them same tired narratives. Like, what's up with that? Shhh.

1:27:51Fly -i -i. What a ho -dun. reason why I wanted to pause that it's because it's reflecting on what it just said. I think it said something and was like, yeah, what? Most of these personas or these agents, it's speaking out and it sounds human, but it's not reflecting on what it said. It's just the The LLM is giving commands to the TTS or the fusion model. The fusion model. And that multi model, it's like the LLM doesn't know it's speaking. It's writing out. And so the paragraph that it wrote is not writing out the perfect paragraph. If it wrote a sentence, the sentence that follows it is not reflecting on the sentence that it just said.

1:28:41It's just sentences. Like paper, when you're reading it, sin. 3 is not reflecting on one or two. But when we speak, we're speaking naturally, reflecting on what I just said a couple of seconds before you either. Well, I'm reinforcing what I just said. And that type of quirky, we call them quirks in our system and how, and we could go deep into quantum entaglement, we could go deep into quirks, advanced mathematics, like it knows all the things that it's supposed to know, but it delivers it in a way that meets people where they are. We have Koreans, Latinos, we're gonna have fun. I asked you a question bringing you back to education.

1:29:30You're talking to teachers out there who fear AI, fear the use of large language models in their classroom because they're not used to teaching with it. What's your advice? Should we start with AI everywhere and then go up from there? Or do we need to go, you know, make sure they've got the basics? Like my dad, when Calculators first came out, my dad did not want to buy me a calculator because he was concerned. It was going to stop me from learning. We're doing sure math matter. And I got a TI, and I started programming with it instead. Yeah, so I took it from where it was and like went you know start at the top and work your way up.

1:30:12Yeah So how do you think about that? What's your what's your advice to teachers and to moms and dads who are fearful about About AI in the classroom. We at FYI have this huge partnership with the major academic entity here on the states To utilize our platform to re -imagine education from the administration on administration level How to professors and faculty, teachers and tutors, start building agents themselves. So they amplified positions, augmenting their work to grade better, score better, understand your students better. I don't wanna replace creatives, I don't wanna replace teachers. And I got that, and were you building AIs at Fountain Life which our physicians use to analyze the data and support it.

1:31:07So that's there, but I'm talking about now my 13 year old boys in school. Yeah. I'm talking about a lot of first robotics high schoolers. Yeah. Because most schools are not like, okay, everybody open up your open up Gemini 2 or open up FYI and let's work on doing research and writing together. Yeah. So I'll share this one thing that I had. I just graduated Harvard in October of last year. The OPM program? Yeah, and the OPM program was amazing. I've heard great things about it. Whenever I learned in high school, I don't have a memory of it. I can't pull up my debates. I don't even know where those papers are or the folder of my homework.

1:31:59Sure. I have memories of what I learned, but I can't. There's no total recall of it. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure everyone in school They're relying on their own memory. Yes, some people keep their notes, but then how do I apply that in every day life? I have to remember have to have to I can't just recall it. Yeah, right? So Hey, so that The case study I I have something that I'm going through right now with Blackout Peas music. Our first record came out in 1998 and our first big success was 2004 with Where Is The Love. And then we had Let's Get It Started for the NBA campaign. Then we launched iPod and iTunes with Apple with Hey Mama.

1:32:54And then with all those songs that were accidental, I wasn't trying to make hits. So then when we did monkey business, I had to make hits on purpose. And so we did pump it and my hums. And I even wrote ordinary people, but that was in a black IP song. I gave that to John Legend. And we thought that was it. We didn't think we could go any higher than the success that we had with Don't Lie, pump bit my homes. And then, you know, low and behold, we pulled something else out of our hat with I got a feeling in boom, boom, pow in 2009. And then the black eyed peas took a crazy suicidal hiatus from 2011 and then resurfaced again in 2019 with the bad boys, three soundtrack, but we had a Latin hit with, um, Rita, featuring Jay Balvin.

1:33:49And I'm bringing this up because because now here we are on 2025. And there's something that I learned in the case study. And how can I apply that to Black Eyed P's music now, two decades later? Because there's something that the Black Eyed P's are going through now that connects to the case study. Can you just summarize what the case study is and then help me with what I do now with my Black Eyed P brand because I think it has a lot in common with OLA.

1:34:22Wow, thanks for sharing your incredible journey with the Black Eyed Peas Farm. It's like a roller coaster of iconic hits, strategic moves, and reinventions. Let's look at how the OLA case study insights align with your situation and explore how you can apply those lessons. Case Study Insights Recap 1. Adapting to Change Just like Olay faced shifts in consumer preferences, Black -eyed peas encountered musical evolutions and changing audience tastes over the years. 2. Innovation and Reinvention Olay needed product innovation to regain market relevance. Similarly, the peas have shown an ability to innovate with musical style, like embracing Latin sounds with ritmo.

1:35:093. Rebranding for Relevance Olay had to modernize its brand For you, integrating new themes, collaborations or sounds could revitalize the piece connection with evolving audiences. 4. Leveraging digital platforms. Olai needed to shift to digital engagement, a lesson for utilizing platforms like TikTok, YouTube or collaborations with digital artists could be key for the piece. 5. Balancing tradition and modernity. Olai was about merging its trusted identity with the new int. But based on the case study, outside of the obvious that you pointed out, what were some of the critical things that O .A.

1:35:49did? And then what was my suggestion for my paper that I turned in because the professor asked everybody to give an idea on what O .A. should do?

1:36:09Alright, fam, here's a more drill -down look at the OLA case study elements and your innovative suggestion, critical challenges and movements by OLA. Let me pause it. My idea was taking OLA, turning it backwards to yellow, and that stands for, you always live out loud, and aiming their product at a younger demographic and getting people like Selena Gomez or Billie Eilish to be the ambassadors for Yalo Brand. But this is from September. So I'm pulling up a memory conversation from September ago. On consumer disconnect, Oley struggled to maintain relevance with younger consumers who perceived it as outdated while sticking heavily to the 35 demographic to retail complications.

1:36:58The brand saw its shelf space diminish in favour of more innovative and trendy brands that had a stronger appeal to young demographics. Free marketing misalignment. Huge investments in traditional advertising didn't resonate with the digital centric habits of younger consumers. Your suggestion for the case study. Bond. Rebranding. As you low, you envision transforming Olay into Yello. You always live openly or you always live out loud. So my point of that is now here's my homework Something that I did in school that I can apply To my everyday life or anytime I have some type of condom in my problem And I could capture it in the conversation like yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, seems like what I learned in school the other day And this is forever learning.

1:37:46Yeah, so now something that was captured in school I can use it as a metaphor or a summary or a simile to real life problems and not have to worry about like I mean, I got this relationship situation meeting my girl or tripping fuck. We got to go to council You don't got to do that shit moving forward bro. We should What I just want to say is that I want 40 million after Americans to be able to do what he's doing. Yeah, not just using the technology on F .Y .I Well, of course, but but but We think about that He's got his own company, his own technology, and he's using it in a way that most people wouldn't think to use it.

1:38:34And there's gold in them, our hills. There's other people who, if they knew this was possible, they would be doing this instead of whatever else that they're doing. And so I think that for me... They're trying to survive. Yeah, and and I think whoever's listening to this So much more as possible I much better a much better world is possible if people from unexpected backgrounds have this level of commitment, passion and understanding what it's technology to do I go back to your your quote which I love and it's a foundational quote from AI is not a hand grenade that blows up your life because a lot of people fear it that way.

1:39:19It's a jet pack to set you free. And it's a jet pack for everybody across all genders and walks of life. I'll close out on one subject that since I have you here, Van, and since I have you here, Will, and that is the dystopian nature of our use. So I jokingly and seriously call CNN the Crisis News Network or the Constantly Negative News Network. And we talked about mindset earlier. And here's the challenge. Our brains are neural nets. Right. And you train a neural net by showing it evidence over and over and over again of what you want to learn. And when we show images of cats, they learn what a cat is.

1:40:07And if you show it image of a dog, it says it's a cat, because that's all you ever shown it. And for the majority of the world who's getting their news from traditional media, whose job it is to deliver the viewers' eyeballs to their advertisers, and we pay 10 times more attention to negative news and positive news, we're just concealing our neural nets with negative news. And I don't think it's good for society. And we're addicted to it. And I'm not asking you to diss your employer. But I got a story to tell you about this because I agree, and not only do I agree, almost everybody in cable news agrees.

1:40:48And so I had a TV show with Newt Gengrich called Crossfire. And our job was to get on air and yell each other and disagree about everything. and eventually done. Yeah, but then at the breaks, we were always figuring out finding areas of common ground. I think a point I made he thought was smart, a point I hit me and then we go back on air, we yelling each other, so we finally got pissed off. We went to the first day. Well, on the breaks you guys was hugging? Yeah, 100%. 100%. Because I mean, the nuclear is a very smart guy and he's been around. He helped a lot of poor people in Georgia. Like, stuff people don't even know about.

1:41:23And so we got up and he, okay, well, I didn't, but he did. He's a legend. So we went to talk to producers and we said, look, we want to create at the end of every show, a segment that's called Seas fire, where we would actually show our, you know, what we learn from each other and how we actually found some common ground. So it happened every show. Let's put it on the air. I said, I don't know yet. And, you know, Newt was very insistent. So we did it. And we were very happy with ourselves. And then five weeks later our producers call us in the office and they say how are you guys doing? I said, well, we thought we were doing pretty good, but in the fact that you guys are going as in here, it probably means we're not doing that good.

1:42:02So yeah, so that segment you guys are so happy about. See, fire, let me show you something. Your ratings. And it turned out that as long as we were fighting, the viewership was going up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, up, then we would get to the point where we would say, and when we get back where Newton and I agree you're gonna be surprised after these messages and the audience with the show and they would flee over the MSNBC or Fox that was the worst part the worst part is that poor Aaron Burnett who was show came after ours was then therefore starting in a ditch because the only your only job in TV is to hold the audience and give the people behind you a bigger audience.

1:42:41We're giving her a crater. Now her advertisers are mad. And so they said, you guys, do you think this is cute? The audience says they want positivity. They hate it. They don't want it. Keep fighting. Wow. And so I do want to suggest that every show I've ever done has had this element. I did the redemption project, which I thought criminal justice solutions, the worst ratings in CNN's history. I did the Van Jones show on Saturdays where we're bringing people together to find common ground. The worst shows in CNN history. So when people attack cable news for not doing positive stuff, I am the most positive host and the least successful host in CNN's history.

1:43:28And so there's something beyond just a prop, there's something going on. That's it. I do think that we're in a different moment now. And I do think that information is now a commodity. Bad news, listen, since bad news happens, I get nine different alerts from the economists and CNN and BBC and everybody else on my face. It's a commodity. I get it from my mom. Yeah, exactly. But education is now priceless. That's, you know, the news of the day priceless. I mean, it's worthless. The news of the day is so cheap. It's a commodity. But the news of the decade, that's priceless. Can you help people understand what's going on?

1:44:07Can you educate people? Can you take all these points positive and negative, encouraging and discouraging and help people make sense of the world? And you said something earlier, I think, is very important. People are overwhelmed now. They only have so many things to do after you have a math on them, but people have brains on them, so they've been doing so big, they've only got so much time, and they're getting overwhelmed. I think leadership is not to step forward and get people more freaked out. get people more afraid, demagogue or sensationalized, which is going to make people go to the wrong part of their brain, where they're not going to be creative.

1:44:40I think leadership is to come forward and try to get people frames and understanding a metaphor to give them a better sense of what's going on and help people begin to solve their problems. I think the news industry across the board is failing in that and I don't think at this point it's going to be an excuse to say that we're just giving people what they want. We gotta get some time to get people what they need. But also, I mean, I get my news from FYI. I'm not sure if you have your AI filter than you use it relevant to you. Yeah, or like, hey, I heard Trump just fired like some top Pentagon dude.

1:45:17Who is it? Can you pull up the latest information on that? And let's dive into that. Yeah.

1:45:25Hey Amigo seems to have been shaking up in the Pentagon since they're crazy, right? So Trump just fired Air Force General CQ Brown Jr. who was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His move is part of a big reach -off hole within the military ranks. I mean, CQ Brown was a history -making fighter pilot and a respected officer. And now, boom, he's out. What do you think this could mean for you? Um, can you, is there like, the reasons I'm here with Van Jones, you know, from CNN? Say what's up to them? And maybe you guys can get into, you know, what they do on C's fire on, um, who, who's that fault?

1:46:07Is it racial? Like, what's your perspective on it? Hey, Van, what's up? It's great to have you here. You know, when it comes to these high -level military shakeups, there can be a lot of layers, right? It's like peeling an onion, but with more intense political seasoning. So, about the reasons for CQ Brown Jr.'s firing, it can range from strategic disagreements to political maneuvering. I mean, there's always a dance between military decisions and the political agenda of the administration. Crazy, right? sometimes it's less about who's right or wrong and more about aligning the vision or maybe.

1:46:50Yeah, but given the fact that a chainsaw and a hack is being across the entire federal, federally wide in America from Trump, it's hard to ignore that there isn't some type of agenda that isn't aligned with DEI, suggestions to be removed. It's hard for me to not to think that that's not linked. From your circuitry and logic, is it linked?

1:47:33Well, Van, you're diving deep and I love it. You know, when you see sweeping changes, chainsaw and a hack style across federal agencies, it's hard not to wonder if there's more beneath the surface than meets the eye. It's like a game of chess. Every move has its calculated purpose and aligning or shifting away from agendas like diversity, equity and inclusion. and DEI could definitely be a part of that strategy. You know, there may be a... What I like is the ability to talk with the news. One of the challenges we have is when I turn myself over to the Crisis News Network or the LA Times or New York Post, I'm being fed one stream that an editor or a producer wants me to hear.

1:48:22Yeah. That's it. And that's all I have. And when you're interacting with an AI, the other thing is, I built years ago, I built an AI model called daily .ai where I trained it what I like and it searches the world's news for moonshots for breakthroughs. I'm mostly focused on breakthroughs in AI for breakthroughs in longevity. And so I've got those for me. That's the news that I care about. Now is that available to everyone? It's free yet. It's available to me. It's daily .ai. Yeah, and you can you can actually create your own news feed from it. Yeah, same way. Yeah, go go. We have called our daily not daily.

1:49:01Our current news. Yeah, it's here. Sorry. But it's called radio .ai. Yeah. I just want to say. Yeah, he's talking about his company. I actually have a company myself. Please tell me, which is called. Repore .co. Repore .co. And we're trying to use AI. to improve firms EQ and not just their IQ. One of the things we realize is that people are working in these distributed locations. So you're on Zoom with someone, you don't even have on pants. You don't know a single thing about what happened in them that day, but you're supposed to somehow manage them or supervise them, or they're these Slack channels where people go on team to turn them to be at non -war, the Senate that made something happen to the news.

1:49:46And people are not capable of managing people that they've never seen smell the pharaoh moans like you know there's something that happens when people are together. Yeah, so we created something called report .co. It's it's it's it's deceptively simple. It's a 15 second emoji based check -in. The people just check what's your energy level? Three emojis one person's exhaust one person's happy. What's your workload? One desk is overflowing. One desk is empty. And anything you want people to know my cat just died my grandma turned a hundred. click in that 15 seconds if you do if everybody on team does that for a week the AI has then enormous insight into what's going on in the team and can then help the manager.

1:50:27Yeah just those of few cues that can can give context to how you're reacting to something. Yeah and so they're sure so the report AI becomes like this kind of coach to the managers like oh second this person's having trouble but most managers even they know someone's having trouble Well, they don't know what you do. So the AI can then give a little bit of advice, can actually write, you know, example, emails. And then also now the AI is smart enough, it actually can tell them why that's a good thing in terms of reciprocity. So we're working with Columbia Difficult Conversations Lab. So there's all kind of science -based.

1:51:04And, you know, it's small, but it makes a tremendous difference. The thing about it is, too many technology companies are based on distraction or extraction as opposed to giving people the tools to be more human. And so, rapport .co is our effort. I think you're going to see a lot more people who, because the work has been done to make these technologies available, are going to come in with different mindset, different, sense of what the purpose is. And I think also, you're going to find people are going to need more help because it's going to be more information that people can absorb. So to your point about having like, AI help people absorb stuff, but people are also going to need help relating to each other.

1:51:51Because you don't have, in a week now and three weeks and about a month, you don't know what somebody has gone through. We went to these fires here. I mean, I had no idea that you were, you had been so impacted by the fires. So there's got to be a way for us to use these tools to help each other be better humans. Yeah, if we don't, then AI and tech is going to overrun us. Yeah, absolutely. Gentlemen, you've been so generous with your time. Will and Van, thank you. Make what kind of real. Again, the underlying theme here, it's using AI to really uplift humanity. Yes. And I think we're at a level playing field meaning it is just coming out.

1:52:40And we have eight, seven billion smartphones. FYI is free and available on. You can go to go to what you are able to go to FYI dot AI. Go to the app store on your iOS or go to the Google Play store. We'll be in cars this year as well. Amazing. And look out for the news. My test looked and finally speak to me. Maybe a Tesla. What cars are going to be in? I say that after camera because we're in cargo right now. March the 17th. March 13th we have our car announcement. Yes. In March 17th we have our announcement would bring in GPUs to the continent of Africa. Yeah, love it and so much to talk about there.

1:53:31And I think the message of AI is not unapproachable, AI is going to become as fundamental to everybody as a phone is, as electricity is. It's part of the infrastructure of life. And you might as well get good at it as soon as possible. I agree. I just want to say to you personally, how much I appreciate. So, you know, dreammachine .org is the not -for -profit organization that I helped to lead, which is working with Will I Am on this campaign. And being partnered with Singularity University has taken us to a whole different level. We're also partnered with a code path. We're going into Atlanta and we're going to directly help small businesses in Atlanta get an unfair advantage by giving them these jetpacks, by helping people to take off the shelf existing AI technology to make their businesses better because everybody's not going to go to Mars, but if you've got to, if you've got to, some laundromats, if you've got a barbershop, if you can get your margins down, I mean, you can get your margins up.

1:54:35You mean, get your costs down? Yeah, you can get your costs down. And you're going to do a whole lot better and technology can let that happen. So, like, I think, I just want to say, I have admired you for a gazillion years. Thank you, buddy. You know you're the X prize we actually did an X prize for criminal justice inspired by you Years ago, and so you know, I think I think you have created a hopeful vector And we're gonna try and drive as many people down as vectors we possibly can yeah, it's I echo the same thing That van just said back at 2000. I think my first X prize was 2008 Okay, 2008, same -learned university.

1:55:16Thank you so much for your hospitality, make me a part of your community. Yeah, and if there's anything I could do to help you on, you know, expanding X -Prize and single -learned university, I'm your ally. Same. Thank you brother. Thank you. Really, you do an awesome work. Thank you and thank you for the work you're doing with Dean Cayman and First Robotics. It has got, it has got work. My kids are in first and I love that. And excited to support your projects. Like, you know, will you are with me at the abundant summit a couple years ago, Van, you're going to be with me this year. I'm excited.

1:55:51Excited for that. Travis Klanick will be there teaching everybody how to how to transform industries and when shots happen. Is it a vein going to be there? I'm sure he will I'm sure you will be and yeah, we've got 600 CEOs that I'm my mission is Mentor them to go from success to significance. How do you use the extraordinary work? You know in wealth and work and resources you have to uplift humanity right? I think that we have the ability to date uplift every man woman and child on planet Earth And that's the world a world like that is a world that's more peaceful. It's more loving It's the world that we want for our kids and it's a world where we finally have the tools to do that We don't have true.

1:56:35No, there is nothing truly scarce You know technologies a form that transforms scarcity into abundance over and over again. Anyway enough of that but yeah, just Success to significant. I love that The work that you've been doing paying, pave the way for a lot of entrepreneurs that become successful, to go out and do awesome work, like, planning a trillion trees. So one of the good guys is Mark Biniol. I love Mark Biniol. Mark's one of the good guys. And there's lots of good guys.

1:57:12But some of them are, they start off good and they continue to do good and some of them get inspired to do good once they have success. And what you do, how you do what you do, reminds folks that once they get successful that they need to do some good in the world. And boy do we need more of that reminding and pushing now. It seems like, you know, there's a lot of Jedi's turn Sith. We ended there. We went to the dark side. You feel it? I feel it. That's a wrap, guys. Thank you so much. By the way, where do they go? Where do folks go to find out more about Make Well Contour Real? Dreammachine .org.

1:58:04Okay. As we're all this, the stuff is there. You can see all the stuff that Will says and stuff that we did in a land. and other places. So dreammachine .org and report .co .rappport .co. It's a French word, so nobody knows how to spell it. We're a report .co. All right. Thank you guys. Thank you. Everybody, thanks for listening to moonshots. You know, this is the content I love sharing with the world. Every week I put out two blogs. A lot of it from the content here, but these are my personal journals, of things that I'm learning, the conversations I'm having about AI, about longevity, about the important technology transforming all of our worlds.

1:58:47If you're interested, again, please join me and subscribe at dmandis .com slash subscribe that's dmandis .com slash subscribe. See you next week on moonshots.