The AI shockwaves are big and being felt. February 27, 2026

24:26Nothing. Okay. And it's one of those really uncomfortable situations where you kind of got to go, if the issue is real, and people will say it's not, that's fine. If the issue is real, I don't mind if my solution, I didn't propose any of those or all of those. I'm just saying, I don't know how else you do it. If that's the reality. I get you. If the circumstances are such that unchecked, it gets worse. You have to check the circumstances. By definition, that's how it works. so I suspect mate if it was me I suspect it's going to make people really grumpy again if the issue is real we have to make take some action and that action will be bad for people who have money that's how it works right just again mathematically if there's a problem and you want to solve the problem solving the problem means you have to take some money off people who are going to give the money to their kids that's how it works I'm sorry that's oh again you can say the problem's not real that's fine but there is no kind of alternative I don't reckon so go on it comes you've got to you've got to go back you've got to really zoom out and and you've got to look at first principles and you've got to ask why is it unfair if i inherit a bunch of assets can i can i step back i the word fair triggers a whole lot of people okay okay okay why is it advantageous right yes thank you okay and not to not to just because people say well this is not fair for going to take my money it's not fair fair just becomes a stupid i know you're not saying it but yeah people are hearing it's just go get well i mean i don't i don't i'm trying to do it as quickly as i really am and and i just refer people to the hard money episode i know it's i know i know it's my thing i know everyone but it's sort of like it strikes me as like this really obvious solution that we just it's just like we can't even talk about it it's not even entertained in the realm of possibility now let's just say that just for the sake of just to illustrate my point here that there's just the world that we live in right and that i've got i I am the richest man in Australia and I've got, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars and I give that all to my kids.

26:21Now, again, they don't, there's no, there's an advantage in the sense that you're at the starting line with a bunch of capital, but that definitely helps. It's only where, where the trouble is with, with, I can't, what am I trying to say here? If I want to let, I've got all the money in the world. I've decided I don't want to work. And what do I do? It's like, well, I'm going to buy a mansion. So I'm going to pay someone else to give me that mansion. and I'm going to want servants. So I'm going to have to pay for those servants. And I'm going to want a yacht. Okay, cool. And I want to eat caviar.

26:51So to fund my lifestyle, I have to start spending all of my money. And eventually that will redistribute the money. And in fact, it will distribute the money to the people who are actually doing the work and creating the value. It seems really bloody fair to me. Why isn't that the case at the moment? The case at the moment is because I've got assets. Now I've got collateral. If I've got collateral, now I've got access to new money. if I've got access to new money, I've got the Cantillon effect and now I'm getting an unfair advantage because I actually never really need to attach the capital because I can do what all sensible rich people do and this is why they're rich.

27:27If there's generational wealth going through, they lean into the function of the plumbing of the system and how it works. You know, it's like at a point those kids will spend all the money and they won't be poor and they won't be rich anymore and that will distribute to society. But if we're continually pumping new money into the system and that money is finding a home because it needs to protect its purchasing power, therefore it's buying into more assets, that means that the collateral that I'm using is going up and up and up and up, which means I can continue to refinance and refinance and refinance and continue to borrow.

27:57And I never have to touch the capital. And I'm golden for the next 4 ,000 years as long as I'm not a complete moron and I've got a sensible financial advisor here. I can perpetuate that indefinitely without me personally ever having to create any value. That's the problem. That's the problem. It's right there. And it's just like we can't imagine anything beyond, yeah, but I just need to, I need to. This is the, I get what you're saying, but there's a very uncomfortable problem with it. No matter how you do it, someone or some group of people have to decide what is too much and to take it off someone else, and then who are you going to give it to?

28:32Now, you will say or other people will say, oh, but we'll do it really fairly. It's like, will we though? Again, it's like hopefully we will, and that would certainly be a noble goal, but history would inform you. It's just like, yeah, generally it doesn't go that way. Generally, it just doesn't happen. So I don't know how to square that circle. And I just like, I know my vision is this is never going to happen. Right? I get that. I get that. But it's like it is, I am yet to find someone to explain to me why that is unfair and why it is fair, for want of a better word, I guess, you know. But I would actually think it's very appropriate to use the fair.

29:10Why it is fair that we are going to give certain commercial enterprises the ability to create money and give them very strong incentive to distribute it only to people who have assets already. Not because they're evil or they're some kind of cabal because that's just how the finance system works, right? I'm not going to lend money without collateral. But if I'm going to use my collateral to buy more assets and I'm going to perpetuate that cycle, it will only promulgate inequality. And that is exactly why we have seen the wealth divide grow so much. Like the top 20 % of our country and anyone in the world is not because they are the top 20 % most productive people.

29:50Like, right? Right? And it's like, wouldn't it be better to be in a system where it's kind of like we allow everyone to prosper, we give everyone equal opportunity as best as we can, and we don't have a financial system that privileges the already rich, the already elite. And that if you work and create value for others, you should be rewarded. I just, to me, that is just sort of like, that is brilliant. And as I said in the double episode we did, it's like, how can you begrudge an uber billionaire? It's like, well, the only way to do that was to create insane amounts of value and then not spend all of the wealth that you accrued.

30:29Like, there's like, cool, you're a legend, right? And if you want to go off and like send rockets up to Mars and data centers in space and blow it all up and all these given, then okay, that's fine. It's your money. But that money will get spent and it will get spent with people who will then have an opportunity. They got the money because they were clearly providing value to the person who was spending it. And they had the opportunity to now continue to create value and accrue wealth. I mean, the whole basis of civilization and prosperity starts with saving and investing, right? And it's sort of like, and in productive capacity and productive assets.

31:05I'm not talking about investing in a pile of brick and mortar or something like that. I'm talking about actually those kinds of things. And it's, to me, it's sort of like once you see it, it's sort of like, I know it's the man with the hammer kind of thing, but it's so clear and it's so transparent and it's almost too radical to ever, and it's very hard to see, but it's too radical to ever be an actor. So I'm a realist. It's not going to happen, I don't think, anytime soon. But if you want the honest answer to your question, that's how you do it, man. And then I'll put it on you as like, how do you decide?

31:36You're the king of Australia. How do you decide what's too much? Who are you going to give it to? So I think that would be... You can't do it non-sub... You can't do it objectively. Of course, but the problem is that's every tax. And so I think you can then... I think that argument's got to be made at a level of government rather than a level of individual taxation. So who do I give it to? Nobody. It goes to consolidated revenue like everything else. But so here's my thing about tax, mate. And this is getting off the topic a little bit, but it's really relevant given the question. Because I think everything else you said is perfectly fine.

32:09but i don't think you if your argument is who how can government decide who gets money from tax then we say well let's get rid of tax at some point we have to accept the imperfectness of a governing system that allows for the collection and use of a proportion of our income for the common good if we accept that's true then every tax has that question to be answered and every tax is either justified or unjustified on that basis and when i say every tax i mean every possible tax policy suggestion is justified. I just mean you can't say, well, we can't inherit the tax. Who are we to give it to? But we do income tax because we know who to give it to then.

32:43I don't think the argument holds unless it's all nothing. No, it's a good point. It's a good point. What I'm really saying is that we obviously need some form of tax to pay for essential services that can't be supplied in any other way. Absolutely. I'm all for that kind of stuff. but as as you've said yourself many times is we the tax has to be it has to create proper incentive schemes and if all you're doing is just saying and it's very easy to say when you're not at the top 20 i'm not at the top 20 right and it's like it's oh things are hard that person has more than me they should have and they're going to give it to the kids so no i want i want to take that and then i think then we can give this to other people and it should be like whoa so what are you trying to disincentivise?

33:28What are you trying to remedy? And is that an appropriate rational remedy, given how we know it's going to work? So you're right. We do have to step back from what I said, and then step back again, and then say, well, how? Absolutely, I agree with you there. So I had that answer, not as a whole answer, but as an approach, right? So I start with, and you've kind of covered some of it already. I simply start with as a community, and I'll say we have to agree. Now, you can't all agree, agree 100 % with everything because that's just democracy, right? So I'll say agree, but assume through whatever democratic process we think is appropriate.

34:01We work on what, to your point, what government should do. What should government do for us? Because we can't do it ourselves or they probably in a prison want to provide or it's defence or it's whatever those things are. What things should government do? Okay, tick, that box. This much welfare spending, this much disability spending, this much defence spending, this much infrastructure spending, this much whatever, whatever, right? You're right. So we're going to raise 84 gajillion dollars. That's the number to do the things that we think government needs to do for us. Cool, great. Okay, so the second question is simply just who should pay what proportion of the$84 gajillion on some appropriate, and I'm going to say appropriate with inverted commas because there is no objective answer, there's only subjective.

34:35On what appropriate basis do we decide who contributes what? And so for me, the answer for the potential of something for the ultra-wealthy and or some sort of inheritance-worsening inequality is maybe there should be a wealth tax. You've tried a land tax before. Maybe it's an inheritance tax. Maybe it's higher capital gains or personal income tax at the top level, whatever. And as a result, others will pay less of the tax burden or the tax-free threshold changes or the marginal rates change or we get rid of a particular tax we don't want or more of another tax we do want or whatever else it is.

35:08It's the same as increasing the GST. So if we increase the GST, how do we say who gets the money? No one goes in consolidated revenue. And if we don't need extra money, then someone else gets a tax break. And so for me, that's how I would make those maths work. It's not a matter of take the inheritance money and give it to those who don't have any inheritance at all. It's not that for a second. It is a combination of we know that tax is inherently redistributive, whether we like it or not. It just is what it is because it takes from someone working, gives someone who's not working or someone who's in defence who wouldn't have a job without government spending or on a road that wouldn't be built otherwise.

35:38So it's always redistributive as much as people ideologically hate that. I hate the ideology of tax because it's just the idea of like, you know, it gets to kind of anarchy or communism. It's like it's neither of those things, people. It's just the uncomfortable gray area in between. We have to work out what we think and how we do it. So for me, Matt, that's my approach is where is tax most appropriately levied based on a whole lot of things, including, as you said, where you want to incentivize and disincentivize. But on top of that, on top of ability to pay, that's the whole progressive marginal tax system is someone on a million dollars can not only afford to pay a higher dollar amount, but also a higher percentage of their income than someone on$25 ,000 because they've covered their necessities of life multiple times over.

36:19And so saying, well, the million dollar, you know, millionaire must have the same tax rate as the person on 25 grand is clearly not reasonable in my view. And if you disagree, either you or anyone listening, knock yourselves out. But that's my take. So how much do we need to raise and how is it most appropriately levied based on who has the capacity to pay and the impact of that, to your point, of the taxes being levied? I mean, yeah, as a high level thing, I mean, the devil's in the detail though, right? This is the trouble. As soon as you start, you go, okay, that sounds very reasonable. Okay, so let's start.

36:51And all of a sudden, you know, almost immediately you just go, oh, because you know what there is? And this is the lesson of economics is that every step of the way down there's trade-offs. and every step of the way down, someone's going to be better off and someone's going to be worse off. And it's really, really hard. I guess for me, I just push back on inheritance tax, not because I'm sitting on gazillions that I want to send to my kids. In fact, if I did, I've spoken before, I wouldn't because they'd just be entitled to little snots and I'm not going to do that to them. But it doesn't fix anything.

37:29It's just too shallow. I mean, I just Googled it while you were chatting then. So let's pick on Gina, right? There you go, Gina. We're taking everything you own. Everything. We get$25 billion as her net worth, according to Google. It's like, well, the federal budget deficit is$37 billion. So we don't even budget. We absolutely liquidate her and we don't get anything, right? We barely cover it. We don't even cover our budget deficit for one year. Yeah, correct. And so it's sort of like it's easy to say the billionaires and it's like, I'm really not trying to stand up for the billionaires. I'm not.

38:05It's just that it just patently doesn't work as an idea. And it's like when people talk about business and that being the problem, it's like, yeah, we love to focus on these big megacorps and multinationals, but 70 % of people are employed through small, medium enterprise. These family-run businesses, they're just Sharon's Hair Salon, you know, Susie's mechanical services. Like these aren't corporate fat cats, you know? And it's sort of like once you start looking at what is available to take and to redistribute, and then you just get to this stage where it's like, you know what? It's just easier to be a real estate agent than start a business or, you know, I'm just, there is no incentive in here for me to do anything because, I don't know, it just...

38:57I agree. The devil's absolutely in the detail. I just think there's two conversations and I think, as with most politics and most policy, I don't like some of the outcomes so I'm going to pretend the issue isn't real. It's frankly where we go with housing. That's exactly where we go with housing, which is just like, we really should help young people get into housing. Yeah, we should. But I don't want my house price to go down. We should help young people. It's like, let's give them more money. Let's make house prices go and make it less affordable. Yeah, but we should help them. Okay, well, let's make house prices go down.

39:23I'm really hungry. Right? But I don't want to eat my cake that's over here. Yes, exactly. Okay. And so you're right. You're 100 % right, man. I completely agree. It's just also that idea of like, agreeing on the issue is real. It's kind of adulting 101, right? It's just like, la, la, la, la, fingers in the ears. I don't want to, because if I say it's real, maybe I've got to do something about it. You know, I've got a drinking problem. Okay, well, then you've got to do something about it. No, I don't. Oh, you don't have to do anything about it. Keep drinking that. Honestly, it's just that 101, right?

39:51By the way, I wasn't me confessing. I don't have a drinking problem hopefully but it's just that idea it's under control you can sell it whenever you want you don't know you've got a drinking problem Scott that's the issue you've got to accept it he says as he takes a hit from his flask that's why this podcast isn't recorded by the end of the podcast I'm so awesome on the floor everyone's like hang on that makes sense that would explain a lot anyway no I get all I would say is that you're not wrong but as up in the clouds as my little solution is, so is yours. I know. You know, like, neither, what you just said is, I just want a mature conversation that we could run.

40:32Okay, and I want a hard money. And I want a pony. Like, this is when they wheel us out the front of the nursing home and go, sure, that's right. We should have that. It's not going to happen. It's just not. Oh, dear. So, yeah, I love your intent. I appreciate that I'm a bit further down the jaded path to you where it's like I thought that I could change the world at one stage too I thought that I your acceptance exactly Motley Fool Money for more subscribe to the free newsletter at fool.com.au forward slash listener

41:12hey mate let's go to something actually much much much better I am so earning season underway we talked a lot about it we'll talk about it next week and kind of a bit of a wrap or something so speaking of probably about brickbats and bouquets earlier I want to give a couple of bouquets to a couple of companies let's be positive for a second now these happen both by the way let's see where this goes these happen to both the companies I own which I feel very kind of self-conscious about but and I probably I probably noticed you know I didn't actually there are also two companies we recommended at one of the some multi-fuel service or other one's a whole one's a buy so just I'm not this is not a recommendation but I own both and I was covering them just because I was covering them for our members I was just doing the write-ups of the earnings announcements.

41:51And there's been plenty of rubbish out there. I don't remember if I bagged ANZ a couple of weeks ago or last week. They kind of said, oh, look, our profit's up 70%. And then they said, yeah, but I actually underline 17%. And actually that 17 % is up on the average of the last two quarters, period, full stop. And you read down the table in the announcement, it's like year on year our profit's up 6%. So because you didn't mention that in any of the wording, you didn't mention any of the tables at the top, You had to read down to the data and actually look at that and go, huh, that doesn't seem anywhere near as good as what you guys said.

42:24So I bagged ANZ last week. I don't have to do it on the podcast. I do it on socials. And I opened up ARBs. ARBs, the car parts, the kind of four-wheel drive accessories manufacturer. Really cool business. I own shares, as I say. I've owned them for ages. And they had an awful result in number terms. Not overly unexpected, but not great. The sales were down. Profit was down for reasons. We can talk about those or not. It doesn't really matter. and the underlying number was down less than the overall number right so the statutory profit was was down further and they said the underlying which when they strip some stuff out we can always argue about what that is was was down less so what do they highlight they highlighted their statutory number and they just said hey here's what happened and they gave it to us straight and again speaking of things that we kind of you know i you and i rant about this all the time rave about it all the time about what companies should do and treat their shareholders like reasonable people and all that and they don't most companies don't and so i read this and honestly my first thought was huh i'm actually getting the numbers properly i'm getting an explanation and there's no garbage as i wrote this said hey um sales were this they were down one percent reported profit after tax uh this and this uh down 18.8 and 17.2 respectively over the previous corresponding period before tax and after tax for excluding while for adjustments was down by less that was 16 and 14 rather than 18 and 7.

43:41That was in the third paragraph. No bullet points, no big headlines saying, ARB says gross margins will improve next year or some other misleading comment. They just said, here's what happened. No spin, no drama. Sales revenue on the table down 1%. Total revenue at 1.2, profit or tax on 18.8. And yes, they went profit after tax excluding adjustments. They put that back in. It was just really, really, really honest and straightforward. There was no spin. There was no palawa. There was no dramas. I did what I haven't done in ages. I just emailed the company and said, hey, guys, just thanks. Thanks for just being candid and being Austin up front and not spinning.

44:16Yeah, good on you. They could have, but it was just a really, really nice update. Oh, they've been a great company for forever. No surprise, it's not a business, right? Right, you know, and just played with a straight bat. It's just an exceptional business. It shouldn't be noteworthy that they just did what they did, but it is. That's the thing. That's exactly why it was noteworthy. It was like ANZ over here, this data, this data, look at this, look at this over here, look over here, look over here. Remember years ago, do you remember the business called Healthy Life when it was traded on the ASX?

44:45Healthy? I think I've told this story before. It was a health food chain. By the way, the brand's been reborn now in Belfast. It's a different, same brand, kind of, they were actually bits of the same business, but I just want to be very clear with people, it's not the same thing now. So different ownership, different whatever. It was listed on the ASX. I was looking at Blackboards at the time, so we're kind of paying attention. This must be, oh, goodness, 16, 17, 18 years ago. Okay. And they went broke subsequently, right? And no surprise, because the headline in the earnings announcement was, Healthy Life announces a gross margin increase.

45:16It's like, gross margin? Like, that was the best you guys could find. Sales weren't up. The margins were up, but sales absolutely collapsed. Yeah, the profit was down. And that may have made a loss, I think, from memory. It was just one of those, it was like, you've literally scraped the bottom of the barrel of the phone. Which one metric, guys, can we actually talk about? Profit? No, that's down. Or maybe we're making a loss. Sales are down. Costs are up. Gross margins. Let's go with gross margins. It was just funny. It was one of those things where it wasn't a total margin. It was just product sales versus price versus cost.

45:44It was just one of those funny things. Anyway, massive props for ARB. Again, as you say, I shouldn't have to say it. I should be like, well, of course they would. Why would you not? This is just reasonable treatment of your shareholders because you work for them and you think it's reasonable, as Buffett would say, to treat them as you would want to be treated if you were in a different position. Why is that notable? It's notable because it's so bloody rare. So I just thought it was a really nice update. I said, I own the shares. The shares were down on the day. They're back up again since. And I don't know where they are by the time you listen to this.

46:11It's been a pretty volatile week. But, yeah, just what I just want to mention because it's worth calling out. No, it is. It is. And I'm glad you did. I mean, their shares have been crushed in the last little while. And I'm not saying that to poke fun in any way, shape, or form. But just to reiterate the – well, no, I mean, I'm genuine. Honestly, for someone who for the longest time has been desperate to own some shares, it's like, I'm sorry to shareholders, but it's not a bad thing. Actually, even for shareholders, unless you're looking to sell immediately, it was sort of, I make this point every week, I'm just going to do it again quickly.

46:48And I had a go at someone who DM'd me the other day on Strom because they said, oh, Andrew, this is like going back a year. It's like, I really, I've got some cash. I need the market to fall. I'm going to back up the truck. I'm ready. And then messaged me again the other day going, oh, what's going on in the market? this is ridiculous like dude exactly what you said wanted to happen has happened it's happened yep and but but now you're upset it's like so i don't know it's it's sort of like you you've got to be careful what you wish for i mean arb is actually such a great uh example of this because if you'd been a long-term shareholder in this i mean this is just it's been around on the market for forever.

47:30But even at the, you know, oh gosh, what do we go? Let's go back 20 years just for fun. $2.51. It's 10X. And that doesn't include all the dividends they've paid out along the way, right? But we do it every week. But just if you're new to the pod, this is a lesson that you can, it's like shaving. It's like shaving. No matter how well you do it, you've got to do it again the next day, right? I go to church every Sunday. Nothing changes. You just go back for the same story. Yeah. And it's quote unquote crashed more times than you've had hot dinner along its path to 10xing, right? So it's sort of like this is normal.

48:01This is what we should want and hope if we're ever trying to outperform the market and get in on good prices. So, yeah, I'll make that point. Also, the other thing is that just below the surface, as you said off air and we said last week, take out the banks and the miners, just like, it's rough out there, man. And this isn't like, oh, all the speccy biotechs and whatever, you know, all the small caps have taken a crumble. It's like, no, it's ARB. It's Prometicus. It's CSL. It's WiseTech. Like, it's technology one. It's zero. It's sort of like, and not 10%, not 20%. It is really remarkable to me.

48:49And honestly, I think that this is something that we should relish. I want for those people out there who are a bit scared at the moment is not to just say, don't be scared, because that's easy to say. It's very human to be scared. And this isn't also to say, oh, so you're saying that now's a good time to buy. No, it could go down over 30 % from now. I had no clue. But I can objectively say that there are a lot of good businesses that are just objectively cheaper than they were. and you know i like discounts so that's right so i assume that you do too and i'm not saying there even there'll be plenty of companies that have fallen a lot and are still too expensive so there is work to be done but this is the point where all the best investors i know are sharpening their pencils right now and they're rubbing their hands together whereas your classic quote-unquote retail investors like oh this is ridiculous i knew the share market was you know my mates were right I'm an idiot for doing it.

49:46I need to go back to, you know, it's just sort of like, and then when we're at an all-time record high X years in the future and it was like, oh, it's not unfair. We need to tax equity capital gains more. It's like all these, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. I think that, and just to sort of connect it loosely to your point, And it says like, and when you have a company that is being ridiculously transparent here, not ridiculous isn't the right word. I'm using it as young kids use it. Insanely transparent. Low key is the new one that my daughter likes to say. It's low key transparent.

50:25Low key. She can't quite explain the definition, but she likes to use it. So it is low key transparent. So it's like, you can do a little work here and you can, we won't do it now because it's not the point of the pub, but it's like, okay, profit was down a bit. Why? Was that, no, it's not good, but is it because the business is in serious trouble or is it because there's a division that has a high degree of cyclicality and it absolutely doesn't change? You know, is it literally talking about a 12-month period or a six-month period in this case? You know, like, anyway, there are far more opportunities right now for the sensible, long-sighted, far-sighted investor and I would try and use this opportunity to encourage you to see it for what it is which is potentially at least almost definitely for certain companies a good opportunity.

51:22Buffett used a line about people being happy when the petrol price goes up because you've got a full tank of petrol. You've got to refill it at some point. You've got to be a net buyer over time. Being happy, oh thank God I bought the peanuts, double the price but I've got a full tank. It's like, that'll last you a week now, what are you going to do? So yes, Yes, being happy when prices are falling is a good thing. And I should say, there are some people for whom it's not, right? If you're not actively accumulating, if you're in a retirement drawdown phase, you're not happy. If you're selling regularly, you're not happy with that, and that's completely okay and reasonable.

51:48So it's not going to be good for everybody. But if you are acquiring, if you're looking for the opportunities, as you say, if you're waiting for the next crash or the next fall, it'll happen when you're not ready for it and when you don't want it and it feels awful and ugly, that's exactly the time you've got to gird your loins and go, this is where we are. Well, even if you are in retirement, if you've got a limited retirement nest egg and you put it all into a highly, highly volatile asset class, which is shares, and I mean, you can be annoyed. I'm not saying you can't be annoyed, but you can't be surprised.

52:19Yes, correct. I'm just saying it's not an opportunity is all I'm saying. You can't go, I'm glad shares are low, I get a chance to buy. It's like, well, if you're not buying, I get why people are in that circumstance. It's like, well, hang on, no, I don't want that. And I will be like that too at some point, I suspect. Well, I hope not too many people have learned the hard way, but it's just sort of like that is why you actively trade down to assets that you know are going to give you a lower return. Hold from cash to other waves more than anything. Absolutely. Have enough cash. The idea for me, mate, is actually living on dividends.

52:46If I get to that point of like I don't need cash because I'm getting a dividend income stream, that's what you want because it doesn't matter what the share price are at all. You don't need being in cash. You can be in high-growth assets over time and you can write it out because the dividends will do the job for you, provide you the income stream while you write that. Or, as you say, a portion of it in dividends or a portion of it in cash if you want to be high growth and cash, that's an okay solution as well. Sure, sure. Yep. Mate, let's go to one of the biggest. I kind of feel bad about this, but also we shouldn't really talk about this, which is the WiseTech news.

53:15They're laying off a massive number of staff. Now, we've talked about AI, I think, every week for the past three or four, right? So I kind of feel like we're going back to the well. You, me, and every single person on planet Earth at this point in time. And we kind of can't not because you have to, right? It's a real thing. So if you haven't caught up with the news, WiseTech, they're a software company. They specialize in freight software, logistics software. Let me spit that out if you like. And it's a really cool opportunity, not only for WiseTech itself to make a lot of money out of it, but for the industry.

53:44A lot of logistics is still done on paper. And so kind of being able to consolidate that so you can see if your order gets placed in Australia, there's a factory in China makes the product. They send a distribution center in China. that goes to a dock in China, gets on a boat in China, or before that, goes to a cargo company, then gets put in a boat, then comes off the boat here. Tracking that through the whole chain is really, really important. Now, I'm talking about one product, but this is used by companies doing a lot of this stuff. And it's largely used by the freight forwarding companies themselves who often hand off at different points to Andrew's company in China, hands off to my company in Australia when it arrives.

54:18It's really complex. And so it's a really cool area to be innovating in. It makes the world economy more profitable. It's cool they've decided to do it and been able to pull a whole lot of stuff together. They've made a heap of acquisitions to try and kind of consolidate all this stuff. And maybe they get there, maybe they don't. They've got plenty of competitors as well. So that's what they do, just so everyone knows. Can I just be a little pedantic here? It doesn't make the whole world more profitable. It makes the whole world more efficient. Yes. And a lot of those efficiencies - You said profitable, did I?

54:44You said profitable. Oh, my apologies. I meant productive. My apologies. Thank you. It's the smallest thing in the world. Yeah, thank you. But it's just like what people often miss with, oh, get up, buddy, big corporates. Yeah, look what they did. and scooping up all this profit. There's a lot of malfeasance in the corporate space, let's be real here. But in that kind of instance here, what actually happens is that we can now ship around the world so much cheaper and faster, which means it's cheaper and faster. Correct. Which means - And if there's competition, price will come down. If they don't pass on those savings, then, you know.

55:11The reason I can jump onto my phone and order something from, you know, Germany and get it three days later is because of this kind of stuff. And have a tracking update while it happens and working on what's going to arrive. So yeah, I meant more profitable. Thank you for pulling up on that one. So that's what they do. And it's just cool because it's cool because it's cool. I don't own shares, but it's cool. This week, they announced they were going to lay off 2 ,000 staff over the next two years. Their current staffing is only 7 ,000. They're laying off the best part of one third, about 28, 29 % of their staff, or they're playing to over the next two years.

55:46And it's all down to, yes, you know, AI, artificial intelligence. and this is kind of look Commonwealth Bank tried that with their call center staff had to rehire them Y6 announced a plan to do over two years I mean man two years in the AI world that's like a million lifetimes right it's about dog years dog decades at some level so I don't know what they will lay these people off we don't know what will happen with AI in the meantime it's all just a big headline announcement maybe it was even done to try and make the market excited about it and bid the shares up because the cost base was going to go down I'm not going to I'm not going to, we're going to be very careful not to draw exact outcomes from this or assume it's necessarily going to happen the way they expect.

56:25What I think is really notable, mate, and I'm sure listeners are already on to this because it's not a big revelation. There's no great reveal. That is huge. Three out of every 10 workers at WiseTech, the people that sit in their cubicles looking around and 16, 10 others, three of us aren't going to be here in 24 months' time. And it's simply because WiseTech have a view, I think it's a particularly controversial view, that programming in particular, software development in particular, but not only, is going to be entirely massively disrupted by use of AI to do some of the tasks. The will be is right now.

57:00Well, we haven't laid them off yet, so there's some rollout somewhere. But, yeah, I mean, the is plus the will be. Maybe that's actually the point, right? Because you're right, it is happening now. And why is tech saying what's happening now? We still need the staff now. We're not laying them off today. But we see a clear path in two years' time, having only 7 out of 10 people still at the company who are here today. Now, that's a big deal for Wysix. It's massive for their employees, and of course, we feel for them. But cast that forward. And yes, software development is probably the white-hot centre of the target for AI because it is something that can be really, I won't say easily, but with AI can be done because programming is a language, right?

57:38So if you understand the language, it's not hard. Now, prompting that is appropriate, testing it is important, all that sort of stuff matters a lot. But it's just a really, really clear example of a company saying, not, oh, we think it might happen, or here's 200 people being laid off today because of AI. They are casting forward and saying, this will be enormously disruptive, and we are getting ahead of it. I think it's really not. You mentioned the productivity bit, or I mentioned profitability. You corrected me. But that efficiency, that's what they're saying. They're saying it will be cheaper and easier to update freight records using AI.

58:08And so things will be more productive and more efficient. That's exactly what they're saying. They're also saying, if we don't do it, someone else will. also we need to to actually keep pace with the rest of the market and that's yeah that's where this is going oh it's inevitable you don't it's not even there's not even a moral judgment to be made i mean think about this now you know a very small number of human beings can produce food for a very large number of human beings because we've got air-conditioned tractors and you know all the all the great um things that we we see in the advancements we've seen in farming you know can you imagine sort of saying oh these people are losing their jobs to this industrial revolution thingy like it's just what a tragedy it's like yeah yeah it is for the people individually involved and for a transitions are always sort of hard so I don't want to be flippant about it but it's kind of like again what do you want what do we want we want cheaper faster better yeah I want to I want to I want to be richer yeah not because of you know hedonistic urges I just I want to work less I want to have more I want to be more comfortable and I want everyone as as much as possible to share.

59:13That's how we do this. That's how we do it. Can I jump in on Richard because you jumped on me on profitability? Yes. We want to have a higher standard of living. Thank you. Richard is part of that to some degree. Yep. But we're not trying to say we want everyone to have more zeros in the bank account. I mean, sure. What's the difference? Right, why bother? But yeah, I know you meant that, but again, just for the sake of clarity, we want everyone to have a better standard of living because things get better. That's the story. The Industrial Revolution to today has had a tri-colon of drawbacks, right?

59:38Pollution is disgraceful and we had to do laws about sending kids down salt mines. There are things you kind of go, we've probably overreached in that direction. That being said, if you look at the extraordinary growth of our living standards over the last 225 odd years, it is almost entirely, I mean, actually it is entirely by definition, down to productivity improvements. Things being done better, easier, faster with mechanization or computerization or automation and eventually be AI. That is the story of human progress over the last 250 years. There is no, you're right, there's no more. I mean, we could choose how we do it, you know, putting limits on things, exploitation, we should limit.

1:00:16You know, we shouldn't say all AI is necessarily good and it should never be feted or considered the implications of. Social media is a great example, right? But to your point, it will happen. So our job is to say - The genie is out of the bottle. Right, exactly. I'm just sort of saying you can have a view on it, but you can't put the genie back in, right? Right. And, and it just, look, I would, I said to you off air, I think this is a company that has grown very rapidly via a lot of acquisitions. And generally when that happens, you just get a little bit of duplication and blow, you know, it's just like we combine, you know, in this case, dozens and dozens and dozens of businesses.

1:00:52There's like how many front end designers do we need right here? We just don't need that many. So it might, it might be a good little bit of cover to sort of say, well, A, it's making our jobs easier, but B, gosh, we've got a lot of people that we just don't have a job for. Again, it's not an evil thing. It's just like, we don't have anything for you to do. So I see it as inevitable. I think that's where, for me, when I see companies doing stuff like that, I think that's where I get a lot more signal than listening to Sam Altman on Twitter. Now, nothing against Sam, but he's going to talk his own book they all are right like i am self-interested in making sure that everyone thinks this is the greatest thing in the world and that we can raise the the trillions of dollars that we need to sort of make this happen so i'm going to give you a vision of agi by 2028 and it's going to be the most exciting thing in the world and you know me man like more than anyone i get carried away with us i'm such a sucker such a sucker for you know visionary tech sort of yeah you know, well, vision, you know.

1:01:59But when you see a business making real-world decisions, I mean, because for them, there's viability on the line here. It's like you can't just speak for vibes, say that we're going all AI. And then you're no one, everyone, you can't deliver the service that you promised. That's what CBA did, right? They said, we're going to go out with that call center. I'm like, it doesn't actually work. We'll have the people back. Can't do it. Thank you. Yeah. And when that happened, it was sort of like that was a good signal for me as an investor to go, I need to temper my views. Yeah, right. And this is another bit of simple go, well, but there's a bit of truth to it, right?

1:02:30And this is always technological disruption. It's just sort of like a little bit of truth in all of it, a little bit of inflated expectations at the beginning, you know, all of that kind of stuff. But I think it's real. I won't go into it, but I said to you off air, I've been playing around with Open Claw, the agentic stuff. and I just, you know, there's a YouTube video, watch it. But it is like, it is, as I said to you, we all had that experience in 2022, 2023 when ChatGPT first sort of gained prominence and we all went, oh, wow, this is cool. And then we all went, it's a little bit buggy. You know, it's not great.

1:03:15Fast forward to where we are now, it's like, oh, it's good, so much better. I'm not saying it's perfect. Like there's a lot of dumb stuff still, but it's like, oh my gosh, it's great. And what you got in those early days was a taste of what is possible and where things are going. And I think with this agentic stuff, you're also getting a taste of, okay, it's pretty clunky. It does dumb things. Don't install this on your own machine, by the way, because it'll have access to all your files and stuff. And there's horror stories that are out there. But it's worth playing around with because you kind of – there is nothing like trying to understand a new technology than doing it.

1:03:53I promise you I'm not going down this rabbit hole, but you mentioned previously that you set up a Bitcoin node and a Bitcoin miner. You're 100 % right. You can read all the blog posts in the world. It's like, oh, okay, now I get this. And so for me, I'm trying to force myself to use AI as much as I can. One, because it makes my life easier. But two, as an investor, it's sort of like, what can it do? And I've just had a few experiences over the weekend, which is, holy crap. You know, I have a Jarvis from Iron Man, right? Like, you know, not a very good one at this point, but they're there. And I see stuff like WiseTech and it's like there will always be humans.

1:04:32Well, not always, who knows? But I think for the foreseeable future, there's humans in the loop. But when I can spawn an agent that can spawn sub-agents that has persistency of memory and active tooling sets and is networked to other people's agents and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it can actually change and iterate on its own code base. And, you know, the world has no idea what is coming. And the thing that fascinates me too is that there are a lot of technologies where you need that zero to one moment. It's like you kind of hit this natural ceiling. We have pushed the technology of the internal combustion engine really far.

1:05:06Like modern ice engines are so much better than the Model T. But each year they get very timely, incrementally better. Whereas in the early days, it was like each leap was just sort of massive, right? What we're at with AI is that we know what we can do to make it better that doesn't rely on a genius to come along and find an entirely new paradigm shift that changes everything. So it might cap out with what we know. And maybe it just caps out full stop because there's certain laws of the universe we don't yet understand or of computing and computer science. But even if that's true, the investment and the focus is in train to such a degree that it's like, it's going to get better.

1:05:54It's going to get better. and and i think what you need to do just to make this practical what you need to do as an investor is you need to this is true or it's always true you need to sort of distinguish between hype and reality and realize that the truth is probably somewhere between those and that that even where there is legitimacy you're going to have a whole bunch of people trying to get a little bit of a halo effect by just like standing adjacent to something that's really cool and trying to have some of its glow wash onto you. The classic mining company that adds.com in 1999 because that'll help their share price pump.

1:06:30That's happening right now, you know, with AI. And you've got to sort of go, just because the company CEO got up there and gave a presentation about how they're using AI, don't wet your pants and get super excited about that. At the same time, don't dismiss it as all fluff, which is just, I've just had it gone on a long rant. It's going to go, yeah, it might be something, might be not, you figure it out. And I'm sorry, but that's where we are at at the moment. And I am, I just, where I guess I'm going is I am trying to temper my enthusiasm, but there is something inside me that goes, this is, the world is changing.

1:07:03This is a big deal. I think that's it. I think this is where directionally it's important to get it right. Because we talk about preparation and prediction, right? Time, who knows, right? We've said many times, I'm still waiting for my flying car from the Jetsons. And yet we have the world in our pockets with a largely smash-proof screen that allows me to do everything everywhere, no matter what. The transition and the speed is unknown, but directionally, we see it in front of us getting better. I remember using a chat to every team back when it was only on training data, and the training data was like 18 months old or nine months old, whatever it was.

1:07:38Like, I'm sorry, I can only answer questions up to the 25th of September 2011 or whatever, 21, whatever it was. And it's like, oh, that kind of sucks, but it's kind of cool. I mean, imagine if it could do other stuff. And now it is literally like just - I'm just going to go search the net. Right. I'm just going to go do that now. My agent was doing it. I didn't even ask. It was like, hey, you know what you wanted me to do this? Like, yeah, well, I hit all these. Oh, but I figured it out. What? Oh, and then I hit another. But I feel like, whoa, you read through the chat log. It's like, so you did it?

1:08:04Yep, I did it. But rather than bothering you with all the nuance and detail, I just troubleshooted and I worked around. I was like, thanks? Yep, yep. By the way, I had to hack the NSA and. Well, that's it, right? Do all of this to make it happen. It's a typically Armageddon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did see that. You saw the viral video about the chat chibity or the different chatbots being asked about going to the car wash? Yes. Should I walk and take my car to the car wash? It's like, no, you should walk. But again, you know, so I tweeted about this during the week, mate. There's a lot of snarky cynicism.

1:08:40Oh, AI slop. I think I've said this before. I'm sure I have. Oh, AI slop. it's terrible it's like if you're only focusing on the whole man not only a percent it's brilliant but there's one percent that really sucks and that's what we're going to focus on you're missing the big picture by such and again your point about morality there's plenty of people like I hope it doesn't work because it might take jobs I hope it doesn't work because it might change the way we engage with each other those things can be real they're very real concerns right but don't confuse that with what actually can or may happen I'm not saying I know what will happen either by the way I'm just saying don't let your views on what I wish was true speaking of Pollyanna as we talked about before.

1:09:13You know, there is, if I ran the world, what would I do? And then there is, how is the world acting now? And if I spend my life only interacting with the world as I wish it was, I'm going to get left behind by a very, very long way. Oh, God, yeah. And that's, so yes, by all means, worry about AI's implications. By all means, advocate for better roles and rules and guardrails and whatever. Do all those things for sure. And yes, even bemoan the fact that it will change stuff. Just don't stick your head in the sand and say, and therefore I just hope it won't happen so I'm going to believe that won't happen.

1:09:42I mean, that was the Luddites, right? We've been here before. If I stop people using sewing machines, we'll be fine. So it turns out using sewing machines is kind of useful and it wasn't perfect. No, but we got to a better place. And see it for the opportunity that it is in two ways. An opportunity as an investor. I mean, the biggest companies in the world in 20 years' time, I don't know, who knows? The world is moving fast, but I would be not surprised if it was AI at the core of it. It was some sort of new sporting there. But also for yourself, for yourself. I mean, I was chatting to a friend the other day about, you know, starting the business about 10 years ago now.

1:10:21And it's just like, I needed a wireframe design. I had to find this person. They were terrible. We'd have these meetings. They'd go away for three weeks. They'd come back. You'd do it. You know, you'd spend$10 ,000 if you were lucky, you know, and get something that wasn't quite perfect. I can do the same thing 10 times better in half an hour. That's okay. I'm exaggerating. An afternoon. An afternoon. And it'll just be, you know,$15 in tokens. And so what does that mean? It means that you can now as a creator realize your vision in a way that was just not possible before. And I'm not talking about everyone assumes tech.

1:11:06It's like, I'd love to, I fantasized about this. This is the weirdest fantasy in the world. I'm going to nerd out. This could be interesting. There's a pizza shop not far from me that closed down. It's just sitting there vacant. And I was just like, there are a lot of good options around here. I thought, you know, I reckon I could make a go of that. And just for fun, right? I was just like, hey, AI super intelligence. Here's this property here. What are you like? Yeah, it's for sale. This is what it was listed for. it's been on the market for this long. This is the former owner. By the way, if you need to do this, these are the regulations you have from council.

1:11:41Here are the forms that you can fill. Actually, I can fill those forms out for you if you like. Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. Oh, okay. And for a piece of recipe, you do need this. Oh, current employment laws require that you need to do this, this, and this, but we can put some ads on there. And my point is, is that for something in meat space, outside of the digital realm, I can now, I can go from, geez, it'd be cool to open up a pizza shop to having so much of the grunt paperwork, you know, foundational stuff done on a weekend. Now, before I would have had to go see a solicitor and get the conveyancer involved, have a meeting with this person there and figure it all out.

1:12:21It's just like if you're someone, particularly if you're young out there and you're listening, even if you're not young, but if you've ever had something, an itch to scratch, you have never, never been more empowered to do it. And so, yeah, it is a tragedy for a lot of people who are focused back on WiseTech. A lot of developers are going to lose their jobs. Like highly technically trained people that are now armed with this that can, you know, and I'm not saying not everyone's going to be able to open up the pizza shop. But just my point is that the barriers to entry are so much lower now. And so, yes, we'll talk about the opportunity on this podcast in terms of what it means for investing.

1:12:59But you personally, this is a game changer. It really is. And yes, it's not perfect. And yes, it will make mistakes. And yes, it's not yet at a stage where I'm just going to get it to do my taxes and just submit it to the ATO without eyeballing it and checking it. But like I say, if this rate of progress is sort of lumpy, but if it continues directionally, we'll get there. And even right now at the start of 2026, I mean, it was almost impossible to imagine for I think a lot of us, you know, even three years ago, what the state of the art would be at this point in time. So it's scary. It's scary.

1:13:35But you can be scared and you can bemoan stuff and the government should do something or you can see it for what it is, which is a real opportunity. I guess that's what I would try and encourage. No, I love it. I think it's exactly right. Again, because it's going to happen anyway. I'm recurring your point, which is just don't, you can't hold back the tide. Don't try and hold back the tide. You're going to get swamped. you might not like it but learn to surf the wave right let me talk to the metaphor you've got to find a way through it it is going to happen in ways we can't even imagine right now and that's the other thing I mean you talk about the beginning of 2026 I mean 3 months 5 months 12 months 80 months ago what do we know think believe and see about AI and it's tempting to kind of it's like the iPhone itself is still only what is it 15 years old at the moment I don't know it's a baby right but it's also gone from maybe you couldn't even have to switch apps on the original iPhone it wasn't even an app when the iPhone came out there wasn't an app store.

1:14:30Right, right. And fast forward now, I mean, I had an old one of those XDA, remember the Palm Pilot things? It connected to the internet at a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny speed. My internet went down yesterday at home, actually. We had a blackout. And normally the closest 5G tower just stays up because it's fine. Obviously, whatever happened, hit the 5G tower or maybe just a lot of people were using it. But the speeds were at a crawl. I could send and receive messages and make phone calls, but I couldn't load a webpage. I don't know why I did this. turned to my son and went, this is like it was when I first used the computer and looked at me like I was an idiot.

1:15:01Like, what do you mean, dad? How is that sort of thing possible? It was just a really funny moment. And it takes, it puts in perspective how quickly, how incredibly quickly things have changed and how much we've kind of picked up by that period of time. And that's the AI world. And again, AI will probably be faster than anything that's come before it. I do worry about the social implications, mate. I do worry about massive dislocation of employment. We've worked through it all in the past. The speed of AI may well eclipse it. You're right to be concerned. And so the chance of a medium-term and maybe even prolonged bump up on unemployment is not zero.

1:15:34Oh, yeah, for sure. The risk of that is quite... In WiseTech, right, those 2 ,000 people, are there 2 ,000 jobs to walk into when they get sacked? No. Okay, imagine other companies do it to the same sort of scale. CBA during the week, actually, this didn't get as much coverage because the WiseTech news was huge, sacked 300 people. They didn't say it was AI-related, whether it was or not, we can only speculate. But at the same time, and maybe because of that point. Matt Common, the CEO, came out and said, we're going to hire everybody, 50 ,000 employees in AI. We expect them to be using AI in a year's time, to be more productive than they are now.

1:16:05Now, he talks a nice game. He said something like, people are coming with higher value jobs, I think he might have said, kind of implying higher wages, not actually saying promising higher wages. Now, it can't happen if AI is going to actually make things more efficient, it's going to replace people. It just will, right? So there's that. We're going to have to create more jobs somewhere else. He reckons somehow that CBA can do it, or is he saying that, can do it without having to sack people overall. But that's, I mean, this is CBA going, everybody in the company is going to use AI and everyone's going to use it for good things and we're going to train everybody to make sure they can maximize the value they're getting from it.

1:16:36Good on CBA. I mean, if it's just a greenwashing, then so be it. But if they're genuinely saying, hey, we are going to embrace this and see where it takes us and be on the front foot, that's a very good thing for their business because if you're not doing that, someone, you know, it's the old line. AI is not taking your job, but someone using AI is taking your job. Yeah. That's the risk. And so be there first. You know, not only embrace it conceptually, embrace it for home and work. I've said to our guys at work, mate, no matter how much you're using it for work, use it at home. Do yourself, just use it for whatever.

1:17:06Just get familiar with it because using it itself opens your eyes to the possibilities and makes you more comfortable with it. And that's more likely to put you in good stead. Oh, it's a skill. I think this is going to sound funny, but there was a time in the early internet where there was a bit of a skill with how you searched. Like the rights, I mean, Google's just gotten insanely good at the moment. In fact, it's now using AI for search. But, you know, it was sort of like two people could try and find the same information and one person could find it much quicker than the other because there was a skill to it.

1:17:33And I actually remember years ago, a friend of mine, he always said, my special skill is I'm really good at searching for stuff on the internet, which I always thought was hilarious. But there was a nugget of truth to it. And I think I have definitely gotten better at using AI. AI has gotten better, but even using the same models, like I'm much better at it because I know, well, I don't know. I'm getting better at knowing how to interact with it and prompt it, break it down into small tasks, be super specific, put in, vet it for check. You know, there's a whole range of, I'm not saying anything that others haven't said and figured out, but it's like if you just came onto the scene today and said, oh, here's a text prompt, go for it.

1:18:19you're very and this is this is where i see the the negativity come from our friends will go oh yeah i i went on to it they went on to the free model because they weren't they weren't prepared to pay so they went to a really low-end model and they said code up for me uh sonic the hedgehog and then like that's way one sentence on on a very low-end model and it didn't work And it was like, it's so overhyped. You know, like, dude, you know, if that's what you were expecting, you're always going to be disappointed, right? Yeah. But as I said, just on the open claw thing, the point I may not talk about that is I can tell everyone listening here, I am not a technical guy.

1:19:03I've never learned how to code. I know a little bit of basic HTML. I'm not a developer. I'm not a computer scientist. I'm not a coder. On the weekend, I set up a virtual private server on Linux, dialing in remotely via a terminal. I'm using words I didn't even know what mean. I didn't know what they mean. Like, what? Ubuntu? Ubuntu? What are you talking about here? SSH? What's SSH? I have no clue. And yet I stood this thing up, open source software. I found a provider. you know it's just like i i did that i did a thing i did a thing and it's just sort of like and that to me was the holy yeah poo moment that it's just like doesn't mean that i did anything necessarily productive or value accretive to wider society for it but it's just like the very act of going through that process shows you the power and just to make the point here this is why you should play around with this stuff is because i'm wearing investing podcasts you notionally you If you want to, don't be that finance bro when there are a million of them out there go, oh, you know.

1:20:19The same dudes that were experts on viruses during the pandemic. You know, the same dudes that, you know, whatever the latest thing is, you can guarantee there's a finance bro out there. They're national security, geopolitical experts. And guess what? They're all AI experts. And it's just like, how can you possibly be it without using it and without playing with it? You can read all the blogs you want and the high-level takes and the YouTube. Get your hands dirty, roll your sleeves up, bang your head against the screen and be super frustrated. I was swearing a blue streak on the, ah, it's not working.

1:20:54But that's how you progress. And it's also how when you do start deploying money in this space and there's money to be made, It's like you can work out the CEO who's just talking BS and saying a bunch of buzzwords versus someone who is actually you can go, oh, that is actually absolutely within the wheelhouse of an AI. And that makes 100 percent sense. And they are doing it in a stage and measured way. And they're probably going to be able to do the same thing that they're doing now with far less cost. You know, you can make an informed judgment on that. So it's all just a big, long rant to sort of say the world is changing.

1:21:31Adapt or die. Go with it. Yep. roll with it yes not to say there won't be challenges and false starts and backward steps and inevitably there will the final point i should make here is i listened to a you'll be surprised to know i listened to a michael saylor interview uh the other day when i went for a walk never heard of him oh yeah he's he's anyway um he's always been a technologist but he just he He was making this really interesting point that the internet was speculative and uncertain in 1993. Yeah. In 2003, you didn't have to be Nostradamus. It's not only happening. It's not only real. It's got a long way to run.

1:22:15He wrote a book called The Mobile Wave when the iPhone 5 came out, I want to say. Yeah. Maybe even before. Anyway. And he's basically like, it's obvious at this point. It's obvious. Now he's obviously making something else obvious and I won't use the B word, but the lesson from it was, A, not only can you reach a point where we go from science fiction to, oh yes, this is a thing, but that that thing will take a long time to mature and it will take a long time to season. And he used my favorite example in this space, which is Buffett's Apple acquisition. Do you know what the PE of Apple was when Buffett bought it?

1:22:55no tell me it's like 13 wow yeah you go oh every and what was the narrative at that time the narrative was well they're just a phone company and everyone else is going to copy them right and it's like and and anyone he was going like it your kids at that time would have said oh yeah everyone in the world is going to want one of these and every time a better one comes out they're going to want one of those and by the way that's not just the thing itself it's the platform that enables everything. This is insanely good. We are never going back to dumb phones. It is never, ever in the same way that you will never be going down the M4 in Sydney, overtaking a horse, like most vehicles on the road are horse-drawn carriages.

1:23:33That is a world that is never, ever coming back. And I think we're through that moment now with AI, even if it plateaus, I'm not talking about advanced super intelligence, AGI kind of stuff when just extrapolating to the degree here. Even if it plateaus in five years time and we have no more breakthroughs, you can see that this technology is going to be everywhere and it's going to change. And so what do you do with that? Is that you acknowledge it, you position yourself for it. And the most important part, the lead up that I'm trying to make here is that you be patient with it because this is what's going to, how do you stuff this up, dear listener, as an investor?

1:24:13How do you stuff up the incredible fortune of you being born and alive today when this is happening to humanity with the last 10 ,000 years, pretty much not much happened at all. And in the last hundred years, everything happened and you were born and you're alive in this point in time, right? And it's real, man. And it's happening. And it's like, great. But what happens with investors? They go, this is brilliant. It's going to change the world. Boom. They pile on, share prices go up. Two years later, the progress has been more incremental than you imagined. And then everyone loses faith in the whole thing, plummets down you go this is a waste of time and then in 20 years time you're trying to explain to your grandkids why granddad or grandma had the biggest opportunity of their life and they actually saw it early and then they dropped the ball because they were just too impatient to allow this to to mature in any sensible way so i'm trying i'm trying to motivate people here as well as to i love it balance it balance up balance up the enthusiasm absolutely but but understand that it's real and understand that it's going to take a long, a long time to sort of season in human time, like three years.

1:25:18Cause like forever. Right. You recognize that when you have kids, there's this useless little pupae kind of thing there that doesn't do anything. And then you blink and they're asking to borrow the car keys. It's just things happen real. And it feels like forever. And that's the, I think that's you, when you think on those timeframes, I don't know, man, I'm getting choked up on my own excitement here. And your time frame is the right thing to highlight because in hindsight, you look back at the 16-year-old kid and go, my God, how did they get 16 so quickly? When they're just born, you think, I can't imagine them ever being 16.

1:25:55When are they? I'm getting up three times a night. This is never going to end. This is horrible. We can't forecast forward. We are, I think, the only animal who can think about the future, apparently, is what they say, at least in any meaningful sense. I mean, squirrels put nuts away for winter. but in terms of considering the future, and yet we are so incredibly, incredibly unevolved in the way we can actually just contemplate and contextualise the future in time and space. You know, you think about being retired, you can't really think about being retired. That's why super works, right? Because in hindsight, you go, oh, thank God, at the time you're like, I'm 48, I'm 24, I'm 32.

1:26:30What do I have to say for retirement? That's a million years away. I'm never going to. And you go, oh, geez, that was good. How did that happen? Right? So yes, keep that in mind, as Ram said. Look back on the massive growth of the internet, the iPhone, AI itself to this point, no one knows what the future looks like, but be prepared for it to happen more quickly than you think, even though that might be numbers of years and feel like forever as you're going through it. Yep, absolutely. All right, that'll do us, mate. I reckon, should I go through the fix and ask if you'll come back on Sunday? Actually, what you should do, let me do it.

1:27:01Okay. I will come back on Sunday. Excellent, thank you. Because I'm just going to go make a coffee and then I'm going to instantly to come back and then travel through a wormhole to appear on Sunday. Breaking the theater off the mind, yes. But we did a bunch of pre-records over the Christmas break and it was a great opportunity to get through some backlog of some questions and we've still got some there. But let's put the call out for some more questions. Nice, thank you. Or feedback or anything like that. Even if it's like, can you guys just stop talking about your pet topics and address something else?

1:27:30What is we going to do? We'll take it. Send it through because it gives us a lot of fuel to riff on and we want to talk about stuff that you're interested in. So email a full... Sorry, what's the address? Info at fool.com.au. That's the one. Gosh, I shouldn't. You've only said it like every week for the last five years. How long? Okay. Show your time going quickly. We were young when we started this podcast, mate. Right? There you go. See, it feels like a long time getting through an hour and a half of our podcast, but in hindsight, it's gone really fast. You're welcome. Super quick. All right.

1:28:03Talk to you Sunday. Fool on. Cheers.