Casey Neistat is Out of Office

30:53My question is always like, how is this defendable? Because like yesterday at OpenAI's announcement, it's like they just invalidated dozens of startups. But even if they gave you a perfect answer, it still wouldn't matter. Kind of. I mean, there's still going to be a lot of winners. I don't understand that space well enough to make a real distinction. But I think that's really challenging. I can speak with some understanding of the media landscape. When you go to the technology landscape, the hardware, I'm sorry, the software landscape, it gets much murkier for me. Yeah. As a creator, somebody who has made a bunch of stuff, and like we talked about in the stoop, Hopefully this is stuff that's really high quality stands the test of time.

31:37I got to ask, are you okay with all of the stuff that's coming out of Sora and all these things? Like your work is probably somewhat in there. Maybe I had this conversation with my little brother. When I like showed him how to use the app, he's like, there's no way I'm putting my face in that thing. And I was like, my guy. His face is already in it. Your face is on Instagram. Like your face exists out there in the world. And whether this is your consent or not, you're in it. Yeah. So like, does it make me uncomfortable? Like when I see Jake Paul who lets everybody use his face and it's like being misused in all these ways.

32:07I'm like, but he's probably right. But what do you think about all these disagreements, these lawsuits where media companies, publishers are saying, hey, you didn't have the right to train on our copyrighting content? I empathize with them. Like, I think that they're right. So if they regulate that in OpenAI and XAI, they're not allowed to use copyright. You know, there's going to be some other AI platform that just does violate those rules. And I just think we can hold back, and I encourage that. I'm very pro-regulation. But I think, ultimately, saddle up. It's the same thing. It's like you're fighting a losing battle, you're using the wrong weapons.

32:45I'll say anything legislative regulation is going to be so far behind the technology. Because you saw when, I don't know what congressional hearing, what it was about. but they're like asking the heads of meta how they make money and it's like right they don't even know that these are the people we're expecting to regulate these platforms that only the most sophisticated people have an understanding of i mean that's a bit of a digression but i think that like it makes me feel uncomfortable like i want to protect what i have like just like disney wants to protect their characters and you know the south park probably wants to protect their characters and Nickelodeon wants to protect SpongeBob from being on there getting arrested for, you know, stealing from Walmart.

33:30I saw that on Sora today. And I think they should want that and they should fight to keep their shit off of there if they're not being compensated for. But I think in the end, we're going to get trounced. Yeah. Can we order? Yeah. Okay, can we have two rice with boiled chicken, white meat and roast pork? And pork and chicken white meat. Who order? Yeah, and one sweet crawler. Okay. To die, folks. This is sort of a nihilistic view. You're just, it doesn't matter. Yeah, and I don't know if it's because I'm, or I'm just a realist, which is what I think is the case. Yeah. I don't see how it could be anything else.

34:05So should these guys just give up? I mean, it's just like, hey, actually, let's just find the way to work together and enable you? No, I think it's just about sort of, I think it's like retail in 1996, being like, everything's going to shift to online. What do we do? And that took decades to be realized. Thank you. And we saw retail ultimately get annihilated, but it was a much slower process. I think the nature of what AI is doing is gonna be a much, much, much faster process. Like in this case, man, maybe you wanna be the first one. You wanna be the first merchant on Amazon. Maybe, I mean, I think that thinking is a little bit literal, but I think that, you know, to be optimistic about, I think it's gonna present an entirely new whole generation of opportunity.

34:52the way that YouTube the opportunity that YouTube presented was enormous and because of that there are millions of creators around the world that are able to make a living by creating and that was sort of unfathomable in the media landscape of the 90s and that's a beautiful, awesome thing and I hope a decade from now we're looking at AI saying the same thing I just don't know what that might be or what that might look like So you don't really care not that you don't care but you're just sort of you're saying it is what it is for somebody that maybe does really care and is like, this is fucked up.

35:26They shouldn't be able to use my work. Can that person use AI? Is it hypocritical that person to use AI if they're like, my content shouldn't be a part of it? Look, Mr. Beast put out a, I don't know if it was a tweet or a comment or an interview, but he was talking about it. And he thinks like, this is going to be a real threat to creators. And when I look at just the vast empire that he built and how incredible it is, and I know from personal experience, and you can see it in every video that he makes, you can see it in his Amazon show, his work succeeds because of the amount of effort and energy and resources they put into creating that content.

36:01For sure. It's a major production. And it's incredible what he's been able to do, but it came on the back of his hard work and his teams, his hundreds of people, they work, they bust their ass to create that brilliant content. What happens when that can be replaced with a prop? What does it mean for someone like him? Wow. Thank you. Yeah, more ginger, more ginger. I'm just a guy. Thank you. Who gives a shit about me? But like when I look at an operation like his, you know, he's built an empire on the platform. How do you defend that? I think that's a much more compelling case study and perhaps like a scarier, you know?

36:35I'm talking about using it as a tool. He does. He does. I'm not anti-AI. Does he? I'm not anti-AI broadly. I don't personally, for my videos, I don't like to use AI. If that means anti-AI, then in that capacity, sure. but I'm pro like I'm excited about where things are gonna go it's a little scary but I'm excited about where things are gonna go and I think Jimmy does use I know he uses a lot of computer generated footage in his videos maybe uses some AI I think there's a place for that but his using or not using is not going to make the difference in the battle for attention when there's you know thousands or an infinite amount when there's an agent that does nothing all day but writes Mr.

37:16Beast script prompts into a generator and is flooding the zone with videos that look like his, feel like his. And then you've got eight-year-olds around the world that don't know what's his and what's generated by that agent. And all of a sudden, it just, everything gets lost in the water. So let's talk about this. This is actually one of the main things I wanted to talk about. So AI is going to flood the zone. Yeah. It's already happening. This movie is so good. Yeah, what, are you supposed to eat it a certain way? No, you just start him. Okay. What do you put this on, this ginger stuff? Everything.

37:49Okay. But it's pungent. Okay. It's pungent. So AI is going to flood the zone. It's going to be infinite content. It's going to be cranking out all the time. It's going to go through this funnel that we talked about. And as we already know, TikTok and Reels, they're really good at programming that thing to keep your attention. Yep. If they have infinite content, then they're going to be even better, right? Like they're going to be able to hold your attention indefinitely. I know you have a problem with this. I have a problem with the idea of just being totally glued to our phones at all times, especially our kids.

38:20Like, we're just handing over more and more of our attention and our agency to these devices. You did a really great video recently about kind of the next platform shift. I think you called it, like, the trillion-dollar opportunity. Is there any future from one of those outcomes where we may go in the other direction and we may, like, unhook ourselves from the device? Yeah. I saw a study recently. it said that AI it's so good right? It said that phone usage peaked in like 2022 It's been slightly on the decline since then and it's a nominal amount but the point is it's no longer up and to the right Is that just maybe there was a COVID bump?

39:01Oh that could be it but even so take that and then look at other sort of market indicators like the resurgence of older technology Yeah we talked about vinyl the fact that we talked about vinyl but the fact that canon is reissuing a point and shoot from 15 years ago are they yeah and it's a it's not a great camera but you know kids gen alpha younger gen z they all carry point and shoots i used to buy these cameras off ebay to make content with you can't find them any like they're all used up and canon is reissuing one and that's sort of a tacit admission that this is not a new camera canon is shipping a camera in 2025 that charges with micro USB.

39:43And it's just because there's this appetite for older technology. I think there's this sort of atrophy of this monolithic device that does everything. And people want something tangible. People want wired headphones now. People want point and shoot cameras now. People want to listen to vinyl now. And I think to young people who grew up watching their parents, you know, look at foxnews.com for 11 hours a day, staring at a phone in their recliner and they're like i don't want to be that and their interest they're going to start looking back and they're going to look for you know the relationships that you get to have with technology you know i work with mod retro a little bit and like the success of the chromatic which is their gameboy device you can buy a gameboy looking device off amazon that comes pre-installed with a thousand games on it with a high resolution or for three times the price, you can buy it for Mod Retro.

40:37And it does none of that shit. You have to physically put in a game card. You have to use it the way we use it in the late 80s when it came out. It's amazing. Yeah, it's incredible. And what you find is your relationship with the technology when it's single purpose is different. It's the reason why my kids are allowed to use the Mod Retro Chromatic, the Game Boy. They're not allowed to use an iPad. And I think it has to do with focus. It has to do with concentration. It has to do with your physical relationship with that device. So your original question was like, as we reach sort of peak flooding of the zone, will we see maybe a defection or a desire to get over?

41:11Is there a hope? Especially... I think there's a lot of reasons to be optimistic. These two outcomes you talked about. You talked about Apple. We don't know what that is yet. And then we talked about, you talked about Meta with the glasses. Yeah, so the specific through line was that like, I think we've reached like peak phone and the fact that, you know, phones have come to sort of dominate our lives. And I think that we've crossed this precipice where the phones bring us less benefit than they do detriment. I think the benefit kept going up, kept going up. And then like social media in the early 2010s and the benefits started to inch down.

41:47And now the damage that they're doing outweighs the benefits that they're bringing. I think the solution, the solve, the fix for that in the longs is going to be through innovation. And the specific hardware innovation that I point to is wearables. I think it's where most people think it's going. I think it's what Johnny Ives is working on right now with Sam Altman. I think that's what Apple was sort of ebbing at with Vision Pro. I think that's what Meta has been doing very much so with their Ray-Ban. I think that's what Humane was attempting with their AI pin. And I think that's what maybe Google was looking towards a dozen years ago with Google Glass.

42:27I think Apple Watch, maybe that might have been a consideration. I think it sort of found its footing as an accessory to the phone, not an evolution of the phone. But I think that as we start to see these fragmented operating systems are going in and out of apps, AI will start to replace all of that, where you sort of have a singular input on your mobile computing device that executes whatever you want to execute. That the need for all the utility that comes with this little mini widescreen TD in your pocket will be supplanted by some evolution in hardware. One of the cool things about having this conversation with you is - Is how hard it is to eat our food and have this conversation at the same time.

43:09Well, I'm loving my food. You're just doing all the talking, I'm doing all the eating. This is obviously a thing that everyone is thinking about right now. Every time I look at my phone, it's almost, you can almost feel it at this point. You've been thinking about this for a really long time. I think this is what Beam was all about. Your product, right? Your startup from almost 10 years ago. I mean, for people who don't know what this thing is, is you had an app that let you film by going like this with your camera, right? And the whole idea, if I understand it correctly, was you're not looking at your phone.

43:40When you're looking at the subject, your attention is here, not here. You've been thinking about this for longer than anyone. Yeah. Was that the inspiration even back then? Beam back when it was originally a Google Glass product. Oh, was it? I didn't know that. Yeah. We rewrote the firmware on a Google Glass. So when you would push the button on the top, it would capture 10 seconds of what you're seeing. They immediately post it to a feed. And then we got away from the Glass because they shut that down and we went to a phone. but somebody just tweeted at me when casey launched beams it was such an innocent time and i think back to that and it was like yeah like the the impetus for wanting to build that that product was this was when you first could put filters on cameras on your photos rather and there was a real lack of realness in social so like what would be the most real version it was called beam but it started out as like be me yeah like how do you show people how to be you And the altruistic mission statement was something like, you know, promote empathy by sharing perspective.

44:42And the idea was that, like, you go through this app and just hold down all these cells and you'd see the world from all these people's different eyes, which is so far from where we've landed. Which instead of seeing the raw world through other people's perspectives, you're seeing this polished, artificial version of the world through so much of what people post. And now you're seeing a literal artificial version of that with Sora. I thought it was really interesting how when you go into Sora for the first time, it makes a point to tell you that. You know what I'm talking about? No, what does it say?

45:14The first time you launch Sora, when you onboard, there's a screen and there's text on it. And it says something like, everything you're about to see is generated. It's not real. You may think it is, but it's not. Or something like that. When did you get the app? I got it the day of launch, just like everyone else. I must have skipped through the app. Yeah, it's a quick thing. I can imagine you just hitting a next button and blowing past it. But there's a message. It's like everything you're about to experience is not real. I'm guessing they did that mostly as a disclaimer because it's basically going to be filled with defakes once you move past that.

45:50But there's also a little bit of a mission statement in that. It's an acknowledgement. Exactly. And it's kind of the opposite of, again, of this idea of beam and experiencing the world through other people's eyes. whether it's Sora or TikTok, I think we're really close to there being a product where as you're scrolling, it's figuring out your interests and it's optimizing an algorithm for you in real time. And then as quickly as you're scrolling, it's creating the videos that it's feeding you. And it gets very close to dead internet, at least on one side, it's the internet because no one's created.

46:27It's both the algorithm acknowledging, figuring out what you're interested and then the AI actually creating that kind of thing.

46:40I kind of screwed up. I forgot to... This is a donut. Read that first or a second? It's a nightmare, and you're going to get so much grease on your fingers, but what you do with this donut, and I only learned this by watching other people, you take the donut and you drop it in. Okay. And the salty... Yeah, yeah. And the saltiness of the food complemented with this donut. You see this? Yeah, that's what the napkins are for. Yeah, you could grease an eight-cylinder truck engine with this. That is the magic of this dish. Not that it's not magical without it. I mean, it was still delicious. I actually didn't even know I had a fork.

47:19It's just an option, but this is difficult food with a chopstick. Do you miss being a founder? Do you like being a founder? Was that fun for you? Yeah, it's one of those things that's like, if I knew then, would I know now, I would have never done it. But I'm so glad to have been there. And when I talk to people who think they know business or know the startup world, but they've never been a founder, it's a little bit like talking to somebody that wears camouflage but has never been in the military. Well, the famous line is when people are like, oh, it's like a startup within a big company. You know, they were like, I'm like on a new team.

47:52It's a startup within a big company. I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't think you really know what it's like. Yeah, until you can appreciate the anguish of not knowing how to make payroll next week, you don't know. And you and I, we both started software development companies, but like my dad had a coffee shop. Same, same. It is the same emotional. You're trying to find a product market fit for something that works enough to build a profitable enterprise and keep people employed, managing staff, managing people. The technology part of it was fantastically exciting to me. But I think back to working with Matt Hackett, who was my co-founder.

48:34That relationship I learned more from than anything else in the entire experience. Team building, management, running the company, finding a fit for it, finding a home for it prior to our acquisition, all of that. I wouldn't trade any of that for the world. But I was in my early 30s and just starting a family, and now I'm in my early 40s and I got a grown, like, you know, two kids and a wife. And like, yeah, trying to imagine being in that place now is really hard. I don't know, I was saying to you earlier, my kids are getting old, they're growing up and like, there's a little bit of an itch I can feel coming back.

49:10Yeah. And you would know a lot more this time around. You've heard so many things you would do differently. That might be a virtue and that might be a liability. You know, I think the fearlessness of being a first time founder is, you know, often leads to successes that had you known what you were doing, you might not have done things that way. You might have taken a more cautious approach. What was the exit like? Tricky. It was hard. You know, we were acquired by Turner, CNN specifically. And, you know, I think that to be simplistic, I saw it as an opportunity to work within CNN and build amazing technology for CNN.

49:50You know, they had a basic app. and I thought we could build really cool stuff. Like, we built a product for the election in 2016 called Exit Polls. Yeah, I remember that. And it wasn't an exit poll quantifier. All it was was right after you vote, you post the video picking Democrat, Republican, other, and then you make a five-second video saying who you voted for, and then we would display it to you in that order. Like, you know, blue, red, other, blue, red, other. So it wasn't about quantity. It was about so you can see who the voters were. in 20 minutes after the polls opened in November of 2016, I was like, Trump's going to win today.

50:27And it was just because you would see the voters and the voters would be like, I voted for Senator Clinton because I don't know, I've always been there. And then you see the Trump voter and be like, he's going to change the world. And it was like, whoa, I didn't have experience, exposure rather, to these voters in my day-to-day life. And we built a product that gave you access to real people. In any event, that's what was exciting about the acquisition for me. The opportunity to build that sort of technology for CNN. I think a real misalignment came from the fact that I have no doubt that they had those similar interests, but mostly they were interested in me, in my media range, and what I could do in bringing my audience to their...

51:08Was it like a talent deal? It wasn't a talent deal. It was strictly a... But you're saying like that's... Like they, they had a greater interest in that than my naive, you know, I should have, I should have been more cognizant of that. But your team went over, they got jobs, right? Everybody got over, yeah. I think it was successful all around. Yeah. There were a couple of shitty situations with a couple of people that made me sad. Like people that we had brought on last minute that, you know, post acquisition that we brought in. And then when they moved the company internal that they got let go and it was out of my hands then.

51:44and this is all that like founder bullshit that you just like the interpersonal stuff this is part of the reason why like like my goal my singular goal when i came back to new york city was to have zero employees i take out my own trash i mop my own floors the exhaustion of dealing with management and personnel and hr is so hard that i just i don't want it i don't want it anymore And right now, like I'm by myself all the time. And it's a very centering thing because I got my ass kicked. That stuff consumes you. I'm a terrible manager. It's hard. I, you know, I had a huge team under me at Spotify.

52:24And like you realize after a certain amount of time that actually you spend like 95 % of your day dealing with that. Yeah. Not building, not innovating, not, you know, exploring your creativity. And I recognize I'm not good at that. Yeah. And it's a waste of, you know, what makes my skill set special. And it's an ineffective way to build a company. Did you get a feel for CNN as a company, as an organization? Or were you not there long enough to really? You know, we were kept, by the way, don't be shy. Yeah, you're right. It's very, what was the word you used? Pungent? Pungent. Yeah, it's very pungent.

53:04Our organization was kept external from CNN as part of the deal. You were never in their office. I had a pass. I'd go there for lunch. But I spent very little time inside there. But I liked everybody that I met. Like, you know, we didn't, I didn't try. I did not succeed post-acquisition inside of CNN. But I don't think that was because of CNN. I think that was because of me. Like, the people who worked with were really fantastic. Andrew Morse was sort of the head of the division that was operating our company. Like, brilliant, brilliant guy. and really smart people inside the organization. I just think it was a real misalignment for me personally, and that led to much of the internal strife.

53:46We were operating a$3 million a year kind of budget, maybe less than that,$2.5 million a year of startup. First year with CNN, we had a$20 million budget. And having to 10x what you spend means you're spending all your resources, bringing people in, bringing new teams on, instead of sort of organically growing. So when I say that the deficiencies in the company were all on me, not CNN, I don't know how to do that. That's not a strong suit of mine. Nor do you want to. Sure, but I fail at that. And that was really hard for me. Like, leave me alone with a small team and we can move mountains. But the minute we have to scale something that rapidly, it was outside of my wheelhouse of understanding of to do that.

54:29And even with the fantastic management skills of Matt and the people CNN gave us, The battle had a lot more to do with taking what was something that worked as a startup and making it work within a big organization. This is a story that I've read about. I have been taught. I've had this conversation a million times with a million founders. And they've all said the same words I'm using right now. Yeah. Like we became the cliche. Yeah. Do you think a company like CNN can survive AI? Like what do you do if you're CNN? Not even them. Not to single them out. like big media company already struggling from the transition of the internet?

55:07I don't know, but I think that like the areas that I think are going to thrive because of AI are like live sports. And I think news media has the potential to be an extension of that. You want to hear perspective from real people. When I'm watching sports, I want to see real athletes. Yep. So it's very hard to see where or how AI, those intrinsically human things. And I think news media is going to be a part of that. I think that their challenge is going to be much closer to, you know, competing with independent journalists. The way we've seen people like. Like people on X or. Dr. Carlson or. Yeah.

55:46Or Megan Kelly or the ones I think of are further to to the right of politics. I don't know, even Barry Weiss, which she did, but she's a little bit more to the center. Although, ironically now, back in a traditional media organization. Sure, but the reason why she's back there is because they recognize that she was able to build. So I think that the challenges that news media are going to face are going to come from real innovators. I don't think it's going to come, the challenges are going to come from AI. From within. Back to the device thing. And again, the Beam journey and you thinking about this attention problem.

56:21We talked about Apple. We talked about Meta. Yeah, you mentioned OpenAI is working on a thing. Is this the moment where a new challenger can emerge? Can a new device, a new company come in? I think there's like, I refer to my video as the magical AI device of the future. which again is what I think Meta's trying, could be or I think it's what Apple Vision Poe is starting to poke at that AI pin was thinking I don't know that an incumbent has the ability to really fight in that race because the R &D expenses like, you know, I saw Meta leadership talking about the tens of billions they've spent you've heard the same thing from Apple about how much they're spending on R &D Altman gave, what's, six and a half billion to Johnny Ives to get his company on board.

57:11It's hard to imagine. You know, I think even Humane, they had a hell of a war chest, a couple hundred million bucks, but their first product didn't work and they're out of cash. So it's hard to imagine an incumbent winning in that space. But I think that where the opportunities are going to be are in sort of more niche spaces. You know, I bring back Mod Retro. I bring back Canon, reintroducing this camera. I think that because there's such an exhaustion towards what mobile phones are today and what mobile computing is today, that there's a multitude of opportunities to sort of embrace the niche and give people the opportunity to own something that just doesn't look like another black rectangle.

57:51And I think that, you know, like old school iPods are like making a comeback? Like, that's what I mean. I think that like, I know I'm sick of my phone. I was talking to my friend Max, he's brilliant, but he's like, when I open my phone, and I just want to do one thing. But because it does all these things, I get lost on my way to that one. And I was like, yeah, dude, I wish I had a Walkman again. Like, I want to start carrying a Walkman. But is this, you know, we talked about vinyl earlier and how it's doing better than ever, but it's like still 1 % or maybe less than a percent. Is that what you think this is going to be?

58:22Yeah, there's going to be some device and it's going to be, it's going to feel pure and focused on the stuff that matters. But like, you and I are going to use it and nobody else. You know, I don't, I don't know the answer to that. I think it's a tremendously overlooked... The Wall Street Journal this week wrote an article saying young... I don't know what the title is. It's like everything old is new again, something like that. But it's about how young people have this affinity for older tech. And I think it's less of a retro thing, and it has a lot more to do with just their not being satisfied with this rectangular piece of glass in their pocket that does everything.

58:58They want single-purpose devices. the floodgates of that space are gonna are gonna break open i know i do yeah i mean i definitely want it i think it's interesting that's what i love about the meta yeah like i bought mod retro as soon as i could the meta rayband glasses are like a phone camera that i don't have to use my phone yeah but isn't that the opposite like you're now you're your device just keeps getting closer and closer to your brain sure but i think the only way out is innovation and i think that But I think that's what it is today. It's just a camera and your glasses. But I think what it could be is, you know, get AI right, get an AI operating system correctly.

59:37And that's how you interact with your device, which I think there's an argument to say that that's better than having your head hunched forward, staring at these distraction machines all day. There's a much greater emphasis put on intentionality when you say, like, I don't know, the interaction is like, boop or like boop text Mike back I'll be 10 minutes late I'm getting more pork versus like let me just check Instagram you know yes I agree with that I also think about somebody's having a conversation we're sitting here having lunch and you're talking to me and you don't know but I'm actually like watching a YouTube video on my glasses right now it's dark because that's totally gonna happen oh yeah I haven't gotten my hands on the meta Ray-Ban displays.

1:00:23Yeah, I'm dying to, but I tried out their Orion prototypes last year. Isn't that the same one? Is it? It's not? The Orion is full AR. And the displays are a singular, a monocular fixed display. Okay. But they're essentially sunglasses. They look like sunglasses. But you have a full AR spectrum in front of your eyes. And when you're in the room and somebody else is using them, you're staring at somebody who has dead eyes. It's very sort of post-apocalyptic. I hate that. And we're sitting here like this and my eyes are just glazed over. And you're like, Casey, what are you looking at? It's like I'm playing a 3D game.

1:01:01That was like the Apple Vision Pro? Yeah. Remember you would talk to somebody on FaceTime and Apple Vision Pro? I never did. And they would have, it's so creepy, man. It just has this weird sort of like zombie face. That's my negative on Apple Vision Pro. Like that's my takeaway from it. is just like, except for niche cases, like gaming, or some of the cool shit they've done around, like aeronautics, maybe even medical. Outside of that, when is it ever socially acceptable to have this thing on your face? Even on airplanes watching movies, which they promoted. When you're on a plane, it's only happening twice, and you see somebody on the thing, you're like, fucking weirdo.

1:01:41You know what I mean? It's weird. Super weird. This was excellent. Okay. He knows it's actually. He knows it. You don't have to tell me this. I'm glad you picked this place. I feel like very New York. This is actually something I want to talk to you about. So you mentioned at the beginning of the video, New York is your muse. We talked about how maybe you couldn't have even done what you've done without New York. And when I think of a great example of that, I think of something like, there's a video my friend Samil and I always talk about of yours, which is the snowboarding with the NYPD. Great video.

1:02:22Classic. You only could have done that in New York. It wouldn't have been as special if you weren't in Times Square. And because you did it, that's what made it so special. It's like, oh my God, Casey is willing to attach his snowboard to a New York City police department car and carve up the streets of Times Square. in an AI world, that video is just not going to be that special anymore. That's right. That's right. And that's where it gets... That kills me. That's where it gets interesting. And when AI is so good, which is like a week from now, you can't tell whether... I can just say that. Yeah.

1:02:59Put me on a snowboard in Times Square. So then to see someone do it for real, does it still matter? Right. And I think the short-term answer would be like, yeah, because you can tell, bro. But you're not going to be able to tell at some point. I think sooner than later, you're not going to be able to tell. So does it still matter? That's what I'm worried about. Yeah. I mean, I'm glad you're already there. I hope I'm wrong. I'm glad you're already there. I hope I'm wrong. Yeah. That's as hopeful as I can possibly get. Yeah. What is this called? It is so good. What is this called? What did you say to him?

1:03:27I didn't even understand what you said to him. I think this is probably on the menu, but I just described it. I'd say the rice with white chicken. Oh, right. And roast pork. Okay. And what's that? That's a sweet crawler. Sweet crella? Cruller. Cruller. Cruller. Okay. Did you try it with that? Yeah! Pretty amazing. It's amazing. It's good.

1:04:07Ready?

1:04:12So you take the kids here, you said, right? All the time. Your kids mess with AI? They're not allowed to. Yeah, mine neither. In fact, like, keeping my kids away from technology is one of the hardest. And, like, it's one of the few parenting things that my wife and I see entirely eye to eye on. Us, too. Like, I don't know about you guys. We don't do the iPads. in restaurants or anything like that. I feel like for somebody who lives and works in technology, I feel very, very conservative when it comes to technology at home. I feel a little bit hypocritical about it. I think we're going to look back at this time and be like, I cannot believe that people let their kids use the internet and use tech the way that kids use tech today because of how just outrageous and absolute and like demonstrably dangerous.

1:05:12God, ugh! How demonstrably dangerous. Yeah, no, I felt the same way. But I feel like an outcast sometimes, right? Like when the kids play together with their friends, you know, the friend has his glue to an iPad, and I'm like, I don't know, like, you shouldn't be using that. How old is your oldest? Eight. She's just about to turn on. Does she know anybody that has a phone yet? I know of one kid. We have one kid too, and it's like insane. Yeah. To give a kid an iPhone, Yeah. It's like, why don't I just give them a pack of cigarettes? Do you, like, when you think about your kids growing up, obviously you've still got a few years and you think about AI or like, does it shape the way you want, does it shape the way you think about what you want your kids to work on and like to care about?

1:05:54It makes me think that like everything that they're learning in school right now and the the way they're being taught, they're gonna be the last generation that learns this way. Because when it comes to education, it's such a one size fits all process. And I think that what AI will enable is a much more like teach to the kids strengths method of teaching traditional academics. Yeah. And you're already seeing that in some areas, but I think that that's gonna grow in a way quickly

1:06:36and in a way that's super, super accessible. Yeah, I majored in computer science, which was not cool back then. But like, if my kid was going to college now, I wouldn't know what to tell them to. No, I was encouraging my daughters to be electricians and plumbers. Yeah, I think that's kind of smart. At the very least, you want to teach your kid to be personable and charismatic and like a leader of people. That's a given, but like the only... But I don't even know how you teach that, right? The only bankable skill sets that I can think of right now are ones that involve your hands. Like, I want my kids to learn how to weld and, you know, build diesel engines.

1:07:15I think it's good I'm going to lose that battle. But yeah, I would love my daughters to learn a trade that has intrinsic value. Would you want them to go to college? No. No. No. I'll probably lose that fight too. No. Okay, well, it's... But my issues with higher education are more political. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I think we've all got issues with that. But I guess what I mean more, like, as your kids are thinking about the next chapter of their lives when they're maybe when they're late teenagers, like, what do you encourage them to do? I think it's more confusing now than it could ever be. I wouldn't even know what to tell them.

1:07:57I think maybe there'll be some clarity in that in, you know, five, ten years. I have nephews that are in college, and I remember like five years ago, I was like, oh, you have to major in computer science. You have to. Yeah. Now I wouldn't even say that. No, if your strength now is coding, you're, you know, what role do you play? Yeah, I don't know. Who won, by the way? I don't know. I have no screen here. Oh, I beat you. I had seven. You had six. What? Oh, my God. Just spy it in.

1:08:29that was fun yeah that place it's like uh there's still quite a few because it's new york but there's not enough of those places around no you know yeah i i was if i was with my kids we'd be uh just trying to collect tickets that's all we do it's all my girls and i do in there okay so we talked a little bit about what you would do with your kids if they were going out into the world you know i think about your story and kind of like where you started if you were landing in new york city right now you wanted to be a creator you wanted to be a youtuber what would you be trying to learn right now if if it was 2025 not when it was you know i i think that i mean specifically within that that the media tech realm yeah i don't know that i have an answer but i think that all the up there's gonna be so much opportunity in the media landscape within AI.

1:09:20Yeah. I think that whenever anybody's pushing back or scared that AI is going to destroy an industry the way I am, I just see nothing but opportunity there. The guys that all hang out in your building, like what are they working on? What are they doing? Like the young guys that are, you know. I think that they are all working on what they've been working on. Most of them, a lot of them are content creators. Some of them are in the tech space. Yeah. When Sora came out, they're all excited about it. There was a little bit of like a no shit moment, but I think they're all excited about like, you know, the new opportunities that this stuff could bring in.

1:09:54And trying to figure out what to do with it and how to incorporate it into what they're doing. Yeah, look, and that was the case where I downloaded TikTok five years ago. Or when you downloaded Vine 10 years ago. Yeah, shit, what can I do in seven seconds? Right. You know, I think there's always an expected apprehension to any sort of new technology at first. And then it, when it starts to yield opportunity and yield interestingness and people run towards it.

1:10:20If you had unlimited money, unlimited time, no distractions, what would you be working on right now? I mean, nothing. If I had all that, I would just have like 100 kids and then I would adopt and I would buy a huge farm and I would just be there with like my 25 children and my 100 dogs and that's what I would do. You want to be like properly retired. No, I'm not interested in retiring, but you said if I had unlimited money. All right, so you just aspire to be a parent. There's nothing I've ever done that I'd like as much as... I think purpose is a really under-indexed aspect. People talk about happiness and success, and I see all those as abstractions.

1:11:07I think that purpose is the thing. There's a story, and it's like... I'm probably fucking this up, but it's something like the very worst shell shock, we call now PTSD, but shell shock soldiers from World War I that were hospitalized and largely comatose. When World War II came 20 years later in England and they needed drivers, they needed people to work domestically that couldn't fight in the war, they went to these almost comatose soldiers and they said, we have a job for you. And for the first time since they had left the war, they had a purpose. and that purpose was enough to like give them their lives back.

1:11:44And I think purpose is at the core of everything. And I think that a lot of purpose comes from careers for sure. But for me, like purposes come from being a parent and my career is an extension of that. Everything I've done is an extension of that, but at its core is being a dad. Well, maybe then the most optimistic and the most utopian thing that can come out of all the scary shit we talked about in this episode is actually that we all get enough time back to focus on our true purposes. I mean, that would be pretty awesome. Yeah, I feel like, what's that maxim? It's like, I don't know what World War III will be fought with, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

1:12:24I never heard that, but... Okay, so it's like, I don't know what the next wave of text is going to look like, but the wave after that is going to be like us building pyramids out of rocks again. You know what? Maybe we could just get there as soon as possible. If that's a Hallmark card. It's just on a farm with dogs and kids. where we have to like pump our own water out of the well. Well, here's that. Let's hope that we can all end up on farms one day. Dude, thanks for having me. This has been really fun. We did a bad shake there. Hold on. You have to put the bad shake in there. Thank you so much for watching or listening.

1:12:58If you're one of the few people out there that doesn't already subscribe to Casey Neistat, make sure you go follow him on YouTube. And of course, follow and subscribe this new channel. We'd really appreciate it. It will help the show grow. If you want to learn more about Lightspeed, you can find us at LightspeedVP on X, LinkedIn, every other platform. And if you want to follow me, I'm at Magnano on all those same platforms. Thank you so much for tuning in and we'll see you at the next one.