An AI Skeptic Enters the Chat

0:06Welcome back to Trading the Markets with AI. I am Nico Brugge filling in for Bijan. If you're at ConsenSys today, keep an eye out. You might see him. And tomorrow we'll be live streaming all of SWE Live Miami 2026 to our YouTube channel and platform. But today, Kris, it is all about AI. How are you doing today? Doing great. Looking forward to this. I think this is going to be a fun show. Absolutely. I'd be remiss not to mention the show I was lucky enough to produce earlier today where you spoke with Rett Capital for our pro members. Everybody should check that out. And if they're not a pro member already, go to realvision.com forward slash pricing and join today.

0:49All right, Chris, a week in the land of AI seems to be a year. It's like we're dog years now, dog years, human years, AI years. So what's happened in the last week that we need to be informed about?

1:05Nico Brugge:Well, so yeah, I have a handful of interesting articles. I think we're going to run on the theme today of, you know, AI is good and bad. AI is early still. There are lots of things that it does well. There are still lots of things that it does very poorly. We're going to highlight that. And then in the latter half of the show, we're going to, I think we're going to have a great conversation that I'm really looking forward to. Absolutely. Just real quick, Chris, I put on my AI Skeptic hat. It might look like my other ones, but it's actually the AI Skeptic hat. So I'm just playing one on TV today.

1:40So I might be playing a little devil's advocate with Chris here. But I'm really excited to get into it. Really a great selection of stories for us to touch upon. Yeah.

1:51Nico Brugge:So the first, whatever handful, two, three, four stories are going to talk about what's, you know, some of the things that are still not working well with AI. And the first one here, basically, this is coming out from the vice president of NVIDIA saying, right now, AI in many cases is more expensive than actually paying human workers. The cost of compute for AI, typically in larger enterprise scale environments, obviously not for small businesses like we had OSF on a few weeks ago. And he talked about how he saved all kinds of money with AI. This is more for like large scale enterprise usage and agentic usage and things like that.

2:29Nico Brugge:This is a good instance where the cost of compute for AI is actually still very, very high. And it's much more so than humans. And it's not going to make sense to be laying off huge swaths of employees because you need humans to basically be checking all this, to be babysitting all of this. And this isn't going to change anytime soon. Yeah, we saw a bit of this yesterday. I have to say this. I think dovetails into the Coinbase news. Brian Armstrong posted on Axe that they're letting go about, what was it? 14%, I believe, of their workforce. And that is obviously a big number. But if you think about what, you know, maybe someone who's taken the red pill on AI too far could do.

3:14You know, there are companies out there and CEOs who want to do 50 percent, but it seems Brian Armstrong understands that this is what it takes and the team will be working more closely with AI as he lays out in his Twitter post. So, you know, there are definitely CEOs who understand right now it is about playing together rather than just letting AI do its thing. Spring is here, New York City is bustling, and I just finished a clean of my apartment this past weekend. And boy, did it feel great. You know what also feels great? One dashboard that gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins.

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4:37Nico Brugge:Yeah, and I think too, one of the things that we're going to get into in the second half of the show, but this touches on is the whole notion that there's this sort of overblown fear that AI is going to take everybody's job. And I don't think that that's an accurate statement. I think, well, first of all, nobody knows, but I also think that these statements are overblown. in the sense that it can't. It certainly can't right now. I mean, yes, it is improving every day and it will start to get better and better, but there's the cost side of it that we don't talk about a lot. There's also the babysitting side of it, which we're going to get into.

5:12Nico Brugge:And there's a lot of things that AI can't even come close to doing that humans can still do. And that's not going to go away. And really what's going to ultimately happen is we're going to find this kind of middle ground where it's going to help humans be more efficient. It's going to help humans be better at certain things and more productive at certain things. But it's not just going to kind of come in and take everybody's jobs. And we're going to have this sort of dystopian situation where there's, you know, 100 million people that are wandering the streets because AI took their job. I don't think that that's reality.

5:44Nico Brugge:And I think that that's wildly overblown. And so, anyway, yes. No, I'm totally with you. And like you said, we'll get into more of it in the back half. But yeah, I mean, look, speaking of things that AI can't take over yet, you know, Odie, who's our director right now and live switching us and putting up all the charts, you would think that's something that AI could probably could code something to do it. But it involves so many nuances and understanding of various things that it would be a silly endeavor right now to exactly your point, Chris, because the amount of compute power it would take to teach it all of these things, learn all of these things, be able to do it in real time with no mistakes whatsoever.

6:26It's one of the reasons why I've always thought that editors like Odie will always exist. AI will become part of their tool set. You're always going to want that human eye at the last stage of assembling these things.

6:38Nico Brugge:Absolutely. Absolutely. So this leads me into the next couple of articles, which are pretty similar. And that is AI is frying our brains. And so what this means by this is, and it's funny, we've talked about this, Bijan and I have talked about this on the show in weeks past too, how we get more into AI and more into using AI. And we suddenly realized we're actually doing more work than less, you know, like both in terms of productive output, but also in babysitting the agents and making sure that the agents are doing what we, what we told them to do. And, and we find ourselves actually being more mentally taxed than less, you know?

7:18Nico Brugge:And I mean, this picture is a little bit, a bit of a hyperbole, but still the point being that, yes, sometimes right now in these early stages, during this transition, we find ourselves maxing out our human brains, you know, in, in both adopting this technology, finding new ways to use this technology, and then also babysitting this technology and making sure it's doing what we want it to be doing. And then on a larger scale, this similar article, but in more of like an enterprise type environment, is talking about how enterprises are adopting AI. And it did a study where 91 % of the enterprises that are deploying agentic AI, less than half of them actually are governing this AI, these agentic rollouts.

8:03Nico Brugge:And as such, they're essentially paying a massive hallucination tax because these AIs are making mistakes and they're not necessarily babysitting them properly or doing what they need to be doing, providing the human oversight required. And they're having to go back and fix all kinds of stuff and pay extra and essentially pay more than they would have had they not implemented the AI in the first place. And so, again, we're still early. You know, it is really interesting, these two articles, because I'm seeing it in my life right now with colleagues and friends who all of a sudden have lost an entire weekend because they're, you know, clawed coating and just been sitting on the couch mindlessly having movies on the background.

8:50And they wonder why on Monday they're like, I feel like I got no rest this week. And it's like, yeah, yeah, you're working now 24 seven. You know, it seems. I mean, look, I think this is a very I wonder what the understanding is in terms of this outside of America, because obviously we have a very particular type of culture where we just grind 24 seven regardless. I wonder if the Europeans using AI have gotten into it to this level. But at the end of the day, it seems like this is a classic example of someone taking a new toy, immediately wanting to play with it and integrate it into their business with no understanding of actually how the toy works and whether or not it is adaptable and useful to your business.

9:38And we have another example coming up later of what happens when you also don't have proper thought processes of how to integrate it and where you may want stopgaps and all of those things.

9:50Nico Brugge:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. In fact, leading right into that perfect segue, this is a little bit over a week old. So this wasn't brand new, but this company, Pocket OS, basically had an agent delete their entire production database and all of the backups, all of the recent backups in, well, in nine seconds. Because a lack of stopgaps in their processes. And well, just a lack of proper management. We were talking about before the show. I have a history in IT. I was an IT engineer for a long time. And I'm like, this could have easily been avoided with a proper backup system in place and things like that.

10:30Nico Brugge:And I'm just like, yes, they did have one, but obviously it didn't work the way it should have. So this is what happens when you sort of give blanket permission to AI agents to make massive changes to production coding environments, which seems like insane to do right now at this stage of the game. You know, absolutely. It also makes me think, Chris, that at some point we're going to need to add another episode to the academy of your guide to security and using AI, because I think a lot of people are going to run into some issues, especially as they go, you know what? I don't actually need that Mac mini.

11:06Let me just run it on my own rig. And next thing you know, it's disaster. So keep an eye out for that. We'll definitely plan on doing that sometime in the coming months. Just already signing you up for more work, Chris. No, that's a great idea. I should say, if you haven't watched it, everybody should check out. It's part of the Academy, Connect and Above, your six, seven-part series on protecting your crypto assets. It is the definitive guide to proper OPSEC for your personal finances and digital art even at this point in life. Yes. Yes. And yeah, I remember seeing this article the other week and just one having a immediately the pit in my stomach drops because I'm like that poor, poor person who made that mistake.

11:55Yeah. Like their week month has been ruined. But it is also, you know, another example of you've got to approach these things thoughtfully and understand that, like you say, this is early years. I mean, this is like internet 1.0, you know? This is the time where every other website you click on might have been a malware, like it was back in the day. And so it requires, even in a corporate setting, you know, a credible amount of caution.

12:25Nico Brugge:Yeah, I can definitely speak to what he was going through. Certainly in my early days in IT, I learned a few lessons the hard way with data loss and losing other people's data, which honestly, you get physically sick over it. I mean, you're just like, it's the worst feeling. It's the worst feeling ever. I mean, I remember just screwing up lunch orders wrong as a production assistant and feeling like I had just betrayed everybody around me. So I can only imagine what it's like when it's, you know, personal records and files that mean a lot to people. So, and, you know, because it's not physical, we all think it's so easily retrievable.

13:05But it's in any ways it's even more, you know, it's easier to lose than anything physical in this day and age. So a quick break in your regular programming. If you're serious about your future, grab my free report called Prepare for 2030. I think you've got five years to make as much money as possible. And this guide will help you navigate what's coming. The link is in the description. Download it now.

13:30Nico Brugge:There was this one instance real quick. I was working with this woman who was just a, she was an engineer or something like that. And just kind of a single person office, small business. And I was helping her set up a new iPhone and sync her stuff. And somehow in the process, I don't even to this day remember how I did it. But I deleted all of her calendar and all of her contacts, like permanently. And just like, poof, gone. And she's like, I, you know, and I, again, I was just immediately, I didn't sleep that night. I was, I was just, I was gutted, you know, because it was just some other, it was like her whole business, her whole everything, you know, her, her whole life was in that calendar and, and it was just gone.

14:16So that's a terrible feeling.

14:18Nico Brugge:Anyway. Oh, it's the absolute worst. It is the worst. And I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm somehow even more sorry to this fellow, though, because that is rough. All right. What else do we got? So, yeah. So looking towards the good side now, what are some things that AI is doing that's good that we can kind of touch on? So we've talked about, you know, all the whatever, all the hallucinations, all the problems, all the extra money that people are spending. AI, OpenAI actually has rolled out a GPT 5.5 instant and they've made it the new default model. And it is specifically engineered to reduce these hallucinations in sensitive areas like finance, like law, and while also pushing its math benchmark scores to a massive 81.2.

15:06So they're working on it.

15:08Nico Brugge:We know, and those people that say, oh, I used AI once a year ago and it sucked. And what's all the hype about? You know, like I get that. But just also know that like literally every day they're working on it and every day it gets better than it was the day before. And this is just yet another example of the constant improvement of all of these, not to mention the competition that's going on between all of these companies. Absolutely. And I have to say, I'm going to shout out Brian Caputo, one of our producers here, who's actually on the ground as well in Miami right now. Now, he yesterday worked with Claude to figure out some guest ideas for this month and asked it to look at key macro themes driving the markets over the next several weeks to go through the roster of real vision people and non-real vision people and select the top five and find their contact info.

15:57Now, it took him a while to get it all set up and running. But now that it's running, we can just rinse and repeat this every couple of weeks. And it is remarkable in that way. And to your point, the way that it footnotes and references everything now is so helpful to check for these hallucinations. Because as we'll see in a bit, these hallucinations can get you into a lot of trouble.

16:20Nico Brugge:Yes, yes. Yeah, you're right. I actually skipped over an article. There was this one here. This big law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, one of actually the biggest law firms in the world, most experienced, biggest, recently filed a motion on bankruptcy court that had numerous errors and incorrect citations. They had used AI, referenced cases that didn't exist. So embarrassing, so humiliating. They were obviously caught by the opposing team, the law firm on the other side that called out all of these errors right in front of the judge. And it was just a huge mess. And of course, they had to apologize and it was ugly.

16:58Nico Brugge:And they did say that they had safeguards in place, that they had trained people specifically how to avoid these instances and the training wasn't followed. But also, again, we're early, you know, and this is what happens. And look, when it comes to the law, I do like it's amazing that like AI can serve as a tool, but I do want a human to double check it at the end of the day. You know, Chris, we're about the same age. I grew up in Internet 1.0 where you were told to trust nothing on the Internet. You had to go to the Encyclopedia Britannica. You had to have three other sources. And Wikipedia was a mess back then.

17:38You know, you could not use it as a source whatsoever. Now it's one of the best sources, believe it or not. But you can't just go into these things and think, oh, the computer did it for me. Everything's great. No, we still need that human eye. And I know we're all looking forward to the day of abundance where we're just sipping Mai Tais and lying on a hammock while robots and AI does everything for us. Truthfully, I don't think we'd all be super happy doing that. I think we need some other purposes in life. But moreover, you know, you need a human at the end of the day just to double check these things, because otherwise you're standing in front of a judge just being absolutely humiliated on something that should be pretty simple, especially for one of the largest law firms in the country.

18:22You know, God knows how much they bill an hour. Yeah, no, I know. Again, we're early. I mean, we are very early. Yes. I don't even think we've had our peps.com moment yet. So, you know, that just says how early we are. AOL is still sending out CDs in the mail. That's where we are in the cycle, in the timeline. Right.

18:48Nico Brugge:This one is interesting. So this article talks about there's a company called Aira. So if you use Claude, if you've used Claude, they have this function built into their app where you can add connectors or skill sets, things like that, which are basically just – really refined instruction sets and types of skills that enhance Claude's functionality. This company, Era, became the first personal finance connector for Claude. So you can install this connector in your Claude app and have this personal finance skill set available to you. And basically, it will then autonomously, you know, I mean, it can, you know, do all kinds of stuff.

19:28Nico Brugge:Basically, it can manage all your finances, help you pick investments, all of this stuff. There's now, it says over$250 million in user assets sort of under, not management, but sort of. I mean, sort of. And it's funny. I don't know about this. To be fair, I have used Claude and all of the other LLMs too extensively for my investment research and investment practices. And we've even talked about them on the show. We've had several people come on and talk about how they've used AI to improve their investing. I mean, that's really what this show is. And it can be done and you can do it well. And I have actually, I've been really profitable this month even, and largely thanks to Claude and AI and all of this.

20:14Nico Brugge:But I would never just, you know, blanket trust one plugin on one LLM to make all of the decisions for me. Like, there's no way I would do that. I, you know, it's a really elaborate process where I use all of the LLMs and I challenge all of them against each other and have all of them pick holes and poke holes and in everything that every one of them is saying. And finally, after five or so, you know, very lengthy phases, do I even narrow it down to something that I then use my own brain to ultimately pick from? You know, I don't let it just go, oh, buy this and buy that and you'll be good. You know, like that's crazy.

20:54Nico Brugge:Nobody should do that. So I'm kind of curious to use this. I want to give it a fair shake and actually maybe I'll install it kind of like I did with the Perplexity Health a few weeks ago. Maybe I'll install it. Just sort of poke around, give it a run through, you know, and see what it's like, see what it says. But, yeah, I don't know. I don't know. It's interesting, though. Absolutely. And I'm with you, Chris. I'm not touching that at all. Though maybe$25 at it would be an interesting experiment. Speaking of which, everybody should check out RALPAL, the journeyman tomorrow with Yoni Azia, founder and CEO of eToro.

21:35RAL and him get into a whole discussion around creating AI agents to trade on your behalf and what happens if they go rogue. And it's absolutely fascinating. If you're watching this show, it is right up your alley. So make sure to check it out tomorrow. All righty, Chris. We have another one that we wanted to highlight before we get to the back half. And this one is both sort of sits in the middle, both optimistic and, you know, scary.

22:03Nico Brugge:Yeah. So if you've been following any of the markets, we've seen really since year to date, basically, software stocks or SaaS stocks, software as a service is what SaaS means. SaaS stocks have just been getting pummeled in the markets. I mean, as soon as AI, I think as soon as Claude launched Opus 4.5, maybe our four points, one of the, a few versions back, literally that was the tidal wave. And just every, you know, all the SaaS stocks just went through the floor. Because the remote was gone. Everybody was like, well, why would I use Adobe? Why would I use Salesforce? Why would I use XYZ CRM tool when I can just build up a quick app on Cloud Code or whatever and not have to pay a monthly license fee, any of this stuff.