A device that records your entire life? Yeah, sure great idea...

0:03Hey, everybody. Just a quick note before we get to the rest of the show. You will notice that we do not really talk about the big story tariffs. that is, of course, rocking the markets globally. But that, dear listener, is by design. We want to give a little bit of time for this story, which is just changing so much by the day, and come with a more fulsome discussion next week. We have a great guest lined up to talk about it, and hopefully there'll be also a tad bit more clarity. But now, let's get back to the rest of this week's episode. Hello and welcome back to the Times Tech Podcast with me, Katie Prescott, and you, Danny Fortson.

0:44Katie here in the city and Danny in the valley. Hello, Katie. Hello, good to see you. So what do you have for us today? I have a question. Go on. Have you ever watched Black Mirror and thought, this terrifying bit of technology that is ruining the fabric of society, we should do that. This is a really embarrassing admission for a tech journalist, but I've actually never seen Black Mirror. Oh, my gosh. I know. I feel like I'm going to get fired for admitting that there. Yeah. Keep that one due. Sorry. Well, so this obviously will answer my next question, which is going to be, have you ever watched the episode called The Entire History of You?

1:22It sounds really good, but no. So I've asked ChadGBT to summarize this episode for you. Big spoiler alert for any listeners. For you, Katie, I will have to spoil it because it's important for what we're about to discuss today. Okay, spoil away. Go for it. Okay. So I've asked Chad GPT to make this summary dramatic. Insert tense music. Producer Callum Wong.

1:50In a world where every moment is recorded through a brain implant called the grain. I'm serious here. Hold it together. one man rewinds his memories to uncover the truth about his marriage but the more he sees the less he can forget and the truth tears everything apart in the end to forget is the only freedom

2:21did i sound like a dude who's like a dude you know in the movie trailers yeah you could be in netflix there's another job waiting for you yeah who knows um so would you watch that would you watch what i just described to uncover the truth yeah it sounds gripping good story yeah question two the grain the device that allows uh liam and black mirror to replay his entire life what do you reckon do you think uh this is a good idea thing you would buy Rewinding your memories to uncover the truth about your marriage. I mean, it just sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I don't know that it's that different to what we're doing now, carrying mobile phones around, but maybe I'm wrong.

3:05Fair, fair. Well, today's guest I've been speaking to is Dan Soroker. He's the founder of a company called Limitless AI. And Limitless have created something they call the world's most wearable AI. It's a magnetic brooch called the pendant. And according to their website, it remembers what you say throughout the day from in-person meetings, impromptu conversations, and personal insights. Personal insight. Wow. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. So. Many questions. What's not to like? Now, in fairness to Dan, pendant, unlike the grain of black mirror, doesn't film what you see. It only records what you hear.

3:48And he takes issue with the Black Mirror comparison. But we'll get into that. OK, well, I'm desperate to hear what he has to say. Should we go straight into it? Yeah, so let's do it. Here he is, Dan Soroker of Limitless AI. My 20s, I started to go deaf. I have a genetic condition called otosclerosis. And when I tried a hearing aid, it was magical. And it was magical for a few reasons. One, I could hear again, which is great. But the second, which was this big insight I realized, is my hearing had gone so bad so gradually that I didn't even know what I was missing. For example, the first time I turned a faucet on after getting a hearing aid, I was like in shock.

4:28Like, that makes sound. This high-pitched sound. What's that racket? Yeah, if you didn't know that faucets make sound, get your hearing checked. But yeah, you turn a faucet on, it makes this high-pitched sound. And like in that moment, I had this epiphany. We are living our lives with biological limitations that we don't even realize are there. And so it put me on this hunt now 12 years later for ways that technology can augment human capabilities and give us superpowers. And that's what it feels like to overcome your biological limitations. That led me to memory. 90 % of memories are forgotten after a week.

4:57It gets worse as you get older. Typically, people's memory peak when they're 20 years old. And then every year thereafter, it's worse. So that's what we mean by overcoming your biological limitations, your mind's limitations, is to do the same thing a hearing aid did for my hearing but for your mind, for your memory instead. So what is the thing? The thing that you are, for people who are not, who won't see the video, you're wearing this little kind of, it's about the size of a quarter-ish. Yeah. That's kind of clipped. It looks like magnetically to your collar. That's right. Yeah. It's clipped magnetically to my collar.

5:28We also have a necklace that goes with it. You can put it on a little necklace. It's got a little jawbone design here. And the idea behind the pendant is it's a wearable AI device. You put it on in the morning, You said and forget it. I've worn it now every day, every moment of every day for months. And just like my hearing aid, I put it on in the morning. I can't imagine living a day without it. The same is probably true for people with glasses. Could you imagine going around your life without glasses? Maybe there's some moments you would. And so the same thing happens with the pendant. So what the pendant does is it captures your conversations.

6:00It could be as simple as a cute thing your kid said. I have three young kids and I capture cute things they say all the time. To maybe an action item in a meeting. or maybe you're listening to a podcast like this one. And a few hours later, what was actually that point Dan was saying? What was the analogy he was making? And now you can ask those questions. Anything that's on the tip of your, if you've ever had this feeling of racking your brain, like where was that? What was that? What did I hear? Or you may be connecting the dots in your past. Now you can do that using a pendant to capture these conversations.

6:26So in other words, it's effectively a listening device that transforms your daily life into a searchable document. Yeah, it's searchable, not just as searchable from like a full text search, but really powered by AI. You can ask questions of your past in a way you could never do it before. For example. Yeah, for example, you could ask it, you know, I ask every morning, actually, I've set it up to automatically give me a push notification, where I have this prompt that says, my goal is to be better, to be a better coworker, be a better parent, be a better, you know, husband, give me examples throughout my day of ways where I could do that.

7:02Give me, you know, one key takeaway, and it'll give you these magical moments that you don't even realize. Can you give me an example of something that the AI told you recently that kind of judged you and said, you need to do this better? Sure. Yeah. So I actually put this out when I was demoing this feature when we launched these daily notifications. I ran it live on the recording for the first time. So you can actually even see my reaction when I see it for the first time. And the advice he gave me, the one concrete thing was, you know, you could give more praise to your team. And it gave three examples from just that day where in standup in the morning, an engineer was talking about, boy, this is really challenging.

7:40We overcame this. And I responded with, okay, cool. And I moved on where he gave it specific language to, Hey, look, if you had just responded with that sounded really challenging, you know, really appreciate you putting the extra effort in that would light them up as a leader, as a manager, those moments of praise are things that I, you know, I know have a huge positive impact people that lights them up and gives them energy to run through walls for weeks to come. That was a concrete thing. As a manager, as a leader, I could have done better. And I didn't know. In the moment, I'm just moving on to the next thing.

8:04I'm not paying attention where, you know, if you're watching a sporting event and, you know, American football, somebody throws an interception, that quarterback is within minutes on the sideline looking at a printout of what they missed. What did they miss? Where was that safety? They're just watching the game tape on the iPad on the sideline. This is a game tape for your life. And many times, the ones that hit home for me are, you know, ways I could be more, pay more attention as a dad, opportunities where my kid says something and maybe he missed it and where I could go deeper. And so, yeah, it's become a key part of it.

8:35It's a life coach for me. It's a work coach. And until you have those concrete examples, you don't even realize. I bet you most of people listen to this and be like, I'm doing a pretty good job. There's nothing I could do and prove. You'd be shocked if you just look at one day of your life and you could ask AI what you could do better, you'd be shocked it would have come up with. And that's not for everyone. Not everyone wants to be better in life. But if you do, this is magic in a bottle. It feels like there's some judgment implicit. And well, you know, not everybody wants to be better. Some people want to be, you know, not very good.

9:04I would say there's a spectrum of self-awareness and self-improvement. And I'll give you a very concrete example. When we launched this feature, it pissed people off. People got a push notification in the morning saying, how dare you? How dare you send me a message? And you know, if that's how they feel when they go back to the conversations they've had in the past and it kind of hurts their feelings that there are things they could have done better. Okay. Maybe we're not for them. But we would rather lean into the people who are wearing an Oura ring. They're trying to be better at what they do.

9:31And if they're open to that, you know, this is not – most tech doesn't tell you ways you can be better. Most tech tries to play it safe. This is an example. We're kind of leaning into the edginess and the ability for us to help people because we think that's good for you and society. My kids are happy I wear the pendant because it makes me a better dad. Just because I think the mechanics of this, you know, so much of this is about design and how it kind of lands on people, as you say, when you launched a lot of – it made a lot of people angry. So let's say yesterday I wear dependent all day. The AI is surveilling.

10:04And then it comes back like, man, when Danny was hanging out with his boys, he should have done this or that. Or he could have done this better. Whatever. I wake up. What does that push notification look like? What is it called? Is it like your daily self-improvement notice? And how is that delivered? Yeah. So you said by listing device earlier and surveil just now. And so you have a connotation here that I just want to address proactively, which is, and I'll answer your question, but first I just want to say your privacy and the privacy people you meet with are very, very important. It is critical, critical for our product to do well for you and society at large.

10:41And I just want to head that off that like, this is not a device that's surveilling you. There's no AI sitting there like, you know, twiddling and saying, Ooh, I wonder what Dan's up to. This is a machine that you're asking questions of and you create a prompt where that prompt is the thing you're trying to extract from your past. And it comes back with a response. There's no, you know, there's, there's no nefarious activity. The things, the conversations you have with others are shareable. You know, very often when I meet somebody for the first time and I say, Hey, can I, can I wear this thing?

11:06I'll capture the conversation. I don't have to take notes. I'm happy to share it with you afterwards. A hundred percent of the time people are fine with it. I've had, I haven't had a single person say to me, Oh, that's weird. Take that off. I I don't feel comfortable. You've had nobody say no. Zero. Not a single person has said that. And the reason why is because the perception of a device like this is so different than the reality, especially when I can share the artifact. I can share the summary. I can share the action items. I can share the conversation. And that neutralizes it. Most people get afraid of recording devices when it's about control, when it's about canceling me.

11:36Well, what are you going to do with this voice, you know, this conversation afterwards? And when you tell them, look, it's just because I care what you say, dude. I want to know what you're going to say. I want to remember it. I got kind of a bad memory. It'd be really great, you know, to be able to go back to it afterwards if it's useful. And, you know, maybe you say something serendipitously now that I might not remember later. And I just I care about you and I want to remember it and I'll share with you. Literally 100 percent of the time that has gone totally fine. The only awkward time was this poker night where there's like 30 dudes and they're all talking shit.

12:00And they're like one guy says, hey, are you a narc? But that's about it. Literally every single moment, every single other day for months. This is not an issue. But so since we're here, because I was looking on your website and there's a lot about privacy and how important it is. and how the lengths to which you are going to kind of ensure that this is kind of encrypted and nobody can hack it, et cetera, et cetera. But I don't see anything on there about what you just said, consent. And maybe I just was looking in the wrong place. But how does that work? Because if you're wearing that, is it on you as a wearer to be like, every time you have a conversation, every time you walk into the supermarket, every time you walk through the office to tell everybody, Hey, I've got this listening device.

12:44Everybody cool with this? In other words, what is the system or is there one? Because it feels like right now it's relying on people to be very proactive and most people just aren't that. Yeah. So we have a bunch of stuff in our help center all about consent. If you search for consent, we've got articles and articles. And the thing in the app, we teach users how to do this. And so I'll say a couple of things. One, there's a legal bar for consent, and then there's a much higher moral, ethical, social, behavioral, social acceptance bar, which is the one we want people to adhere to. And the two magical things that we have learned about that higher bar is what I did earlier.

13:21I tell you why I'm wearing it. It's because I want to remember what you say. It's not about me trying to cancel you, and I'm willing to share it with you. Those two things, I think, are the magic ingredients to social acceptance. People are like, okay, cool. Like you're just an honest person trying to be better, trying to remember, and you're not going to lord this over me. It's something we have a shared artifact for. We have found that that actually – we had all these technology solutions to this problem. We thought about consent mode and all the technology. And we have built a lot of that. But we realized it's more of a human thing.

13:49It's more of a – the way you introduce it thing. And that is what unlocks the social acceptance. So when you talk about those, there's a moral bar of like just being straight with people. Yeah. And then there's the legal bar. What's the legal bar? So the legal bar is – every country and state is different. there. But part of the legal part is this notion of presumption of privacy. So if you're at a restaurant or if you're at a sporting event and you're in public, the presumption of privacy isn't there. And so the Leo bar, basically all these rules are in consent, kind of go out the window. You can, you know, just like today, you can go to the sporting event and take a picture of their phone.

14:23No one's going, oh my gosh, why are you taking a picture of me? You're out in public. So all the legal stuff happens when there is a presumption of privacy. In America, it's state by state. So in America, you know, in one state, there's some states that are called one party consent states where the person who's wearing it is the party. They have to consent and they're going to wear it. Then they technically legally don't have to say anything. Although we tell them, you should tell everyone, like, this is the reason why you're wearing it. And that's why I say it's a higher bar. Some states like California are two party consent.

14:51So if you're going to court somebody else and there's a presumption of privacy, not in public, but a presumption of privacy, you can tell them, hey, you have to tell them legally that you're going to record them and get their consent. And so that is, that's sort of the legal bar. But again, that's much lower than the higher bar. And the higher bar again is just being a good person. It's being a good person. And then to explain the why behind the device. And you know, most people, you tend to think, I mean, maybe you as, you know, you interview a lot of new people. Most people's worlds are pretty small.

15:18They interact with their family, their coworkers, their friends. It's not like a thousand new people you meet every day. So you have the conversation the first time, you explain what it's for. People get kind of curious. They kind of lean a little bit. And then from there on out, you have that presumption. Okay. Yeah. This isn't going to capture the conversations. Like you're one of those, you know, you know, new technology adopters who doing this crazy thing. Uh, you know, I, I want to remind you some analogies here. This is why for most people listening, we like, Oh, this is weird. Why would I do that?

15:41Imagine a world before Uber you got in and I told you, look, I've got an idea for a company. You're going to get into a random person's car that you were matched with on the internet, random person. You've never met this person. They're going to, you're going to get in their car and they're going to drive you. You don't know who they are. You don't know where they've come from. You don't know if they've got I did driver's license. And they're going to humanely ratchet on the internet within minutes. Like that would have been shocking. And the first time you ride an Uber ride, you're like, well, this is kind of neat.

16:04So you're all your perception, your concerns, your fears go away as soon as you try it. And the same thing is the true of the pendant. As soon as you feel that magical moment of being able to go back to a moment in your past and see the ways you could have been better or done better, or even just remember something that you would have otherwise forgotten or that cute thing. The first time your kid says, I love you. That was one of the first things we got from a customer is like, Hey, I was wearing this pendant with my one-year-old on the swing. They turned around and they said, I love you for the first time.

16:27They were able to capture that moment with a pendant. No other device could do that. You can't take your phone out quickly enough to record it. Those are serendipitous moments you're going to lose. And so then you realize, okay, wow, this world is a better world and I can't imagine living without it. Right now it's just America? No, the whole world. Yeah. Whole world. And so are there any, and I don't know if you know the soft top of the head because the world's a big place, but like what, if any differences there are in terms of what you can and can't do or have to and have to not do in the UK in terms of privacy, consent, etc.

16:58Yeah, I'm not an expert on the UK. I have seen though that America tends to be actually more restrictive and more legalistic here. And even socially, it's like, even the word consent is actually a very loaded word. There's a lot of other connotations for the consent. It has nothing to do with reporting. So that brings in sort of this baggage, this conception that I do think creates a very, again, very high perceived concern, but reality when you try it is not there at all. You look at countries like Korea where phones in Korea, they have a button right on there to record the phone call. And that's totally fine.

17:27You just have, oh, I want to record this call. It doesn't do the beeping thing. It just records the call and people realize, okay, cool. I'm going to do a phone call. So it is kind of this social, control-trial artifact. It's actually the roots of it are in government surveillance. It has nothing to do with me capturing this government. It's the government. It's protecting you from your own government. That's why you need one-party consent so the government can't surveil you. So it all depends on the history of the country and what they're comfortable with. I want to talk about the business a bit.

17:57So when did you launch this company or when did you start this whole thing? So this company actually is five years old. We started with a very different idea and we've pivoted out a few times. We announced the pendant October 23. We're now just delivering on these pendants. So it's been a while since we announced it, built it. We've mass produced it. We have a whole factory set up in China, mass-produced these things, shipping them out now. So we've got thousands of these going out every week. Well, that's what I was going to say. So how many are out in the wild and how far along in that kind of trajectory are you in actually getting this out in the world?

18:33Because that's the proof of the pudding is in the eating, right? Yeah, I would say we unequivocally have product market fit. And having now searched for that for five years, it feels really good to be able to say that. Oh, my gosh, were we out in the desert looking for ways to get there? And this is not my first rodeo. So my first company, Optimizely, it actually got product market fit very quickly. So I have not been used to spending years and years of my life trying to build something that people want and failing. So finally, I think we've achieved that. And, you know, obviously there's degrees of product market fit.

19:01This is not, you know, ChatGPT that's got hundreds of millions of users in a few months. But it's tapping into something really human. And we've been thrilled with the results. You know, we've got thousands of these out in the world today. People are using it every single waking hour. That was a, that was kind of a bet we made that this isn't just a tape recorder. This isn't just a tape recorder in the cloud. There's a lot of products out there that you can, you know, you can use voice memos. You can just, we, we sort of made this conscious bet. If we build a product with this premise that people are going to set and forget it, they want to carry it and wear it without having to annotate their day, without having to turn it on and off and just sort of organizes your life for you.

19:35That's something I didn't mention. Sort of organizes everything you've said and heard into this life log where it's a hierarchical view of your, you know, the conversations you've had, our bet was like, that would, that would resonate. People are busy. They want to put it on in the morning. Just like I put my hearing aids on in the morning. I don't think about them throughout the day. I don't really think about dependent throughout the day. It's capturing what's going on. And if I need to, you know, I can tap it stars a moment, sort of remembers it. It's a cute thing a kid said, but passively it just captures my day.

19:58And that premise has really, really paid off. I think people really value that they're busy. They want something that's going to help them be a little bit better. And, and we can do that. Is there, what's the gender breakdown, um, of people buying this thing? Is it mostly dudes? It is mostly dudes. That is a good question. I'm curious why you ask. It does skew male. And that might be a byproduct of just social media. And like, you know, I'm not on Instagram or other, I'm mostly on Twitter slash X and that's now skewed very male. So I do think that's more a byproduct of where we've been. We had a couple of early adopters use us on and put videos that went viral on Instagram.

20:32So maybe that's where we're getting more of a gender split, But it does skew male, yeah. Personal question, are you married or have a partner? I am married, yeah, with three kids. What does your wife think of this? Great question. My very first thought when I had this idea for The Pendant many, many years ago was fear. I was terrified my wife would hate this idea. And so she's very honest, very, like she's both my biggest fan and I think most honest critic. I've told her many startup ideas, including many crazier ones than this. And I told her this idea, what do you think of how I wore this device?

21:05It captured conversations. And my fear was she would hate it because now I would finally win arguments and she would lose a few. And it turned out it was the opposite. She, I think before I did, realized the power of clarity, of that conflict and miscommunication comes from misremembering. Oh, no, you didn't say you were going to do that. Oh, I did say that I was going to do that. When you have a record, when you have a conversation, you can go back to it. you have this magical ability to remove ambiguity, to remove miscommunication. And so she saw it long before I died. And she's the most private.

21:38She'd be, if she watches it, she's going to be. So she's the most private person I know. She doesn't want me to talk about her. But like that was actually the first people who I talked about this idea and kind of lit me up. It's actually maybe this is better for relationships in society. Well, I was going to say, because to your point, often conflicts are, well, you said this. Like, no. I said that. And like, I feel like, um, um, you know, being right doesn't mean you're always quote unquote have won the argument. And so I'm just wondering like how this fits, like, have you used this to solve conflicts in your own life?

22:13Because there is that kind of, uh, let's call it a misalignment of like the, the record around what, what was actually said or not said. I will give you a very concrete example. I tweeted this out six days ago. Me, you said you would do your homework right after dinner. My six-year-old. No, I didn't. Me, do you want me to play back what you said from the pendant? Six-year-old. Okay, fine. I'll do my homework. So one example, you know, of getting your kid to follow through and commitment when there's no ambiguity of what was said. You know, that was a small example, but I do think, you know, he should know that when he says something, his words should be impactful and he can't just make it up and change it after the fact, and the pendant can help hold him accountable.

22:51So this is one small example. If you ever struggle getting your kids to do homework, get a pendant.

22:59And how much money have you guys raised? With 33 million from great investors. First investor was Sam Altman before he became Sam Altman, although he's always been Sam Altman. Then first round capital did our seed round, or I guess pre-seed. Then Andreessen Horowitz did our seed and NEA led our series A. do you think you're ever going to get past the black mirror effect because i mean i'm sure you've been asked the version of this question a billion times but i'm and i'm sure you've seen the the famous episode where i think it's in the eye that's in uh it's a recording device in someone's eye and they their whole life is basically one long video recording they the guy goes back sees there is a little something between his wife and a friend at a dinner party and that leads to a bunch of questions and ultimately comes out she's cheated and he ends up like alone depressed it's all very dystopian because he's like i can see the evidence oh anyway it gets to that idea that i think you know a lot of companies out here there's a question of like well can we build this thing the answer is often yes the next question is should we build this thing do people want it Is there, or is this going to be too creepy?

24:10Whatever it may be. So how do you guys think about that kind of social piece? Is this a thing that people are actually going to want beyond like a very small core of enthusiasts? I will tell you with 100 % certainty, this is the future. I have felt the power, the 100 % certainty. There will be millions, if not billions of people on this planet wearing this or one of our competitors in years to come. Why are you so convicted? because of the fundamental insight I have, have now worn it, is that we all live our lives with blinders on. We don't even realize it. Once you feel what it's like to go back to a moment I just, you've had from your past that you didn't realize you were living life to its fullest in the moment, you can't go back.

24:50I cannot imagine a single hour without that. I've had now, the only time I've not worn this is I have this founder form every, it's off the record, two hours, once a month. I feel naked. In fact, in that meeting now, I'm so dependent on this capturing it. There was a conversation about a dinner in New York and some people said who they're coming. I just assumed the pen it would capture. I forgot I wasn't recording it. No, you could argue, okay, is that good for my brain? Is that to be able to outsource this? But the same thing is I don't know people's phone numbers anymore. I just type in their name.

25:12That's fine. Whatever. So I'm convinced with 100 % certainty that millions, if not billions of people will wear this. It's early and every new technology goes through these phases of shock and awe, just like self-driving cars. People are terrified. Now you try it a few times. Like, that's kind of amazing. So it is, you know, I think the dystopian views from Black Mirror are interesting, but there's some fundamental issues I can nitpick that particular episode, one of which is that fundamental conflict comes from this idea that the wife captured these cheating affair with others and then lied about it.

25:42Whereas if you know in a world that there's a track record, just like with my wife now, I know that, hey, if something was said, I have a record, I can go back to it. I don't lie. I never lie. I know that there's an impeccable truth behind it. It changes your behavior in a positive way. You don't gaslight people. If you've been gaslit, you can go back and say, hey, hold on, what actually happened? So I think the benefits to the person wearing it are clear. The benefits to society at large is clear. But it's weird. I know it's weird. I'm not immune to that. It sounds like what you're saying is like on this idea that millions and eventually billions of people are going to wear this thing.

26:14What you're talking about is because it's going to, in that part of that bargain is changing kind of the fundamental nature of humans and how they interact. Yeah, fundamentally. It helps you in a way. Just like glasses and hearing aids. Like, you know, you could live your life without glasses, but why would you? I could live my life without perfect memory, but why would I? And I think the thing that was a surprise to me was how clearly the disconnect between perception and reality is once you wear it. And the other major surprise, I didn't know how this would be received. I know I've been wearing it.

26:45The whole team wears it. I was expecting maybe half my conversations to be awkward. And it's every time I have to like, oh, gosh, this thing. Turns out if you just introduce it in the right way and you explain the why, it completely neutralizes that. So once I had seen that, I realized, OK, the bar to this being accepted isn't that one-to-one kind of awkwardness. It's people getting over their own perceived concerns, just like Uber. You try Uber one time, you get over the fact that it's a random guy from the internet. And that same thing is true of this pendant. So I hope it's us. I don't know if it's us.

27:13I'm sure at some point Apple and Google and they're all going to make these things. Right now, the beautiful thing is we're in this window where it's weird enough that they're too terrified. They can barely even get their regular AI stuff to work, let alone this stuff. I think they're too terrified to even dip their toes in this. They're going to let us take all of the punches and all the tough questions from interviewers. I hope by then, you know, we have millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of users. And, you know, like the Oura Ring, you know, we've built a new category of technology that people realize, ah, there's some utility here and I can't imagine living life without it.

27:42Feel free, if this ages like milk, I would be very surprised. Whoever's listening, if the year is 2035 and there are not millions of people wearing devices like this, maybe not from us, maybe from our competitors, feel free to send me an email. Hey, Dan, this age is like milk. Your prediction was wrong. Your 100 % confidence was ill-fated. I just think the – to your point, there is – who would have thought that 25 years ago when the internet first arrived, all of a sudden we'd be walking around with supercomputers that we're just obsessed with and staring at all day in our pockets. That then would have seemed like an impossibility because it was like a big deal when Bill Gates said, we're going to have a desktop in every home.

28:25People are like, no, that's crazy. So I'm willing to accept the premise that we don't know how things are going to go. But I think the fundamental issue around, oh, just like, you know, it's a bit like CCTV in the UK. So maybe this is an apropos example. CCTV is literally everywhere in the UK. You know, there's like the famous saying, like if you want to go through central London, there's never, there's almost nowhere where you can go where you're not on film. But this fundamental issue around consent and just relying on people to be good people about it and to be really assiduous about it. And every time they go and meet a new person, every time they're going out on a date, whatever, they'll be like, hey, do you mind if we record this conversation?

29:16but I am only doing this because I think, you know, I care about you. I just don't think that's realistic, but maybe I just don't have enough faith in humanity. Yeah, maybe. Uh, I don't think it's a faith in humanity thing. Cause I would even argue that what's the worst that could happen. Like, honestly, people have, there's, there's this psychological trait people have that they have, that their whole world revolves around them. Like what you say really doesn't matter. You know, honestly, what if somebody posted on the internet? Like I, I, I'm not cynical about it, but I do think people, they like to think they're more important than they really are.

29:46And they like to think what they say is super important. And like, honestly, it doesn't matter. And also soon, if maybe you say something stupid and you're worried you're going to get canceled, an AI could have made it. AI, automatic generating voice clones are just as good as humans. So honestly, even if we don't exist, we're going to live in a world where like what you say doesn't really matter. Like it almost like you're yelling into a wind and nobody really hears you. So I just think there's so much, it's a little bit of, I think, a Luddite mindset that like, oh, like, you know, and it's also not the government.

30:15It's not sort of government surveilling you. And that to me is much more scary than your friend who just wants to sincerely remember your conversation with you. I much more trust my friends than the government with CCTV. And the fact that CCTV even, that would surprise me more that societies would be accepted of that than individuals who are just trying to be better and remember what you say. So, you know, maybe I'm wrong. Who knows? I'll also just say, this is the worst this technology will ever be. Every day it's getting better. Soon, by being able to capture what you say, there's a fundamental thing that I didn't mention that I think is important.

30:48LLMs are getting smarter and smarter, but still know nothing about you. Maybe they remember your chat history, but they don't know the conversations you have. Soon, Dependent will enable you to basically draft emails exactly like I would. So instead of me having to write from a blank piece of paper, just drafts the email. Maybe after this conversation, it'll draft me an email to you, say, hey, thanks for having me on the pod. And it was really cool. We talked about this and the other. Here's a link you should look at. Knowing the context of what I've actually said and heard, eventually it'll do the boring half of your job for you.

31:12I'm a big believer in LLM's augmenting human intelligence, not replacing human intelligence. And eventually you should just do agentic behavior identically to me. And if we get to those use cases, oh my gosh, then how can you imagine living life without it? I don't know what to do with that. That's a lot. There's a lot there, right? There's a lot to talk about. Can we start with his enthusiasm. I don't think I've ever heard anyone who's so completely optimistic and I don't know what the word is, you know, he's sort of self-driven and really, really bloody believing in this thing. And he didn't seem to be able to, even when you were talking about the consent issue, see the issue, see the problem.

31:55Well, the thing that struck me is he's both totally optimistic about, yeah, hey, just ask nicely and it's all going to work. But also totally nihilistic as well. Just being like, well, in the future, there's going to be so much AI and nobody's going to know who's really saying anything. So you're not that important. What you say doesn't matter. Yeah, you're just shouting into the wind. And actually, that's total nonsense. A lot of what people say a lot of the time matters a lot. It might not if you're just wandering around in your day-to-day personal life. Sure. But in the workplace, it's hugely important.

32:30A lot of the time people are dealing with really sensitive conversations. Yeah. And the idea that it just completely depends on the individual wearing it to put their hand up and say, would you mind? Well, this is what I found so interesting. Yeah, because he was like, look, we tried all these different technological kind of fixes, we'll call them, to kind of handle the consent issue. And lo and behold, we couldn't figure it out or nothing quite worked. and so the solution we ended up on was hey person who spent two hundred dollars on this device anytime you meet somebody just say how much you care about them and you just are really trying to be a better person and that's why you want to record this conversation like that's just so wildly unrealistic it feels like to me and the fact that like oh we couldn't actually crack this very very hard problem so we're going to shift the responsibility back on the user in a way that's completely informal and not trackable and not enforceable it just I was just like oh and very discreet I mean you could argue well he might argue well if you were going to record somebody secretly you could do it any way you wanted you could and of course you could but the fact is this is actually deliberately a device that's made to do that it's made to capture the whole of your life and if you think about meta's glasses they have a little flashing light because they record everything as well yeah can do but they have a light that flashes to show that they are recording you'd think that they would have designed something on the little badge like a red light that went bing you would think you would think and i i also think it's just so interesting that all you know this company is not alone there's a bunch of companies trying to figure out what is they're going to be the quote-unquote you know the AIA wearable the thing that's going to like supplant or at least become a companion to our smartphones or whatever I mean his prediction that in 2035 there will be billions of people wearing an AI microphone what do you think about that i can't i can't see it happening can you but i i do find it fascinating that he got money from sam altman before he was sam altman yeah yeah yeah because actually when i heard him talking that was my question i thought wow danny's got an interviewed tigger certainly very positive but he's got serious people behind him yeah he's got real money real money and real people yeah totally and when i i reported out a story on this so i talked to a few people and i found another company who he referred to that didn't make into the cut they're called friend go on friend.com okay and it's the same thing it's like a little circular listening device but you can wear it as a necklace and the founder is 22 years old and they put out this like 90 second ad and it's all young people and it like opens with this like woman she's hiking she reaches a peak of something and then she just starts talking to like no she's by herself she's talking to nobody or whatever and then she says something and then she gets a text and the text is from her listening device her friend who has commented on what she said and then she responds and then the next vignette is like somebody playing video games and like the little friend says oh you're getting your butt kicked or whatever ha ha ha ha the friend necklace yes and then the third one is this woman is on a date and she was about to start talking to her friend because i guess you can kind of touch it which activates it or says something or whatever and then she stops because she's having such a wonderful time on this date and it's like this supposed to be this profound moment but the whole is it's like an ai wearable friend that has a personality it has a name and it listens to your life because you're wearing it as a necklace and then sends you text messages kind of throughout the day or whatever to kind of have a conversation as if your friend is with you do you think um that our generation maybe has different views on privacy i mean is that is that 100 percent one of the things here because the idea for us of walking around and recording our entire lives is is terrible but maybe if you're more used to growing up in a social media era where you document everything and you carry your phone everywhere it's less of a deal your whole life is mediated by a screen anyway and so the idea of like an ai friend for example that's constantly talking to you and here the interesting thing about the friend and then we can get back to limitless but friend is if you lose the device you lose everything there is no backup i.e it's kind of supposed to be like a person oh so it literally dies and that's it basically yeah well that's one of the things i like about technology that it doesn't do that oh well but back to limitless i just think the uh i'm trying to figure out how they're trying to sell it because he's like it's a life coach it makes it's making me a better person it's making me a better like worker or whatever you're like that bit was wild by the way what was that about he goes through I mean I don't I think he uses it because he's ticker and optimistic in a different way to the way most people would use it well that's what I'm saying like is this a solution looking for a problem I mean billions of people I just don't buy it like you know millions of people I don't buy it it's very easy to slag it off I can see why 100 recording all your life could be really really useful you know like all of the work conversations you have I know sometimes I speak to sources and I would love to be able to record what they say, but I don't because they don't want me to and it's not ethical.

38:26But I can see how, you know, or just generally when you're engaging with your kids, like I can see why it could be useful. I just, it makes me feel really squeamish. And yeah, just the idea of like when he gave the example of talking to his kid and it's like, well, do you want me to go back to the pen and see what you said about your homework? And it's like, do you want me to call up God? and say, hey, God, what did little Timmy say? But also the idea of an argument with your partner, when you go, well, you said this, you said that. Oh, well, let's get the pendant out and check what you really did.

39:01I mean, most of you will know in that situation. Well, that's what I was saying. Even if you win, you're going to lose that argument. You're rather half. Just be right sometimes, even if you remember full well, they're not. Yeah, you might be right, but you're going to be sleeping on the couch, my friend. Life is a bit more subtle. I found him quite endearing. It's like boundless enthusiasm for this idea. Well, the other thing I would say is that he has a previous company, Optimizely. Like I think that when you talk about, you know, getting backing from Sam Altman, Andreessen Horowitz and other companies, like nothing will get you funded quicker than a previous success.

39:46so his other company did well this is his next go around and so again it kind of just it's a little insight into how this place works silicon valley is that even if your idea is totally looney tune if you've shown that you can do this if you've um you will you're very likely to get money people get their wallets out yeah exactly i mean maybe it is something that if everybody wore one and if there is that universality to it that he thinks there's going to be and I'm looking forward to you going back to him about the the milk yeah aging like milk I think I honestly I think it is going to age like milk but if you knew everybody was wearing one then it would make you act in a very different way wouldn't it well that's what he's saying he's like you know basically everybody would be different and you're kind of like okay this is we're doing we're trying to do too much here we're not changing humans no because all of a sudden oh no one's gonna gaslight anybody anymore and no one's gonna lie and no and you're like it's like what indeed it's quite sweet yeah so i but but again it's it's a little insight into the kind of the that uber optimism that often you find in this place uh he's an awesome i think he used to be based out here but um either way so i i thought it was a kind of a fun conversation obviously it was a great conversation thank you for sharing it so you're not going to go get you're not going to rush out and get one that's what you're saying not quite yet not quite yet maybe when everyone else has one in 10 years time how about you did he give you one no no well he did he encouraged me to like you know have a go but i'm a real late adopter of everything basically are you yeah When did you get an iPhone?

41:37Oh, late. I didn't get my first cell phone, mobile phone until I was 25. At all? Not even like a dumb phone? No. My first Nokia brick was in my mid-20s. Wow. Yeah. My best friend told me the other day she's still got her AOL account. Yeah, see, that's the thing. If you have an AOL account, there's a lot. You need to be conscious of what that says about you. I know, it's amazing. It's like having a Hotmail account. Or driving a really old car. No, that's fine.

42:13Before we go, a very important bit of news to cover. What's happened with the tadpoles? Oh, the tadpoles. They're almost growing legs. Weren't they almost growing legs two weeks ago? I thought they were and it turned out that was poo. Put that on a t-shirt. So I now put little bits of bacon into the tank, and they go for it like devils. Wow. I'll send you a picture. It's horrible. What are you going to do with all these frogs once they're frogs? Well, while you're starting your coding company, I'm going to start my frog selling business. Oh, right, right, right, right. Massive demand. Yeah, yeah.

42:55Millions or billions of people will have frogs. They will. In the future. Everyone in Southeast London.

43:06Thank you.