Peter Leyden: Generative AI (Transcript)

Aqeel: Hey everyone. Joining today is Peter Leyden of Wired. You may have seen him in a lot of different things: a Silicon Valley veteran who's been around tech, who's been covering things across the emerging technology for a while.

Aqeel: He's an advisor for many organizations and takes part in a lot of emerging tech research, has done a few different startups. Hopefully we'll get into today about the stories of those. I’m mostly just gonna pick his brain today while we're at a great Hackathon here at the Beautiful Shack 15 Venue in San Francisco, under Cerebral Valley's Chat GPT Plug-Ins Hackathon.

Aqeel: So he's joined us today as a master of ceremonies and graciously given us time just to get into his brain a little bit. So without further ado, Peter, I'd love to just introduce you.

Peter: That's great. Thanks for that intro.

Aqeel: Of course, man. Of course. I’ll spare your story for yourself. I'm just gonna butcher it.

Peter: So, well, you, you kind, you gave a more generic version of it, but Yeah. Well, let me, let me give you a little bit, little perspective here. You know, I started out as, a journalist and in so many ways, got onto extremely early tech story which was the current early days of the digital revolution because at the beginning of the internet kind of time and this was when Wired magazine was just starting, and it was this crazy ass magazine that like was the only place that had any clue about what was happening with all these computers in this early internet thing. So I worked at the founders there. I was recruited early. I was one of the first people they hired. Eventually ran it as the managing editor in the height there in the when it was really the kind of ground zero for all kinds of stuff going on in San Francisco here in the whole of the digital world.

Peter: And so since that time, I must say I've written magazine pieces there. I've written several books on the future that were kind of influential. I basically went into a lot of public speaking around this. I've done keynotes for literally the last 25 years, probably one a month all over America and often in Europe, sometimes around the world.

Peter: Trying to explain the digital revolution, globalization, the future, the kind of emerging technologies and all the different things about how we solve these challenges. So with that, I also have a kind of demo on startups I've actually had, depending on the industry. One of the political startups I've had like three startups, I found it and then ran. And I kind of get the business side, I get the startup scene. I've seen this happen before and I've been through this drill now for about 30 years. I've had a perspective on this technology world that really is helpful because as an OG I can see their emergence here of generative AI and you can kind of see, oh my God, you know, this is happening again.

Peter: Tons of parallels to what happened with the birth of the internet back then, which we can get into. But the idea is that, this one's for real and this one is one that is really very stepping back and saying, oh my God, this is, this is a really, truly big deal.

Peter: And that's something we can maybe chat about here, but I've got the perspective now to help this next generation of technologies, entrepreneurs, hackers.

Peter: Really think through the moment there and then really understand it for all its complexity, but also simplicity of like, hey, we're in a big moment here and this to all tune into. So this is why we're here chatting and I'm here at the hackathon chatting with everybody and hanging out and just really getting energy by the energy here. Yeah, that's what reminds you of the vibe is so much like early to mid nineties in San Francisco when at that time, the digital revolution was being called out by people like Wired, in some ways the mainstream press mocking it and like, oh, how’s that big a deal? It can't be that big a deal, this internet thing. Oh, these little goofball web companies, they're not gonna mull too much. And oh, these goofy startups, like what, it's kind of like Amazon? What's that ever gonna do? And who will ever really wanna buy stuff online? And no one's gonna really put their credit card on the internet, who would be crazy enough to do that.

Peter: That's all happening again now with this Generative AI. The whole thing is happening again. So it's just like watching people say, it's not that big a deal. Oh, it's such a big deal that it's gonna be, we gotta shut it down Or it's like, you know, all the issues that back then started going berserk. 25, 30 years ago are now coming up again here and so we're in the same place again.

Peter: We gotta really kind of look at this fundamentally new technology, look at it for what it is and the positive potential of it. Also understand some risks involved with it, but also, but forward and really start to take off on this next phase, which is really what's opening up here, an incredible opening here.

Aqeel: Absolutely. No, this is cool. I do want to dive deeper into the parallels with some specificity because you can comment on what was going on in real time and you took the great lens of sort of distilling and communicating and being between the worlds of the planet and what you're seeing here on the ground, those days.

Aqeel: Yeah, I guess I wanted to elaborate more. I'm sure you and your buddies are just hearing about the implications there. There's plays to be made, there is disruption happening in every sort of possible avenue and pocket, and then things outside of our imagination you can't see yet.

Aqeel: But I, I also agree, you know, it's only been a couple of decades.

Aqeel: I don't think people really adjusted, on how they're gonna react, so the general, like categorizations, like you said of enthusiastic to just dooming about it. Yeah. And or like outright rejection or just unaware. When you come in terms of societal like behavior seems the same, right now, why is this breaking out right now around Generative AI?

Peter: There was a very similar thing with the internet, which is the internet had been around for a while. The defense industry, academia. I mean, there was, you know, a certain elite was using it and understanding it, some of its implications. But really what happened in the early nineties, early to mid nineties, was essentially it opened up to everybody.

Peter: It was essentially popularized. You got a web browser that allowed us to graphical web and uh, to the internet essentially. And we started to see things for the first time and get it into the hands of just average people. And it was getting into the hands of these young technologists, entrepreneurs, again, back in the early nineties.

Peter: It was the 20 somethings and the 30 somethings who, We're really coming to this new technology with a really open mind and really kind of energized kind of sense.

Peter: Like, oh my god it does all this crazy stuff with it. And so, and it was that moment of popularization that is, it wasn't like the, it was invented the internet then, but it was essentially popularizing or opening it up, seeing so. Fast forwarding now, means the same thing with AI. Now. have been talking about AI for the last decade or more. Mm-hmm. There's examples of it. You can say, well the Google search was, you know, kind of powered by AI and people outside, you know, the big companies, they kind of like, okay, I kind of get why it would be a big deal. But no one really had their hands on it. They couldn't really do their own thing.

Peter: They couldn't apply it to their own fields and their own kind of little problems and just monkey with it.

Peter: Well that changed 36 months ago, and it says with, by opening up this, the word I keep calling is generative AI, just cuz there's Chat GPT and there's, you know, there's different versions. Let's just say the generative AI opening essentially now doing the thing. It happened before you get all these young 20 somethings, 30 somethings kind of technology entrepreneurs we're coming to this fresh face, looking at it going, oh my god, look, what can you do here? And just pushing it in all these different directions. Hackathon's a great example of like, everybody's just running with a different direction.

Peter: They've now got the plugins. Oh God, what can you do with the plugin? And you know, boom, boom, everyone's going nuts with it. That energy of those two things, by the way, another parallel about this is we're at Ground Zero, San Francisco.

Peter: Back then it was essentially a different neighborhood.

Peter: A little bit different part of San Francisco for those that know San

Peter: But everybody wanted to come to San Francisco in that early web world. I mean, we had literally TV crews that wired, coming from all over the world would come to our news, our kind of offices interview everybody to try to like, what's going on?

Peter: How's that work? Or journalists from all over businesses, from all over corporations, from all over. I mean, everybody's trying to figure out Ground Zero, San Francisco, what the hell is going on with this digital revolution? Here we are again. Where is this happening? In San Francisco. You got Cerebral Valley.

Peter: There's even a kind of old area Hills Valley kind of where everyone's kind of living. Here, we're in the ferry building. But you know, it's again, smack in the middle of Ground zero, San Francisco. Mm-hmm.

Peter: And what do you know? You know, once again, we're in the middle of this crazy ass new, new technology with all these people from all the world kind of streaming in here.

Peter: Kinda like, oh my God, what's going on here? What's happening? So that parallel is really striking and but it's, the reaction again, is like the outside world's reaction to this is very similar. made some illusion earlier in the conversation here about some of the things that, you know, kind of, um, first of all, there's a, there's a crew that kind of downplays its significance.

Peter: That'll be the crew that will just kind of ignore it or try to think it's not a big deal or not, don't have to wrap my head.

Peter: There's always that crew that's a big crew. Then there's a crew that wants to kind of, um basically, think about, uh we'll freak.

Peter: You know, and, and so just like, I kind of give you some examples of back in the early days of the web, it's like, oh my God, would, this would just be used for, you know, bad guys or whatever.

Peter: They was all worried about it. You know, either is even talk like, then let's just, why are we even opening this thing up? It should just be shuttered down.

Peter: Um, and again, you got the same thing now where people like, oh my God, the AI is gonna control us. It'll eventually be our overlords. We gotta shut the thing in this letter, this letter that went out with a thousand people signing.

Peter: I mean, there's always these hysterical reactions to it.

Peter: Here we go, check that box. There's different boxes so too, just not like the corporates, like corporates now. Back in the day, now, the origin, they initially were kind of suspicious of, what the hell is this internet thing? But eventually they said, holy shit, we gotta get in on this. And so they all started lumbering towards San francisco. Lumbering towards these startups and trying to like, okay, to help me do a web page, you know? 

Peter: And you're watching now the same thing's just starting to click right now as all these corporates are start think, oh my God, this is gonna affect our business and oh my God, how are we gonna do that?

Peter: Or Jesus, can we buy these people? Or how do we hire 'em? And how do we get our own chat GPT kind of model?

Peter: Anyhow, so you're watching that So there's all these parallels, so it's helpful for an oG like me who've been through it once watched, also, I've watched false starts.

Peter: There were some false start ones, like people thought there was a crew that thought it was gonna be this transformative thing. It was gonna change everything.

Peter: And to be fair, and again, I don't know how many of your listeners are involved in that and you know, there could well be good users and over time it's gonna be a useful thing.

Peter: I mean, I'm open to that, but in general, it was not. This threshold, transformational of technology. And those of us who played the game for a while have just watched it and kind of let it play its course. 

Peter: But this one is different. The generative aI revolution is, I would say at the very least, its best parallel is the arrival of the internet in the early 90s. and that case is pretty straightforward, the way I'm talking about this. It's because it's a general purpose tool that can impact almost everything, every field, every industry, every kind of region and culture. It has a world historic kind of potential to change.

Peter: in a way that certain other technologies, like the Metaverse or crypto for example, you know, you could, oh, it might affect financial services, but if you're not in that okay, who cares? 

Peter: Or, you know, there's different ways that these things are tighter. But all-purpose things can affect basically every field industry. Same thing with Generative AI.

Peter: AI is now in the hands of everybody. It essentially can impact pretty much every field in industry. Some faster than others, some more thoroughly than others. But in general, we have an all-purpose super tool that is now just starting into action. So on some level, that's the main parallel you gotta remember. And so why, that's why it's such a big freaking deal is you've got this, once a generation this is, you know, 25 years or something, you get across that kind of game changer. 

Peter: That is to my mind and to like myself, I think is, is clear that we're in that game.

Peter: But here's where it gets a little crazier, which is what I also laid out to your hacker crew here, which is, it could even be a bigger deal than that in a weird way, because in some respects, what the internet did was essentially an evolution of our telecommunications infrastructure. It wasn't something that was completely different than we humans have ever been to do. So, for example, we had telephone lines.

Peter: You could still call people across the ocean and talk over the voicemail. You know, now you can do it digitally and you could send, you know, things digitally and you could get audio found, you could eventually get video found there. It is an evolution. It's a very fun game. It helps a lot. But it's essentially an evolution of a thing that we had experienced before. Being able from a distance connects people from all over the world.

Peter: What's interesting about chat, uh about generative AI is it is really bringing humans across a threshold that we've not really been through before.

Peter: It's essentially a kind of a step changer or a threshold that humans kind of really are just going through for the first time. And let me explain that a little bit more, which is essentially, if you think of mechanical machines, uh, when they arrived on the scene about 350 years ago, kind of an enlightenment, um, back in the early industrial revolution, when that was invented, essentially you said, oh, here's a machine that could take the physical power of humans, or by extension animals maybe, and it could mechanize it or automate it into essentially a machine that can give you a superpower. Super physical problem, fat power.

Peter: So we could lift that, you know, humans could never lift, or all the stuff that we know. We harness that. We've essentially 250 years creating this world that we have now, which is harnessing that physical ability of machines. Mm-hmm. What's happening now is this is the first time we are crossing a threshold of machines being able to do intelligent things. They were moving from the power that humans could always have physical power, but they also had mental power. They had intelligence That was essentially a unique thing for humans and so, and machines could never do that. So basically every time you had to use intelligence, you had to have a human hired to do that. And some was low level stuff, some was high level but that was all labor. That's what it was at. Now we got a machine that can actually think and can actually do intelligent things.

Peter: So we're opening up an incredible category of things that are humans, so this time it's been all human beings, 10,000 years in civilization. All humans have always done the intelligence stuff.

Peter: Now it's like, holy shit, we could get 'em. An actual machine could start to do this thing. And that is a big oh wow moment that thing does open up an incredible category of, of so many things that humans do. And now we can start to think, oh well, you know, machines can do this, maybe better can do this thing even, you know, a comfort bar.

Peter: In some ways they can do things we do. And so now we're finally in a different world.

Peter: And I that threshold that we're going over with this generative AI. Is a threshold that people will literally, for centuries, be back on.

Peter: Because I think the capability of aI now is unlocking a super tool, a superpower that is going to augment human power in way of intelligence, essentially, in ways that up until now, have never been able to do.

Peter: Um, and so I think it's, that's a very big deal. And you could imagine in literally a hundred years, years from now or whatever, they'll look back and I'll go, Jesus, that was the early 2020s or the 2020s was kind of when we first, they humans first started opening up generative ai, AI and gen into the world, opening up the, the age of ai, which is like an a long age.

Peter: You know, you can talk about a different era, which you think in decades terms, but if you are about an age, it's like hundreds of years potentially. And I think it's fair to say it, this is a technology that now is opening up an era that, or an age where we're gonna be using these things forever now, And people are not going back.

Peter: You're not gonna oh, Jesus, don't do that.

Peter: Uh, we're gonna get better and better and better. It's gonna be, you know, all these ways kind of permeate our culture, our civilization. But it's starting now. So long short, I wanna laid out this whole thing, but analogy is really helpful because I think as people are looking today, a lot of the hackers for example, you know, it's, it's a funding technology.

Peter: It's a potential way to make money and a lot of people, lot of mine, are around this for sure.

Peter: But it's really an important moment. Human history and it's a kind of a, you are of something here that is like a very big deal and there are some big dangers and there's things gotta wrestle with, and that's we're all gonna do that in good time.

Peter: But I, I think it just, just at least stay fresh and focused on, oh my God, we're doing something now that is really, uh, fundamental, uh, to what humans, you know, the of human beings and now we're crossing one of 'em. It's not the only cool thing that's gonna happen in my lifetime, but it is one of the biggest things that's gonna happen in your lifetime.

Peter: And it's begun.

Peter: And that's an amazing moment.

Aqeel: You've touched on it very well. Right. Which is that we're now broken past the physics barrier in a lot right. Like the biomechanical functions of using the internet was still limited to like your excess use of keyboard and mouse.

Aqeel: Mm-hmm. Do some things and there's still gonna be human operators or service provision.

Aqeel: Goods and services are still being exchanged in terms of a, insofar as a commerce thing or information or retrieval thing. Mm-hmm. But now you just have fully autonomous entities if you will, organisms if you.

Aqeel: And I say organisms tastefully because you know, you can iterate and fine tune and reinforce and retrain and correct them as they go. But yeah, you just won't need as much human operation from many things. Right? So what does that world even look like, right? That, and that's the exciting stuff to me. Are we freed to solve problems that we just neglected because we were focusing on this stuff, right?

Aqeel: Cars were wrong by then. Or whatever, right? It can be a fixed climate, it can be fixed, better things, neuro attack, things of this nature. But I, it's been, it's been exciting. I agree that, that what you were, as you're speaking, thinking those dots are, the internet was closing through incredible efficiency gaps, Credible efficiency gaps. You access information, task.

Aqeel: Communication became instantaneous. You can automate processes, right? Like RPA was the thing that's kind of happened in the last two decades. but Now you traded all our PA systems and it just has that reasoning within it now.

Peter: Well,  I think that it is just a crazy moment here and, and, and, and I, and I wanted to say crazy and I really mean it. That is, it's very disheartening right now because I think right. It wasn't to some extent that crazy that you had to get people thinking differently in the early days of the internet.

Peter: And the reason being is like people were saying, oh, it won't matter if you, you could talk to someone on the other side of the planet for free and if you, because of, you know, the internet going over the internet, right? And at the time everyone knew telephones and knew if you did it a long distance telephone to go outside the planning, you know, it costs a shitload of money and you could barely do and.

Peter: So you had to wrap your head around what happens if you could be with anybody in the world for free. That's a fucking different, you know, mind shift, right?

Peter: So there weren't any big mind shifts. that, but I think we're in a bigger set of mind shifts now because you're starting to think, well, what if the machine could do all these things that we used to have humans do then, uh, and could do it better, cheaper, more efficiently.

Peter: Um, and okay, what then? And now you start really thinking through.

Peter: So, uh, you start thinking, well, wow, that could make one human much more productive than what would've taken 10 humans to do if the machine can make up for those 10 humans by empowering and augmenting that one human.

Peter: that's, there's this one little bit like 10 x superpower that you could apply not to everything, but let's just say a lot of tests gonna get to that point where, like, Oh, you needed a team of 10 people doing, you know, media copy for agency, you know, for this advertising thing.

Peter: It was like, well, God, maybe you just need one.

Peter: And that person, it's a team of bots that essentially are constantly doing it.

Peter: Anyhow, there's a million ways of rethinking this.

Peter: So there's a super productivity thing that people are not, thinking through it. So then the economists have to think, oh wow, wow.

Peter: We might be this crazy productivity thing going through the economy. Oh, if that you're gonna watch these crazy big growth rates that could happen anyhow. It starts to have repercussions of just that productivity thing. But then people flip around and they say the naysayers are the kind of freakout

Peter: They say, well that what? We're gonna have massive unemployment. We're gonna have nine people from that marketing team who are gonna have no job.

Peter: And, you know, on the immediate surface of it, you, you, that something that people, it is a a visceral reaction to this. It's like, well, what are those nine people gonna do?

Peter: And, but I will, my own answer is that humans will move up the food chain onto the next of problems that the machine is not generally not gonna be able to do. And there are things that, you know, this gene ai for all this amazingness and crazy interesting things about it, it's definitely. Can't solve humans too, it doesn't have that kind of personality. It doesn't have general intelligence, which the way is, I think, gonna be a long time away where you're gonna have a machine that can blur you, everything human does, and you're not gonna have all the emotive stuff and gonna have the kind of personality and the socialization and the kind of, you know, the different things that humans still do and do, you know, need to do.

Peter: Um, it's not gonna be replaced, but by the machines. And, and so, so the initial freakout, I thought, eight, eight people are gonna, nine people are gonna be, employed.

Peter: It's like, well, the positive reframe is, well, they can move on to do other stuff that we really need humans to do. then frankly, it's more interesting because humans are more engaged.

Peter: It's more creative, it's more, you know, all this different stuff. right? Like, who wants to do half these stupid right? Yeah. There's a lot of dumb jobs that are done by intelligent humans, but who are bored to death. Right. Machines might be able to do that. So, There's, but I'm just given one sliver of the kind of repercussions of this thing that everybody's started, not everybody, but the early thinkers on this, myself are just starting to really think and they go, oh my God, you're right.

Peter: And then, you know, there's hundreds of these versions of what I just said there. And it affects every different industry differently. Every field is thinking about differently, positively and negatively. So it's a crazy moment that is very disorienting.

Peter: It's very to some minds if people are more anxious, disturbing, but it's also super for people of a different mind, which is mine. Which is and, and people like me. See the opportunity, seeing the possibility of seeing the things you can do with this. And I think there's only a topic which if we want get into, we can get into, but I think is, I think I go so far as to say it, I do a lot of public speaking on this stuff and I've been starting to talk this way, is, there is a fundamentally new way to think about what these tools could do for human society.

Peter: That we're not even really about yet, which is, and I'll give you just two quick ones, which is we could be moving towards a new kind of economy of abundance, not scarcity.

Peter: Mm-hmm. Meaning that these tools will essentially, Allow us to create many more things, much cheaper, which allows more people access to. than every previous era has wrestling with, so every previous era, you know, of history is all, I think, a scarcity model around the economy. There's only so much so the rich people dig a lot and the middle class a pretty good chunk and the poor people are banging around, can barely hang on.

Peter: That's, and depending on what country you're from, there's a lot of more people and a few rich people.

Peter: And anyhow, there's been this sense of scarcity. So it's possible in the next century or you know, based on these new kinds of technologies, you could imagine a society of more of.

Peter: Where instead of education being very expensive and hard to, you pay for it to get to college, you could actually using intelligent tools bring the cost of higher education to allow many, many more people to do it for much cheaper because it's being automated more and it's not really dependent on so much high end labor of and everything.

Peter: Anyhow, I, I'm just kind of using an example that there's an abundance society coming

Peter: And then there are things that I think are possible institutional breakdowns like democracy. People are all complaining now that you know, every liberal democracy in the world, not america. The world is like they can't get things done.

Peter: No one can decide on what the majority wants, and we're all playing by the rules of these old systems that were devised. Literally centuries ago. It's possible we can imagine AI and energizing democracy and allowing us to kinda understand what the majority of these want and, and applying those kinds of insights into actually making this happening in new ways that we haven't really begun to understand yet, or beginning to really grapple with.

Peter: But I'm just saying it is, we could be on the breakthrough of a technology that essentially could fundamentally change the way the economy.

Peter: The level of abundance that we have in that economy and ultimately the way our and our society work will make them more efficient, productive, and more kind of, you know, fair.

Peter: And just so it sounds crazy, in the sky, what's this guy talking about?

Peter: I'm just saying this is just the beginnings of when you get a a tool like this, think about, it starts to open up a kind of a Pandora's box of possibilities that you start thinking, wow,

Peter: It's not now, I don't know this, only in 6 months where we're all kind of grappling with thing and really understanding it and kicking the tires. So I don't wanna get too far out there, but I will say that the next year to two to three years, there is to be an explosion of conversation around what basically three main things: what's the real implication to this? What is the true potential of it, the positive of it, where you focus on the positive, including some of these things like, could we transform and then I think gonna look at the real risk cuz there are real risks and if we need to go to that, we can talk about it.

Peter: But, you know, these things are very open-ended questions. ones we're just just starting to. They're ones that, by the way, I'm gonna be leading a series of conversations here at the shack, where this hackathon is, uh 15. We're gonna basically be doing this through the summer, um, taking on one of those questions each month, and we're gonna bring out meeting the minds from all different perspectives to really try to parse through this because it is an important conversation to have, have it and have people really about from the the beginning.

Peter: But not so much that we shut down everything like, oh, stop the train and, you know, pull the plug and, you know, shut it down.

Peter: Like some people are saying, think that's crazy and impossible frankly.

Peter: But I will say, uh, we do have to get serious about thinking about things. Because this is an extremely powerful tool for us, as you all know. 

Aqeel: I love everything here. Um, it's become like a very salient theme and thinking about in April.

Aqeel: So backtracking for me in March, even like putting a blog post out there, I was feeling very, it wasn't the technology, it's the issue, but I, I was very in a cynicism, nihilism sort of like space for a. As I was observing the ongoing events here, just like every grassroots community on the ground here, observing things, being shuffled around for who's investing in what, who's building, what and who's gonna come out on top.

Aqeel: In terms of the early mover, economical value capture here, I, I had some priors kind of coming up for me, which was things like, socioeconomic and just wealth gap in. Um, if we already see sort of like this weird diamond in this country or like the different socioeconomic classes, right?

Aqeel: I guess for, to put a visualization. I kind of saw steps and a little bit confirmation bias enacting upon me, but steps of, is this, this gonna squeeze everybody further apart? You know? Or are some of the richest getting or richer or the distribution is gonna get thinner and thinner and thinner and this be more polar roles in society.

Aqeel: And again, this is accelerated in my imagination through TV shows with dystopian futures. I particularly like one of those, those altered carbon mm-hmm. Watched several years ago on Netflix. Right. And, and, and the consciousness being uploaded to only the folks who can afford the best lifestyles at that.

Aqeel: And there's still different classes alive. Well, but their lives are servitude at a different dehumanizing level. And that's what that show captured well. And that was like we just arrived in the future. Conveyed by that because the driver here is human behavior. It was more of my issues. When you take it to the extremes and you only have, these origins number about 150, right?

Aqeel: Can only think about your local group. Will politicians and governors, presidents and CEOs and other folks, private wealth, whatever, just be thinking about their local Trumps more, and as AI is sort of replacing, if you will, I use that word, very umbrella term, replacing on the need to participate and do X, y, z.

Aqeel: Well, it won't only have to answer to anybody else. I was overturned a little bit through very intimate discussions, and again, my background is I'm, I'm from Fiji. My parents are both, uh, farmers from a small island.

Aqeel: Oh wow. I saw the socioeconomic disparity a little bit growing up here locally, just in suburb suburbia, right? Mm-hmm. But just this lack of being able to assimilate to the education and sort of me being in the middle of, Hey, I'm going to high school, Silicon Valley engineers, sons and daughters. Uh, and I can see the differences in our households, in our culture growing up.

Aqeel: Maybe we're just in a different space from scarcity. Right? Where principles of economics still apply better products at a lower price. Valuable is to be created in local economies, just on these principles alone.

Aqeel: And perhaps it's gonna be a world where people are actually incredibly more self. Where there isn't, there's actually more of a Democrat democratizing of wealth and, and democratizing of innovation because through things like, I don't know, GitHub and API access, small village deals and access to the internet and technology and computing resources are still available, and by making instance information already there.

Aqeel: These folks inspire innovation and entrepreneurship, which forces you to innovate, right? And to offer proximity service. And ultimately you are rewarding for providing a better value to folks around you. And I'm hoping for this sort of exponential gain on entrepreneurship through this. Can hopefully achieve this future where we're in society.

Peter: Um, but here, here's my quick hit on it is, uh, it's essentially how you referred to sci-fi and kind of TV and, and kind of movies essentially. It's unfortunate to me, I've always thought this was crazy, which is, Hollywood has just. And, and the television and movie industry by in, by extension, not just Hollywood.

Peter: Mm-hmm. It's just been incredibly dystopian. I mean, it's just been so negative about everything and, and, and it's, it's been a frustration I've had for the longest time. I'm a big sci-fi guy. I read a ton about it. I watch a ton of it. I watch a lot of the stuff you even just mentioned. Um, it's just constant frustration too.

Peter: Uh, particularly around visual media, it's always negative. It's always post-apocalyptic. It's always, you know, the world's run by ego, kind of, you know, billionaires, the trillionaires, you know, we're all dying. Climate change is fucking up everything, you know, it's like, it's like you can't, if you ever, I mean, it's almost never, you get a kind of an environment where it's, oh, humans, let's figure it out.

Peter: Wow. It's like, that's the world I wanna live in. And there is a little bit more of that in the ridden sci-fi blocks. And so, by the way, I, I and I, and there are some people in that world that I follow pretty closely. So anyhow, the point being, Yes, we've been surrounded by our media world of stories of the future of this negativity.

Peter: Mm-hmm. I would just argue that, uh, they had them 50 years ago, or they had 'em a hundred years ago, the negative stories about the future, and we actually ended up with a future that is increasingly better. And over time it has essentially made a ton of progress. Like I would argue that nobody would rather be living a hundred years ago than living today or in any country in any place.

Peter: I mean, it is like living, you know, middle, upper, middle class in America right now is better than the King of France and, you know, the 1850s. I mean, it's like there's a million things. And explain that. I mean, it's basically there's been this general upward thrust of human progress across all kinds of, Yeah, it's just a slow limiting thing and people don't recognize it and they forget it quickly.

Peter: Like, oh yeah, it's right now our lifespans are, we lived on 78. Well, you know, literally in the beginning of the 20th century, it was literally the, the lifespan of the average American was like 45, age 45, and now it's like 80. You know? It's like, okay, that's better, you know, for everybody, not just rich people.

Peter: You know, there's a bunch of metrics to say we do make progress, things do evolve, but we get freaked out about the future. So I would just caution us about being too freaked out about what this future could be. The second thing I would just say is, two other just points that I think worth doing is fundamentally new technologies do open up fundamentally new ways.

Peter: You could run the economy differently. You could run your society differently. You could get an impact from all kinds of people. You know, right now, the reason the United States has run the way it is, is we're working on an operating system that was devised in 1780 before they knew what electricity was, let alone what electronics were, and computers.

Peter: And so they're running by the rules of how many men mostly can buy a horseback, get to Washington to talk in a, you know, room with a hundred of 'em to kind of make a decision for the rest of the country. Right now that might've worked pretty well, you know, two 50 years ago, but it's like a ridiculous setup for today, you know?

Peter: And so, but I'm thinking, what if now you have AI beginning. Super early days, but it's not, uh, the question, I think in 25 years, 30 years that, you know, AI could essentially be leveraging a way to tap into the wants and needs and interests of all kinds of people. The opinions from the people aggregating many different ways, kind of come up with many different options in ways that, you know, our human systems of democracy will essentially filter out the majority opinion in new ways that are kind of very different from what they did 250 years ago.

Peter: But there might be the foundation of how we're gonna do it for the next. 50 years anyhow. I don't know how that would work exactly, or I'm just throwing it out there as a possibility. But I'm saying don't underestimate what these new technologies could do for even fundamental social organizing of the economy, of the society and whatever.

Peter: Yeah. And the third thing I would also say about this is it's kind of, I don't know exactly your age, but out to the ages of pretty much everybody in this hackathon here. I do think this younger generation right now, the world is controlled. Boomer boomers and older and maybe a little Gen X in there.

Peter: I mean it is, but it's essentially old people running everything right now. Right. And in terms of how power works and how, you know, the general community heights, the economy and stuff like that now, And so there's a lot of sense of like, well, this is the way the world works. It's always gonna work like this, and so we're screwed because you know, right now we have a very unequal society.

Peter: And you know, you think, okay, well 25 years or 50 years, we'll have a very unequal society. It's not really true. Out of thought and history goes through phases of. What people want to do with their society, particularly in democracies that we're generally still in here. And I would say the younger generations, this Gen Z, which is the, you know, up until about age 25 now, and then millennials, up until about age now, 42 or so, those generations are aligning in a different way and they have different aspirations and they, they're, they've been locked out.

Peter: A lot of the money that was made in the, you know, the previous booms, they really have a. Feeling for how to solve the climate. They need to solve climate change for a kind of diversity and connection to all kinds of cultures and races. And, you know, there's a different mindset, a different set of eyes and a different kind of things that essentially these generations are driven by in ways that those older generations weren't.

Peter: Boomers are very anyhow, a bunch of reason things about the boomers, but the movies are dying off. Those people are like, it's, it's moving on. You know, they're retiring, boom, moving off. And so I think what we gotta really think fresh about in terms. How does this new technology play out? It's gonna play out in a world that's gonna be increasingly run by these younger generations.

Peter: And so it's very possible that they'll have different values, different priorities, different ways to kind of spread. Well think about, you know, quality differently, given equity differently. I mean, thinking about different ways to organize society. And so without being too u. Because it's not gonna happen immediately.

Peter: I actually would say the jury's out in terms of how this technology will play out in these new social systems driven by these new generations. It's entirely possible to me that it could be a much better society for everybody and it could be much less inequality. And I think we could now. If there is going to be a lot of displaced.

Peter: So there's gonna be a lot of crazy stuff happening in this transition to this new generative ai. But I will say you can deal with that in many different ways. Different societies and different countries might deal with it differently, but I would say there's no reason to think that that has to end up in a more unequal society.

Peter: You could imagine a lot of the gains coming from these technologies to be captured differently. Through taxation, through kind of, you know, equity in the technologies and different kinds of different ways we spread the world and invest in our societies for everybody and housing differently anyhow, there's a bunch of ways you could have re reorganized society and economy differently that would take advantage of the best of these technologies and actually mitigate the worst.

Peter: And I think to myself, that's where I would start to think about it. Gloom and doom and thinking, not that you're saying this, but a lot of people are thinking doom and like, oh my God, this is a horrible thing. Let's just put it back and knock it down. And you know, thinking that what we've achieved is where we want to end.

Peter: No, we wanna move forward, right? And we wanna move forward with these new technologies, these new superpowers, these new kind of tools, super tools, and And that's what we're gonna do. And that's kind of fun watching the energy of this weekend is, you know, this is the front lines, the first initial troops that are kind of charging the hill to kind of figure out, okay, let's try these plug-ins.

Peter: Okay, let's try this on this task, or let's try on that test. So anyhow, that's, it's fun to be part of it. It's cool that you guys are pulling off here, so I congratulate you for, for, for pulling this together and keeping. Energy moving in the right direction. 

Aqeel: Appreciate it. But it takes a village, but I'm loving it.

Aqeel: I'm loving it. Everyone's got skin in the game and, and so much passion and love for the future here. Like right now, like you said, IIP. Right.

Aqeel: I think the last question is just someone who's at home listening, not necessarily in San Francisco. What would you tell, say a 20s, 30s something' that has an internet 

Peter: connection? For just someone who's listening or, however you think about it, fir first of all, this is the real deal. This is a big deal. There is a transformative moment. There is an opportunity here that is unusual.

Peter: It's, you know, once every 25 years kind of thing, not more so anyhow, that is without question, pay attention, get to, and then learn fast and try to get up to speed, number one. Number two, there's a kind of a, I would call it unconventional cause you're, you're going against the grant and what a lot of people say, but I would say don't really worry about money.

Peter: In other words, it's like if your first instinct is how do I make money or how do I make the most money? Or how do I, you know, my own feeling is, you can do that and a lot of people will tell you to do that, but I would say don't do that. I'll tell you why. It's because.

Peter: If you follow where this technology can go, if you try to do even the right thing with this thing, you try to work on important problems here. You try to, you know, wrap your head around, you know, tools or, or, or things that are gonna essentially make an impact. The money will follow. I mean, money follows.

Peter: There's always a way to make money. I mean, if you understand a new technology like this in real depth or complexity. You are, there's a bunch of ways to make money down the stream on that, and so instead of putting the moneymaking first and focused on that, just trust that the money will come on where your natural instinct is where to go.

Peter: What's gen one? Your own curiosity and the space you want to learn or work. The thing that you care about in the world outside of, you know, in this space, you know, is like, how do you apply it to education? Or how do you apply it to this country? Or how do you apply it to this field? Or whatever it is.

Peter: Where is your passion? What do you want to do? So that is to let yourself go, I would call it a more mission oriented kind of way of thinking about it. And Yes, and you will, money will come and, and there's ways to do it if you flip it around, a lot of times you get really distorted and the whole system gets focused on chasing money down crazy ass holes that really don't matter in the long run.

Peter: Or also don't make it as the impact you're gonna want in the long run. So I would just say try to stay, Mission art in kind of a big picture and clear, and then work, the money will come. That's another big instance there. And uh, the other thing I would just say is don't bet the farm on anything right now in terms of, and don't be too sure of yourself, which is, it's like this is a period where we're all learning.

Peter: Uh, OGs like me, people have been around for a long time, are just trying to really stay open minded about, okay, what's different about this? What's new about this? Mm-hmm. It's not necessarily always the same as what we saw before, so this is different. What's so trying to stay, you know, like we stay open and minded, but also the young folks come into this for the first time too.

Peter: Don't think, oh, I figured this out, so this is all, end all, and it's gonna, I'll double down everything on it. It's like, you know what? Wow. I just learned something new next. Another week and it's like, geez, that makes my old idea kind of complete. So anyhow, the point is this is fluid, it's moving fast, a lot of things happening.

Peter: So stay very open, learning, curious, tune in.And then the other thing I would say is, depending where you are when you're hearing this, is, I don't think, and this is maybe not the most encouraging thing for some people, but I would say location does kind of matter in my mind and I think. Where you want to get for when you're getting in this kind of revolutionary period, like this, a real technological revolution is, get to where the action is and you know, if you can make it to San Francisco right now, got to San Francisco, cuz believe me, it's, it feels like ground zero in this thing in a way that it did also in the, in the early nineties, early mid nineties.

Peter: And I would say, and the reason I'm saying that is not just promoting this cuz there's other. Going on in other parts of the world, you know, New York or Lynn, whatever it is. I mean, they're different places, but hubs make a difference because it's in these moments where it's Hackathon, there'll be people sleeping here all night.

Peter: There's like, you know, 125 people sitting here. They're all elbow to elbow with their laptops, you know, they're eating, they're drinking, they're hanging out. You know, they're talking. It's a vibe. It's a, you're, you're learning by osmosis, you're picking stuff in the hall, you're bumping into people and kind of, you know, cross-referencing points.

Peter: And there, there is an energy, there's an excitement. There's all kinds of, there's parties, there's like living arrangements. You end up with, you know, roommates that happen to be in the world. Anyhow, a bunch of stuff happens that I think is just the eating and the breathing and the living being in a place.

Peter: That makes a difference over time. Like I'll tell you, I was in that thing in the early internet around the Wired magazine where that was a ground zero time Wired was in the middle of this. All the networks of, you know, the entrepreneurs and technologists and hackers and media people and creatives in that space at that time, and I will say for my entire life now, I.

Peter: Just been essentially and has been rolling from that moment because I made lifelong friendships. I kind of connected through people that, you know, I've, I've worked with over and over again. I've met new people that have given me access to their networks all over the world. I mean, it's just, it's a crazy kind of moment of connection.

Peter: So that said, if you can't move the ground zeros here or whatever, and you're at your own places, there's some kind of localized hub with other humans. Even though we're talking about a, a, a technology that's kind of emulating human intelligence, there's nothing like a warm living, creative, curious human body Yeah.

Peter: Human next to you. kind of like this competition here. You know, we're talking in the same room, we're smiling, we're hanging out, you know, there's a connection. And it's different than if it was over video and certainly over, you know, if it was even just over audio, you know, you can still have some kind of good connection, but it, it's, there's nothing.

Peter: So yeah, I would say weirdly, the guy who's, you know, the vir, you know, talking over a virtual medium here is like, think, think physical too. So anyhow, those are some thoughts. There's a few ones, there's no correct answer. You can do it under any scenario, but I would say get some thought on some of those suggestions and, uh, yeah, go nuts.

Peter: Try to get going next soon. 

Aqeel: This is great. Thematically I'm hearing, embrace the full human experience like it's passion and mission first. What do you want to see happen? Or is there some sort of thing, industry, space, right? Learn the means, which is AI. Mm-hmm. It's just the means.

Aqeel: It's not, 

Peter: It's not the end. Exactly. And 

Aqeel: Deliver the means. Package it, use it, make it better. Live life. Well, it's supposed to be right? With flourishing as a whole, it's a community. Find your tribe. Find your hub. Yeah. This is beautiful, right? I love it.

Aqeel: I'm smiling so much 'cause my last three months of my life has completely flipped around 'cause of just this community building, AI. Yeah. 

Peter: There you go. There you go. There you go. It's just 

Aqeel: starting. You wouldn't expect that. Wow. We just think so alike. And I was in the room with lifelong friends, great people.

Aqeel: All of them, grew up with them locally. We don't think the same though, 

Peter: even though we're in the same neighborhood, in the same schools. Yeah. 

Aqeel: And sometimes just through this, it's like whatever walk of life and journey are in the same hub at the same time. 

Aqeel: It's just, keep going, you know? I love it. Is there anything you'd want to share about what you're up to, what people can expect 

Peter: from you? If you want to know what I'm doing for my company, it's called Reinvent Futures and it's at reinvent.net.

Peter: Mm-hmm. You can see what I do for a. Uh, one of the things we're doing is convening. We do a lot of convenings of remarkable people in these different fields. And what we'll be doing this summer, and again working with Cerebral Valley, um, is a series of, um, of events here at the Shack, but also it's called The Great Progression Series.

Peter: It's kind of looking at what I see as the great progression in the next 2010 to 25 years around all these fields. But we're gonna focus on generative AI. To start, we're gonna do a series of these evening events. We will capture it. With an audio podcast version of it like this. We will do the transcripts of it, so you edit transcripts so you can see some of the big ideas that come out of that.

Peter: And I'm gonna be writing up a substack kind of analysis, essentially what we're learning on each of these events. And I'll put that in ck so you can follow me in Substack. Under the Great Progression Series, Peter Leyden. And so anyhow, there is a world of convenings around this and trying to make sense of it. Yeah.

Peter: Final little thing, just if you ask me what is it I do, I do a lot of public speaking and I do a lot of writing on, beyond the sub thing, on the future and on new technologies and where things are going. And if you go to my website, which is my name, PeterLeyden.com, you can get all my other videos of my, some of my latest talks, keynotes I've done.

Peter: You can see a lot of my latest writing. Including what's called the Great Progression. It was 2025 to 2050. It's the story of the world looking ahead for the next 25 years and all the positive things we can look at. You can see that also on my site, but also off of Big Think, which is a magazine on the internet.

Peter: Anyhow, follow me. I'm very social, stay connected. I'm trying to track this story along with everybody. And as that makes sense of it, I'll try to communicate it to everybody I know. And, so if you wanna be part of that learning journey, kind of, whether it's through this series of Reinvent Futures series, whether it's me on my website, whether it's around this great progression idea, it's all there for you.

Peter: Go for it. And stay in touch.