The Story Economy: Practical, Private And Personalized AI

This interview has been transcribed using AI technology. While efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, the transcription may contain errors.

Dr. Awesome00:00:21

Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Futurist Society, where, as always, we're talking in the present, but talking about about the future. Really interesting guest that I have for you today.Bill Welser is the CEO and co founder of Lotic AI, and I'd love to talk to him about a lot of things, but really just techno optimism. So, Bill, thanks for coming on. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing in the AI space.

Bill00:00:44

Thanks for having me. I, first of all, I just have to say, Talking to a doctor who is Dr. Awesome is really exciting for me. So thanks for having me. So I'm in the AI space.My background's in chemical engineering, and I spent some time in the Air Force, spent some time at the RAND Corporation, large nonprofit policy institution. And while I was there, did a lot of research as to the ethical use of advanced technologies.And so my scope, my view, my mission in the AI space is how do we build systems that are ethical, safe, private, secure at the individual level for individuals and their purposes and their values. And so that's hopefully going to be underlying everything we talk about today.

Dr. Awesome00:01:39

Yeah.So tell me about what Lotic's doing, because I know that, you know, specifically you have this idea of bringing together storytelling, behavioral science and data insights. And I feel like that's something that I guess that I'm just not really sure, you know, what the layperson would take away from that.

Bill00:02:00

Yeah. So the richest source of data of a human is not their purchasing history, it's not their blood tests, it's not their wearable data.Those are all interesting, but it doesn't really get to the why of us. And the why of us comes out of our spoken word. And so I'll call it story, because it is really, that's what it is.I mean, it's us talking about those things that are happening around us to us that we're doing. Our wishes, our hopes, our dreams, our sadness, et cetera. And so when I say story, I'm not talking about once upon a time.I'm really talking about, like, disclosure. Disclosure about who you are. Well, if you take that in a unstructured manner.And when I say unstructured, I mean, like Ryan's sentence, dirty, messy, grammar's all over the place.

Dr. Awesome00:02:55

Right.

Bill00:02:56

You end up with a very, very rich network graph or, like, hairball of a person.

Dr. Awesome00:03:03

Right.

Bill00:03:04

That's that's very, very specific to who they are, what their values are, what their goals are, what their fears are, et cetera. And so that's where story comes in, is it is the richest source of data about each of us.So at lotic, what we're doing is we're trying to empower individuals by first capturing that rich set of data about themselves, which is their story, and then making sense of it for them and doing this in as secure and private a way possible so that they really are in control of, of this rich source of data about themselves. And really, if we're thinking about where can you put this into play, where can you take this, you know, and apply it?Well, I want to make better decisions in any place that I'm a consumer. So I'm a consumer of health care, right. I want to be an have agency in my health care space. I'm a consumer of finances, right.I want to have more agency in that space.And so if I can be in a situation where I can understand more about myself, more of what's happening up here, subconsciously, my expectations, my motivations, all of that, then I can be a better consumer, I can make better decisions and hopefully live a little bit better today than I did yesterday.

Dr. Awesome00:04:20

Yeah. So can you give me an example? Like if, if I were to sign up with Loaded, like how, how would I, how would I gain value from the experience?

Bill00:04:28

Yeah. So, you know, I'll give you a personal example. I have always thought myself to be an evening person, right.And, but everyone says work out in the morning, like, work out in the morning, like start your day off strong. And over time sharing my story with Lodic and then also integrating some of my wearable data, etc.Um, I was able to figure out the system shared with me that for about 30 ish plus hours after I work out in the evening, I carry a very positive mindset, moodset, et cetera. If I work out before noon for about 20ish hours, I have the opposite.And so that to me was, hey, I kind of, I kind of felt like that was the thing anyway, but I felt so guilty because I'm like, everyone says this is this other way is the way, right? Like, why can't I do it?And now I've just been able to embrace the fact that like when I go to the gym at 10 o' clock at night, like that's cool, like that's okay for me and I don't need to be there at 6 in the morning, so an exact that's, you know, a simple example.

Dr. Awesome00:05:50

Yeah, I feel like that's the hopeful future that I want AI to trend, which is kind of like your personalized buddy that says, hey man, you work out better in the evenings, you know. And I don't know what other products other than loaded that are doing stuff like that, but I feel like that's what everybody's looking for.They're looking for their own personalized coach, their own personalized, you know, healthcare advisor. They're looking for their own personalized, you know, stuff. And you can, and you can query that a chat GPT.But like realistically, we're producing data 24 7. Why can't we just have somebody gleaning that and then giving us answers? But you know, I, that's my optimism speaking.I know that you're also optimistic about the future and what technology holds. What do you see this whole, what would you hope that AI turns into?

Bill00:06:45

Well, I, I want to go back onto something you just mentioned like that we can put our information in ChatGPT, right? Or Gemini or Claude, or choose, choose your LLM. And you can, you can. But the challenge there is that you are prompting the system.You have to know what you're looking for. It is very hard to find what I would call the unknown unknowns.Those things that you don't know exist and that are kind of needle in the haystack when you are looking for them.

Dr. Awesome00:07:21

Right?

Bill00:07:21

So that's a very hard problem. The way that we've designed our artificial, and we call it artificial relational intelligence.I mean it is essentially an artificial companion that sits on top of all these other models. The way that we have envisioned this is, and the way it executes, you are prompted by the system based on what it knows about you already.And then you respond with a disclosure, a story of one to three minutes, and it dynamically re prompts you to dig into something that it sees within its the knowledge base of you that would fill in a gap or reinforce something or help you reach a goal that you've stated is something of, of interest to you. And so this reliance on LLMs is actually really concerning to me because it not, not only is it that we have to.We're limited to the things we know exist and kind of searching. So we're going after the known unknowns, right? We know they exist and we're just looking for an answer.It limits us from kind of that full exploration. It also makes us super lazy, right? Because we're not challenged by it. We ask it a question, it gives us a response.We ask it another question, it gives us another response. It's going to become sycophantic.It's going to become, you know, in this way, just reinforcing of the questions and the perceptions that we have of ourselves and not actually get us to learn anything, if that makes sense. So it's, it's actually problematic to me the way people are using it. And it's terrifying. Terrifying to me.The misuse of it over the past few months and the reliance that people have gotten or have applied to these systems over the past few months. It's so fast. It's so fast.

Dr. Awesome00:09:25

Yeah.I was recently reading a study that was saying that the retention of information after using a, A LLM is like far below a traditional search algorithm because you have to, there's a certain amount of, of work that's required.You know, even if you were to write a letter and you know that, send it to your mom, ask yourself what that means, three hours from that time, your retention is going to be significantly lower than if you just had written it yourself. And you know, I, I see that like, I, I use Chat GPT for like, my throwaway tasks that I honestly don't want to remember.I just like, you know, if like, I have to send an email out to a staff member, like, you know, saying that they need to be on time or something like that, I just ask Chat DPT to write it for me. But I feel like we're, we're not asking it the right questions.It reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where, you know, it's, the answers are very easy, but asking the right questions are difficult. Like in this book, they asked what the meaning of the universe was and the answer came out as 42.

Bill00:10:30

Right.

Dr. Awesome00:10:31

And you're just not asking the right questions. And I feel like I'm not asking the right questions.I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm utilizing it for mundane tasks, but I know what it's capable of and I, I wish that there were other companies like yourself that are, are making something that leads to the betterment of humanity rather than infantilizing us. Um, but, you know, I, I think that's a really pessimistic view.I'd love to hear your, your thoughts on it because, you know, obviously you're in this space, you're creating something, you want it to be better for the future. Like, what are you, how do you feel about it?

Bill00:11:07

I'm pretty positive. If we can figure out the right way to apply these things.I'm pretty, I'm bullish on the fact that they exist and the fact they've essentially become commodities. I mean, that's the other thing. That's just insane.So ChatGPT comes out to the public in 2022 and we're sitting here three years later and like it has just become synonymous with how you interact with a computer. Like, that's kind of. That's crazy. And it is.Some people have offloaded a majority of their creative thinking, their cognitive responsibility, et cetera, onto these systems. Yeah, that's. That makes me feel a bit sick to my stomach. The problem is, how do you make money building a system that doesn't do like that?That puts the user in, in control.

Dr. Awesome00:12:04

Right.

Bill00:12:04

And this is where I think we have to be creative about what future economy looks like. We need to be creative about the democratization of self and what the economy around that looks like.So if I can understand myself to this deep, deep degree and I share that understanding with companies or my doctors or, you know, if, if I can share with Dr. Awesome, right? And like, get that feedback, I become an agent in that process. Like, there's got to be benefit to that from a financial standpoint.And we've shown with our system, when we've released it to certain communities, that we can help people understand when they actually need to go see a doctor and what kind of doctor they need to go see versus getting on the list of the expert that they think they might need to see because they went onto the, you know, the equivalent of WebMD, but really they went on to ChatGPT and said, who should I go see? And they get on this long waiting list and then they wait to, you know, drive two and a half hours to the nearest, to that nearest expert.All the time wasting while something else develops and then they end up in an emergency room. Right. So there's like huge costs associated with that on everybody's plate.

Dr. Awesome00:13:24

Right.

Bill00:13:25

So I. Translating that cost avoidance, I mean, those efficiencies into value in a commercial sense, I think is the next big challenge that we're going to have if we're going to have these digital companions that are personalized to us.

Dr. Awesome00:13:45

Let's talk a little bit about that economy for just a second. Because that's something that's always fascinating me when we're talking about the Internet, for example.

Bill00:13:56

Right.

Dr. Awesome00:13:56

The Internet to me was a really open playing field initially and eventually then now you have a lot of, a lot of large Czech giants that have kind of shaken out because of the eventual progress over the years.You know, initially like if you had a food truck and you use the Internet to open up a website and put yourself on Google, you know, the, the, the, the benefits were so significant for people who are on like the, the lower stages of the economy. I feel like from, from my understanding of AI right now, like people think that it's, it's, it's a little bit more democratized.But as an outsider looking in, it looks like these large tech giants are kind of, you know, having this pseudo monopoly over this stuff. How is it from your perspective? Because like I see AI companies popping up everywhere.But on the same token, like all I'm really hearing about is chatgpt, Claude, you know, Grok all of these, these larger companies that have the significant compute to do all of these, these really amazing things.

Bill00:15:04

I mean it's, it's really, it's a really complicated if not complex environment or terrain that we're looking at. And you know, I think so one of the challenges right now is that we think about everything from a top down standpoint.So you know, Google, Amazon, meta, fill in the blank, they are collecting data, they are flattening us into statistics to give us something that's close enough to what we might want, right?So I like to say I'm like the 77th percentile of men my age with three kids, you know, living in Austin, Texas, blah blah, blah, and, but that's not really me, right?So it feels a little bit disingenuous when I get a suggestion to go buy some product that I have no interest in, you know, like fishing gear or something like that. I've been fishing like twice in my life. But in the 77th percentile of people in Austin you kind of get, they like to fish, right?Like something like that.But that's a missed opportunity because if they actually knew me, if instead of flattening us we could expand, then I could find the goods and services and products and whatnot that that were for me. My lifetime value would go up, right?My spend would go up and my value to those companies, not the tech companies, but to the providers of goods and services etc would go up, I don't think. And I've done a ton of, you know, looking at this if you will. I'll even say research deeply into this.I don't think the business models of the large tech companies will allow for this. So there has to be a major shift from, you know, hey, use those commoditized Tools, but start at the individual level. So don't.Don't say that those commoditized tools are worthless. That's. That'd be silly.

Dr. Awesome00:17:02

Right?

Bill00:17:03

Like, they're super powerful, but start at the individualized level. Don't try to compete at the top down. Go bottom up. And I think that if we have enough people thinking about going bottom up, we.Not only can you help the individuals right now who already have purchasing power and, you know, kind of are comfortable enough in the economy, but you can open up the markets that are inaccessible right now, those people who are at the lower end of the socioeconomic status kind of brackets, because you'll know exactly what they need when they need it. They'll know what they need when they need it, and they'll essentially put their money against that. And they have very limited resources.

Dr. Awesome00:17:42

Right.

Bill00:17:43

But if you can direct those limited resources to actually what they need, like, you've opened up new markets.

Dr. Awesome00:17:50

Yeah. So I. Yeah, no, I love that fact of that individually individualized AI is what you're trying to build.And honestly, most of my inspiration for the best of what the future holds comes from science fiction. And I think that the best science fiction has individualized AI that competes with large organizations at the same level.And so, for example, like, if, you know, we were talking about just the drudgery of being a human in 2025, if there was somebody that could do it at an individualized level, that would be so much more powerful. Just like what you were saying, right? Like the going to a specialist, you know, rather than chatgpt or cloud or.Or whatever, looking at statistics, looking at all of my individualized data and saying, hey, this is what my heart rate was.This is what my EKG looks like, you know, and then keeping that siloed, but still having the same ability to, you know, go out into the wide, wider Internet and plug those variables in and say, hey, you really need to see an interventional cardiologist, because this is the very specific specialist that you need to go see. I think that would be something that would be really compelling and powerful and. And that's what I want.I want to have, like, an AI buddy, you know, something. Somebody that is an advocate for me that has all of my data all in one place, that I don't have to feel like I'm a commodity.You know, you said it, that the AI is a commodity. Honestly, I think that the human experience is a commodity. Right.I don't want to feel like just like what you were saying is just this statistic and being bracketed into these things. I want somebody that's almost like a personalized advocate for, just for me. And it sounds like that's what you're building.And honestly I think that that's something that I can get really excited about. Outside of, you know, what it is that you're building, what are some hopeful things that you see coming out of the AI community?Because realistically I feel like it's still kind of a novelty right now. It's like underutilized. Yes. It's replacing search engines. Yes. It's like helping us go through complex legal documents, you know. Yes.It's doing like, like that kind of stuff. But it, it seems like more of an efficiency tool, more so than anything to me right now. But, but it's capable of so much more than that.What do you, what, what are you hopeful about that you're seeing that maybe.

Bill00:20:18

We'Re not seeing so technology, if we think about it, just go back in time, right? Technology is just a tool. That's all it is, is a tool.So we think about technology as like something like, I don't know, more special than that, but it's just a tool. Every technology can be used for good or for bad.We seem to think of AI in this kind of like fear based model of like it's going to take our jobs, it's going to be our overlord, it's going to be our this, it's going to be our that. We don't take the same approach to like our cars.

Dr. Awesome00:20:50

Right.

Bill00:20:51

Our cars are also a technology.

Dr. Awesome00:20:53

Right.

Bill00:20:53

And they get us from place to place. We think about the good of it. I mean it does bad. It can hit someone and kill them. You can drive impaired and cause major problems.So it can do very bad things. But that's how we use it, dictates that.And I think that just the mindset needs to shift around AI, this mindset and you were making the point about a digital companion. I mean, I'm not saying that meta shouldn't have any information about us.I'm just saying I should at the very least have equal, if not better information about myself.

Dr. Awesome00:21:34

Right.

Bill00:21:34

And technology exists that can not only help me collect that, store it, understand it, but also safeguard it, make it private and you know, keep it secure for me. And those are the promising things about technology.And like people will talk about, you know, put your information on blockchain and blah, blah, blah, and they're always, they're thinking about like monetizing it. But like, let's think about that instead about like, securing it.

Dr. Awesome00:22:05

Right.

Bill00:22:06

And so our system is actually layered with everything that you share is goes into your individualized database and your database is a distributed ledger. And so we have an immutable record, but it's also super, super secure. The other thing I just wanted to share. So, Dr.Awesome, you have a patient and they go and they take all of their lab results and test results and whatnot, and they run them through ChatGPT and they come to you and they say, here's the results. Like, talk to me about this. That's better than two years ago.

Dr. Awesome00:22:44

Right.

Bill00:22:44

Because they're coming in as an informed patient and maybe you're going to have to disavow them of certain things or whatnot.But there's one thing that's been kind of completely overlooked in that activity, which is the second they put it out there into one of those models, it's no longer theirs.

Dr. Awesome00:23:02

Right.

Bill00:23:02

And so what happens, and I don't mean to pick on 23andMe, but like, what happens when a 23andMe like, incident occurs where it's like, oh, well, OpenAI has actually decided that they're going to, for all of their paid users, the going to sell that data to insurance companies.And now the insurance company knows that your patient who came in with X, Y and Z concerns with all those labs and all those things that they put in there, like, again, that could affect policies, premiums, all those sorts of things. And right now people just aren't informed. They have no idea.

Dr. Awesome00:23:39

Right.

Bill00:23:40

And so, you know, Google has done a very interesting thing with Gemini in the sense that if you have like a professional version of Gemini at an organizational level, they've walled it off so you can utilize it, but it will not take your information back and try to train models if you set that up. I'm sure Claude and GPT and whatnot have some similar version, but I've noticed that Gemini tends to do it the best in that case.But that's what we should be looking for. But who the heck is setting that setting?

Dr. Awesome00:24:16

Right?

Bill00:24:16

Like, you're not looking for that being like, oh my gosh, that rainy day from a couple years from now. I better prepare for that. Humans are terrible thinking about those things.

Dr. Awesome00:24:26

Yeah. And honestly, once it's out there, it's like a genie being put into the bottle.

Bill00:24:32

Right.

Dr. Awesome00:24:33

That's the dystopian version of science fiction that I don't want to happen. Like Gattaca, where, you know, you have this idea of everything is compared to an Idealized statistic.And anything less than that makes for a difficult experience for the, the person who doesn't fit into that statistic. And I really hope that that doesn't happen. And, you know, I appreciate the stuff that you're doing.I did want to talk with you a little bit about your book that's coming out. You know, the Story Economy. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Bill00:25:04

Sure. And I just have to. Just major props for pulling up Gattaca. Oh, yeah, okay.

Dr. Awesome00:25:10

Well, yeah, that's how I reason a lot of stuff that's coming out in the news, like have I heard about this in science fiction before? Or not. You know, and so really well done.

Bill00:25:22

Anyway, sorry, I digress. So the book, it comes out in October. It's called the Story Economy. The idea being very consistent with what we've talked about.If you have two people, that one is a $10 million person, they've got $10 million to their name, and one has $10 to their name. The entire global economic system has been articulated for that $10 million person, and that $10 person has been left behind.If you think about all the solutions that we have right now to bring that $10 person up, to close that gap, it all has to do with redistribution of dollars, redistribution of fiat currency. And so you have a winner and a loser, right? I mean, if you're going to do redistribution from, you know, tax the rich to give to the poor, the.Then you've got losers and winners. If you have a lack of redistribution and it's like, hey, we're not going to tax the rich.We're going to let them be rich and the poor, we're going to hope that they can bootstrap themselves. You've got the winners and the losers. And the thought behind this book was, well, what if there's a different way to accrue wealth?And we start by looking at, look at the market cap of every single one of these large technology companies. I mean, there's clearly value in our data, right? And it's not like passing value. It's not, you know, we hope there's value.There's trillions of dollars of value in our data. And what would happen if we got a share of that, right?What would happen if we were able to build a strong enough data set that we could actually that show that as well?And if you then take that comparison of the $10 million person and the $10 person, again, the one thing they can do the same is they can create the same amount of data if they're given the same tools.

Dr. Awesome00:27:26

Right.

Bill00:27:26

So if they both have an oura ring, they're creating the same amount of data.

Dr. Awesome00:27:29

Right.

Bill00:27:29

If they both have a smart device, they're creating the same amount of data.And so this is a way that we can think about wealth differently that doesn't get caught up in the political environment of the haves and have nots and who gets what and universal basic income and like all these other things that are really, really complicated but are winner, loser situation. And it's more like how can we come up with a either win neutral or a win win.And I think that's by figuring out how to accrue wealth in a different way. That's what the book's about.

Dr. Awesome00:28:03

Yeah, I mean, I, I just started dabbling my foot into just like the whole idea of just the digital economy and stuff like that. And you know, the more that I take a look at, I mean our entire stock market is based on seven tech stocks almost.You know, it's something that, it's something that's so weighted that it's, I'm, I'm interested in hearing solutions and that sounds like a pretty profound one.I just had never really thought about it, about the idea of storytelling being this digital currency, you know, and, and that was, that was pretty interesting to hear and I know you did a, a TED talk about it and, and something that, that, that you know, people can go out there and watch. Certainly interesting to, to hear about. I did want to, you know, just as a sidetrack, ask you like you're in the AI space.What AI are you using on a regular basis? Like what other than, other than your own, obviously. I mean, I, I, I encourage everyone to check out LOD and, and see what it is that they're doing.But I feel like we're still, we're still in like what a previous guest had said, the in between times with AI. Like there's, it's, it's certainly more to come and it's certainly more to be ingrained in our society.But you know, you mentioned you have an aura ring. What other, what are the peripherals are you using in your own, in your own life?

Bill00:29:26

So it's a, I think I'm a, you know, way out into the tail of society in the sense of like, I'm very, you know, extreme because I'm, I'm constantly capturing information. So like right now I'm comparing a whoop to the aura to a Garmin, right.And I, you know, the Apple watch Makes its way in there sometimes I've used other rings and like, it's, it's just, I'm constantly trying to compare those things because they actually, I'm sure people, if they look into it, they would find this.I don't know if they care, but like for something like heart rate variability, which really, really matters in the health specific space, they all measure differently. They all have different ways of measuring, so they're not necessarily comparable when you compare them.So one of our things is like, how do you baseline that for an individual?Because if you're trying to give them knowledge about themselves, you got to know what kind of that foundational information, how that looks and how to treat it. But for me personally, from an AI standpoint, I would agree with your previous guest saying we're kind of in this in between space.I'm looking to use those things that keep me from being reliant.

Dr. Awesome00:30:44

What do you mean?

Bill00:30:46

So I, and I'm not trying to pick on you, Dr. Awesome, but if one of my colleagues is showing up late for our meetings, I'm writing that message, okay?I'm writing the message because I, I need to communicate it in my voice to them. And I know that, like, that some of these LLMs can, like, can be our voice. You can train an agent to be your voice. I get it. Like, and I don't.I'm not talking your spoken voice, but like how you, how you communicate yourself. You can also do your spoken voice, but it's, it's more.How do I keep myself responsible and accountable for those things that require cognitive tension on those things that require me to think? Because if I offload too much of that, and I'm not suggesting that you are so just speaking on this.

Dr. Awesome00:31:39

Wait, I am. Like, I promise you. Like, like I'm. No, no offense taken. Like, I am.Because the way that I look at it, as I look at the, just the, the highest stakes for something that is really just a point of drudgery for me. You know, Like, I, if I'm a Boss, there's like 10 different other things that I have to think about.And following up on something like tardiness, to me, I feel like is, is so trivial that like, and, and the thing is, is like, it's not trivial for the person, right?Like, that person, they're anxious about it, like they're worrying about it the night before and, and I want to almost sanitize it through some sort of filter that doesn't offend them and doesn't, doesn't Just take up too much of my time, you know? Because, like, I worry, like, if you were to ask me. And that's the thing is, like, human beings were so imperfect.Like, if I were to say it how I wanted to say, I'm like, dude, what the hell? You're, you know, like, like every day this week you've been late, and then, you know, you called out, like, three days.Like, I need you to show up on time so that we can not be strapped, you know? And so I can't say that because otherwise I'm going to get a call from human resources, right? And so for me, like, it just.It acts as kind of like an ambassador for me, you know?

Bill00:33:05

So that's fair. I want to interject really quickly. Yeah, that's fair.But I just want to say, like, that friction that you just described, and maybe you're not like, dude, what the hell?

Dr. Awesome00:33:14

Right?

Bill00:33:15

But that friction that you described is necessary for the human condition. We require that friction. If you sanitize it too much, your point doesn't get across. And it may be that. And this is where one of those things.And I have spent a lot of time around HR professionals, and I respect them deeply, and I respect lawyers in that space, et cetera. But, like, we become far too sensitive in this space, right?Like, I need to have friction between me and someone else if we're trying to solve something together. Because if not, we will not come up with a good solution. We, neither of us will be satisfied, right?It's okay that they're worried that you might come down on them because they haven't done their job.

Dr. Awesome00:34:03

Right.

Bill00:34:04

And there's an expectation to do their job. So I just worry about that. Cognitive offloading. And again, we all have to choose this. We have to choose where we're willing to do it.It's a risk assessment, right? Because that may be number 12 on your list of 10 things. And those 10 things you're applying all of your cognitive juice to, right?And this one, you just can't. And I totally get that.

Dr. Awesome00:34:26

Right?

Bill00:34:26

Like, we've all have to prioritize. My concern, though, is that not everyone is thinking of it that way. They're like, hey, can I get everything up to number one taken care of?Can I, Can I, Can I get rid of all of that, make that all convenient? And I promise you that if you do that, friction will find you.

Dr. Awesome00:34:48

Yeah, that. That's true. Friction. Friction definitely finds you. You know, I.There, There is that point, you know, the offloading of drudgery I'm using it, I also use it a lot for analysis.

Bill00:35:01

Right?

Dr. Awesome00:35:02

Like, for, for like if I'm, if a new surgeon is coming into my practice, where to put him so that he maximizes his, his output and I can, I can put in like Excel sheets and then, you know, chat, GPT. I wonder like, how, how do you feel? Like, like, are you using that aspect in your own life?Is that something that, that is like, you know, I'm certainly using it on a, a social basis.Like if I'm choosing a family vacation and, and I want to have a place where there's like babysitting and kid activities, I want to have a place that has a sauna, you know, I want to, you know, have a, a beach available. And it's just like, it spits out answers for me. So research is another one. Like what, what other like use cases are you using it for?

Bill00:35:45

I think research and being. I spent 10 years as a researcher as part of my job at rand and you know, I have a deep research respect for research.You can get bogged down in the details and miss the bigger picture. I really love it for research.I mean, prior to this call, if I hadn't looked at the calendar, I wouldn't know it's Sunday because I'm just constantly spinning. So thank you for meeting with me on a Sunday. But prior to this I was looking at how do we apply our relational intelligence to disaster preparedness?So how do you actually understand more about a population at a very finite level. So at the individual level, very precise.So that when a hurricane hits or something like what just happened south of me in Texas occurs with the flooding, that you can be better at responding and to, to actually inform that.I was like, well, now I need to go look at everything that was written about Katrina, everything that was written about Sally, everything that was written about Ivan. How did Camille look in 1969? Like, and that's just a hurricane space, right? I can't. Like that would take me weeks and weeks and weeks to parse.And instead I used a tool, I use Gemini in this case to, to say, okay, here's what I need. Constrain it in these ways. So I gave it a research plan and it went and executed it and it came back with some, you know, I'd say about 90% right.Of things that were useful. And then I, you know, went ahead and said, okay, great, I've done this research saying about these communities, now apply it to those communities.And then I have something that I can take to those emergency managers and say, hey, this is what we're seeing. This is what kind of, It's a really good way of saying this is what the average person might think.

Dr. Awesome00:37:53

Right.

Bill00:37:54

Because this is kind of the information that's out there. So this is the best that someone might think. How can we do better? So I really do like it from a research standpoint and also from a.How do you trigger cognitive reasoning? How do you trigger cognitive accountability? I think it's a really useful tool in that, in that manner.

Dr. Awesome00:38:15

That's awesome, man.So before we get into our three questions that I ask all of my guests, general questions about how they feel about the future and everything like that, I did want to ask just like a personal question because I'm also really into wearables. You can see I'm wearing an Apple watch right now. I have a internal glucose monitor that I, I wear on a regular basis.And I see that you're testing all of them, I'm assuming for lotic research purposes. What do you find is like the best? What do you find is like the worst?

Bill00:38:44

What?

Dr. Awesome00:38:44

What? Give me your, your feedback on what you've done so far.

Bill00:38:48

So the, I think it's, it's a, a nuanced answer first, because some people just don't like wearing things on their fingers.

Dr. Awesome00:38:59

Right.

Bill00:38:59

Some people don't like wearing things on their wrists. So, you know, obviously do something that's comfortable.I do think that you can also run the risk of become over indexing toward, oh my gosh, did it say, I'm going to have a good day or a bad day or whatever? Forget about that. I think patterns and trends are really important. I think the best patterns and trends right now are reported by aura and by whoop.They're the two that I wear consistently. And I'm not, I don't have partnerships with either. So it's not like I'm, I benefit from saying this and whoop has come a really long way now.They've been in the news recently about their blood pressure. Yeah, Right. And I actually, I, I have personal feelings about, about the usefulness.I actually think it is quite useful to, to at least be within range. But I understand the risks from a medical standpoint, liability standpoint, et cetera. Yeah.

Dr. Awesome00:39:57

You know, hon, coming from that space, I think it's overblown.I think it's, it's, it's more so an opportunity for the FDA to flex its muscle, you know, because like every physician will tell you that they're more interested in trends than they are in like the precise data, you know, and, and to me, I look at that and I'm like, what is, like, what is the, the, the basis here?And I personally, just as an out, like, I mean, I wouldn't say that I'm an outsider, but I, I am an outsider to the, the Food and Drug Administration. I think it's, it's just a cash grab for, you know, larger pharmaceutical companies. But anyway, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I mean.

Bill00:40:35

No, you, you didn't. And I, I.It's a really interesting topic that you, is worth an entire conversation, but I think those two, the whoop and the aura are best in, best in class right now. I think Apple's amazing because of health kit.And the Apple watch does a lot of really cool things, but it runs out of battery like insanely fast if you have everything turned on. And so that's a huge challenge that is kind of a deterrent to use. Yeah, Garmin does a really great job, but it's also, it's kind of bulky.It's really for a very particular group of individuals and they're not really well integrated. Elsewhere. Samsung Health has tried things. Fitbit, you know, is in that space, they're okay.Some of the more startup, startupy companies, like, they're trying to, they're trying to play in the space, they're okay, but they're, I mean, a sensor is a sensor is a sensor. It is all about how the data is presented to you and to your point, the patterns and the trends.And so if I were to give advice to somebody who's thinking about a wearable, it is which one gives you the patterns and trends that are in alignment with the goals that you're looking to achieve or that you've agreed to with your doctor or your nutritionist or your spouse or who, whatever it might be. And then pay attention to those patterns and trends. Don't get caught up in like, oh my gosh, I had 32 minutes of deep sleep last night.I'm screwed, right? Like, like not. Which I think I had four minutes of deep sleep.

Dr. Awesome00:42:17

I know, right?

Bill00:42:18

Which is terrible.

Dr. Awesome00:42:19

So hard to hit that, that number.

Bill00:42:21

Yeah.

Dr. Awesome00:42:22

But yeah. So can I give you my, my sensor prescription? My own sensor prescription, like here Matson. So I wear icgm, which I think is a super undersold.You know, like the, the idea of, of measuring your, your blood glucose just from an energy perspective has been revolutionary for me. And then I have two Apple watches. Like, as soon as I take one off, I put the other one on, and it's still.So, like, the battery situation has been removed. And then I have a smart scale that measures, like, body fat percentage, like, you know, weight trends that I, I measure myself every day.Which one do you use? It's called Withings, which.

Bill00:43:05

Yeah, Withings has a ton of. Really. So I use the Withings scale as well. I picked up the HUME scale the other day. Like, I've been playing with that.Withings also has, like, a blood pressure cuff. And they have watches that I wore one for a while. They're fine, but I love their scale, so. Yeah. And the cgm, the glucose monitor, I wore one for, like, three months. And the data that I got off of that was incredible.

Dr. Awesome00:43:40

I think it's undersold. Like, it's, it hasn't hit, Like, I think the mass.Mass Zeitgeist, I guess, if you will, you know, but the people who are in the know about it, like, somebody told me about it that I should, I should do it. And for just genetic profiling, South Asians are predisposed to diabetes. So I wanted to know what to. What to. To be measured anyway.I wanted to measure it anyway. But from an energy perspective, man, like, like the high, the high lows and the, and the, the high highs and the low lows of, of sugar crashing.Like, I didn't realize how I was making myself feel in those times. And for me, now that I have, like a solid steady state, this has just been so much better from a lifestyle perspective.

Bill00:44:26

But, yeah, I mean, if you lay the story of yourself on top of that, so, like, you know, you can use a system like ours, which, by the way, we have a version of our system for free. It is a demonstration version online. You can reach it at LOTIC AI.But if you're using a system that allows you to, you know, capture the context around that, the CGM and everything else together, like, gets even better. I like your Apple Watch solution. What do you feel about the note? Do you turn notifications off? Like, do you.Because that's the other reason I don't wear it. And, and that has nothing to do with the measurements. It has something to do with distraction.

Dr. Awesome00:45:09

Yeah.

Bill00:45:10

What do you do with. What do you do about that?

Dr. Awesome00:45:12

So it's a big distraction. I'm not going to lie. I feel like I have to, because the majority of my communication throughout the day is through text.Like, if I'm talking to, like, other specialists or anything like that. And you Know, also, like, if people.So the, the state that I'm in in Massachusetts has a very strict narcotic prescription regimen where I have to, like, physically approve every single one that I send out. So if, like, I'm in the middle of surgery, I can, you know, easily tell somebody, oh, hey, you know, can you just send this?And then I can just hit it on my Apple watch and, and approve it, you know, so there's a lot, a lot of benefits for me, like, for the notifications. I do. I mean, I obviously turn it on, like, sleep mode when, when I'm, you know, heading to. Off to bed and. And I feel like that's pretty good.But the distractions are real. But I, I just don't think I can get around it with my lifestyle. Like, I need. I need to be distract.I need to have those notifications on, or else I would just get bogged down at the end of the day.Like, I'd be sitting in, in the office for like an hour just catching up on all the admin stuff that I could just, like, quickly hit throughout the day. Yeah. But anyway, listen, this has been, like, such an illuminating conversation. I really appreciate you coming on.I do want to talk about our last three questions that we ask everybody just to kind of get an idea of who is building the future, where their inspiration comes from, where they see the. The future going. And the first one is just that, which is where. Where did you get your inspiration from? Like, I can tell you, for me, it.It comes from science fiction.And I love the stuff that I'm doing on a regular basis, but I love even more the stuff that I'm learning about that's coming down the pipeline because I see us going towards that utopian vision of science fiction. I think that anybody could tell you that overall, as a human being, our life has gotten better over the past a hundred years.And I truly believe that.And I think it's just going to continue to get better and based on all of the imaginative dreams that these writers and authors and different people have have talked about in the past from the utopian visions that they've had. So what about you, Bill? Tell me a little bit about where you gain your inspiration from. Like, what brought you into the space? Where do you.Where do you gain the. The energy to. To keep on going?

Bill00:47:29

Sure. So I have a rotation of genres of books that. And I'll just use that as the example.So I'll go science fiction and then something that is about human behavior, so consciousness or psychology or Ethnography or something like that. And then I'll go back to science fiction and then I'll go to something around organized humans.So whether it's organized religion or tribal practices or whatever it might be, I'll go back to science fiction, back to human behavior, back to science fiction and back to the organizational. And it helps me root some of those because some of the concepts in science fiction are just amazing.If you can strip out the idea of an alien or the idea of a whatever, you can strip some of these things out from the even more extreme science fiction and get huge insights into where we might be able to go. And then if you read like Heinlein or people like that, like you don't even have to strip that stuff out. Like it's just like, just prophetic almost.So that's kind of my rotation. That's where I get my inspiration just constantly. So it's sci fi huge for me as well.But that human behavior part I've got to keep in and how humans connect as groups.The history of religion is just fascinating about how that's just developed over time and really how it, I mean it, it dictates how we think about things. Life, technology.

Dr. Awesome00:49:05

Yeah, I, I, I do love the idea of, so, you know, obviously my name is Dr. Awesome and like, just like the, the feeling of, of awesomeness, right?Like the, where you find yourself in awe and you feel almost small in the comparison of like this, this larger experience. You know, it's like some people get it religion, some people get it looking up at the night sky.You know, I, I'm sure that, you know, we all have like that moment where just like you felt so small in comparison to the larger, larger part of the world. And, and I, I love that idea that, you know, how humans connect, being a part of that, that's really, that's really awesome.Afterwards you got to share some recommendations for, for books that are going to make me feel like that. But coming to our second question, you know, where do you hope you see AI in 10 years?From a, just like a layperson, like getting up in the morning to going to sleep in the evening. What do you hope that AI looks like in that person's daily life?

Bill00:50:06

So I hope that we're not overly.

Dr. Awesome00:50:07

Reliant on it and that we're not like being overlords, but from AI. Overlords, right?

Bill00:50:13

Like, yeah, so interesting. I gave a talk in November in Southern California. It was another TEDX like thing.And I talked about the fact that AI, the complexity of it could outpace our cognitive capacity to keep up because, I mean, we're setting the conditions, but like, we might not know the conditions to set to constrain that. My watching the past, since then, watching the past few months, my, my mind is changing, which is, I'm not actually sure that's the biggest risk.I think the biggest risk might be that we become so reliant on it that we become dumber.And so it's not actually that we can't keep up, it's that we actually tip the curve and we start, our cognitive curve starts to dick because we've just become so reliant. So to get to your question, where are we in 10 years?I would love that I wake up and I'm not reliant upon it to tell me what to do, when to do, how to do it, et cetera. And I would like to have that digital companion. I'd like to have the equivalent of Jarvis. You know, Tony Stark has Jarvis.

Dr. Awesome00:51:33

I agree.

Bill00:51:34

And like, hey, I'm going to go boxing later on today. Like, essentially, what's, how's that going to impact the rest of my week, right. Like, based on the previous knowledge of me.So I'm going to make a conscious decision. That is my decision. I'm just looking to say, like, okay, what are the ramifications of that?And with the, There's a lot of really cool work happening around Quantum. And I know people like, raise an eyebrow at Quantum and this, that and the other, but there are ways to offload things onto a quantum stack.And I think that in 10 years from now we will be doing that and we'll be able to have these assistants that are Jarvis, like, that can run, you know, billions of permutations of how that might affect us and come back and say, like, hey, like, you might want to consider this. That would be really valuable. There'd be value added to my life.

Dr. Awesome00:52:30

I totally agree. I hope that that happens. That would be the ideal, you know, a symbiosis between man and machine. That would be pretty interesting future to live in.So, last question. You know, I'm in medicine, but outside of medicine, there's breakthrough technology happening in literally every field.And I, I can tell you that it's tough to keep up. But for whatever reason outside of medicine, like, when it comes to robots, like, I can't get enough.You know, that's like my, my personal guilty pleasure when it comes to, like in, in creating content into my life. Like, I, I, every time there's like a Boston Dynamics Video I want to see that, you know, or a Boston Robotics video. What about you?Like outside of your own field, outside of AI, like what can you just like not get enough of like what, what are you looking at in regards to the technology progress that doesn't have any sort of direct influence on your field?

Bill00:53:27

Oh, that's difficult to answer. Because that's difficult to answer with that last piece, that last caveat you threw in.A caveat that there take it past, which is, I mean AI not like touches everything, right.

Dr. Awesome00:53:41

But you know, especially these days, you.

Bill00:53:43

Know, so the thing I, the thing I would like to, that I like to track is really, I'm not sure if it's technological in nature as much as it is just scientific in nature. We have spent a lot of time in society labeling things like labeling conditions, labeling preferences, labeling, labeling, labeling.And I think we've gotten a little bit too far field on that to where we've lost perspective on what we are actually trying to do, which is say we're all unique.And the thing that keeps me super excited is looking at how do we continue to understand the unique components, the unique aspects of each of us that bring more to the table so we can leverage those things as we try to build the next, you know, great system. You said something prior to us starting our call, which is that dyslexia is under diagnosed, Right.And for a really long time, like when my parents were growing up, that was seen as a huge disability, right? It isn't, if you understand it, it's not necessarily a disability.It might be the thing because the way the human's brain is looking at something, it might be the thing that breaks us free, Right. It might be the thing that like actually unlocks it.And so I think that this idea of, and this push toward understanding the uniqueness of humans and of the brain in particular, keeps me so excited. I love it. I love it.And it's, it's not really separated from AI in the sense that like we need to use some AI to, to be able to process all of that information. But it is one of those really like it's at one of the most basic human things.Like we're individuals and unique and like we all have flaws and powers and. Yeah, so I get excited about that.

Dr. Awesome00:55:47

Yeah.I mean just if you're, if you're talking about just like research into the brain, that stuff is so interesting and there's been so many breakthroughs that have happened recently that even like as you know, even though I'm not into neurology or a neurosurgeon.Like, I look at that and I'm like, okay, that's changed my understanding of it, you know, and there's been so many frame shifts in my own thought about how the brain works over the past five, 10 years because of all of that research that I think it's super interesting. So I totally get you there. But thank you so much for joining us, Bill. I really, really appreciated this conversation.And for those of you guys who want to follow Bill, check out Loading AI. I'm definitely going to do that after today's talk.And for those of you who are following us on a regular basis, thank you so much for all of your patronage. If you could, as always, hit list like and subscribe. And as always also, we will see you in the future. Thanks, everybody.