Ep. 21: Who Will Win the AI Race?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to ChatGPT Curious, a podcast for people who are, well, curious about ChatGPT. I'm, um, your host, Dr. Shantae Cofield, also known as the Maestro, and I created this show to explore what ChatGPT actually is really, though, are the files in the computer, how to use it, and what it might mean for how we think, work, create and move through life. Whether you're skeptical, intrigued, or already experimenting, you're in the right place. All that I ask is that you stay curious. All right, let's get into it. [00:00:38] Speaker A: Hello, hello, hello, my curious people, and welcome to episode 21 of Chat GPT Curious. I am your grateful host, the Maestro, and today we are talking about my predictions for who wins the AI, uh, race. So first off, before we even get into that, we hit 20 ratings. Thank you. That's because of you folks. And we got a new review from TLT 2021. Whoever that is, whoever you are, thank you. Y' all are legit the goddamn best. So the into the episode, this whole episode is, it's kind of twofold. If you know me at all, you know that I am definitely a, you know, conceptual big picture thinker. Not really so great at memorizing the minutia. And to that end, I want to use this episode to speak about more so about who I think among us users of AI comes out on top. And then I will briefly share my present day predictions for which company, as of this very moment, looks like it could take the title. So in putting together the webinar that I hosted earlier this week, it's so wild because at the time I'm recording this, I actually have not recorded. Excuse me, at the time of recording this, I have not actually run the webinar. This will come out after the webinar. But in putting that webinar together, I did some, some shifting of my Threads algorithm and to make it basically just, I just wanted. I'm like, so sick of it. I wasn't going on anymore. Not that I, oh, I need to go on it, but, like, I would go on. I'm like, this is the fucking worst. And one of the things I always say with Instagram is curate your experience. So I went over to Threads and I was like, I'm going to curate this. And all that I want from Threads is AI related content and funny black people. That's it. I don't want anything else. Uh, and I, I did that. I shifted that. You know, you basically just click on things and like it and then that's all it Serves you. But in doing that and in welcoming in way more AI related content, I got served a bunch of cranky pants people talking about AI as well. Like, I know they exist. I know the cranky pants people exist. But also, I don't need to see that they exist. But AI gets a lot of hate, especially in the United States. Like, this is just a fucking thing. People have big, big, big feels about it and big, big, big emotions around it. And I kind of understand. But also the ones who really lean on the environmental concerns, that's the two main things. It's environment and art, right? The. The people who really lean on the environmental concerns. It's. To me, I'm just like. But you're expressing your dismay on social media. How do you think social media works? Like, you know, I think there's like a sign. No data centers were used in the sharing of this post. Like, how do you think, how do you think everything you're doing works? It doesn't, it doesn't invalidate the environmental concern, right? Uh, because energy, the energy cost is very real, very real. And we need to do something about that. But it tells me that these people have done zero research and understand even less. And they are going off of purely emotion, right? They're speaking from purely emotion. And that is not a place where we can have a productive conversation. I'm not saying it's a place that's not valid, but we can't actually have a productive conversation and change anything or do anything with that. So, uh, I just scroll by it. But their big feels did inspire this episode and continues. Their, Their, their big feels continue to solidify my prediction for who wins this AI race. And that is, in my opinion, people who have three things. One, a mastery of foundational skills, Two, tech tenacity, and three, people who are actually good at what they do. So mastery of, uh, foundational skills to me comes down to can you fix it? And this is something that I've been thinking about quite a bit as of late, because I'm going in the coding rabbit hole. And, you know, vibe coding is a thing. Then it's like, you can build it with vibe coding, but can you fix it? And that's when it starts to get tough. Because then you don't have a foundational understanding of things, how things work. Then you can't fix it when it breaks, right? You could, you know, think about this with an actual house. You could build a house and just follow instructions. You could build a house and just completely outsource it. And you Just manage it. You manage the project. You have the vision. But if something breaks, can you fix it? Uh, people who can say yes to this will be okay as it relates to their house, obviously, but as it relates to AI as well, because AI is just gonna be another tool for them that. That really supercharges their skill set. The second piece, tech tenacity. I did a podcast episode about this on my other podcast, my show on the Mic, and I'll link that in the show notes. That was episode 693, the tenacity to Change. And I added this, uh, you know, this. This characteristic, uh, in. Because of what you and I are doing right now, right? We are not coders. Well, maybe some of you are. I don't know. I don't know. Everybody listens to this podcast. But, you know, I'm working on becoming one. But we can really get so much out of this technology simply by being tenacious and sticking with it. And, yes, there are plenty, plenty of frustrating moments, and if you're not willing to, you know, push through and work at it, you'll just stop. But if you have that tech tenacity, you can do so much, it can help you with so much, and you can learn how to fix so much. So not as, you know, it's not just, oh, can you can build these things. It's like, hey, you can start to get this. These foundational skills, and you can use it to help you learn these foundational skills. I'm talking about AI in general, not just, you know, generative AI, Right? Uh, the third characteristic is going to be people who are actually good at what they do, which is twofold. And in each of those folds has multiple parts, but twofold. When I'm thinking about people who are really good at what they do, and those people being the ones who will win the AI race in being really good at what you do, number one, you can get results, right? You got to be able to do the thing. Which also ties into point number one, which is that mastery of foundational skills. The second part of it here is that these folks actually care about their people, right? Why do I think that AI will help these people? Well, we know that disconnection makes humans crave more connection. We saw it in Covid, right? We see the same thing happens with. Will happen, in my opinion, with AI, if it keeps going as is and, you know, nothing changes, which is like, you know, such a sterile way of thinking about it, thinking about it in a vacuum. That's not how it's going to work. But if we were, which is how so many predictions are made. It's just like if nothing else changes except for just one thing and AI advances, then this is what's going to happen. But we can predict posture, you know, hypothesize. I was gonna say postulate, which also works. But we can hypothesize more AI that leads to disconnection, which leads to people craving connection, which leads to folks who have a human first business model winning. You see it all around us, right? The pendulum goes too far, swings back to center, it gets balanced out the other side. All these fucking big businesses right now doing the worst. That makes people want to shop at small businesses and they're like, yeah, I'll put up with some of the, like, shipping takes a long time. Or like things are out of stock because these big businesses that have, that are not human first, that don't give a fuck about me, right? I believe that we will see the same thing as we get more AI, right? As, as people use it to create absolute nonsense and flood, you know, the channels. Then people will want more human first, human centered things. So if you have that already as part of your business model, you will thrive. You will come out on top, folks, again with the three things that I just mentioned. Foundational mastery, tech, tenacity, and good at what they do. I believe AI will amplify their skill set and they will come out as winners. Now obviously my prediction and my little list is based on my personal experience. I am not an artist of the traditional definition and I say this because that was another big talking point on threats, right? I said earlier that it's the environment and art. No, I do not believe and think that or support people's work being stolen. I feel the same way about how these LLMs are trained. Like that is bad and we need to do better, right? We need to, you know, vote, uh, against things if you ever have the opportunity. Like no, no, I do not agree with those things. There are lawsuits going on. Great lawsuits for days. Fuck the companies that are stealing the shit. I think it's terrible. I think maybe that this and the stealing is people's biggest concern. But you know, that being their, their concern more so than their being them being concerned about it taking people's jobs. But honestly, I don't know, like there's big emotions in thread and I'm not trying to fuck up my algorithm by clicking on those threads to read more. So it could be a mixed bag for all I know. But worth noting and maybe a Topic for another episode. There also seems to be an argument out there, an underlying argument that is being expressed. And I don't think. I don't know if people realize that they're implying this, but an argument being made that, you know, the whole art thing and within the whole art thing that ties into struggle and effort as the qualifier for what make someone an artist, right? Like, people are just being like, well, it's too easy. Like, becoming good at art takes a long time. And so if you can just like put a prompt in, then you're not an artist and this isn't art. And I was like, what? This is interesting. It's an interesting argument because. And then I saw someone. I did click a little bit, right? So someone wrote back and they were just like, you know, some of these, like, I don't know what the term is, but artists that like, throw a can of paint on to a canvas, like, how hard is that? Like, and then people are, you know, bending over backwards to justify that and, and explain it as art. And it's just like. I think that your argument is not really standing up here, but clearly it's a discussion that I'm, you know, peripherally, or perhaps more than peripherally interested in. But again, I don't want to fuck up my Threads algorithm so much. So I'm not going to be clicking too much, but maybe I'll circle back into another episode. But. But in general, I don't have big feels about AI generated art outside of the fact that any use of generated AI generative, I should say generative AI, that's make for making slop. I'm against it. It's a waste. I don't want to see it. I don't know whether it's music or art. I don't want to see a cow on a skateboard. All the videos of like, just all the nonsense that's out there, like, I. I don't support it, I don't like it. But on the other hand, when we're talking about AI art, I don't know, to me, I'm just like, don't buy it. I don't, I don't know. Like, I think that, like I was saying earlier, it'll create demand for human made art. And I don't know, I kind of think about it with like, shitty furniture. And you get enough shitty furniture and then like, makes you want to buy more expensive furniture that's like actually made by somebody. I don't know. I have to sit with it more. But I don't and, you know, talk to somebody that's more directly impacted, um, because I'm not super impacted. So that's not to say I don't care, but it makes it more difficult to understand and see it through that lens. So I bring up art at all to speak to the point that I kind of alluded to earlier, that. [00:12:09] Speaker A: When folks are talking about the impact that AI will have, I think that many of these predictions fail to take into account the greatest variable of all, which is humans. We adapt, we overcome, we evolve, we pivot, we change, we grow, we impact the environment we're in just as much, if not more, than the environment impacts us. All that to say I, uh, don't think we can predict how AI will impact things, and I think, quite frankly, is a waste of time trying to do so. Right. So, speaking of the futility of making predictions, let's round up this episode with a brief discussion about what most folks in the tech space mean when they try to predict who will win the AI race. And that is which company will win the AI race. And I'm not really speaking about who will be the first to reach AGI. Remember, AGI is artificial general intelligence. That is Skynet companies stay promising this and say, you know, spending money, trying to go after this. Do I think it's a good idea? Not really. And do I think we're going to get there anytime soon? Absolutely not. Um, but what I am speaking about right now is who wins this thing and wears the crown as the AI company. Right. If I was forced to make a guess in this very moment, I would say. [00:13:33] Speaker A: Google Worth noting. There should be, and there will be categories as things go on, as time goes on. Right. Is the focus on the consumer market, Enterprise coding. We see anthropic, really focusing more on enterprise and coding. OpenAI is really more about the consumer market. Uh, so if we just look at this, who's going to win the consumer market between OpenAI and Google? I think Google's got it. Based on Google's recent release of Gemini 3 and the fact that they are inherently an ad company and have boku bucks, they're positioned to win. Right? They have the money because their main thing, their bread and butter, is ad spend, ad revenue. They don't need to rely on investors in the same way. They are already a household name. People know them and they create products in the consumer market. So, so they can go to the consumer. They use TPUs in addition to GPUs. So we talked about in the Nvidia episode, uh, what GPUs, graphics processor, graphics processing units versus TPUs, tensor processing unit. Um, I briefly spoke about TPUs and just that Google makes them, but this means that they're not beholden to Nvidia. And TPUs are a bit more like task specific. But that's a good thing for what they need. Uh, additionally, Google is better positioned to figure out how to integrate the ad side of things to generate revenue because they're ad company, right? One of the things that we see OpenAI really struggling with is how to make money on this thing. Like, they are not making money. They're, they're actually set to lose, I believe, 74 billion with a B. $74 billion in 2028. Like this is just negative, negative, negative. I talked about this, uh, in the, the episode are we in an AI bubble? Um, but Google is in a way better position to integrate the outside of things. And actually just to keep this episode a little bit timely, uh, OpenAI. Sam Altman. So fucking weird. Sam Altman just, he's, uh, the head of OpenAI. CEO of OpenAI. He just declared a code red. And basically what that means is, uh, yo, we are worried because Google did some really good shit and based on the numbers in the market, it makes sense for them to be nervous. And so what Sam Altman has done is. [00:16:05] Speaker A: Required. Um, instructed. That's a better word. He has instructed the team, the peoples to focus on making ChatGPT better and what exactly it entails. I mean, I, um, believe there's going to be something having to do with, with memory that's like a big place where they can improve. But the issue here is that in spending more money to make ChatGPT better and focusing efforts to make ChatGPT better, they are, uh, kicking the proverbial can down the road in terms of figuring out how to make money and how to introduce ads, which we, I've been talking about, like, basically, you know, so many of these episodes, like they gotta, I don't want ads. I don't know what they're gonna do, how they'd put them in. It made sense when they rolled out, when they rolled out Atlas, uh, the browser. I did an episode about that. But they gotta figure out how to make money and they are not figuring that out right now because they need to try and catch up to, uh, Google. They want to compete and the only way they can keep getting the investor dollars is by being like, we are gonna be the best. And in doing so, or the way to do that is to spend the time and the money now to make the models better. So what does that mean? Do they fall behind because they, you know, continue, they still aren't able to show they can generate revenue. And does that make, know, the other investors scared? I don't know. I don't know. But gun to my head, if someone's like, hey, who's going to win this thing? As of right now, as of today, it is in my opinion, Google. But this changes every 13 seconds, so who's to say, right? Time, as always, will tell. So instead of betting, let's just all learn together and also make sure we just evolve with it, shall we? Overall, I continued to be very excited about the possibilities. Yes, we need age restrictions. We do it for beer, we do it for driving. There is a solution here. Age gate. Things like this is very simple solution here. Yes, we need to handle this energy situation is getting out of control. You know, I, I my podcast, uh, you know, my podcast is called. This podcast is called ChatGPT Curious. And I'm here, like, hoping that Chat GPT fails, right? Because this is a very American Ford F150 approach to AI. It ain't it? Bigger is not better. More expensive is not better. Yes, we need guardrails. Yes, we can use and should be using smaller models. I did an episode, actually. Uh, will chatgpt get old navied and just speaking like, yes, there's a way to do it. There's a different way to do it. There was a smaller way to do it. And Sam Altman and OpenAI continue to just barrel down the road being like, bigger is better. We're just going to make it too big to fail. And y' all know I love me some Titanic. And that reference, she's made of iron. I assure you she can sink and she will. It is a mathematical certainty. So, uh, those are my feelings. Yes. Excited about it. Yes. Overall, positive. I am excited about the possibilities. But this is a both and situation. There's always nuance. I, I do ultimately believe that AI continues to have the potential to democratize so much. So much. An analogy that I, that I shared on threads. Let me share it with you. Sometimes I share stuff over there, but then I don't go check it because I don't want to deal with the angry people. But I was talking to my girl Pam and I said it to her and I was like, I'm gonna make this a thread. But the way that my brain thinks about this and I did an email talking about is AI the devil? Uh, because I did a poll first to see if I should run my ChatGPT webinar. And that was one of the, that was one of the answers that I gave. Like, do you want, Would you be interested in this? And then it was like, yes. And the other one, yes, I've been waiting. And the other option was no, AI is the devil. And a good number of people hit that and that's fine. Um, but my thoughts around this is the people in charge, the people driving and promoting the circular funny money, the people who just care about financial returns, they are the devil. The technology itself, it's a great equalizer. It's like deep sand and beach volleyball. It gives us small folks a fighting chance. So if you haven't met me in person, I'm not a big person. I'm um, five, six, which is not like teeny by any means, but volleyball is for like fucking giants. Except when you go play beach, especially when there is deep sand. Especially, especially when you're playing against people who have never played in deep sand or played in sand at all. That sand is an equalizer. You can have people come from indoor that are very good, very high level players and you can hang like, obviously you can't be like brand new to beach volleyball, but it is an equalizer. The wind as well, the elements. Uh, but deep sand is a very, very, very significant equalizer. Uh, so let's wrap this up how I use ChatGPT this week and then we'll be done. So for those of you who don't know, each week I include a section where I discuss how I use ChatGPT that week. This week I use it to create an acronym for the system that I use for creating prompts for. I always struggle with that word. Like it comes out. But in my head I'm just like, don't fuck it up, don't fuck it up. And it's just tough to say, prompt the pt, the MPT all together. It's a lot of consonants together. Mpts. That's rough. Uh, but how I. The system that I use for creating those for CHAT GPT, I am not really a huge acronym person, but I mentioned the value, um, my biz and life bestie Jill Fit. She's all about acronyms and alliteration. Like I can get down with alliteration. I come up with that, that's fine. But acronyms have always been harder. And I also, sometimes people don't fucking remember them anyway. Uh, including the person who made them up. So I was sitting with this and I really want people to be able to walk away with tangible things from the webinar. And so I was like, hey, I'm gonna. I have a system for prompting. And it was. I introduced it in one of one of the past episodes, but it's just like seven steps. And I was like, that's tough to remember. So I had a chat with chat about that and it came up with an acronym for me that is actually really good. For those of you wondering, the acronym is Clarity. C L A R I T Y. I will save that breakdown for another episode, but I just wanted to share this use case because I know that any of you listening who are from Jill's audience or you're in the online business world, this could be a useful thing for you. All right, that, my friends, is all for today. Hopefully you found this episode helpful. If you did consider sharing it with someone you know who is perhaps curious about ChatGPT. Don't forget I also have a companion newsletter, the Curious Companion, and that drops every Thursday. And that's basically the podcast episode in text format. So if you prefer to read or you just want a written record, join the newsletter fam. You can head to chatgptcurious.com forward/newsletter or you can check out the link in the show notes. As always, endlessly, endlessly, one more time. Endlessly appreciative for every single one of you. Until we chat again next Thursday, stay curious.