Tin Foil Hat with Biz/Dev Podcast | Ep. 165

In this episode of the Biz/Dev podcast, David and Gary go guest-free and get real about the biggest client pain points we’re hearing right now. From the lingering fear of AI (spoiler: it’s not coming for your job—unless your job is really boring) to what’s actually working for businesses embracing AI today, we break it all down.
Offshoring vs. U.S.-based development is a hot debate, and we’re pulling back the curtain on why Big Pixel is 100% U.S.-based (and why that decision matters for our clients).

Links:
In The Soup Podcast
Big Pixel Website

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Our Hosts

David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] David: I'm excited for the opportunity to, cause my new hypothesis is people in New York and Boston and those kinds of cities, would love a us based developer that didn't cost an arm and a leg.

[00:00:13] David: Hi everyone. Welcome to the biz dev podcast about developing your business. I'm David Baxter joined per usual by Gary Voigt, who's extra spiky today. What's up, man? Super duper spooky. I am good. I'm good. I cannot complain. It's not cold here anymore. It's normal cold. No more

[00:00:33] Gary: it's not really cold here anymore either.

[00:00:35] David: Your definition of cold is probably different than mine.

You Floridian weirdo. You back up to 70 something.

[00:00:42] Gary: yeah, mid 70s,

[00:00:44] David: Oh my gosh. I don't know how you live there in the summer. Don't know how you

[00:00:49] Gary: It's getting worse and worse every year. It really is. Summer starts in what, the end of March and lasts until pretty much the end of November, mid

[00:00:58] David: No, say no to bad weather. That's too much. We don't have a guest today. So I guess it's just me and you. I have this whole list of jokes over here of how to roast you for the next 45 minutes. It'd be great.

[00:01:11] Gary: I'm actually looking forward to that.

[00:01:12] David: I wish I did. I wish I was that prepared. I

[00:01:15] Gary: We can interview you.

[00:01:17] David: Oh, no one wants to hear that. No, I'm sure I was just on someone else's podcast. That was actually a lot of fun.

[00:01:24] Gary: Yeah. That was a grep beat, right?

[00:01:27] David: You know it well. It was grep Pete's one of their children. So grep beat is

[00:01:34] Gary: Oh, so they have an, a network of podcasts.

[00:01:37] David: So there's a guy who started all named Joe Colopy. I hope I'm saying his name, right? He is an investor. He's very successful He created a company called Bronto Which was servers and stuff. I think He sold that many years ago.

He loves dinosaurs. And

[00:01:54] Gary: I was going to ask that, but knowing that the company name is Bronto

[00:01:58] David: His next company was or I don't know his next one, but he has an investment firm called Jurassic. That is investing in existing companies. And then his newer company is called primordial, which invests like seed funding. So again, we're following the dinosaur theme.

And grep beat was a media company that he invented originally to talk about his investments, but it has grown to be talk about. All startup life in my area, the triangle area. And it's great. They have the best schmoozers, I think anywhere, a big fan. But we were, I was interviewed on the their podcast called in the soup, which is run by.

One of his right hand people Jen, some, we actually had her on our podcast.

[00:02:44] Gary: Yeah. I remember Jen,

[00:02:45] David: that was when I was sick. I'm very mad that I missed that. She interviewed me. And it was much more personal. It was more like, how do I run the company and raise kids and stuff like that? It was really. It was very fun.

So I enjoyed that very much. Thank you, Jen, for for indulging me.

That was actually one of the conversations we had with who I had with Jen.

When I did her podcast, Jen, some that I mentioned before, it's a choice, right? I made a choice early on with my company and I can't tell you what the effect of it was, but I made the choice. I wasn't going to travel. I wasn't going to expand beyond where I could go without. Not being able to go home at night.

Cause I know I could have chosen early on to do ads or whatever all over the country. And I chose not to, cause I didn't want to. And again, I'm not saying we would be a hundred million dollar company killing it right now. If I had done that, I'm just saying it was a conscious choice. And now it's interesting for the first time where, so we will be 12 years old.

In March which is weird. But we'll be 12 years old and this will be the first year. We are ever targeting outside of North Carolina.

[00:03:48] Gary: Yeah. I was going to bring that up. You led me right into asking

[00:03:51] David: you right into

[00:03:52] Gary: the expanding part.

[00:03:54] David: I, it's I'll give all the credit to Corona. No, it's weird ever since COVID the need let me back up before from the day I started this, COVID, I thought no one wants to hire me and pay me 100, 000 or something and not meet me.

They want to see my face and make sure I'm a real person. And that I, if they're mad at me, they can come and punch me in the mouth. That was what my belief was. And I believe I was right. COVID I think changed all of that. I, now we have several clients that I've never met. And even the clients that we do have, they have met me.

Most of our clients have met me, but most of them I haven't seen in years and they're fine with that. Like it used to be, Hey, let's get together once a year, quarter or whatever.

[00:04:38] Gary: The culture has definitely shifted just because of the dynamics of how easy it is to do business, digitally online without actually meeting a person.

[00:04:49] David: And I think people will pay me a hundred thousand dollars without ever meeting me. In fact, I know that's true because they're doing it, but it's That's a shift. So we're like, okay, let's see how far this goes. And we have clients in California. I've never met him ever. And we have clients all over, even in North Carolina that I've never met.

So we're trying, so we're gonna we're expanding. We're going to give this a shot and see how that works. I can't tell you what that means yet, really, cause we're just getting warmed up, but I'm excited. 

I'm excited for the opportunity to, cause my new hypothesis is people in New York and Boston and those kinds of cities, would love a us based developer that didn't cost an arm and a leg. 

And that's my, my, that's my hypothesis. I think I'm right,

[00:05:30] Gary: there's two things to talk about there. Where are we targeting? And it's basically just up and down the East coast, like from Miami

[00:05:38] David: For the same tribal thing, it's the same travel thing. I can travel anywhere on the East coast. Relatively speaking, Miami would probably. That's the only one that might be a little tricky, but I haven't actually done that. I don't know how long that flight is,

[00:05:50] Gary: just rent me a luxury car and I'll drive down there.

[00:05:53] David: The fair, that's fair. I'll get you a it'll be a

[00:05:55] Gary: Lambo. No,

[00:05:57] David: Oh

[00:05:57] Gary: wait,

[00:05:58] David: They both in an, Oh, they both.

[00:06:00] Gary: What is,

[00:06:01] David: Yes. It's a Pinto, a Russo. We'll go with that. But I can fly there in a couple of hours if someone needed to meet me, right? Fine. I'm happy to meet you. Got California. It's nothing against California, but that's a long flight.

So we're going to stay away from that side of the country. Or, Oregon or whatever, but I did that flight last year. It is long. It is

[00:06:20] Gary: you also mentioned a U S based development company. So there are probably thousands of dev companies on the East coast that Maybe more, but one of the things that separates us from a lot of them is the fact that we do not offshore any of our work at

[00:06:40] David: Yep.

[00:06:41] Gary: We are all 100 percent us based and the benefits that we see and that our clients see from us by being us based besides just communication, what do you tell them?

Like, why? Obviously we know why it's more expensive because it's cheaper to outsource. Dev stuff overseas, just because labor's cheaper overseas. But what's the benefit of having it as a us based team besides communication? 

[00:07:09] David: I think for us, the number one thing is we are very UX heavy. We're very design focused, very You interface all that stuff. That's a very cultural thing. So if you're not from our culture, you're not going to design the same way we want. It's not better or worse. It's just different. There are countries that actually have worked very hard against that, but generally speaking, that's where we come.

That's our home basis. Design is a big deal. And it's funny. I'm going off on a tangent here, but it's funny. I'm We adhere to our design so tightly and we're getting worse or better depending on how you want to look at it. We're getting more picky about it internally for ourselves that devs that we bring on either contractor or our own people, we have to throw them into the meat grinder because they're not used to it.

We push hard for that fidelity and I am amazed. Everybody's dude, Like I've never been called out for being two pixels off before anyway. So that's a big part of it. That's one of the major reasons we do, we stay on shore. 

[00:08:15] Gary: Yeah. I would say that the iterating is a process. It's not just a change this and then expect to get it back. A hundred percent. So besides the communication, just the time factor of the iterations and the number of iterations and how long that phase is going to take, it's just forever. It just makes the project slower and then yeah,

[00:08:36] David: we need that tight loop now. I know, and people will say why don't you just near shore and go to Argentina? Again, that's fine. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's talented teams down there. But it's just not our style. I think I I realized the reason I do it personally, I am old enough.

Not as old as Gary, mind you, but old enough that I was around for the. First round of offshoring. I was young developer type when everyone we're talking 2004, five, six kind of timeframe. Every company started offshoring and a lot of people lost their jobs and that hit me, it hit me hard. I did not like that.

It made me uncomfortable. It made me worried about my young family at that point. And I did not like that. And then you go fast forward and looking back through, in hindsight, a lot of those companies go, Oh, that was a bad idea. We're going to bring that back. And now you get a lot of these hybrid models, which again can work, but often do not.

And so I think that's one of the reasons me personally, when I started my own company, I was like, I can't in good conscience do that again. Does that make sense? So I think that's why it's personal for me.

[00:09:42] Gary: it's a decision you made based on how you felt about how you want to run your business.

[00:09:48] David: and it's, but I will say it's gotten harder. People are much more sophisticated now about their stuff. A lot of people are liars. I can't stand that, but it's a thing. People, the only people you speak to are in America. Yeah. But your whole team is somewhere else and you should just be upfront about that.

That's fine. I'm also finding, again, we study this all the time and competition and whatnot and the internet. People don't pass along those savings that they think I find we have a local competitor. I won't mention their name Of course, but we have a local competitor that charges as much as we do per hour and their entire team Is out of this country and that's mind blowing because they don't pay those guys like they're american workers That's why they're over there right now.

I will say their team is large over 100 developers and So they can manpower it up, right? I can put 12 people on that project And maybe that's how they solve it. I don't know. But I, the cost thing is mostly, I think a myth, but here's the truth of when it comes to offshoring, someone comes to me, I got a project.

Let's say it's a good size project $300,000 is what is in their head. So they're expecting to be developing for a good period of time with a good size team. They want quality, et cetera. They're willing to pay for it, but they will talk to the offshore team and the offshore team will say, I can do that for $150,000 And I'll come in and I'll say, I need the full 300. I'm just making numbers up and they'll be like. I'm going to go with the cheaper one. And the reason they do that is because on paper, they don't realize that most of the time, that 150 does not include everything there's going to be. It's just some, it's a number they threw out to get into the door.

And by the time you're done, it's going to take you 50 percent longer and it'll cost you 90 percent of what it would have if you had hired me, I've seen that over and over again, and that's where people just don't realize it. You come with me we might end up being 10 or 15 percent more expensive in the end, but we'll be done faster.

And you. We'll enjoy the process a lot more. That frustration that you, that is so common will just vanish. Not saying we're perfect by any stretch, but we are a joy to work with. Just flat out. We are a joy to work with.

[00:11:58] Gary: We have a tight team where everybody, every project, someone knows something about, they might not be the ones working on it all the times, but everybody has an idea of what every project is. And after, let's say if we complete an app or a project, and then we They stay on for maintenance and updates and, adding features in the future.

And that continues to go. It's the same people with the same skillset that have already been there or seen enough of it that we can just continue working on it pretty seamlessly. It's not like we have a different team we have to pull in or different. You know what I mean? It's

[00:12:31] David: Yeah that's a huge difference between a lot of we have a client right now that they had a team and it's been going on for a few years and clearly this is according to the client. The guys who built this are not the guys who are working on it. Now they've either been shifted to the B team because it's maintenance and the A team is going to go build something else or the, those guys left or whatever, they throw 12 developers at it within two years.

I promise you half of those developers are gone. And so you lose that. And we just do it very differently. I guess I'm not trying to turn this into a big, long sales thing. We just do it differently so that you don't lose that subject matter expert that's internal to us. That's a big deal to us. And we also take the whole proverbial bus thing very seriously.

We want to protect you against that as opposed to just hiring the dude, right? The dude goes and wins the lottery and vanishes and you're left on the back. That's just, it's common. 

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[00:13:49] Gary: So besides just expanding our reach, another thing we're trying to do is really hone in on using AI in a strategic way, not only for ourselves, but for our clients. Now Because of this, we are really up to date on the AI news. I know you've actually used AI to create yourself an AI newsletter about

[00:14:10] David: It's true.

[00:14:11] Gary: So I wanted to ask a couple of things and maybe the people listening to this will get a kick out of the agent that doesn't work. I wanted to hear your story about that. And then also what your thoughts are with the the new Chinese model that apparently is better than everybody else. But has a very sketchy privacy concerns, deep seek

[00:14:31] David: I think I can answer deep seek. I like my AI, like I like my employees American. But I don't know. I'm I am, I don't allow Tik TOK in my house. I don't think I'm going to allow deep seek in my office. At

[00:14:45] Gary: what I read, because of course the AI bros are on it and trying to tell you everything is great about it. From what I read, apparently there's some really good concessions made in the amount of much their models become active based on the queries. So it doesn't need to know everything all the time for every query.

For every prompt. So it'll call on experts based on the prompt, which then I guess saves compute time and server time and stuff like

[00:15:13] David: it's cheaper to run,

[00:15:14] Gary: more efficient. Yeah.

[00:15:15] David: but here's the thing is it really, and I don't know the answer to this, I'm not. has done this over and over. They're doing it with electric cars right now. They flood the market with their stuff

and they 

[00:15:26] Gary: Timu. I can't say Timu AI without stuttering. Timu AI.

[00:15:32] David: It's just, this is their M. O. Are they subsidizing it? So it is cheaper. We won't know until it's too late. I don't know. I will say I read an article about it and they said that one of the things they did early in artificial intelligence, when it was all about games, if you remember, there were AI bots that would play video games and board games and stuff better than humans.

One of the ways that they would teach those game bots is they would allow it to play itself thousands and thousands of times, and it would pick up things. By doing that by playing itself when it came to these other AIs the ones that we're used to the LLMs and stuff They tried to do the same thing and it didn't work.

It didn't work very well They would create data and learn from your own data is the spinny thing Apparently deep seat can do it and that's what's throwing people off is they figured that out and that allows it to learn very fast. i'm sure there are repercussions for it, but I don't know I am nervous about it unless I was forced to from a business perspective, because it's just so much better than everything else out there.

I'm going to try to stay away from it. Just out of principle. I, I don't allow Tik TOK in my house. I don't think deep seek works in my business. It's the same thing. I know that's not fair. But I don't think I care if I'm being totally honest, but I do. It's weird. Like we, there's two sides to AI for a development company.

There is how we use it and how we use it for our clients. And those are radically different, right? How we use it is how do we make ourselves more efficient? Our goal is to use AI to make us more efficient, so that we can get more done in the same amount of hours. Excuse me. So if we're using the tools it gets so deep really quickly.

I have a deep fear and I've told my team about this that within five years, we will not be developing code the same way we build development now. And on the order of the internet and cloud computing, when those things came about, you either jumped on or you got ran over it's if I was like, I'd built desktop software back in the day, when I got out of college, web was brand new. There was still desktop. And if you were an old desktop developer. And you refused to build web apps. You were unemployed, pure and simple. If you were go 10 years in front of that, if you were a web developer, but you wanted to do it, you wanted to access your data in, on a local server. Just because it's more secure, right? Secure. I don't trust the cloud. You're out of you're unemployed because the cloud is where everything lives. It is that level of paradigm shift. If you're a developer and you're refusing to use AI, you will lose your job within the next five years.

I am 100 percent convinced of that. Maybe I'm being alarmist. I don't mean to be. This is based off of my own research and doing my own stuff. The tools now are writing code for us. They're not very good, but they're doing it. And you can see the future from here. 

[00:18:22] Gary: That reminds me like when websites and no code platforms and low code platforms first came out there was a lot of, start with this template and then build from there and everybody would, say, okay, I'll just start with this template and then I'll just change colors, change typography, add my images, move things around a little bit, and then it'll be way quicker come to find out Templates are all built the same.

They're not all built great. And they don't always have the, let's say the flexibility to be changed that great. So a lot of times you would start with the template and then halfway through, you'd be like, you know what, this is just, I just can't get this to, to work how I want it to work. I'm going to start from scratch.

And then you waste the time you're saying that in, as far as writing code, AI is to the point where it's getting you halfway there. And there's only some bad stuff you need to change. You don't have to start. Deep again, or at least,

[00:19:17] David: Yeah. The difference that you're describing and where we are now is back then you used gizmos and doodads. They weren't AI, but they were programs to give you a finished product. And then that finished product, the template and the, what you're describing, you could then manipulate it to a point and you

could 

[00:19:33] Gary: So there was a lot more to have to change since it was quote unquote finished where

[00:19:38] David: it was the, it

[00:19:39] Gary: coding things in chunks and it's

just 

[00:19:41] David: And we're also at the, We're at the base level. We're at the lowest level of stuff, right? Or not the lowest one up, but anyway, we're, this is code. So it's not a, it's not a build me a website and I'm going to go and tweak the website. It's build me this function. It's one little thing and you're going to give me halfway there.

If I could speed myself, my team up by 50 percent using AI, that's a game changer all day long. And so it is my job and Scott, who's our team lead, we are playing with these tools because I believe deep down that if in a year, two, three years, if someone has to be laid off because AI is doing their job, then I, as the owner have failed because it's my job to make sure my team is prepared for what's coming.

They're just doing their job right now, right? They're coding when I asked them to code. And they're doing a great job doing that. Their job is not to think about this kind of stuff. They do because they're nerds and they do that sort of thing. But it is my job to prepare them. I have to train them for what's coming.

Or at least let them know that you should be learning this because they should not leave, lose a job because, Something surprised them, right? Does that make sense? You're good at your job, but the job has now changed completely. So that goodness of your job is useless. That's not fair to them. So me and Scott are working really hard to learn these tools, to grab these tools, to say, these, this is what you should be using.

This is what you need to be learning. This is how to use AI without losing what gives you joy in this job to begin with. Problem solving is ultimately what every program wants to do. Do they want to be typists if you really love typing and that's why you became a programmer I hate to tell you're going to type a lot less in the future you're just going to but if your dream is to problem solve and to Engineer solutions that won't change and that means you get to keep your job But

[00:21:28] Gary: it's also. An opportunity for them to sometimes they have a limited amount of time to get something done and they'll build it. And then after they ship it, they're like, there's a couple of things I would love to do a little different, or, oh, now I know how that could be better.

And just little efficiencies changes that they could have made. This might open up a lot more time for them to just be like, you know what, let me revisit that. And I could just make that little change in a lot less time than it would take for me to go back and rewrite something. You know what I mean?

With the help of AI, they could probably go through and make. The process of optimizing and just polishing and perfecting,

[00:22:03] David: I

[00:22:03] Gary: of a fun process instead of a 

[00:22:06] David: a tedious one. 

[00:22:07] Gary: Yeah. 

[00:22:08] David: will say that though This is like everything else. The difference is going to be in the details. You're going to see all sorts of people throwing up all sorts of junk using AI. It

[00:22:18] Gary: That's really prevalent now. Just.

[00:22:20] David: really, and if you look, really look at what they're building, it's crap. It's fine. It's cool as a neat placeholder, but it's not real when people, I think when Mark Zuckerberg just a couple of weeks ago said, we're going to replace all of our junior devs or mid tier devs, whatever he said with AI.

And I'm like, I don't believe you do either. You have access to tools, which is entirely possible that no one else knows about because he built them from scratch using llama fine, which I doubt it. Cause he likes to show off his tools. But I just think that if the, there's a bit of fear there, fear mongering, that's very common.

You saw it with crypto, right? You saw it with you see it with AI, you sell it with the web. You saw it with the cloud. We've seen this over and over again. You saw an offshoring. If you want to go back that far the reality is somewhere in the middle. And that's what we have to find. What is that middle?

How do we use it for our clients? All of our clients are asking us to use AI. And we have some really cool solutions we've done. And we have some really great ideas on how to open up some things that will allow them to do things they never have before. And that's very cool. And we're, it's very exciting.

[00:23:28] Gary: it's also an opportunity for us to show them what I, what AI can't do, but what

we 

[00:23:35] David: sure. Yeah. There's a lot of limits right now. Are those limits going to go away? Maybe there is something uniquely human at the end of the day. Like I don't believe in the next 10 years, even that you're going to be able to be a guy or a gal with a great idea, walk up to an AI bot and say, build me this app, and I'm going to give you upload a 200 page document that I've been noodling on for two years.

That won't work. That will never work. I think you're going to see, just like with self driving cars, you're going to see a diminishing returns eventually, not on how smart they are, but what they can do, everyone was so excited. We all thought we'd be on self driving cars by now, right? That last 10 to 15

[00:24:16] Gary: flying cars by now.

[00:24:18] David: fair, that last 10 to 15 percent of that driving, that being able to drive, we've, I think we've talked about this before, but driving down a residential street and seeing a basketball and knowing how to handle that.

That's really hard. It's really hard But boy those first 80 and you're seeing this now today I can drive with many cars I can drive on the highway and never touch the steering wheel

[00:24:39] Gary: Yeah. Or

[00:24:40] David: lanes It could do all that all day because it's easy. That's quote easy. It's not easy It's really hard, but comparatively it's easy coding is the

[00:24:47] Gary: safety features have drastically improved, but still

[00:24:52] David: The AI is the same way. 

[00:24:54] Gary: Feature.

[00:24:55] David: how many LinkedIn guys are coming up and saying, look at this. I didn't write any code. I don't know how to code. And let me show you my to do app. All right, dude, to do app

[00:25:03] Gary: I see a lot. On the design front is from wireframe to full blown web app in four hours made 20, 000. Let me show you how subscribe to my newsletter. It's no,

[00:25:16] David: You did not do that. And your to do app, it's neat if you don't know how to code, but there's a thousand to do apps already done. I don't need to do it again. It's great for learning, but That's not the, if you walked up to an AI bot and you said, write me a new search engine and it did it hats off to you.

Then my job is done. I will sit down and I will go retire, but we are a very long way away from that. I don't want, I just, I want people to understand what AI can do and what it can't do. And I, this might be my paranoia, but I don't trust any of these companies. I don't trust that they're going to mind your data.

I don't trust that they're not going to train themselves off of your data. The one thing I know about every AI company is they are desperate for more data and the data that they want is private data. So those companies who just say, Hey, I'm going to come plug my database in to this AI bot because they have, I can write SQL dude, and it can write SQL and write, read your data.

And there's nothing you can do to stop it unless you don't give it access to your database. I know that's a little tinfoil hat, but we may, we are very particular. We do not give AI access to our client databases. We will give it access to some data sources, a cache or of some sort or whatever but we will not give them full access to the database because I think you're asking for it. That's just me.

[00:26:37] Gary: So we talked about expanding up and down the Eastern seaboard. And inland a little bit. I think we could probably get Philly in there. What do you think?

[00:26:46] David: never been to Philly. Good reason

[00:26:48] Gary: talked about AI a little

[00:26:49] David: can go to Philly.

[00:26:51] Gary: using AI for ourselves and for our customers. So

[00:26:55] David: I would love to

[00:26:55] Gary: three tips?

[00:26:57] David: are using AI.

[00:26:58] Gary: I was going to say, what are your three tips for using AI in your business?

[00:27:02] David: I will say, I'll tell you a couple of things. The top three things to use crypto and NFTs. No. I will say if you haven't played, and I think this is in the free version, I could be wrong. It's at least at the 20 version. We just upgraded for one month. We're giving it a shot to the 200 version so that we get access to the toys faster

[00:27:18] Gary: You're talking about chat GPT. Yeah.

[00:27:20] David: Cause they're coming out with toys all the time. 

[00:27:23] Gary: Canvas and tasks are the new ones, right?

[00:27:25] David: so the tasks, I think that's available now on the 20 a month plan. If you haven't used that, it's very cool. What we did was like Gary mentioned, I created a little thing and I, I'm not taking any credit for this. I stole it from LinkedIn.

You create a prompt to say, Hey, go look for this topic and give me the latest things that have come out in the last 24 hours and tell me about this every day at nine. And so every day I get a little newsletter about development and AI and all this stuff. It's been very cool and showed me some good articles that I would otherwise would've missed.

So that's a really cool one.

[00:27:58] Gary: And you can tell it which ones you like, which ones you don't like what to focus on more, focus on less. You can avoid the AI bros and get more into the actual industry stuff. So

[00:28:08] David: We use that observer, which is their newest tool, which is allows chat GBT to use the the internet for you. I gave it a task of find me a camping reservation for such and such date somewhere in North Carolina. It was just a softball. It got stuck going in a circle over an hour later. It did not finish, but we did have another guy use it.

And he said, plan me out. I think it was building a tree house. I don't remember what it

[00:28:35] Gary: he just said DIY project.

[00:28:37] David: Yeah. Some DIY project plan me, tell me what I need, and then go to Home Depot and put it all in my cart. And he said it did it in 15 minutes. He said it, he had to take over one time and kind of guide it. Cause it got a little lost,

[00:28:50] Gary: Yeah. I couldn't find the button for the cart.

[00:28:52] David: but if to me, if you're going to do that, it either has to work or it's useless if I have to sit and watch it work for 15 minutes,

I 

[00:29:01] Gary: You've just wasted 15 minutes. You would have been done in five.

[00:29:04] David: I would have been done much faster than that. So I don't see the point of that until it's really good. And they're setting themselves such a high bar because almost perfection is required to be

[00:29:13] Gary: But I'm sure there's also, there's tasks that you could just set it and forget it and then check back at the end of the day and be like, I didn't even have to think about this at all during the day. And here's some information that's

[00:29:23] David: I would love to know what those tasks are. Like, what would my biggest problem with AI in general is how to use it. I was just reading an article today. The, my glasses my meta glasses, they have this new feature called live AI. Look at me live AI. And when you turn that on, it will turn on the AI bot constantly for 30 minutes and you can use it to chat with it.

It's just there. It's talking to you. It supposedly knows when you're talking to it versus someone else. Very interesting idea. And the review was, it's I don't know how to use this. What is it

[00:29:55] Gary: is it for?

[00:29:56] David: when, if I have a question, I'll go to my phone. If I use it, a lot of times it tells it to Google, which that's defeating the purpose completely.

I just, and that's where I think we're as humans, we don't know how to use these tools that are coming at us at mock seven at our face all the time, but we don't know how to use them. I don't know when I need a helper in my ear. For any, maybe on vacation, if I'm looking, cause it's using the camera to look right, it can see do I'm at, I'm in Seattle and I'm looking around, what's this building, what's that building.

What's that could be cool. Maybe that's the only thing I can think of. One person in the comments was saying that this should be done for people who can't see very well,

[00:30:40] Gary: That would be beneficial. Okay.

[00:30:42] David: and then learn from that, how did they use it? Cause they're going to use the crud out of it and then improve it, then turn it on for the rest of us.

Which is what we found. Apple does that a lot of Apple's more interesting features they've come out with were accessibility options first, and people started using them even if they didn't need it. But, Oh, this is interesting. Whatever. Like the button on the back of your phone, right? No one knows it's there, but it's there.

And that's the accessibility option. Allow that to. Percolate and become useful and then give it to the masses. Cause right now we just don't know how to use any of this stuff.

[00:31:12] Gary: they have their new hearing aid feature in the AirPods. That was all just an accessibility thing to begin with

too. 

[00:31:18] David: And as so cool if you have mild hearing loss, it's very cool. Anyway, I've waxed poetic about something we didn't mean to talk about. Sorry, we need to wrap this up. My apologies.

[00:31:29] Gary: Okay. Thank you for listening to us talk about ourselves. That's been fun, but we will be back with the guests next week and we will have a very interesting and intriguing discussion about their business instead of ours,

[00:31:43] David: it will be so amazing and intriguing. Yes, that's correct. Alrighty. I'll thank you so much for joining us. We will be back with more interesting people to talk to until then. Thank you.