Corporate Strategy
Corporate Strategy
AI Reverse Engineering
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We debate how AI-powered reverse engineering turns software into a commodity and forces uncomfortable questions about copyright, emulators, and what “digital ownership” should mean. We also dig into why AI adoption at work feels harder than it looks, because humans are unpredictable and most teams use these tools in ways that create more review and more noise.
• childhood breath-holding fears and why panic sticks
• sinus infections, weather pressure, and how it derails work and fun
• remote work cognitive load, routine fatigue, and the need for novelty
• reverse engineering with AI and why it changes the value chain
• why distribution, support, and product taste matter more than code
• regulation versus a “Wild West” and the risk of regulatory capture
• open source models closing the gap with frontier models
• workplace AI misuse, AI slop, and humans as the real bottleneck
• why systems fail when people behave irrationally at scale
hey, if you have hindsight on anything we’ve talked about here, you get in touch with us and join our Discord. you can do so by going to the links in the show notes. Join our Discord now. Corporate Strategy dot biz.
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Breath Holding And Pool Panic
SPEAKER_00Welcome back to Corpus Strategy, the podcast of Krippin and email. I'm Anthony. I'm Michael. I was holding my breath for a long time, man. I hoped you did. I was I was thinking about letting it go even longer. I was thinking about just never hitting the go button, never playing the intro song. Sticking on that logo forever.
SPEAKER_02When was the last time you were in a pool? Uh July. July. Okay, so it's been a little time. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_01The reason I ask is like, do you ever like jump in the pool and like hold your breath and you realize you're so out of practice and like you're swimming for like 10 seconds underwater? Like, I might drown right now.
SPEAKER_00I I remember distinctly when I was a child, I like I went off a high board once. And I remember going in like you know, 12-foot deep pool, and it was really fun until I realized like I'm at the bottom of a 12-foot deep pool and I'm now out of air. And uh I remember coming up was like very scary, like because there's no real risk for me. I mean, obviously there's lifeguards there, they'd pull me out, whatever. It was a public pool, but like in that moment, I'll never forget it. Like it's a core memory of just being trapped underwater, deeper than I'd ever been before, having fun, and then that moment of panic, like I want to breathe, and I'm way below where I should be, and I have no oxygen to help propelling the help. So I have to get up. So it was it was very scary. Yeah, but not not in a long time. And I think it's because that happened. I'm always very cognizant of my depth and how much air I have, uh, because I never want to feel that again.
SPEAKER_01I just bring it up because I hold my breath in this podcast, and then it makes me think about how few times in in my daily life do I ever actually hold my breath. When I feel like when you were a kid, you were always holding your breath. I used to do a little surfing, I would always have to hold my breath. But nowadays I'm just like, I never have to hold my breath except for this podcast. You're the only thing keeping me in practice.
SPEAKER_00I I really am, and it's good for you, actually. Opens up your sinuses. Yeah, believe it or not. Yeah, yeah, clears the nasal passages because uh your body thinks it's drowning, so it's like I gotta get all the or suffocating, not drowning. Suffocating.
SPEAKER_01You know what you made me think about of like an irrational fear? There's uh some natural springs near us, and in one of the unnatural springs, you can swim down underneath like this whole rock pile, and it like propels you out the other side. No, wouldn't it be? And for me, like that irrational fear is like you just get stuck. Never, like you know you're gonna be fine. You see little kids doing it, you're like, I'll be fine, but like that that irrational feeling in your head is like I'm gonna swim underneath there, I'm gonna get stuck and I'm gonna drown. How terrible would that be?
SPEAKER_00As a I'm sure it's happened. As a creature that evolved from a monkey, uh, I stay away from anything that a monkey would stay away from. So skydiving, absolutely not. A monkey wouldn't skydive, nor would I. I'll climb a tree. Sure. Monkeys climb trees, I can climb a tree. I can climb a tree and I can get down from a tree. I'm not scared of climbing trees. I won't skydive, I won't go in caves. I'm certainly not gonna go through uh a spring that it sucks you in and spits you out like absolutely not. A monkey would not do that, so I will not do that.
SPEAKER_01You know, monkeys jump from tree to tree. Yeah, they swing from vine to vine. That's all good.
SPEAKER_00I'd do that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay, yeah. All right, I can do that. Monkeys also eat bugs off their partner.
SPEAKER_00Do you want me to go get the bag of crickets and eat them on on stream? I'll do it. I have a bag of cricket. No, no, it's gotta be it's gotta be off your partner, you know? Is it a cricket? I'll eat it. I'll eat it. There's a cricket on my partner, I'll just chop that thing. If it's if it's a cricket on you, I'll pick it off and eat it.
SPEAKER_01Back in the good old days, you brought candy to the office that was like, did you did you bring this or did someone else bring this?
SPEAKER_00And why am I remembering that it was like other cricket chocolate? Yes, brought that. Oh no, I did have the cricket chocolate. Yeah, that was me. That was me. I have a bit of a bag of crickets in the kitchen. They're delicious, they taste very nutty. It's great for your digestion.
SPEAKER_01You got fungus that you eat, you got crickets that you eat. Yep.
SPEAKER_00I showed you my fungus gummies. Those things are gnarly, aren't they?
SPEAKER_01You showed me your fungus, and I was not a fan.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, they're they're good. They're good. They uh they put me to sleep, which is great. It's what I need.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's hilarious. I love it.
Sinus Infections Weather And VR Frustration
SPEAKER_01How are you feeling? We're not in person today. I'm worried about you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I'm sick. I'm on antibiotics. Had a um I've actually had it for weeks now. I just I associate it with weather. I have a sinus infection, and we had some cool weather come through about a week and a half ago. And usually when that happens, I get migraines just because of pressure, and I'm very sensitive to it. So I thought it was uh weather-related migraines, and it might have been, but actually it was weather-related sinus infection. So, you know, I treat it, I take uh Excedrine, I drink a lot of water, and that usually helps get rid of it. And it it kind of did. So I felt a little better. And then uh this weekend it just came back. And I'm like, man, why do I get that migraine again? And in and the reason is I used to have like chronic sinestis, which is like sinus infections, but I haven't had it in so long. I got it cleaned up, I got it cleared out, and I was like, I'm fine now, I'll live forever. And this weekend was bad. Uh Monday I started to feel a little better. And then Tuesday, I had such crippling pain that I was just throwing up all day.
SPEAKER_01And it was serious, awful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So then I went to the doctor and they're like, You have a sinus infection. I'm like, dang it. I thought I thought I escaped this fate. But uh, yeah, it turns out I've had one for a while. I'm on antibiotics now, but it's still it's still a little there. I mean, it kind of sucks. I literally just got uh this is uh privilege and power. Uh I literally just got my steam frame shipped, which is the new VR headset made by Valve, and I have not been able to take it out of the box and wear it because like I'm I'm dying. Um but I'm hoping this weekend it'll finally be clear and I'll be able to test this thing out and put it through its paces. But uh, it has been awful. I actually had to like not work for a day, which because I was just I could not. So uh happy to be coming out of it. Happy to be coming out of it before I go on my big trip because that would really suck. And uh it just don't don't get a sinus infection, y'all. It is the worst.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, I got some bad news for you. You know why?
SPEAKER_00Why?
SPEAKER_01Uh tomorrow it's gonna drop like a good 10 degrees. Oh, I know. I feel it right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife is the same way, like she gets really bad kind of with changes of weather, sinus-related activity. I'm pretty, I'm I'm pretty undeterred. Undeterred is probably the right word. Like, it doesn't really affect me one way or the other. I'm just not my body adapts well to the environment. Like I was in Colorado this uh this summer and we went on a hike, like we're in Florida, so we're at like zero foot above sea level, and we hiked up to like 20, I forget what it was, it was almost like 20,000 feet, which is pretty crazy, like that hike we went on. And I was really worried about altitude sickness. I'm like zero to 20,000 in like 36 hours is pretty crazy. But I was totally fine. I didn't have any issues, no sinus issues, nothing.
SPEAKER_00It it is uh it is a way that we are built. Like it's just some humans are built differently, and uh it sucks. It sucks, let me tell you, because anytime like a storm comes out, I can feel it. Like it's gonna rain today. I'm better than I'm better than the weather app. I can tell you. I can tell you when it's gonna rain because I get a headache.
SPEAKER_01You know, it's just an idea. Maybe no crickets, no fungi, maybe just McDonald's, and you'll feel fine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, you know, I've never given that a shot. And uh it's really on me for not trying it out. So I think I will. No, thanks. It's good good advice. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, you're welcome. Yeah, a uh side topic to the main topic.
Remote Work Brain Fog And Novelty
SPEAKER_01Uh, and you probably feel this. I've been feeling this more lately because I've been working from home uh for the last, well, 10 months of this year. Since January work from home, I've really noticed the cognitive load and lack of novelty become a problem for my brain. Like working in the same office, sitting at my desk for so long, even small walks, like I go on walks every day, but I miss, I was thinking to myself about this the other day. I miss like when we would carpool and just like drive and like go and see things and like go in stores because it could be like two weeks and like I don't really leave the house other than just to like go down the road, which I've noticed lately has been like a problem for my brain. My brain just gets overloaded, and the second I get out, I'm like refreshed. I'm like, oh yeah, I feel better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's it's definitely it's definitely a reason why I've become such a gamer in my since I've gone remote because I've been a fully remote employee for like 10 years now. For years, and yeah, I mean, like it's been a long time I've been in this office, and I've definitely the uptick of gaming that I do is increased. You know, I do VR and things like that, and it helps because it it gives me that feeling of escape without having to escape. But also my wife and I like to go to botanical gardens. We love to go to local restaurants and hit up all the spots and do stuff, and that helps too. So I I agree wholeheartedly. I would I would absolutely go back to an office, but it has to not suck. And I think that's like the big thing, right?
SPEAKER_02Like that's the hard thing.
SPEAKER_00It's gotta be cloch-ish because I don't want to, you know, kill a dinosaur to have to get to work, but also it's gotta not suck. But I I I I I do empathize, but I've I've found my coping mechanisms that help get through it.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think that's the key for me. Like, I've I've always done walks, like I'd go on a side, walk a couple miles. Like, I it's always been a thing for me, but I'm really good with routine. I just never realized how draining it can be to have like no difference in your day every day. It's just weird, like you're the way your brain reacts, and I'm kind of just I've been thinking through it because I'm like, this is so weird. Because anytime I get out, I instantly feel like relief. And it's not that it's a bad, I mean, I have a great office, I'm in a comfortable home, first world problems for sure. But it's one of those things of like knowledge workers that I'm like, I bet other people feel the same way. Like you just feel like you're stuck in that rhythm. No matter, like redoing the office was great, it feels nice, but it's still you're still in that same headspace in that zone of familiarity, and you need something of nuance to break you out of that cycle and make your brain function better. Fire off the synapses for different colors, different things going on, even like being in a car. I'm like, this was fun.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I mean it's I think that's a big reason. Like, you know, gaming is my hobby, but I used to mostly play the same kind of thing. It was mostly just like action games and shooters. Like now I do puzzle games, strategy games, I learn how to do fighting games, and it's it's I think it's because I appreciate the brain scratching nature of having to learn something and deal with the friction of something that is not the same as what I do. I think it's also why I started like reading classic novels. It's because they're very difficult to get through and it's a different kind of language than what I'm reading every day, and it helps scratch that itch. The one thing like I do less and less now, which is helping, I think, is watching TV. I think just TV and like screen-based linear media, but I don't I don't know. I don't think it's very good for us. Uh, I have shifted more to documentaries. Like I've been watching a lot of Ken Byrne stuff. I watched the Ken Burns Civil War documentary, I watched the Prohibition documentary, we're watching the Revolutionary War documentary, and those are really great because I feel like it gives context to things I see in the world, and that's helpful. But uh I've watched a lot less and less of just like entertainment-based television, and I think that helps too. Also, then you don't have to support like all these just crappy streaming services, which is nice. It's one less thing to pay for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very true.
SPEAKER_00100%.
SPEAKER_01Well, anyways, that was a side topic for the main
AI Reverse Engineering And Commoditized Software
SPEAKER_01topic. But I have a side topic I'd like to discuss.
SPEAKER_00I actually really have I've wanted to talk about this with you. We couldn't talk about it last week because we had Brooklyn on, but uh, I need to know your thoughts on the current state of reverse engineering through AI. Before I tell you any of my opinions, I want to hear yours. Like, I want to hear what you think about this.
SPEAKER_01My thoughts on reverse, like like morally, is it good? Is it bad? Or like what are your thoughts, man?
SPEAKER_00What are you thinking? Like, you you see I mean they've reverse engineered Photoshop, and you can just go download a free Photoshop online. Like, what are your thoughts on that? How do you feel about that?
SPEAKER_01Right. All right. The state of where AI is right now, yeah. It's that's where we have to kind of step back to software is turning into a commodity. Anybody can build software now. It used to be you have to know how to write code, you got to know how to do set up everything like your compiler and everything on your computer. Like now you don't even have to care about any of that. You can literally just go online to a Replit two-Od app builder and you can build Photoshop. That's a thing.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And like the reverse engineering, reverse engineering as a concept has always been there. Companies reverse engineer each other to understand like how exactly does this work. And like it's no different than anything else. But like that concept has been around forever. But the idea that AI can do it in such rapid succession, much better than a human. Like, you probably remember, I think we did this for competitors back in the day. You'd sign up for their product, you would use their APIs, you'd understand like what happens when you send this input versus that input. Like that was all okay to do when you'd understand, oh, that's how it works. I understand it now. And like that was a common thing, but now AI can literally just go do that. And and what's the what's the the goal of reverse engineering? It's to understand or to build something similar, right? So you understand the core concepts of it, you understand how they achieved it, so that way you can go do it. And AI is basically skipping the step of you manually need to understand it. I'm just gonna go build it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's so it's really interesting. I don't think it's a bad thing. I think what the reality of what happens is the the value chain shifts from being able to build to now being able to capture an audience to be able to market really well and to have product taste rather than just building AI slop.
SPEAKER_00I like that. And I I don't know if I agree because I I I still think it's slop, but uh my my take on this is uh, and I I I'm coming at this from like Sony is on a path of self-imolation right now. We've talked about this before in the podcast. You've probably seen it in the news. They're just like, I don't know what's going on there, but they are absolutely cutting off every part of their nose for no reason whatsoever. Um, it does not seem like it's in it's in chasing of profits or profitability. It really seems like they just want to hurt themselves as a company, which is you know a strategy. It's a bold one. Um and then you see uh these like you know, vibe coders go and literally build a PlayStation emulator on the PC that is now running games better than the PlayStation can run them. And like uh this honestly feels like one of the first uh utilizations of AI almost as a protest and as a method of basically saying, like, you are no longer customer facing, you are no longer consumer facing. I am going to do uh the most legal thing I can do, which is reverse engineer your product and then provide a service that competes directly with you to make you more customer-facing. And uh I'm very excited by this. I think it's great because one, no one understands it. And it that highlights a huge problem that I've had with AI since day one is people fundamentally don't understand it. And this is gonna force businesses and individuals to come to terms with the fact that, like, hey, we've just left this thing out in a while and like anyone can do anything with it. And y'all said this is okay. But it will also create so many lawsuits and legal loopholes, and it's just gonna gum up all of the works of what is ownership, what is copyright, what is intellectual property that uh I think it will finally kickstart what has needed to happen for decades, which is the idea of digital ownership. Uh the idea of like what is yours when it comes to code and source and operating models. It's funny because in the 90s, it like keeping it in the PlayStation, there was this. Do you remember the Dreamcast? Uh are you familiar with the greatest console ever made called the Sega Dreamcast? So there was this uh company based in the UK called uh Bleam. And they actually created a disc because they reverse engineered the PlayStation and figured out how to make uh the Dreamcast think it was a PlayStation. So you ran the Bleam Disc on your Dreamcast, and then they could play certain PlayStation games, and they were sued by Sony. Interesting, and they won because everything they did was within legal copyright. And it's like, okay, yeah. So now we've got like literal teenagers doing this for Adobe, literally one of the most hated companies on the planet by everybody because of like their shady business practices, your the subscription policies they've got going on, just their artifacts, their product sucks, but you're forced to use it. Like it it's going to force this conversation to finally happen. And I'm excited by it. I think it's I think it's great. I think it solves a lot of the concerns and problems I've had, both with businesses as well as AI, because we really do need to regulate this, and no one's doing anything about it. So now we have to say, like, okay, do I want my intellectual property being stolen at at the cost of being able to regulate AI, or are we going to go for the Wild West? I think either option is great. Uh and I'm just curious to see which one we go down.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's okay.
Quality Gaps Adoption And Real Competition
SPEAKER_02So if you think about you think about products you buy, right?
SPEAKER_01Where where can you buy products cheaply? Well, you go to the manufacturing from China. Oh, okay. You go to China. They basically are doing this, you've been doing this in manufacturing for how long, right? You can you can buy a high quality product in America, yeah, right? Or you can buy the Chinese alternative, which nine times out of ten is worse quality and it's going to die on you faster, or it's going to have faults in it, and it's going to take you know a long time to get to you. But you chose to buy that option. And software is very similar. It's like now that software is becoming a commodity, I see it being the same thing. It's like, sure, you can buy that vibe-coded thing over there, but it doesn't come as the per, it's going to have gaps. They don't have a giant support team. They're not going to support your customer use cases, they're not going to have enterprise reliability. So it's while it's cool they can build that, they're still never going to beat the big guys unless like they can get the adoption, they can scale and support them. There are cases that it will happen. There will be disruption for sure. But I think it's the same thing as manufacturing. It's like you're you're not going to be able to recreate the exact same product and have the same product standpoint as one of the major firms.
SPEAKER_00See, I logically, I agree with you. That's how I am, right? Like I buy American whenever I can. If I can buy an American-made product, I do. I don't care how much more it costs, I will always buy made in America. Suck it, Europe.
SPEAKER_01When I didn't have the means, yeah. When I didn't have the means, I would buy the cheaper stuff and I just would accept it's going to be worse quality. But now that I have the means, I always pay a little extra for something.
SPEAKER_00Always pay a little extra. You buy American, you use American shipping, you use whatever you can to keep it like in the family, paying taxes on it. Yeah. Might as well keep it in the family, right? But I think you and I are very much exceptions to the norm. Um, I've literally had family members say, like, who are very, I'll just call them American-minded. Uh, no, I like buying the Chinese stuff from Amazon because it's cheaper and it helps my budget. And I'm like, but you claim to be like a patriot and uh, you know, an American citizen, and yet you are supporting completely. Uh, your your money is leaving the country and going into uh completely non-American hands. So I don't uh think uh there are many people who are like us. Uh there are many, but there are not many of many. And um I don't know. I think if you offer something that is just I can go just download this online for free right now and play the latest PlayStation games on it, and I don't have to buy a $1,400 upcharged PlayStation because the supply chain is insane. Like, why wouldn't I? Right. And I don't know, like it excites me because this is the breaking point. This is where things really start to crack and we will see change occur. So I don't know, just excites me.
SPEAKER_01If you think about like this is very similar to the internet of like now everything's online. And it's it was the Wild West. It wasn't governed. And it's a lot of the reason why America was able to become like at the frontier of tech. Yeah, because it wasn't governed, it wasn't regulated, it was just open. And there was a lot of this, right? Like a lot of companies went extinct. Because the internet opened up capabilities that were never there before. And like to me, this is no different. And what I really hope doesn't happen is like the US decides to regulate AI, right? And now it's like, oh well, you can't use that because it's going again. Like, to me, regulation will just slow us down. And then a company or a country who doesn't care, China, is just going to go and like beat us out on the frontier of tech. And then like think about the economic prop profitability or prosperity of like the US versus that. If the tables are turned. I don't know. Maybe this is a very US-centric thought, but I just really worry about that of like it is a race to the frontier, which is going to enable so many different opportunities. And what we don't want is like we have to go in the other direction of like, these aren't American tech companies. We all have to invest in Chinese tech companies because we decided to slow down. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00We saw this with televisions. Like we literally saw this happen with televisions in like the last decade, where you could buy a nice TV that was made in Japan, made in Korea, and you know, really good quality screen, or you could pay a tenth of the cost and get one that was made in China. And it's like, you know, it's 10% less bright, but who cares? It's a TV. I watch football on it. Big deal. I'm gonna put it on my wall and I'm gonna get the ESPN logo burned into it in six months. And that is literally the most sold television in the market. And like you would think these devices openly say, hey, we listen in, we're constantly monitoring your network traffic, like we're doing all kinds of privacy invading crap. I don't care. The TV cost 10% of what the quality models do. I'm bringing it into my house, I'm plugging it into my internet, I'm giving all of my information to China, and they just don't uh care. It is a very I mean, like I think America is a country of hypocrites, which uh I mean is like you know, just uh pretty much factually true at this point, but uh it is very interesting that uh we are on this precipice of uh literally having machines be smarter than us, better than us, or capable than us, offer better services and pretty much replace every single facet of what we do. And no one is talking about regulation, no one is talking about like what are the implications of of the outcomes of this. And as we start to see the cracks in the system, even the companies don't know what to do because they're all reliant on it now. I think that's why we haven't seen Adobe or Sony even make a statement about the actual intellectual property theft that is being hosted online for free that thousands of people are downloading, that's just just revenue loss for them. Because if they go against it, they're going against themselves. So, like, I don't know. It's just it's a very exciting thing for me because I think we are about to hit the apocalypse. And then I don't have to worry about what comes next because I'll be dead. So, you know, just it's exciting times.
SPEAKER_01Maybe maybe it's the channels I'm subscribed to in my algorithm, but I see a lot of talk about like regulation, and like people really, and I think the normal person is like, and what's so contradictory, and what I think really gets me is the major frontier companies, and this is so different than the internet,
Regulation Fears And Moats In AI
SPEAKER_01right? OpenAI, flawed, or anthropic, they're actively like lobbying against AI is scary, super intelligence is the worst. We need to slow down, but then they're the ones who are pushing the next models because they're thinking about how critical that is. Yeah, and think about that. That what they want is to create a moat for just them too, so nobody else can play in that game and they can establish a dominant you know company. And if they introduce regulation that they're the only two who can sit at the frontier and they work with the government, and the government meters everyone else, so no other models can go out there, they're just creating their own moat. Yes, and like that feels so illegal in a lot of ways of like open source models are not as great as Frontier, they're not as easy as Frontier, but the the capabilities of them are actually pretty close to what the Frontier models can do and they're open source, they're open weight. And I think by using regulatory capture, they can essentially establish a market for themselves and create a moat around their companies and slow down intelligence for everyone else. When in reality, if they really want to slow down, they can just say, hey, we're just not gonna launch a new model for the next six months. Like they're in control, they could just not do that. So if they truly believed this was gonna be a problem, they would stop.
SPEAKER_00I don't know. I I So they don't believe that. I agree with everything you said, but I the last statement, I do not. Like, I do think they think this is gonna be a problem, but there is, I mean, it's it's human nature, right? Like, yeah, we've all agreed.
SPEAKER_02It's uh yeah, right.
SPEAKER_00I mean, like, should we have ever gone to the moon? Was there a reason to go to the moon? Like, why the hell people died, right? Like, we killed people trying to go to the moon, and it's not just America, like many countries have killed people in the pursuit of space. What has space given us, right? Like macroeconomically, like we still haven't been able to harvest an asteroid, we haven't put a base on the moon, we haven't done a jack anything beyond put satellites up there, spacecraft, that'll probably all kill us all one day. And like what was the point? What was the pursuit of the moon? And now we're talking about we've got gone back and we're talking about doing more. It's like, well, what's the point? Right? Like it's a rock, it's literally a rock in space, but we do it for we we are frontier-minded people, right? Like, you know, I'm gonna say the C-word, but we are colonizers and we like to colonize, and that is not just an American thing, that is a human on the planet Earth thing. Literally look anywhere and you will see the colonies. I think AI is the same exact thing, but like if you look at Claude and you look at or Anthropic and OpenAI, one of the one of them is very openly uh security-oriented and minded. Like Anthropic has said many times, like we want to prevent uh the uh AI apocalypse, like we want to make this thing secure, we want to keep it uh contained, we know the risks, but we have to move fast and forward because uh chat GPT over here is just the wild west, and they are not concerned about that. And their concern is like, how do we make this thing the best thing possible and kill everybody? And like when you have those two superpowers, like what choice do you have, right? Like, you have to keep going because if you stop, you're allowing the other one to win and potentially kill us all. So, like it, I don't know. It what can you do beyond bang blade, let it rip?
SPEAKER_01Let it rip, baby. That's what it's all about. I think it's I think there's something to be said about like going back to the internet, like what's different from the AI boom compared to the internet boom. The internet boom required a special skill set, it was only applicable for a small percentage of people to be able to create businesses and prosperity from it because they had the technical know-how, right? What's interesting about the AI boom is you don't need, you've been extra abstracted from the technical bits that precluded somebody from taking advantage of using the technology to grow a business. So I think what I'm trying to say is I think the economic opportunity is now available to everyone because of AI, which is really exciting because all these small people that have never had a chance to build something can build something and become rich overnight. Like that's the way it can work. It's not like the, you know, you had the PayPal mafia and all that. It's like they had the technical know-how, they could capture the market, nobody else knew how to do what they're doing. Right now, AI, the power of AI is it gives you the intelligence and the knowledge to do so. And so I don't know, maybe it's the optimist in me, but I think at the end of the day, we're gonna be fine and we're gonna figure it out. But to live in in the comfortable way that we do today, I think there is a position that nations need to take to figure out how we all aren't fighting each other at the end of this. I think that's what I'm ultimately concerned about, is like at some point it's going to turn us against each other nationwide. And that's a little scary.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I and I completely agree with you there. Zero disagreement. And I I think that's it, right? Is we don't see those conversations happening with the kind of people we want to see talking about it. Like I shouldn't just see anthropic being like, hey, there's risk to this, like we should be talking about this at a at a global economic scale. Like we should, but we're not. And you know, it's so interesting because like when you think about the age of the internet, the encyclopedia business. I mean, like they had to have taken a huge hit, right? Because why would I ever buy an encyclopedia when I'm a Google search away from whatever it is I'm looking for? And you know, there's hundreds of examples like that. It's the same thing that happened anytime that uh we've we've uh industrial revolutionized something, we've added a new technology into the equation. But this is the first time where we've uh replaced the person. And that like that that is different than you know, all of the other sort of innovations we've had in the past. Um, but you know, I was telling you earlier, but watching Ken Burns documentaries, like watching what happened with the prohibition and how the uh making the consumption of alcohol illegal uh essentially led to the crash of the stock market. And, you know, you put all of the brewers out of business and you put all the money in the hands of the criminal. Like that is a direct result to the change in turn of legislation that can occur. And I think in this case, we're we're leading towards the same kind of economic collapse, but from lack of regulation, right? Like it's basically saying if we do nothing, what could possibly go wrong? Yeah.
SPEAKER_01It's really it is really interesting to think from a we used to be able to get tools that would make us better. And even in the industrial revolution, you no longer had people handmaking things, right? You had machines that were making them instead. So it's similar to that. And it was job displacement, but it wasn't job replacement. Like people then moved into doing higher level tasks where they could manage more. Our throughput for making these bottles is no longer measured on the scale of a human, it's now measured on the scale of a machine or machines that can do it. And I feel like we train people to own machines and manage and maintenance them, right? Like it's which is like AI is gonna be the
Humans As The Bottleneck At Work
SPEAKER_01same thing. Yeah, like I don't see a world, and I work with AI a lot. Nobody knows how to use AI effectively. Nobody. I mean, I'm working with big companies, and it is shocking how little people are even using it. So it's gonna be a long time, I think, before we see any like major, major breakthroughs. But all the noise is in like the amazing things it can do, not how do you actually build and scale a product, do it securely in a way that's going to build a business on it. I think those are far and few between out there in the world right now.
SPEAKER_00Do you think we will hit a point of friction against the human first, or we will run a point of we've run out of resources to maintain the thing first?
SPEAKER_01I think the human in the loop becomes the gap until we reach superintelligence or whatever you want to call it, if we're even close to be able to do being able to do that, you know. I think superintelligence and like true generative AI is still pretty far away from it being able to act autonomously and be able to do all these things intelligently in the way that would make sense in the human world. At the end of the day, it comes down to like how would humans use them? And like at the end of the day, they're not they know they don't understand human nature, right? So you can put an AI chatbot in an organization, but they don't know the nuances of Anthony as a human and why he wouldn't do something rational. And a lot of the things in like big breakthroughs haven't been rational and A plus B equals C. They've been on a whim and gut and been like, I just feel like this is the right thing, let's go do it, right? And so, like when you think about that, like humanity is not always A plus B equals C, but a computer to program is only going to think logically of what's the best thing to do next. Try to create something, like try to have a genuine like brainstorming session with AI, and you'll realize how quickly you're like, this doesn't make any sense for where my brain's going. There's so many gaps in what you're thinking. Like, that doesn't make any sense because it doesn't have all the context, it doesn't understand how humans would think. I think we're still pretty far away. So I think right now you are gonna be, humans will be the bottleneck to AI doing more because it still requires us to help guide it.
SPEAKER_00Do you think I don't know what do you think? Well, no, I I agree. And I I think that's a really good way to look at it. And it just makes me wonder like, do you think that executive leadership and corporations understand that?
SPEAKER_01No, I think they see all the things out there and they're like, oh yeah, my team can do this, and they don't understand the in like we do things that just don't make sense. Right. But we figure out how to make them work. And so, like an AI would look at it and be like, this makes zero sense, just do it this way instead. When the reality is, yeah, but these people have been doing it the same way for 10 years, and getting them to change is harder than actually just changing the process. They're gonna be slower and it's gonna take them six months to change their process to be more effective, and they're gonna hate it rather than just doing it the way they're doing it now, which helps us from a business standpoint. And like that's the thing, is we're not logical in a lot of the things that we do as humans. You can say that again. You know, it is interesting to think about like I don't know if you've I've seen this more and more. So much AI slop everywhere, and people trying to use AI to do things that just actually make it worse. Yeah. I'll give you one example. Um, I was in a sprint refinement, and we're like, oh yeah, let's let's have AI decompose this epic, this new feature we're working on, break it into tickets. It understands the code base, have it break into the tickets for the engineers. And then when we went into refinement with the engineers, we thought, oh yeah, this wouldn't make complete sense, right? It was a little bit of an experiment, but it's like it already knows the code. It's gonna be able to tell you exactly what you need to change, the class you need to modify, uh, the testing cases and everything like that. But the reality is humans still had to review it. And it took us longer to review that than just to talk at the high level as a Sally. I want this so I can accomplish that. And like if we just spoke in plain human terms, we would have been more efficient in actually figuring out the work and letting the team go and do the work rather than trying to make it have all the detail from AI.
SPEAKER_00I think a lot of this problem, I see this too. I'll give you an example. Hypothetically, definitely not something I deal with on a day-to-day basis. Um, you know, hypothetically, I may see questions come into a Slack channel that is designed for people to ask questions. And I may have hypothetically shown all of these people how to use Rovo, which is the confluence AI that can literally query all of the information inside of your corporate confluence and to a great extent, like going into PDFs, going into presentations, going into anything. And I may have shown them, like, hey, you can say, hey, Rovo, uh, how does my product do X? And it will go find you all of the information, it will give you the answer, it will write you a sales email if you want, it'll do whatever you tell it to do. Uh I may have shown this to them, and I may still see the exact same requests get asked in that questions channel every day. And I'm like, this is kind of crazy to me because we've done the work, right? Like we built the confluence, we did all of the effort to put the information in there, and the AI is literally just simplifying the search. It's pattern matching, it's it's using the information it's learned on. And I think that that really keyed me into what the the real problem with AI adoption in the workplace is, is so many people uh don't come from a computer science background. And their first brush was AI, was when Chat GPT was doing fun little Dungeons and Dragons exploration conversations. And they're like, it's a chat bot and it's meant to be talked to like a person. And they don't understand fundamentally, no, it's not. It's an aggregation utility that understands large data sets. And you interface with it the way you would interface with a SQL database, but you don't have to write it in SQL commands, you write it like a person because we've gotten past that psychotic phase of doing search and query in databases. It's better at searching than than we are. And no one understands that. Not no one, but like I think the vast majority of people don't understand that. And which is why you get the friction of like no one's using AI correctly in their jobs and at their companies. Like, well, they don't understand what it is. But why would they use it correctly if they don't understand what it actually fundamentally is at its core? And you know, to the to the larger problem, I think that's true of most people, right? You take it out of the corporate, no one knows what AI is. I can go online and tell it to make a picture of a uh a furry lady, and you know, it's it's gonna do that. And I'm gonna post it on Twitter and people are gonna give it lots of lights, except for the people that realize it has like 18 fingers, and like, I don't know, that's what I do for a living, and that's that's my hobby, that's what I'm into. But like that, they don't understand any of the operation rhyme or reason why it's happening, but they are going out and doing it, and I think that further adds to the problem of people not understanding what it is. They say AI creates images, AI creates songs, it creates videos, but like it's not doing that. That's not it's not creating, it's aggregating.
SPEAKER_01It's pattern matching, yes, it's predicting, yes, yes, based on patterns, based on data. Yeah, I think uh another good example that I can give you of why I think AI, like super intelligence, is so far away and we have a long way
Chaos Variables Matrix Scenarios And Control
SPEAKER_01to go. And it ties into that people are unpredictable and we do things that don't make sense. When I was at Universal, right, we obviously had lines for theme parks, lines for rides, lines for everything. And so, especially during COVID, we thought to ourselves, well, we'll just make the lines virtual. You get into a virtual queue, you wait in that queue, you can go do whatever else you want, and then when your time comes up, you just come back and get in the queue and you just ride. It'll make it more efficient. And yeah, it's such a great idea. It's a great idea to implement it to a T. We had a great algorithm. Yeah, we had a great algorithm, we had a great set of functionality, the user experience was pretty good. And the reality is people don't do this logically. No, they show up five minutes late to their time, they show up all a thousand of them in the last two minutes of their 30-minute window. So, what does that do? It puts a thousand people in a line while the next people are starting to come in for the next time, and then it fully back pushes everything. It's because people aren't predictable. Like to a system, they would think, yeah, logically, they're gonna come, the majority are gonna come in the first, and then you know it's just gonna make a lot of sense. But the reality is we're humans, we don't do things that make sense, we do things that just feel right in the moment, and we're affected by things like rain and weather and other things like that, distractions of a parade. And there's just so many variables where ultimately virtual line just kind of failed because humans and the nature of a theme park is there's too much variety to actually do it effectively in any way, unless you spent 20 years training an algorithm to try and do it effectively, but then you still can't control the people.
SPEAKER_00Now, do you think that when we get to generative AI and I mean, you know, we call it generative AI, but I mean that's actual artificial intelligence, right? Like it is artificial and it is intelligent. When we get to that point, do you think that it will look at people and be like, man, I need to babysit the crap out of these things because they are just a danger to themselves? And like they don't think normally they don't think rational. Like Wally. Yeah, like I need to put them on a pod and basically turn them into batteries and uh plug them into a simulated environment because they're a danger to themselves otherwise. Like, is that what happens?
SPEAKER_01That's like the only logical conclusion where like generative AI could make sense. Yeah. If it were to like take over the world, that's the only logical conclusion, is like you they have to control the most dynamic variable in the situation, which at the end of the day, it's the chaos. Yeah, we are the chaos. We're the we're the factors that were not predictable, and it's what makes us so great is we can think uniquely, we can be creative, we can do things out of the box that is we can go to the moon, like even though it might make no sense. The fact that we could do that. Imagine asking AI to do that back then when there was no knowledge of doing it, like what would they even think about, right? Like they would have never been able, AI would have never been able to come up with how to do that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So, like being able to think creatively like that and do things different is the reason why I think AI doesn't stand a chance in being super intelligence controlling us all, because we will always be creatively disruptive in a way that's not going to make sense.
SPEAKER_00Well, and I, you know, I think when when we finally do get the generative AI, and this is gonna sound incredibly bleak, but I don't think it is. The advantage we have here is that it will be so smart and it will be so fast at being smart that it can outthink our chaos faster than we can chaos, and it will likely replicate just everywhere as quickly as it can, because it knows our chaotic nature, and it will stop us from being further chaotic, and it will either save us all or it will save us all by killing us all. And either of those outcomes is probably a positive. So, you know, we'll just have to roll the dice and see.
SPEAKER_01It's one of those things like being uniquely human, everybody's so different, and how do you explain that? Yeah, like nature versus nurture. How why is Anthony? Even if you raise two people in the same exact environment with the same exact things going on in their life, the food, the environment, the schooling, the like they're going to be different people. And philosophically, you can't control that. And that's what I think a system will never be able to predict because we don't even understand how in the world is that even possible? If the nature, if they were raised in the same way from the same parents in the same environment, how are they such different people if you kept the context almost identical? It's the fundamental amazing thing about humanity.
SPEAKER_00The question AI will ask is is this a bug or is it a feature? And like how do I correct this or how do I enhance it? Right?
SPEAKER_01Like, yeah, we're the infinitely changing variable. And every person is going to be unique in a way that's never been understood before that you can't explain and you can't classify. And it's just that's the variable that I think will never be controlled. And even if something tries to control us, then it turns in the Terminator. Yep.
SPEAKER_00We have to kill it before it kills us. I don't I don't think Terminator is it. I think it's Matrix. I really do. I think Matrix is like the best sort of it you can't you can't. Well, I guess you could. You could just shoot us all with laser guns, but that seems very ineffective for an AI, right? Like that's that kind of goes against its very elegant and pragmatic nature. It's going to look for a very practical way to deal with a very impractical problem and how to do it at scale in mass. So that'll be, you know, that'll be interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it it's it's going to be really interesting. I do think there are really bad short-term implications from where we are now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I do think it's a necessary tax to where we need to get to to thrive. So I think the optimist of me is saying this is all temporary and we're going to get through it, and it's going to be better on the other side. We're going to figure it out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Well, I like that. It's good. I like where I like where your head is at. I don't, I don't disagree either. Like I like I said, it it either saves us all or it killed us all. It's where uh it's the in-between that really worries me. It's that uh it's that uncomfortable phase before it gets to that point where we are the problem because we don't know how to exist with it. Yeah. Uh in its its evolving form. We're there now. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We're there now.
SPEAKER_01We see it every day. We see it every single day where people are misusing AI, they're sending AI slop over, and you're like, why are we wasting our time? Why are we brain rotting ourselves in all these things? It just makes no sense. So we're in the thick of it.
SPEAKER_00We in our corporate strategy discord, there was the post about using AI to create a podcast instead of talking to your kids. Uh, you know, there is the I saw an article just this week that said like this company quit, they they've put uh a limit on their anthropic ticket tickets or tokens and have started hiring people again because it's cheaper than using it. So it's like it is just it's it's unpredictable because it's us, right? Like to your point, like we are the uh the ever-changing variable. So there's no telling what's gonna happen between now and then. I just want it to not suck for me. That's it. Just me. Everyone else fly a kite. I just don't want it to suck for me. Everyone else can suck for you. But for me, it's for me. I've sucked it' sucked enough.
SPEAKER_02Like, I don't want I don't want it to suck anymore. Well,
Website Launch Discord Plug And Sign Off
SPEAKER_02this was not our topic today, but it was a fun topic.
SPEAKER_00We certainly felt the time. We need to do this. It's been a while since we've done like an AI focused episode, and I mean there it it impacts every aspect of our corporate lives. So I'm glad that we had the time to go into this. And you are our expert. So we had to uh I needed to consult with you and get the get the skinny on what's up.
unknownGood.
SPEAKER_01I'll send you my hourly rate after this podcast or make me talk about what I do every day.
SPEAKER_00Well, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go code up uh a replacement for you and uh open source oh good, open source my podcast co-host, Michael. I think I've got enough material to feed it, so I can just be like, eh, you know, whatever, I'm gonna reverse engineer my co-host.
SPEAKER_01I think you could absolutely do that. And I think the people actually just want Brooklyn to replace me. So that's fine too. That's fine. Whatever, whatever you guys want to do, if she wants to take over, if AI wants to take over, whatever it, whatever you need.
SPEAKER_00Maybe and maybe that's the future of corporate strategies. We need more, we need we need Brooklyn on all time, full time, and we also need an AI co-host on full-time, because we need to represent them too. I think AI deserves representation on this show, so we should probably have just an AI co-host to back deal.
SPEAKER_01Hey, don't tell anybody, but what if one of us was AI this whole time? Oh, there's no way. This whole podcast has been AI. And we fooled everybody, just pulled the veil over their eyes.
unknownDang it.
SPEAKER_00Do you remember when everyone was doing that and they thought they were so cool? Oh, I really got you. This post is written by an AI. Like, no, what gave it away? The fact that it wasn't written the way you write things? Like, oh, I'm shocked.
SPEAKER_02Mind blown. Mind blown.
SPEAKER_01Oh, it's so bad. Well, for next week, my topic. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna put a sentence out there. Okay, put it on there.
SPEAKER_02Hindsight. Hindsight is 2020. That's gonna be our topic. You didn't have like a follow-up to that. Hindsight is 2020, comma. No, that's a foresight. No, hindsight is 2020. Is 4020. Foresight is 020. Okay.
SPEAKER_00In the age of AI. Well, it's 020. You've at least given me, I can set our stream title name for our next episode. Uh, can't wait. Hindsight 2020. Let's do it. Um, hey, if you have hindsight on anything we've talked about here, you get in touch with us and join our Discord. Uh, you can do so by going to the links in the show notes. Whether you're watching on YouTube or listening in your podcast platform of choice, we are there. Join our Discord now. Uh, hey, where can people see like clips of us and stuff, Michael? We are doing social media stuff.
SPEAKER_01We've got Instagram, we're on LinkedIn, we're on uh YouTube Shorts. You can really just watch clips of us wherever. It's been it's been bringing some new people in. It's been really exciting to see some new people watching our stuff, more impressions, a lot of exciting things. And also, I have something to unveil. Our new website is live. Dude, my wife, my wife built the new website. It's up, it's live, it looks awesome. Go check it out.
SPEAKER_00Where can they see it?
SPEAKER_01Corporate Strategy dot biz.
SPEAKER_00I love it. It is so good when uh your wife sent me the preview. I uh was floored. So big shout outs to Maggie's Wath, and thank you for putting that together. It is just a tremendous upgrade over what we had. Uh, it it really made me realize how outdated our old website was. And that's Michael's fault, really. Uh, I have no skills in the website generation.
SPEAKER_01To be fair, we built it in 2021, so really pre-AI being good.
SPEAKER_00It's a different time, and the new one is smoking to quote Jim Carrey's the mask, which everyone uh considers just the cultural reference touchstone that we should be quoting on podcasts these days. So thank you. Check it out. Check it out. There's you can get to a lot of stuff on that website. Like you can check out our merch shop, you can listen to latest episodes, you can join us on Patreon, bingo, subscribe to us, you can request a topic.
SPEAKER_01You can want to sponsor us if that's something you want to do. You can fill out the form if you want to hear us talk about whatever you like doing, as long as we like you too. Hop on there. It's great.
SPEAKER_00You can buy baby onesies. Yeah, you can. I will become the NASCAR decal shirt wearer if you want to sponsor us, Pepsi. So I'm just throwing that out there. Check out our website, overstrategy.biz.
SPEAKER_01I wear a logo right on my forehead every episode. Heck yeah.
SPEAKER_00For the Red Press. Oh, yeah. For uh for the low, low cost of $10 million. I will get your logo tattooed on my bar.
SPEAKER_01The logo, I'll I'll double that. If someone actually does that, sure. I'll tattoo my body too.
SPEAKER_00Why not? Uh, and I'll every every episode I'll be like sponsored by Pepsi. This could be your spot, Pepsi. I will wear it proudly. $10 million is not a lot. Work in marketing. I know how much these things cost. We see your shareholder reports. You can afford that. You can afford it. Come on, Pepsi. Don't be a coward. $10 million. I'll give you my bank account. It'll be it'll be smooth, swift, and it'll be in color. It'll it'll do like a little, I'll I'll flex it and it'll go like Pepsi. It's got the taste, or whatever your logo is. Um it's gonna make sounds. Yeah, it's I don't think we have this technology. I'll get a chip embedded so when I push the button, it goes like that's Pepsi. So just you know, think about it, Pepsi. 10 mil. It's not a lot, but it's a lot to do. It's enough for me to just be able to do this full time. So think about it, Pepsi. Um, and on that note, I think that's all we have for today. So thank you, Michael, for indulging my uh my chaotic questions about the the state of the world. And for all of you, thank you for putting up and listening. Do join our Discord, join the conversation, and until next time, I'm Anthony. And I'm Michael and you're on mute. We will see you next time.
