July 24, 2025 • 52 mins
In this episode, tech visionary Sheldon Gilbert and thought leader Van Jones join forces to break down the AI revolution—and why it’s a make-or-break moment for Black and brown communities. From job disruption and AI agents to opportunities for wealth creation and social equity, this isn't just a tech talk—it's a survival guide, a call to action, and a blueprint for building a Black future rooted in innovation and inclusion.
Van Jones challenges us to stop romanticizing Black history and start building a Black future. Sheldon Gilbert unpacks how AI is changing every industry and why mastering these tools is the new civil rights movement. Whether you're an entrepreneur, student, or just curious about what’s next, this episode will shift your mindset and arm you with real, actionable insight.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. This is
John O'Brien. This is a top one percent podcast in
the world today on every continent, and the top one
(00:21):
hundred for a business and top fifty for entrepreneurship on Apple.
And so thanks everybody for your support on the silver
for rights movement, from civil rights to civil rights, from
the streets to the suites. This is a very special episode.
I don't remember ever having two guests with me at
the same time. A lot of you know that I
do these solo often. I thought, this is so important.
(00:42):
This is not just a tech episode. It's not just
about AI. It's a survival guy, a playbook, and our
warning label all in the same breath. Black and brown
communities have historically been last in line when economic revolutions
hit the world. Is the insight from Van Jones, who's
(01:03):
on with us today, my brother from another mother, from
the industrial era to the digital boom. But AI is different.
It's moving faster than anything anybody has ever seen. To
go from the automobile to horse and buggy to the
automobile took about sixty years to go from labor to
(01:24):
technology centric reality will take about six and that's probably
a very generous timing. We're going to probably see thirty
percent improvements in efficiencies and companies in the next two
to three years, which means that they won't need employees
to do many of the jobs that just got made
(01:45):
more automated and efficient. New jobs will come, but this
may not be a direct overlay in real time, which
means you need a survival guy. You need to be
your own toolkit. The communities that understand shape and own
a stake in this revolution now will define the future
(02:06):
of power, wealth and opportunity later. So before I lay
in and let my brother Van Jones and Sheldon Gilbert
lean into this in a way that will transform your life,
let me just say this AI is moving faster than
civil rights legislation ever did.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
What happens if we don't act now?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Doctor King once said the world is moving that human
rights and social justice in America. This is what he
said back then was moving at horse and buggy pace,
but the world was moving at jetlife speed. That can
be said for where we are now, between what's going
on with the suites and the streets. Van Jones brings
his policy and media voice and his brilliance. I think
he is literally a genius in this area and others
(02:55):
revealing what's happening in Washington and Silicon Valley behind closed doors.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Uh, and technology too.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
He once told me that nine night persent a black
folk on think about AI, but nine nights in a
white folks think about AI either so orver. This is
the equal opportunity discrimination. Van Jones introduced me to Sheldon Gilbert,
who compensates not smiling with having a brilliant brain. That
(03:28):
makes it irrelevant whether he smiles that you or not.
He's just dead serious. He's making smart sexy and it's
a big thing for me to tell somebody to smile.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
My wife's always telling I have mister serious. This brother
makes me look like I'm a libertary.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I'm a liberal.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Breaks down how AI is being coded without us and
why that's dangerous for us, for algorithms, for equity, and
for democracy.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I'm going to help.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I'm going to try to in the middle of this
great conversation reframe AI as the next frontier of financial inclusion,
civil rights, civil rights, and community economic empowerment. It's an
urgency of now to my brother Van Jones.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Well, it's it's an honor to be here, and I
think you know you've done more than any the next
one hundred people in getting financial literacy and the silver
rights movement taken seriously, we're now in a position where,
if you're going to be focused on economics, what's happening
(04:34):
now when it comes to artificial intelligence and exponential technology
that there's no lawsuit protest bill you can pass like
it's it's it's moving so rapidly.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
And yet I.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Want to point out we as black folks, should be
happy because if everything's going to be disrupted, as they
say they're going to disrupt everything, AI is going to
disrupt every industry good because he's interested to have been
leaving us out the whole time.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Anyway.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
It's not like the status quo has been so wonderful.
I mean, do we like the healthcare system that we've got?
Do we like the education system that we've got? Do
we like all this stuff so much?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
So?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Why we're the main ones who are being threat sensitive
as opposed to opportunities sensitive. You're now in a position
where the most creative people in the world, black cultures,
you know, inarguably I'm the most creative, most innovative.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You just said something about about basically the urgency and
how we miss the dot com boom, we missed the
web two oh, and yeah, you know we're not gonna
miss ai. But I just want to say, and I'm
not making at all a political comment. Please, anybody listening
to this, as you know, I'm inclusive of everybody. I'm
not making it at all a political comment. I just
think this is sort of funny people say. Some people
(05:53):
have said, let's make America great again. I'm not making
a political comment. I'm not even digging at anybody. I'm
just saying, when was America every great for black people?
I'm just saying, like when my grandfather was a sharecropper,
my second grade grandfather was a slave Georgiana.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
He fought in a Union army for a country that enslaved.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
In fact, but he was in the he was part
of the Emancipation Proclamation, I mean civil rights movement. Doctor
King was killed and all these other folks, and just
trying to get some folks to a to a guy stage,
to a watering station, a water fountain.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
You know. Furnivash was given to white women. All good.
I love that for them.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I'm just wondering, Well, I'm not trying to get off.
I'm just saying this for the record, when making America
great again? When did that ever? And we worked twenty
trillion dollars of free labor and slavery forty four trillion,
and you taught missed opportunity.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I'm not complaining, I'm not why, I'm just contextualizing.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Back to Vangelines, Well, I I think what you're saying
seriously in the following respect though, black folks really do
have a profound sense of history. In fact, you know,
we do history as well as anybody's ever done it.
In fact, we have a whole Black History Month. Everybody
(07:22):
in the world knows who Harriet Dubbin is. Everybody in
the world knows Doctor kingis. I'm not sure anybody knows
who any Irish American or Italian America or Greek American
heroes are. So we've done a great job with Black history.
The question is what about the Black future. I would
trade in at this point about ten Black History months
for one Black Future weekend? Can we talk about the
(07:44):
black future? Where are we actually going? Especially given that
when waves of change come. You can either be knocked
down by them or you can ride them to a
different place. And so the reason I'm so happy to
be on with Sheldon is because there are very few
people in the world, black, white, or any other color
who understand the depth of what this AI revolution means
(08:07):
than Sheldon Gilbert. And one of the things I think
that we get caught up in is we tend to
look at this from the perspective either of just folks
who are scared or folks who are at a thousand
feet above and are thinking about how they're going to
beat China with AI and that sort of stuff. But
here's reality. These AI data centers are not in the cloud.
(08:29):
Right we talk about cloud computing. I think a lot
of people think there's some laptops up there in the clouds,
you know what I mean, like holding all this information.
There's no laptops in the cloud. You've been on a
plane many times. You've never seen a laptop up there.
Because they're data centers on the ground on planet Earth
using materials that came from Africa. They call them rare
(08:51):
earth minerals. They're rare in Europe. They're africa abundant minerals
is what we should call them. And there's water being
used on the ground, there's energy being used on the ground,
and their work is going in there every day who
are doing real computational work in a very different way
than somebody from Silicon Valley, grassroots, real time people. And
(09:11):
that material reality of what this AI revolution means is
something that Sheldon understands. And then also the fact that
the Internet itself, which was built for humans, is now
that have to be rebuilt for AI agents. These two
massive changes in terms of the data centers and what
(09:31):
they mean on the ground level and this new Internet
that's being created are two areas that Sheldon knows as
much or more about anybody else. And I just wanted
to make sure that we had that conversation because if
we're going to make Wakanda real, which should be the
new Black aspiration is to make Wakanda real, science, spirituality, heroism,
(09:55):
high purpose, but technology being central, we have to have.
I have to start honoring our technologists and one of
those is Sheldon Gilbert. So get that mostly right and
mostly wrong, shall and you keep correct me.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You're the engineer, Yeah, no, absolutely. I love Also the
reference to kind of a dune in the background. So
good stuff. I say, I'm broad, broad exactly, all encompassing,
and I want to.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Ask knowledge Van as a new kind of leader, because
leaders in the past our community would not commend another
leader will certainly not recommend another leader. In fact, doctor
King was viciously attacked by civil rights leaders who happened
to be black because you, I don't know he was popular.
I don't know what it was, but I mean he
really died chained, smoking, overweight, and depressed. He thought he'd failed.
(10:40):
And we tried to even give them the Nobel Peace
Prize money away to the other nonprofit civil rights leaders.
They didn't even acknowledge the gift after he had wired
the money to them. They were so resentful. And the
stories going on and on. The guy in Chicago who
changed the dress of his church because it was on
Martin the King Boulevard. After Doctor King was assassinated, he
changed his address to the side Street and here you
are avenged zones. Not taking credit for himself. He introduced
(11:03):
me to to Sheldon, who runs Cure Labs, amongst other things,
and told me he was a genius and all this stuff.
And I took some time with Sheldon realized he really
was a genius. And really all me and Van Jones
are doing here as a prop for Sheldon. But I
think it's really beautiful and command to give band his
flowers for being the kind of leader who's willing to
(11:23):
share the stage and even hold up the stage for
someone else.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Sheldon over to you absolutely well, first, John, again, really appreciate,
really appreciate your actually inviting me in. And yes, but
I do smile, but you're right, the time is it's
a very urgent and serious moment. And again, brother Van
as always, thanks again for you a constant brilliance and
insight and perspecassy with regards to a wide range of topics.
And I know that you began first and foremost, you know,
(11:50):
sort of really sort of stuff, you know, making that
clearing call with regards to environmental issues that to your point,
it's still even that much more pressing given the massive
energy consumption of Ah. Look, you know it's interesting. My mom,
I'm from Saint Lucia, are born and raised, and my
mom down there, to your credit, abou a few years ago,
she's about seventy one years old. She goes, Shell, what's
(12:12):
what's the big deal about this AI thing. I kind
of walked it through chat GBT my mom, you know
that really that cruise that you want my sister. I
want my sister I need to take you on. She's
like yeah, I'm like, okay, check this out this itinerary.
I'm not gonna put the itinerary together. Look at this thing.
I pulled mysel phone and I showed her this thing
called chat GPT. I said, Mom, think of all the
islands that you want to go to, and it'll give
(12:32):
us that itinerary hour by hour everybody. And she was
blown away. I go, okay, you think that's impressive. Check
this out. It shows you all the restaurants, all the
right everything, all the places we can go. Yes, imagine
if you actually hit a button. Says okay, now book that.
She's like, what do you mean. I'm like, imagine the
next thing you could say book that. It will book
all the entire itinerary for you. Goes you kidd me.
(12:54):
I'm like, that's exactly what's going to happen. And that's
exactly what's happening. This is the world what we called
AI agents. And I remember someone was giving a talk
recently and saying, what is the most consequential tool that
human beings have ever created? I think is you've all
Harari who wrote Sapiens and many of us know, give
a really interesting perspective on this and saying, is it
(13:16):
the wheel? Is it fire?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Steam?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Engine?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
What is it? And he goes, I don't even think
we actually put AI in that category. And he goes, well,
why is that? Because it's not a tool. We need
to harness the wheel, we need to harness fire, we
need to harness water, we need to harness steam. AI
could harness itself. It has self agency. These things can
(13:45):
act on their own. So we've never been in a
situation ever in human history where we've created something that
one could argue could start to act independent of us. Now,
lots of concerns, lots of drama, industrial exactly, exactly, Yeah,
(14:05):
And so these are things are called AI agents. Like,
let's let's talk about practically what that means to have
an AI agent. An AI agent is basically think of
this basically as software that can act on your behalf.
It has agency, not unlike a real estate agent, right
or a broker. It acts on your behalf. So imagine
(14:28):
now that you basically could have an agent that could
go in there and check your calendar and go book
flights for you, or a doctor's appointment for you, or
buy stops for you, or can educate you. The question
is do you actually now need to go get a PhD?
Do you need to now go to the like There
(14:50):
are ways in which these things could could advance your
understanding in very, very significant ways. But this also has
real consequences for labor in the workforce. You know, John,
I've told you, I've told Van before. I said, look,
(15:12):
the future is when they're hiring, they're not going to hire,
you know, our kids. It's like saying, hey Janice, Hey Sean,
hey Maria, we want to give you your job. Companies
aren't going to be hiring our children's individuals anymore. They're
going to be hiring our children alongside agents, the agents
that they have built that are working alongside them. And
(15:34):
think about that. It fundamentally changes the nature of employment,
right and what it means to be an employee. So
whether you're a nurse practitioner, whether you're a truck driver,
whether you're a teacher, or even if you're a surgeon,
and the other thing about this, by the way, is
all these revolutions you refer to before John the horse
(15:55):
and buggy farming into certain things, primarily what was at risk?
One we're gonna argue sort of like manual labor, right,
blue collar work. This is an inversion. This is the
first time ever that white collar services jobs are at risk.
We've never had that level of inversion before. So whether
you're are again a stock analyst, or even even thinking
(16:19):
about jobs in the most advances like be a neurosurgeon,
they're a deep risk.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Why.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
I don't know if you guys have paid attention to
surgery recently. When I good friends an orthopedic surgeon as
well as an ob g u I N surgeon, he
performed surgery with robots. Half of his surgeries are done
with robots fore arms. Why because they don't tremor like
the human hand can, so they can achieve for more precision.
And the other arms are in their scopes and magnifying glasses.
(16:46):
And he's just controlling his procedures to a joystickture. So
what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Human error? No?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
No, no lawsuits because you left us a scalable and somebody's.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Uh right exactly. But but now think about this, So
think about like not only a long distance surgery, what
does it mean now to actually have AI conductor surgery?
So what does it mean now to be a doctor?
Are you just supervising the robot? What what does it
mean to be a nurse practitioner? Many people from our
communities are nurse practitioners. What does it mean?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Now?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You've got a lot of start to learn how to
sort of collaborate and interact with those agentic systems both
suffer it and physical world. This is where Elon is
really going after you look at the different question.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yeah, well I was just just going to add on
you know, uh, two things, one conceptual and one practical.
There's this is a fourth intelligence on the planet.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Right, So if you believe as I.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Do, you have the original intelligence. You know, we call
it God and call the universe called whatever you want
you But there's a great intelligence that uh, you know,
I believe is divine. That intelligence gave rise to what
you would call nature, the natural world, which is very intelligent,
(18:07):
biological but non human, but very intelligent. Uh, go in
the ocean, you see, you know, go in the forest
is very intelligent. But then that biological non human intelligence
gave rise to us, who are you know, biological human intelligence,
and that we've given rise to a fourth intelligence, which
is non biological, non human intelligence, artificial intelligence.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
That's the fourth intelligence.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
And so you now the next the rest of the
century is going to be determined by how did these
intelligences interact with each other.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Anybody who did not recognize when I said that Van
Jones is a genius and you just singing with scen in,
don't get it.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
You only getting a slice of him, replay what he
just said, because it's.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Smarter I think I am. I've never framed I was
still with acknowledgement. Van Jones just said. That was Van
Jones was telling me there were four people there are
for a countries that want to just take America out.
I mean, I thought about this, I had part of
it right. But Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and they're
(19:12):
just waiting for us to screw up.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
They can't win in a fair fight.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
But we're just so busy tripping over each other and
fighting over politics and black and white and red and blue,
which by the way, is an externally generated fight Jewish
and black, but externally a generated fight of us against us,
because that's what they swoop in and lead. But band
throughout another knowledge bomb on you with these four intelligences
(19:36):
that I've never heard before.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
You need to listen. To listen to podcasts. It reversed.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Again.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
We don't have a lot of times I want asked
to repeat it. But that was that was That was.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
The reason. The reason I'm saying because I wanted.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I wanted to give it back to Sheldon, which is
if you look at the first three intelligences, how to
basically God Nature. God gives rise to nature, and nature
gives rise to man. And then man turns around and
abuses nature and.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Badly.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
I mean the planet is overheating, were floods, fires and extinctions, whatever,
and often disrespects God. So now we've given rise to
something else, artificial intelligence, you should be worried because if
it then turns around and abuses us the way we've
abused nature and disrespects us the way we've disrespected God.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
You can now see karma is a mug. So what
you don't.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Want right as we move forward is to have uh,
this new civilization that's emerging be lacking in wisdom, lacking
in compassion, lacking in morals. There's a there is a
reason for African descended people to be engaged now because
(20:57):
you're about to have a society where the leading technology
to use all data and know wisdom. That's a great danger,
I think. And so it's important for us from a
practical point of view, as you're pointing out, to try
to begin to evolve our professions and evolve our ability
to compete, but also to recognize we have something to
offer now because we know what happens when a single group,
(21:20):
a single ethnicity decided it's going to recreate human civilization.
That happened forty years ago. Europe, you know, jumped the
queue and redesigned civilization, and we had slavery, we had colonialism,
we had ecological destruction.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
You need everybody at the table.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
I think around technology that's powerful, to make sure that
it reflects wisdom and decency. And I wonder, Sheldon, if
you agree, in adition to the professional part, there is
also the purpose part that we got to deal with.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah. I think, Look, I think those four layers that
you laid out there then are really astute. I think
there there's actually some sort of quitic aspect of that too,
because in many ways the constructs for artificial intelligence based
on what it called neural networks, which is basically trying
to mimic the emon brain. My background is in moleculy
(22:11):
molecular genetics, and so my entire thing and the way
in which I think about the world is.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
The lens of sea. Again, do you mean to turn
you on?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
John? But you see a whole bunch of women.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Like, I don't know what, I'm completely straight what you say?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, no, no, So it's an interesting thing. It's called
it's a whole feel called molecular genetics. You're trying to
understand genes and inheritance and heredity. But at the small
sort of molecular level. What does that mean understanding how
DNA is formed, how DNA is basically unravels itself, makes copies, forms, proteins,
(22:53):
everything in life. So so this all ties together here,
here's the interesting thing. And people say all the time, like, wait,
so you know your background is molecular genetics, how did
you end up in encoding? And I said, you do
realize the person I actually wrote out door programming, Java
and those different things and Python was actually a MALECLI biologist.
So all these terms have deep references around each other.
(23:14):
So these terms like polymorphism inheritance. The more importantly is
this you could have to you to imagine that these
systems that are being built out are trying to mimic nature.
They try to mimic the natural order. So the new
thing right now around drones and military systems, there is
whole no strong swarms, and how do you actually have
(23:35):
these swarms on the battlefield regulate themselves. They study ant colonies,
they study, like my background, particulars around the immune system.
And so the immune system is one of the most
to me, that's the true artificial it's true intelligence. As
you mentioned before, it's like just if you think about
how the immune system acts, it's remarkable. As we're sitting here,
(23:58):
there are trillions of things invading our bios and our
genes are literally turning things on and off to try
and help us evade the attack. It's going through constant simulations,
and so all these new digital systems are trying to
mimic that. Whether it's called the neural network. So all
these things are based on these true organic biological systems,
(24:21):
and we're trying to mimic that as much as we can.
Now here's the reality. Look, that's very a lot of concern,
a lot of dystopy around, you know, artificial and general intelligence.
The robots are taking over. Like look, as someone who's
who operates in the space, we're far away from artificial
general intelligence, so that that we're still very far away.
That said, that said, what is very real is the
(24:45):
ability of these things to do a lot of processing
and synthesis of information that it's going to cause massive
economic dislocation jobs very quickly. So for everything from being
a law clerk to being an assistant to be all
these different things are rapidly going to change, and so
(25:06):
we have to pay very very close attention to that.
But you know, one of the things that someone said is, look,
we don't have to don't necessarily worry about being replaced
by AI, but we have to be worried about being
replaced by people who know how to use AI. I'm
in that ladder camp. I'm focusing extensively on making sure
that we're being equipped. So companies before they had teams
of about thirty to forty people and John, they're going
(25:28):
to shrink down to about twelve people. And the people
that are left are going to be sort of these
super employees, and they're going to be having these teams
of part of agents that are working alongside them. That's
what I'm thinking about. I want to make sure that
our communities are not left behind this AI agentic economy,
because if we're not careful, that's being calcified already.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Can I say in the positives this is the biggest
opportunity for black progress ever. So everything that you're saying
is scary and weird, but it's not just scary we're
black folks. It's scary and weird period. There is such
a number. Don't lose your fears, trans thought.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
But what we can't talk about as a meeting we
were just at which we can't even acknowledge the meeting
just happened, but what we heard at the meeting didn't
happen is there's almost another podcast episode, uh that's a
layer scarier than this one.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Basically what we heard is coming.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
But anyway, so continue, but I think this is a
what I'm hearing is that we got to do this
again to go a layer deeper so we can truly
prepare our people for what's coming and not to be
afraid of it, but when you're being run out of town,
get in front of the crowd, made like a parade,
and oddly that black people are uniquely positioned this time
to continue van.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I think that is where you're going.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yeah, yeah, This is what I'm saying, is that on
the one hand, you know, someone listening this might be thinking, Wow,
this dude's saying that basically, you know, robots and computer
computer programs are going to replace me, and so that
that could that could be very disparaging. Hope as you're
listening to this that everybody else listening to this feels
(27:04):
that way except you. Now, let me talk to you.
What you should be saying is I could build. If
I lean into this and I learned how to use
these tools, I can be in the twelve. If it's
going to go from from thirty to twelve, I can
be in the twelve.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
That's exactly it. And I want to talk about this
specifically what you need to do to make sure that
you're in that twelve. I got a friend who's who's
she's becoming a real estate agent, potentially leaving journalism entering
real estate, and I asked her about that. I said,
you do know the world you're entering. She's like, what
do you mean, Mike, you heard the word agent. Okay,
that's going to that may be you, it may be
(27:42):
a system, but how do we make sure that you
become the super real estate agent that's leveraging these new capabilities?
And she was showing me all these different tools. I
think we got to do it for just about every
every system that's out there. Look, there's still going to
be a need for what's called HILD is a term
HILD human in the loop. So companies are making sure
that the people whose entire job is to build these
(28:05):
systems and managing these systems sort of quarterbacking those systems,
and every field is going to have that. It'd be
great to actually talk about how you could be that
for any field that you're in. How do you make
sure that you are familiar with these agents and you're
helping to manage them along with the other other teams.
And the premium is going to be in human relationships.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
So, so, for instance, if you're listening to this, if
you have not downloaded chat, GPT downloaded as simple as that.
Some people haven't even done that yet. And I'll tell
you why. There was a time. I'm a little bit
older than my brother Sheldon. There was a time when
there was a real digital divide. It was a hardware divide.
(28:45):
I can't remember how many meetings and clean as we
went through talking about one laptop per child.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
We've got to get one laptop per child.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
And you know, and and now everybody has one of
these devices in their back pocket. So so the one
laptop for child is already solved. It's in your back
pocket right now.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
So it's not an.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Only just showed you basically his iPhone. This is essentially
a microcomputer in your pocket.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Yeah, So so you know, we all have to be
the ten years we spent crying about one laptop child,
you never have to cry that again. Everybody's got some
kind of smartphone in their back pocket. That problem has
been solved. So the digital divide is not a hardware divide.
You've got the hardware in your pocket. It's not a
software divide. It used to be you have to spend
money to you know, buy you buy all these software
packages and get them on the laptop. You can download chat,
(29:31):
GPTO free, fr Ee free, and so it's not a
hardware divide. It's not a software divide. It's a wetware divide.
The wetware in your brain, the wetwear between your ears
is telling you this is this is scary. Stuff is
for white folks. It's going to come and get me,
(29:52):
and it's stopping you from getting the best coach, the
best lawyer you will ever have four free on your
phone right now before this podcast is over, you should.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Ceto the best strategic thinker. All those different things.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
You know you can take Sheldon co creator absolutely absolutely creator, Yeah,
a thousand percent.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
You know, you know John, I know this is also
a podcast about entrepreneurism, So you know what. Listen, just
take what what what then said, let's extend it to
be for entrepreneurs. Well, there are four main things that
were that guided the success of the company.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
The first thing I remember years ago when I first
run my first tech startup the capital. So you basically
need to basically have access to engineers. You need engineering talent.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
That was number one.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Number two, you needed computational infrastructure, data centers, these different things.
Thirty needed capital. You raised the capital so you could
get the engineers, get the infrastructure. And fourth was domain
expertise and relationships. I got to tell you the first
three of falling. The first three of falling AI is
the great equalizer. Listen, you could pull out your credit
(30:58):
card and start renting clocking, you know, on an AWS
right now, and with with a lot of the coding
agents that are available through Cursor and others, you actually,
you know, you can actually get a lot done written
a I can now write code somewhat better than most
human beings. At this point, we're probably about two cycles
of a way by GPT five for sure. Along those lines,
(31:20):
so does a baron of entry has been significantly reduced.
And you know what the you know what the premium
is now on is on human relationships. It is your
ability to actually know how to articulate your ideas. Meet
with the prime minister of Jamaica, Botswana or Nepal and
talk about how you're going to help modernize the electrical
grid system or the mayor is this exactly, let's school
(31:44):
board president, exactly what?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And by the way, let's say say this for the
average person listening to this, Uh, we're all average, but
we're also extoring there. You're listening to this, you're saying,
how does it relate to me. I want you to
think before we run out of time here. You don't
want everybody get the last word and tell me what
do you want us to continue this series on Ai
and you? But think about everything in your world is
about to be reimagined. Everything from the most basic thing
(32:10):
the cup that you're drinking from, the hair, the brush
that you comb your hair with and how you comb here.
I mean, I'm being a little crazy, but you're gonna
have three hundred million robots or one hundreds of millions
of robots amongst us human eyed robots in your lifetime.
You're gonna have three hundred million virtual robots by twenty thirty.
But think about Sheldon Man help me out here. The phone,
(32:34):
the how furniture gets produced, your medicine, your medicine.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
How how you can sue media, how educated where you
consume media?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
What is a network?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
What do you care free? How do you care for
our elders?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Yeah, elder care for the reason why.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
You can change everything wherever you are. You can be
a pioneer today. I see you combine this with your
passion sports. Great event.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
So again, just trying to keep it as practical as possible.
All this stuff might sound way outlandish, download Shaggy Peach
and literally just say I'm scared, I want your advice.
I'm a nurse, I'm of this, I'm of that. How
could I use AI to become a super employee or
(33:24):
a super employer? And it will tell you for free
in two seconds. You literally need you don't have to
be afraid of it. It will literally tell you what
to do, and it will ask you is this good
enough idea?
Speaker 5 (33:37):
Do you want more of this? You want more of that?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
And you can guide it and literally, this afternoon you
can become an expert in how to become an expert.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
That is what's so amazing.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
You would have had to go and take a test,
apply to college, and spend four years to get the
information you can get this afternoon. And why is that?
There used to be something called water spit ten thousand years,
the hardest thing to get with some clean water. That's
why everybody lives along rivers and stuff like that, because
(34:07):
clean water it's hard to get. Modern city and modern cities,
et cetera. Now you don't even think about it. If
you live in an an industrial country, you just turn
a screw and the water comes out. You don't have
to walk down to the river with the thing on
your head and come back. What is right there. Intelligence
is now right there. You used to have to walk
(34:27):
down the street and take an sat and get it
rolled in a program of it's right there. So now
everything that John and Sheldon's been telling you should go
from being frightening to being liberating. Yes, AI is going
to tear the floor out from under you, but it's
also going to tear the ceiling off from over you.
You can literally fall or fly based on your own effort.
(34:52):
And that's all we've ever wanted in the first place.
That's called freedom. That's what freedom is. And you now
have a jet pack. You have a jet pack is
for free on your phone. I'm a JATGBT claude. I'm
not picking anyone, but I'm just saying that that's when
you heard of get that one and literally everything that
just made you feel uncomfortable from what John O'Brien, Van
(35:12):
Jones and Sheldon said. You can tell the AI and
it will give you the answer. And you say, give
me a curriculum to stay this stuff? What books are
I reading?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
What order?
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It will tell you that too. Absolutely, by the way,
if you watch some of the leaders in tech talk
about it. I was just watching podcasts recently with Michael
dell Or Synthion and Jensen. They tell you all the
time that they spend the weekend, and I do the
same thing. I'll say, Okay, the ten year you'l curve.
We explain that to me like I'm in third grade,
(35:42):
or explain that to me like I'm like him in
eleventh grade. And then you know what I then do,
I'll say, quiz me, quiz me, it's next level. Oh,
I give you two quick antidotes. By the way, at
a friend who's trying to negotiate a job at this company. Well,
she's been this twenty years and you bought this has
come in and she's a little bit nervous come back
from betraying Eve and so forth. I said. She said, Sho,
(36:04):
I'm godn't tell me about something, Judge, Mike, hold on
a second. Give me the person's give me your new
boss's LinkedIn profile. She's like, what are you doing, Mike?
Watch this? I loaded in her new boss's LinkedIn profile.
I didn't load it in my friends LinkedIn profile. I said, Okay,
judgept this is the person's new boss come up with
a script for how they should negotiate the new salary.
She was blown away and she used that gut okay.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
No, let us w to a lunch.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And I was running tight on time and with a
really powerful guy on Wall Street. I knew I liked him.
I just didn't know why. I just had a vibe.
I said, look, I got three names. We'll give it
this lunch. Tell me this is the person's name. Tell
me how what what's correlation to this person? And John
O'Brien have are we? Is my gut feeling right to
be a common threads man. Three seconds later, it's here, Yeah,
(37:03):
your story and his story and he connect and capital
and community and here's here's the value added.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I'm never exactly exactly. And John, here's the other thing
I tell people all the time is what Ben said.
It's actually spot on the same thing with you. John's
to take it to the next level. If there's an
article that someone has just sent to your boss, your friend, whomever,
take that copy that you are all that link, put
it into chat GPT and said, could you give an
executive summary of this article? Can you tell me how
(37:31):
this article is related?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
To this.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It can summarize it for you could send this even
behind the paywall, by the way, so this is just
we I got a ton of these things. There's a
bunch of these, but that's one of the ones I
think is a is a massive unlock when you actually
have it sort of distilling information if you and synthesizing information.
By the way, guess what your boss is already doing it? Yes, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So the Van's gonna have to go on TV soon
and and Sheldon's got to go make another billion dollars
for somebody. Uh, Sheldon tries to rein with what he's
doing around AI. I'm doing financial literacy, Van's doing, you know,
trying to heal the world. And we're trying to bring
these three things together for a new movement for all people,
(38:17):
by the way, but certainly underserved people. When manstream, Maria
has a headache, black and brafelks have pneumonia, but we're
all sick. Uh. We got to get the folks who
have pneumonia first because they're the most at risk. But
here's the first what Vana said is those were at
the bottom have a chance. The folks who folk who
don't get hit. Yes, if you work at CBS or
a grocery store, your job's going the way. Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Uh, you say that automation at the check check out
count in the grocery store. Okay, that's obvious.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
But also the countains the middle class folks who work
their whole life to get If they don't retool themselves,
they're done and that severe income is gonna disappear. So
you're it's planeflow has been leveled. We don't want anybody
to be run over by this, right, But if you're
black and brown, you used to crisis. You're the crisis
(39:02):
every Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
So this is you.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So we want you to give you the army with
the tools to be successful and then help your brother
and sister come up. Be they black, white, brown, yellow,
be they middle classlas. We're all in this thing together,
the world starting a new man. Oh, let give us
some walk off music. Yes, what do you have to
say to folks as you and you know, we don't
have time to get into why this relates to the
Black Jewish conversation or the global conversation or the other converses.
(39:29):
But you're normally five or ten years ahead of everybody else.
In your thought leadership. Folks don't understand you. That doesn't
mean you're wrong. That means that they're not caught up yet.
I need to say as a drunk the mic and
then Sheldon will leave you with the last word.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
Yeah, I just I just think the main thing I
would just say is to be encouraged. Be encouraged. You know,
no pressure, no diamonds. All the things that we've gone through,
that you've gone through has really prepared you for a
time like this. You've been through the stuff and you
know how to make a way out of no way.
There's this This thing can either be a hand grenade
(40:02):
or it can be a jet pack. It really just
depends on how you choose to relate to it. And
if you move first and you say, you know what
I can ask it. I want to do a business
on this is a good idea, bad idea? What I
need to do? It will literally teach you whatever you
need to know, because all the intelligence has been been
put in there now sometimes to be hallucinating and you
(40:23):
have to like double Checkstu. But just to Claire that
this is your moment's Claire, that this line that you've
been standing at the back of is about to get
blown away anyway, and so you get a chance to
fly or fall based on your own effort. But with
technology that you know we can only dream of. To me,
(40:44):
if you said you can have reparations, that you can
have AI, I would take AI every time, because you know,
if you gave me reparations and I had no knowledge
of what to do with it, I would be in trouble.
But if you give me AI, I can figure out
way to get reparations times one thousand. That's the way
should be thinking about this thing. Hey man, shel does
she have to bring us home?
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (41:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And where I began by saying that, like both of
you said, I think so eloquently, is that this became.
This is the deepest repository of human knowledge collected together.
I think that's the first order is how do we
actually learn from this? The second thing is about action.
How do we actually make it act on our behalf.
We've never dealt with a substrate like this before they
(41:27):
could act in our behalf. This is a whole thing
called vibe coding. You sort of basically tell the system
what you're thinking about building, and will build it for you.
This is literally what is happening. Look, next week, we
have a meeting with a number of students through a
programm with Accentsure teaching high school students about agents. You know,
We're going to teach them about emergency evacuations for the
(41:48):
next forest fire, for the next flesh floods, for the
next earthquake. They're going to be building agents that could
scan all the real time news reports, things on Twitter,
all these different feeds and will then basically connect to
mechanism that will actually do three one to one notifications
based on their location right based on their location on
their cell phones, and to tell them to the nearest
(42:11):
areas for emergency evacuation. They can now build the plumbing
for the emergency relief infrastructure. We're just getting started. This
is about agency. That's the ultimate driver. Here is agent
self agency amplified at a level that we've never seen before.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
I want everybody to tell your friends about this podcast episode.
Share it, start a conversation and your fraternity, your sorority,
your community group at the barbershop. Play This was a
short episode. It's forty two minutes. I want you to
play this and you can cut down pieces of it.
Any One piece of this for five minutes will be
an hour long conversation. I want you to reimagine everything.
(42:56):
This is why I keep saying we got to make
stop making dumb sexy. You gotta make smart sexy again.
Because if you're dumb as rocks, if you think bling sings,
if you are locked in this old narrative of look
the part, but not be the part, you can't take
advantage of what we just talked about. So, in other words,
(43:16):
crap in, crap out, and you will crap out if
you take what they just said this you download this up.
But you're not creative because it's the creativity is your superpower.
Now you're not intelligent, creative, and you can't ask the
right question. You're not gonna get the right answer, so
you can all you be asking, You'll be asking AI
for how to get movie tickets? How to get a ticket?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
You know? Tell you about what you know?
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Shoes who won the game last night? But do that?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
So yeah that that I do that too? About being lazy.
You'll miss the brilliance. If you here's a good part,
may be sorry to the positive. We gotta wrap this up.
If you're brilliant, you know you're brilliant, and I know
you brilliant. We were doing so much with so little
for so long. We'd almost do anything with nothing. If
you're black, so if you're brilliant, he was like, I
just need a shot. I just need a shot. These
(44:07):
guys just gave it to you. Now you can ask
the question I asked three, four or five times a day,
mind bending questions of my AI agent, mind bending questions.
I'll take this and this, smash them together and say, Okay,
now tell me how to do.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
This this third thing exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Now I gotta go do it. First of all, I
had to have the creativity to think about it. But
now I have to exk you on Okay, brand's got
to go. But I want you to. I'm trying to
light the fuse for you. If you are smart, this
is your time. If you're nosy, this is your time.
Go ahead, man, listen. I grew up on the edge
of a small town in rural West Tennessee. It took
(44:45):
me a very long time to figure out how to
basically get my twin sister was smarter than me to
get her. She got an affirmative bastion of scholarship at
the University of Tennessee at Martin, and then she tricked
them and to give me one. So I've literally started
my career all my sister's affirm of action, the scholarship
at the University of Tennessee at Martin. It took me
a long time to know when I I know and
(45:05):
to get where I am. But that's never going to
happen again, because you can now get you your dream
so much faster. Everything that took me so long to
assemble this relationship, that relationship, this book, that book, but
it's all right there in your phone.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
And so you who.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
Are the most creative, most imaginative, most innovative. You came
up with jazz, you came up with hip hop, you
came up with the blues, you came up with gospel.
Speaker 5 (45:33):
You found a way out of no way.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
You started black colleges two minutes out of slavery. It
wasn't Harvard Law School that figured out that the Constitution
wasn't compatible with segregation.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
That was Howard Law School. That was your school.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
It wasn't the White Church that figured out the Bible
was incompatible with racism. That was the Black Church. So
everything you have created from theology to jurisprudence, to art.
The culture has been magnificent, has been world's changing, and
you had nothing to nothing, nothing but your own brilliance
and God's love.
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Now you have a jet pack. You have a jet pack.
Speaker 4 (46:10):
Any dream you have, it's possible now in a way
that's never been true since we were brought over here
four hundred years ago. And so do not let them
call you and scare you and and all the tricks
of this. This is your time. This is your time,
and this is your tool artificial intets.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
So Van has got to go pulling him for TV.
But I want Van to hear this as he walks off,
and I want you to hear this. And then Sheldon,
you're the last word. There was a joke, not a joke.
There was a story about Africa. Somebody told me that
blacks had Africans had the land, and unethical missionaries, people
(46:50):
posing as missionaries came with the Bible. We turned around
and one hundred years later we had the Bible and
they had the land. What he's telling you is those
rules don't apply anymore. You can't be snookered out of this.
You can't be manipulate out of this. You got to
(47:11):
give it away. You got to literally just sleep through this,
your reserve evolution. This is your time. He's not telling
you not to go to college to I don't want
you might hear that. He's not telling you not to
go to college because you need relationship capital. You hang
around nine old people, you'll.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Be the tenth.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Right, all Harvard is is a group of people who
book ease. You are there for forty years. So find
whatever group of people who are aspirational. That's college. Great, learn,
You're going to learn in different ways, but that relationship
capital will be this value at it.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Sheldon, bring us home.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, I said, you know before I think also, what
we're looking at here, John is you know, discrete steps
and advice that can actually give to people. So what
I very much look forward to his opportunity. You know,
you mentioned the barbershop, you mentioned a couple of other areas.
They're very discreet things that we could actually suggest and
recommend to people, particularly if you're you know, enterprising, right,
(48:01):
we're entrepreneurs. We think we have to do things to survive.
And there's so many people that come to me all
the time and say, Shell, listen, I'm thinking about starting
this business, this business that listen, I'm very flattery. You
came to talk to me. I really am. I got
someone who's better than me, ten times better than me.
It's in your pocket. You can ask anything that you want.
(48:21):
It will. It's your lawyer, it's your accountant, it's your
finance person. It's all these different things. If you're thinking
about creating a bar, you want to launch you own school.
You want to create your own Montessori academy, you want
to create your own spintech company. You want to start
doing crypto minding what it will actually write the code
for you. It will tell you the systems to get.
We've never been here before, right, and so this whole
(48:44):
notion again about agency. That's the amazing thing about this
is one thing to ask questions, other thing to say, Okay,
now tell me what to do. How do I build this?
It will give you the blueprint. It's the blueprint to
build it.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, here's the new era.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
I Evanjol's talk called me that you need to know
chell I met Sheldon, who I think. By the way,
if you never know, if anybody listening to this on
audio podcasts only he's black, I don't know he may
have to sound like his brother.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Colan Powell. You speak so well, what do you think.
I'm an educated man anyway.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
But for those who are not, he's black. He's just
a black genius in tech. And it's great that, by
the way, we're talking to black people about this who
can talk the same way as everybody else. No disrespect
to Sam Altman will co chair that AI at this
council with and all the other tech geniuses we need
them to.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
But he's black, and I Dvan sent me to him,
and he sent you to your phone. No, nobody's trying
to pimp you, trying to get you.
Speaker 5 (49:45):
In a way.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
And on that point, we're out. This has been a
great conversation. This is Money and Wealth on the Black
Effect Network and iHeart Radio. This has truly been a
unique podcast episode I get. I challenge you to find
another on this topic, Tell all your friends about it,
Share this on social media, rints, repeat, share, converse, discuss.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
There's no right or wrong, it's just forward. I'm out.
John O'Brien, Sheldon Gilbert's great, amazing Van Jones Love you Much.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Of Deep
Welcome to Money and Wealth with John O'Bryant, a production
of the Black Effect Podcast Network and iHeartRadio. This is
John O'Brien. This is a top one percent podcast in
the world today on every continent, and the top one
(00:21):
hundred for a business and top fifty for entrepreneurship on Apple.
And so thanks everybody for your support on the silver
for rights movement, from civil rights to civil rights, from
the streets to the suites. This is a very special episode.
I don't remember ever having two guests with me at
the same time. A lot of you know that I
do these solo often. I thought, this is so important.
(00:42):
This is not just a tech episode. It's not just
about AI. It's a survival guy, a playbook, and our
warning label all in the same breath. Black and brown
communities have historically been last in line when economic revolutions
hit the world. Is the insight from Van Jones, who's
(01:03):
on with us today, my brother from another mother, from
the industrial era to the digital boom. But AI is different.
It's moving faster than anything anybody has ever seen. To
go from the automobile to horse and buggy to the
automobile took about sixty years to go from labor to
(01:24):
technology centric reality will take about six and that's probably
a very generous timing. We're going to probably see thirty
percent improvements in efficiencies and companies in the next two
to three years, which means that they won't need employees
to do many of the jobs that just got made
(01:45):
more automated and efficient. New jobs will come, but this
may not be a direct overlay in real time, which
means you need a survival guy. You need to be
your own toolkit. The communities that understand shape and own
a stake in this revolution now will define the future
(02:06):
of power, wealth and opportunity later. So before I lay
in and let my brother Van Jones and Sheldon Gilbert
lean into this in a way that will transform your life,
let me just say this AI is moving faster than
civil rights legislation ever did.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
What happens if we don't act now?
Speaker 1 (02:31):
Doctor King once said the world is moving that human
rights and social justice in America. This is what he
said back then was moving at horse and buggy pace,
but the world was moving at jetlife speed. That can
be said for where we are now, between what's going
on with the suites and the streets. Van Jones brings
his policy and media voice and his brilliance. I think
he is literally a genius in this area and others
(02:55):
revealing what's happening in Washington and Silicon Valley behind closed doors.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Uh, and technology too.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
He once told me that nine night persent a black
folk on think about AI, but nine nights in a
white folks think about AI either so orver. This is
the equal opportunity discrimination. Van Jones introduced me to Sheldon Gilbert,
who compensates not smiling with having a brilliant brain. That
(03:28):
makes it irrelevant whether he smiles that you or not.
He's just dead serious. He's making smart sexy and it's
a big thing for me to tell somebody to smile.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
My wife's always telling I have mister serious. This brother
makes me look like I'm a libertary.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I'm a liberal.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Breaks down how AI is being coded without us and
why that's dangerous for us, for algorithms, for equity, and
for democracy.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
I'm going to help.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
I'm going to try to in the middle of this
great conversation reframe AI as the next frontier of financial inclusion,
civil rights, civil rights, and community economic empowerment. It's an
urgency of now to my brother Van Jones.
Speaker 4 (04:12):
Well, it's it's an honor to be here, and I
think you know you've done more than any the next
one hundred people in getting financial literacy and the silver
rights movement taken seriously, we're now in a position where,
if you're going to be focused on economics, what's happening
(04:34):
now when it comes to artificial intelligence and exponential technology
that there's no lawsuit protest bill you can pass like
it's it's it's moving so rapidly.
Speaker 5 (04:46):
And yet I.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Want to point out we as black folks, should be
happy because if everything's going to be disrupted, as they
say they're going to disrupt everything, AI is going to
disrupt every industry good because he's interested to have been
leaving us out the whole time.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Anyway.
Speaker 4 (05:03):
It's not like the status quo has been so wonderful.
I mean, do we like the healthcare system that we've got?
Do we like the education system that we've got? Do
we like all this stuff so much?
Speaker 2 (05:13):
So?
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Why we're the main ones who are being threat sensitive
as opposed to opportunities sensitive. You're now in a position
where the most creative people in the world, black cultures,
you know, inarguably I'm the most creative, most innovative.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You just said something about about basically the urgency and
how we miss the dot com boom, we missed the
web two oh, and yeah, you know we're not gonna
miss ai. But I just want to say, and I'm
not making at all a political comment. Please, anybody listening
to this, as you know, I'm inclusive of everybody. I'm
not making it at all a political comment. I just
think this is sort of funny people say. Some people
(05:53):
have said, let's make America great again. I'm not making
a political comment. I'm not even digging at anybody. I'm
just saying, when was America every great for black people?
I'm just saying, like when my grandfather was a sharecropper,
my second grade grandfather was a slave Georgiana.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
He fought in a Union army for a country that enslaved.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
In fact, but he was in the he was part
of the Emancipation Proclamation, I mean civil rights movement. Doctor
King was killed and all these other folks, and just
trying to get some folks to a to a guy stage,
to a watering station, a water fountain.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
You know. Furnivash was given to white women. All good.
I love that for them.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I'm just wondering, Well, I'm not trying to get off.
I'm just saying this for the record, when making America
great again? When did that ever? And we worked twenty
trillion dollars of free labor and slavery forty four trillion,
and you taught missed opportunity.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
I'm not complaining, I'm not why, I'm just contextualizing.
Speaker 4 (07:01):
Back to Vangelines, Well, I I think what you're saying
seriously in the following respect though, black folks really do
have a profound sense of history. In fact, you know,
we do history as well as anybody's ever done it.
In fact, we have a whole Black History Month. Everybody
(07:22):
in the world knows who Harriet Dubbin is. Everybody in
the world knows Doctor kingis. I'm not sure anybody knows
who any Irish American or Italian America or Greek American
heroes are. So we've done a great job with Black history.
The question is what about the Black future. I would
trade in at this point about ten Black History months
for one Black Future weekend? Can we talk about the
(07:44):
black future? Where are we actually going? Especially given that
when waves of change come. You can either be knocked
down by them or you can ride them to a
different place. And so the reason I'm so happy to
be on with Sheldon is because there are very few
people in the world, black, white, or any other color
who understand the depth of what this AI revolution means
(08:07):
than Sheldon Gilbert. And one of the things I think
that we get caught up in is we tend to
look at this from the perspective either of just folks
who are scared or folks who are at a thousand
feet above and are thinking about how they're going to
beat China with AI and that sort of stuff. But
here's reality. These AI data centers are not in the cloud.
(08:29):
Right we talk about cloud computing. I think a lot
of people think there's some laptops up there in the clouds,
you know what I mean, like holding all this information.
There's no laptops in the cloud. You've been on a
plane many times. You've never seen a laptop up there.
Because they're data centers on the ground on planet Earth
using materials that came from Africa. They call them rare
(08:51):
earth minerals. They're rare in Europe. They're africa abundant minerals
is what we should call them. And there's water being
used on the ground, there's energy being used on the ground,
and their work is going in there every day who
are doing real computational work in a very different way
than somebody from Silicon Valley, grassroots, real time people. And
(09:11):
that material reality of what this AI revolution means is
something that Sheldon understands. And then also the fact that
the Internet itself, which was built for humans, is now
that have to be rebuilt for AI agents. These two
massive changes in terms of the data centers and what
(09:31):
they mean on the ground level and this new Internet
that's being created are two areas that Sheldon knows as
much or more about anybody else. And I just wanted
to make sure that we had that conversation because if
we're going to make Wakanda real, which should be the
new Black aspiration is to make Wakanda real, science, spirituality, heroism,
(09:55):
high purpose, but technology being central, we have to have.
I have to start honoring our technologists and one of
those is Sheldon Gilbert. So get that mostly right and
mostly wrong, shall and you keep correct me.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
You're the engineer, Yeah, no, absolutely. I love Also the
reference to kind of a dune in the background. So
good stuff. I say, I'm broad, broad exactly, all encompassing,
and I want to.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Ask knowledge Van as a new kind of leader, because
leaders in the past our community would not commend another
leader will certainly not recommend another leader. In fact, doctor
King was viciously attacked by civil rights leaders who happened
to be black because you, I don't know he was popular.
I don't know what it was, but I mean he
really died chained, smoking, overweight, and depressed. He thought he'd failed.
(10:40):
And we tried to even give them the Nobel Peace
Prize money away to the other nonprofit civil rights leaders.
They didn't even acknowledge the gift after he had wired
the money to them. They were so resentful. And the
stories going on and on. The guy in Chicago who
changed the dress of his church because it was on
Martin the King Boulevard. After Doctor King was assassinated, he
changed his address to the side Street and here you
are avenged zones. Not taking credit for himself. He introduced
(11:03):
me to to Sheldon, who runs Cure Labs, amongst other things,
and told me he was a genius and all this stuff.
And I took some time with Sheldon realized he really
was a genius. And really all me and Van Jones
are doing here as a prop for Sheldon. But I
think it's really beautiful and command to give band his
flowers for being the kind of leader who's willing to
(11:23):
share the stage and even hold up the stage for
someone else.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Sheldon over to you absolutely well, first, John, again, really appreciate,
really appreciate your actually inviting me in. And yes, but
I do smile, but you're right, the time is it's
a very urgent and serious moment. And again, brother Van
as always, thanks again for you a constant brilliance and
insight and perspecassy with regards to a wide range of topics.
And I know that you began first and foremost, you know,
(11:50):
sort of really sort of stuff, you know, making that
clearing call with regards to environmental issues that to your point,
it's still even that much more pressing given the massive
energy consumption of Ah. Look, you know it's interesting. My mom,
I'm from Saint Lucia, are born and raised, and my
mom down there, to your credit, abou a few years ago,
she's about seventy one years old. She goes, Shell, what's
(12:12):
what's the big deal about this AI thing. I kind
of walked it through chat GBT my mom, you know
that really that cruise that you want my sister. I
want my sister I need to take you on. She's
like yeah, I'm like, okay, check this out this itinerary.
I'm not gonna put the itinerary together. Look at this thing.
I pulled mysel phone and I showed her this thing
called chat GPT. I said, Mom, think of all the
islands that you want to go to, and it'll give
(12:32):
us that itinerary hour by hour everybody. And she was
blown away. I go, okay, you think that's impressive. Check
this out. It shows you all the restaurants, all the
right everything, all the places we can go. Yes, imagine
if you actually hit a button. Says okay, now book that.
She's like, what do you mean. I'm like, imagine the
next thing you could say book that. It will book
all the entire itinerary for you. Goes you kidd me.
(12:54):
I'm like, that's exactly what's going to happen. And that's
exactly what's happening. This is the world what we called
AI agents. And I remember someone was giving a talk
recently and saying, what is the most consequential tool that
human beings have ever created? I think is you've all
Harari who wrote Sapiens and many of us know, give
a really interesting perspective on this and saying, is it
(13:16):
the wheel? Is it fire?
Speaker 2 (13:20):
What is it?
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Steam?
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Engine?
Speaker 3 (13:21):
What is it? And he goes, I don't even think
we actually put AI in that category. And he goes, well,
why is that? Because it's not a tool. We need
to harness the wheel, we need to harness fire, we
need to harness water, we need to harness steam. AI
could harness itself. It has self agency. These things can
(13:45):
act on their own. So we've never been in a
situation ever in human history where we've created something that
one could argue could start to act independent of us. Now,
lots of concerns, lots of drama, industrial exactly, exactly, Yeah,
(14:05):
And so these are things are called AI agents. Like,
let's let's talk about practically what that means to have
an AI agent. An AI agent is basically think of
this basically as software that can act on your behalf.
It has agency, not unlike a real estate agent, right
or a broker. It acts on your behalf. So imagine
(14:28):
now that you basically could have an agent that could
go in there and check your calendar and go book
flights for you, or a doctor's appointment for you, or
buy stops for you, or can educate you. The question
is do you actually now need to go get a PhD?
Do you need to now go to the like There
(14:50):
are ways in which these things could could advance your
understanding in very, very significant ways. But this also has
real consequences for labor in the workforce. You know, John,
I've told you, I've told Van before. I said, look,
(15:12):
the future is when they're hiring, they're not going to hire,
you know, our kids. It's like saying, hey Janice, Hey Sean,
hey Maria, we want to give you your job. Companies
aren't going to be hiring our children's individuals anymore. They're
going to be hiring our children alongside agents, the agents
that they have built that are working alongside them. And
(15:34):
think about that. It fundamentally changes the nature of employment,
right and what it means to be an employee. So
whether you're a nurse practitioner, whether you're a truck driver,
whether you're a teacher, or even if you're a surgeon,
and the other thing about this, by the way, is
all these revolutions you refer to before John the horse
(15:55):
and buggy farming into certain things, primarily what was at risk?
One we're gonna argue sort of like manual labor, right,
blue collar work. This is an inversion. This is the
first time ever that white collar services jobs are at risk.
We've never had that level of inversion before. So whether
you're are again a stock analyst, or even even thinking
(16:19):
about jobs in the most advances like be a neurosurgeon,
they're a deep risk.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Why.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
I don't know if you guys have paid attention to
surgery recently. When I good friends an orthopedic surgeon as
well as an ob g u I N surgeon, he
performed surgery with robots. Half of his surgeries are done
with robots fore arms. Why because they don't tremor like
the human hand can, so they can achieve for more precision.
And the other arms are in their scopes and magnifying glasses.
(16:46):
And he's just controlling his procedures to a joystickture. So
what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (16:52):
Human error? No?
Speaker 1 (16:54):
No, no lawsuits because you left us a scalable and somebody's.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
Uh right exactly. But but now think about this, So
think about like not only a long distance surgery, what
does it mean now to actually have AI conductor surgery?
So what does it mean now to be a doctor?
Are you just supervising the robot? What what does it
mean to be a nurse practitioner? Many people from our
communities are nurse practitioners. What does it mean?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Now?
Speaker 3 (17:19):
You've got a lot of start to learn how to
sort of collaborate and interact with those agentic systems both
suffer it and physical world. This is where Elon is
really going after you look at the different question.
Speaker 4 (17:31):
Yeah, well I was just just going to add on
you know, uh, two things, one conceptual and one practical.
There's this is a fourth intelligence on the planet.
Speaker 5 (17:43):
Right, So if you believe as I.
Speaker 4 (17:45):
Do, you have the original intelligence. You know, we call
it God and call the universe called whatever you want
you But there's a great intelligence that uh, you know,
I believe is divine. That intelligence gave rise to what
you would call nature, the natural world, which is very intelligent,
(18:07):
biological but non human, but very intelligent. Uh, go in
the ocean, you see, you know, go in the forest
is very intelligent. But then that biological non human intelligence
gave rise to us, who are you know, biological human intelligence,
and that we've given rise to a fourth intelligence, which
is non biological, non human intelligence, artificial intelligence.
Speaker 5 (18:31):
That's the fourth intelligence.
Speaker 4 (18:32):
And so you now the next the rest of the
century is going to be determined by how did these
intelligences interact with each other.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
Anybody who did not recognize when I said that Van
Jones is a genius and you just singing with scen in,
don't get it.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
You only getting a slice of him, replay what he
just said, because it's.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Smarter I think I am. I've never framed I was
still with acknowledgement. Van Jones just said. That was Van
Jones was telling me there were four people there are
for a countries that want to just take America out.
I mean, I thought about this, I had part of
it right. But Iran, North Korea, China, Russia, and they're
(19:12):
just waiting for us to screw up.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
They can't win in a fair fight.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
But we're just so busy tripping over each other and
fighting over politics and black and white and red and blue,
which by the way, is an externally generated fight Jewish
and black, but externally a generated fight of us against us,
because that's what they swoop in and lead. But band
throughout another knowledge bomb on you with these four intelligences
(19:36):
that I've never heard before.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
You need to listen. To listen to podcasts. It reversed.
Speaker 3 (19:43):
Again.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
We don't have a lot of times I want asked
to repeat it. But that was that was That was.
Speaker 5 (19:51):
The reason. The reason I'm saying because I wanted.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
I wanted to give it back to Sheldon, which is
if you look at the first three intelligences, how to
basically God Nature. God gives rise to nature, and nature
gives rise to man. And then man turns around and
abuses nature and.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
Badly.
Speaker 4 (20:09):
I mean the planet is overheating, were floods, fires and extinctions, whatever,
and often disrespects God. So now we've given rise to
something else, artificial intelligence, you should be worried because if
it then turns around and abuses us the way we've
abused nature and disrespects us the way we've disrespected God.
Speaker 5 (20:29):
You can now see karma is a mug. So what
you don't.
Speaker 4 (20:34):
Want right as we move forward is to have uh,
this new civilization that's emerging be lacking in wisdom, lacking
in compassion, lacking in morals. There's a there is a
reason for African descended people to be engaged now because
(20:57):
you're about to have a society where the leading technology
to use all data and know wisdom. That's a great danger,
I think. And so it's important for us from a
practical point of view, as you're pointing out, to try
to begin to evolve our professions and evolve our ability
to compete, but also to recognize we have something to
offer now because we know what happens when a single group,
(21:20):
a single ethnicity decided it's going to recreate human civilization.
That happened forty years ago. Europe, you know, jumped the
queue and redesigned civilization, and we had slavery, we had colonialism,
we had ecological destruction.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
You need everybody at the table.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
I think around technology that's powerful, to make sure that
it reflects wisdom and decency. And I wonder, Sheldon, if
you agree, in adition to the professional part, there is
also the purpose part that we got to deal with.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah. I think, Look, I think those four layers that
you laid out there then are really astute. I think
there there's actually some sort of quitic aspect of that too,
because in many ways the constructs for artificial intelligence based
on what it called neural networks, which is basically trying
to mimic the emon brain. My background is in moleculy
(22:11):
molecular genetics, and so my entire thing and the way
in which I think about the world is.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
The lens of sea. Again, do you mean to turn
you on?
Speaker 1 (22:21):
John? But you see a whole bunch of women.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Like, I don't know what, I'm completely straight what you say?
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Yeah, no, no, So it's an interesting thing. It's called
it's a whole feel called molecular genetics. You're trying to
understand genes and inheritance and heredity. But at the small
sort of molecular level. What does that mean understanding how
DNA is formed, how DNA is basically unravels itself, makes copies, forms, proteins,
(22:53):
everything in life. So so this all ties together here,
here's the interesting thing. And people say all the time, like, wait,
so you know your background is molecular genetics, how did
you end up in encoding? And I said, you do
realize the person I actually wrote out door programming, Java
and those different things and Python was actually a MALECLI biologist.
So all these terms have deep references around each other.
(23:14):
So these terms like polymorphism inheritance. The more importantly is
this you could have to you to imagine that these
systems that are being built out are trying to mimic nature.
They try to mimic the natural order. So the new
thing right now around drones and military systems, there is
whole no strong swarms, and how do you actually have
(23:35):
these swarms on the battlefield regulate themselves. They study ant colonies,
they study, like my background, particulars around the immune system.
And so the immune system is one of the most
to me, that's the true artificial it's true intelligence. As
you mentioned before, it's like just if you think about
how the immune system acts, it's remarkable. As we're sitting here,
(23:58):
there are trillions of things invading our bios and our
genes are literally turning things on and off to try
and help us evade the attack. It's going through constant simulations,
and so all these new digital systems are trying to
mimic that. Whether it's called the neural network. So all
these things are based on these true organic biological systems,
(24:21):
and we're trying to mimic that as much as we can.
Now here's the reality. Look, that's very a lot of concern,
a lot of dystopy around, you know, artificial and general intelligence.
The robots are taking over. Like look, as someone who's
who operates in the space, we're far away from artificial
general intelligence, so that that we're still very far away.
That said, that said, what is very real is the
(24:45):
ability of these things to do a lot of processing
and synthesis of information that it's going to cause massive
economic dislocation jobs very quickly. So for everything from being
a law clerk to being an assistant to be all
these different things are rapidly going to change, and so
(25:06):
we have to pay very very close attention to that.
But you know, one of the things that someone said is, look,
we don't have to don't necessarily worry about being replaced
by AI, but we have to be worried about being
replaced by people who know how to use AI. I'm
in that ladder camp. I'm focusing extensively on making sure
that we're being equipped. So companies before they had teams
of about thirty to forty people and John, they're going
(25:28):
to shrink down to about twelve people. And the people
that are left are going to be sort of these
super employees, and they're going to be having these teams
of part of agents that are working alongside them. That's
what I'm thinking about. I want to make sure that
our communities are not left behind this AI agentic economy,
because if we're not careful, that's being calcified already.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
Can I say in the positives this is the biggest
opportunity for black progress ever. So everything that you're saying
is scary and weird, but it's not just scary we're
black folks. It's scary and weird period. There is such
a number. Don't lose your fears, trans thought.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
But what we can't talk about as a meeting we
were just at which we can't even acknowledge the meeting
just happened, but what we heard at the meeting didn't
happen is there's almost another podcast episode, uh that's a
layer scarier than this one.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Basically what we heard is coming.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
But anyway, so continue, but I think this is a
what I'm hearing is that we got to do this
again to go a layer deeper so we can truly
prepare our people for what's coming and not to be
afraid of it, but when you're being run out of town,
get in front of the crowd, made like a parade,
and oddly that black people are uniquely positioned this time
to continue van.
Speaker 2 (26:41):
I think that is where you're going.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
Yeah, yeah, This is what I'm saying, is that on
the one hand, you know, someone listening this might be thinking, Wow,
this dude's saying that basically, you know, robots and computer
computer programs are going to replace me, and so that
that could that could be very disparaging. Hope as you're
listening to this that everybody else listening to this feels
(27:04):
that way except you. Now, let me talk to you.
What you should be saying is I could build. If
I lean into this and I learned how to use
these tools, I can be in the twelve. If it's
going to go from from thirty to twelve, I can
be in the twelve.
Speaker 3 (27:21):
That's exactly it. And I want to talk about this
specifically what you need to do to make sure that
you're in that twelve. I got a friend who's who's
she's becoming a real estate agent, potentially leaving journalism entering
real estate, and I asked her about that. I said,
you do know the world you're entering. She's like, what
do you mean, Mike, you heard the word agent. Okay,
that's going to that may be you, it may be
(27:42):
a system, but how do we make sure that you
become the super real estate agent that's leveraging these new capabilities?
And she was showing me all these different tools. I
think we got to do it for just about every
every system that's out there. Look, there's still going to
be a need for what's called HILD is a term
HILD human in the loop. So companies are making sure
that the people whose entire job is to build these
(28:05):
systems and managing these systems sort of quarterbacking those systems,
and every field is going to have that. It'd be
great to actually talk about how you could be that
for any field that you're in. How do you make
sure that you are familiar with these agents and you're
helping to manage them along with the other other teams.
And the premium is going to be in human relationships.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
So, so, for instance, if you're listening to this, if
you have not downloaded chat, GPT downloaded as simple as that.
Some people haven't even done that yet. And I'll tell
you why. There was a time. I'm a little bit
older than my brother Sheldon. There was a time when
there was a real digital divide. It was a hardware divide.
(28:45):
I can't remember how many meetings and clean as we
went through talking about one laptop per child.
Speaker 5 (28:51):
We've got to get one laptop per child.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
And you know, and and now everybody has one of
these devices in their back pocket. So so the one
laptop for child is already solved. It's in your back
pocket right now.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
So it's not an.
Speaker 1 (29:03):
Only just showed you basically his iPhone. This is essentially
a microcomputer in your pocket.
Speaker 4 (29:08):
Yeah, So so you know, we all have to be
the ten years we spent crying about one laptop child,
you never have to cry that again. Everybody's got some
kind of smartphone in their back pocket. That problem has
been solved. So the digital divide is not a hardware divide.
You've got the hardware in your pocket. It's not a
software divide. It used to be you have to spend
money to you know, buy you buy all these software
packages and get them on the laptop. You can download chat,
(29:31):
GPTO free, fr Ee free, and so it's not a
hardware divide. It's not a software divide. It's a wetware divide.
The wetware in your brain, the wetwear between your ears
is telling you this is this is scary. Stuff is
for white folks. It's going to come and get me,
(29:52):
and it's stopping you from getting the best coach, the
best lawyer you will ever have four free on your
phone right now before this podcast is over, you should.
Speaker 3 (30:03):
Ceto the best strategic thinker. All those different things.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
You know you can take Sheldon co creator absolutely absolutely creator, Yeah,
a thousand percent.
Speaker 5 (30:14):
Listen.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
You know, you know John, I know this is also
a podcast about entrepreneurism, So you know what. Listen, just
take what what what then said, let's extend it to
be for entrepreneurs. Well, there are four main things that
were that guided the success of the company.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Right.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
The first thing I remember years ago when I first
run my first tech startup the capital. So you basically
need to basically have access to engineers. You need engineering talent.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
That was number one.
Speaker 3 (30:36):
Number two, you needed computational infrastructure, data centers, these different things.
Thirty needed capital. You raised the capital so you could
get the engineers, get the infrastructure. And fourth was domain
expertise and relationships. I got to tell you the first
three of falling. The first three of falling AI is
the great equalizer. Listen, you could pull out your credit
(30:58):
card and start renting clocking, you know, on an AWS
right now, and with with a lot of the coding
agents that are available through Cursor and others, you actually,
you know, you can actually get a lot done written
a I can now write code somewhat better than most
human beings. At this point, we're probably about two cycles
of a way by GPT five for sure. Along those lines,
(31:20):
so does a baron of entry has been significantly reduced.
And you know what the you know what the premium
is now on is on human relationships. It is your
ability to actually know how to articulate your ideas. Meet
with the prime minister of Jamaica, Botswana or Nepal and
talk about how you're going to help modernize the electrical
grid system or the mayor is this exactly, let's school
(31:44):
board president, exactly what?
Speaker 1 (31:46):
And by the way, let's say say this for the
average person listening to this, Uh, we're all average, but
we're also extoring there. You're listening to this, you're saying,
how does it relate to me. I want you to
think before we run out of time here. You don't
want everybody get the last word and tell me what
do you want us to continue this series on Ai
and you? But think about everything in your world is
about to be reimagined. Everything from the most basic thing
(32:10):
the cup that you're drinking from, the hair, the brush
that you comb your hair with and how you comb here.
I mean, I'm being a little crazy, but you're gonna
have three hundred million robots or one hundreds of millions
of robots amongst us human eyed robots in your lifetime.
You're gonna have three hundred million virtual robots by twenty thirty.
But think about Sheldon Man help me out here. The phone,
(32:34):
the how furniture gets produced, your medicine, your medicine.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
How how you can sue media, how educated where you
consume media?
Speaker 2 (32:45):
What is a network?
Speaker 3 (32:46):
What do you care free? How do you care for
our elders?
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Yeah, elder care for the reason why.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
You can change everything wherever you are. You can be
a pioneer today. I see you combine this with your
passion sports. Great event.
Speaker 4 (33:03):
So again, just trying to keep it as practical as possible.
All this stuff might sound way outlandish, download Shaggy Peach
and literally just say I'm scared, I want your advice.
I'm a nurse, I'm of this, I'm of that. How
could I use AI to become a super employee or
(33:24):
a super employer? And it will tell you for free
in two seconds. You literally need you don't have to
be afraid of it. It will literally tell you what
to do, and it will ask you is this good
enough idea?
Speaker 5 (33:37):
Do you want more of this? You want more of that?
Speaker 4 (33:38):
And you can guide it and literally, this afternoon you
can become an expert in how to become an expert.
Speaker 5 (33:45):
That is what's so amazing.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
You would have had to go and take a test,
apply to college, and spend four years to get the
information you can get this afternoon. And why is that?
There used to be something called water spit ten thousand years,
the hardest thing to get with some clean water. That's
why everybody lives along rivers and stuff like that, because
(34:07):
clean water it's hard to get. Modern city and modern cities,
et cetera. Now you don't even think about it. If
you live in an an industrial country, you just turn
a screw and the water comes out. You don't have
to walk down to the river with the thing on
your head and come back. What is right there. Intelligence
is now right there. You used to have to walk
(34:27):
down the street and take an sat and get it
rolled in a program of it's right there. So now
everything that John and Sheldon's been telling you should go
from being frightening to being liberating. Yes, AI is going
to tear the floor out from under you, but it's
also going to tear the ceiling off from over you.
You can literally fall or fly based on your own effort.
(34:52):
And that's all we've ever wanted in the first place.
That's called freedom. That's what freedom is. And you now
have a jet pack. You have a jet pack is
for free on your phone. I'm a JATGBT claude. I'm
not picking anyone, but I'm just saying that that's when
you heard of get that one and literally everything that
just made you feel uncomfortable from what John O'Brien, Van
(35:12):
Jones and Sheldon said. You can tell the AI and
it will give you the answer. And you say, give
me a curriculum to stay this stuff? What books are
I reading?
Speaker 2 (35:20):
What order?
Speaker 3 (35:22):
It will tell you that too. Absolutely, by the way,
if you watch some of the leaders in tech talk
about it. I was just watching podcasts recently with Michael
dell Or Synthion and Jensen. They tell you all the
time that they spend the weekend, and I do the
same thing. I'll say, Okay, the ten year you'l curve.
We explain that to me like I'm in third grade,
(35:42):
or explain that to me like I'm like him in
eleventh grade. And then you know what I then do,
I'll say, quiz me, quiz me, it's next level. Oh,
I give you two quick antidotes. By the way, at
a friend who's trying to negotiate a job at this company. Well,
she's been this twenty years and you bought this has
come in and she's a little bit nervous come back
from betraying Eve and so forth. I said. She said, Sho,
(36:04):
I'm godn't tell me about something, Judge, Mike, hold on
a second. Give me the person's give me your new
boss's LinkedIn profile. She's like, what are you doing, Mike?
Watch this? I loaded in her new boss's LinkedIn profile.
I didn't load it in my friends LinkedIn profile. I said, Okay,
judgept this is the person's new boss come up with
a script for how they should negotiate the new salary.
She was blown away and she used that gut okay.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
No, let us w to a lunch.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
And I was running tight on time and with a
really powerful guy on Wall Street. I knew I liked him.
I just didn't know why. I just had a vibe.
I said, look, I got three names. We'll give it
this lunch. Tell me this is the person's name. Tell
me how what what's correlation to this person? And John
O'Brien have are we? Is my gut feeling right to
be a common threads man. Three seconds later, it's here, Yeah,
(37:03):
your story and his story and he connect and capital
and community and here's here's the value added.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
I'm never exactly exactly. And John, here's the other thing
I tell people all the time is what Ben said.
It's actually spot on the same thing with you. John's
to take it to the next level. If there's an
article that someone has just sent to your boss, your friend, whomever,
take that copy that you are all that link, put
it into chat GPT and said, could you give an
executive summary of this article? Can you tell me how
(37:31):
this article is related?
Speaker 1 (37:32):
To this.
Speaker 3 (37:32):
It can summarize it for you could send this even
behind the paywall, by the way, so this is just
we I got a ton of these things. There's a
bunch of these, but that's one of the ones I
think is a is a massive unlock when you actually
have it sort of distilling information if you and synthesizing information.
By the way, guess what your boss is already doing it? Yes, okay, okay.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
So the Van's gonna have to go on TV soon
and and Sheldon's got to go make another billion dollars
for somebody. Uh, Sheldon tries to rein with what he's
doing around AI. I'm doing financial literacy, Van's doing, you know,
trying to heal the world. And we're trying to bring
these three things together for a new movement for all people,
(38:17):
by the way, but certainly underserved people. When manstream, Maria
has a headache, black and brafelks have pneumonia, but we're
all sick. Uh. We got to get the folks who
have pneumonia first because they're the most at risk. But
here's the first what Vana said is those were at
the bottom have a chance. The folks who folk who
don't get hit. Yes, if you work at CBS or
a grocery store, your job's going the way. Okay.
Speaker 2 (38:38):
Uh, you say that automation at the check check out
count in the grocery store. Okay, that's obvious.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
But also the countains the middle class folks who work
their whole life to get If they don't retool themselves,
they're done and that severe income is gonna disappear. So
you're it's planeflow has been leveled. We don't want anybody
to be run over by this, right, But if you're
black and brown, you used to crisis. You're the crisis
(39:02):
every Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (39:03):
So this is you.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
So we want you to give you the army with
the tools to be successful and then help your brother
and sister come up. Be they black, white, brown, yellow,
be they middle classlas. We're all in this thing together,
the world starting a new man. Oh, let give us
some walk off music. Yes, what do you have to
say to folks as you and you know, we don't
have time to get into why this relates to the
Black Jewish conversation or the global conversation or the other converses.
(39:29):
But you're normally five or ten years ahead of everybody else.
In your thought leadership. Folks don't understand you. That doesn't
mean you're wrong. That means that they're not caught up yet.
I need to say as a drunk the mic and
then Sheldon will leave you with the last word.
Speaker 4 (39:42):
Yeah, I just I just think the main thing I
would just say is to be encouraged. Be encouraged. You know,
no pressure, no diamonds. All the things that we've gone through,
that you've gone through has really prepared you for a
time like this. You've been through the stuff and you
know how to make a way out of no way.
There's this This thing can either be a hand grenade
(40:02):
or it can be a jet pack. It really just
depends on how you choose to relate to it. And
if you move first and you say, you know what
I can ask it. I want to do a business
on this is a good idea, bad idea? What I
need to do? It will literally teach you whatever you
need to know, because all the intelligence has been been
put in there now sometimes to be hallucinating and you
(40:23):
have to like double Checkstu. But just to Claire that
this is your moment's Claire, that this line that you've
been standing at the back of is about to get
blown away anyway, and so you get a chance to
fly or fall based on your own effort. But with
technology that you know we can only dream of. To me,
(40:44):
if you said you can have reparations, that you can
have AI, I would take AI every time, because you know,
if you gave me reparations and I had no knowledge
of what to do with it, I would be in trouble.
But if you give me AI, I can figure out
way to get reparations times one thousand. That's the way
should be thinking about this thing. Hey man, shel does
she have to bring us home?
Speaker 3 (41:04):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (41:06):
You know.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And where I began by saying that, like both of
you said, I think so eloquently, is that this became.
This is the deepest repository of human knowledge collected together.
I think that's the first order is how do we
actually learn from this? The second thing is about action.
How do we actually make it act on our behalf.
We've never dealt with a substrate like this before they
(41:27):
could act in our behalf. This is a whole thing
called vibe coding. You sort of basically tell the system
what you're thinking about building, and will build it for you.
This is literally what is happening. Look, next week, we
have a meeting with a number of students through a
programm with Accentsure teaching high school students about agents. You know,
We're going to teach them about emergency evacuations for the
(41:48):
next forest fire, for the next flesh floods, for the
next earthquake. They're going to be building agents that could
scan all the real time news reports, things on Twitter,
all these different feeds and will then basically connect to
mechanism that will actually do three one to one notifications
based on their location right based on their location on
their cell phones, and to tell them to the nearest
(42:11):
areas for emergency evacuation. They can now build the plumbing
for the emergency relief infrastructure. We're just getting started. This
is about agency. That's the ultimate driver. Here is agent
self agency amplified at a level that we've never seen before.
Speaker 1 (42:32):
I want everybody to tell your friends about this podcast episode.
Share it, start a conversation and your fraternity, your sorority,
your community group at the barbershop. Play This was a
short episode. It's forty two minutes. I want you to
play this and you can cut down pieces of it.
Any One piece of this for five minutes will be
an hour long conversation. I want you to reimagine everything.
(42:56):
This is why I keep saying we got to make
stop making dumb sexy. You gotta make smart sexy again.
Because if you're dumb as rocks, if you think bling sings,
if you are locked in this old narrative of look
the part, but not be the part, you can't take
advantage of what we just talked about. So, in other words,
(43:16):
crap in, crap out, and you will crap out if
you take what they just said this you download this up.
But you're not creative because it's the creativity is your superpower.
Now you're not intelligent, creative, and you can't ask the
right question. You're not gonna get the right answer, so
you can all you be asking, You'll be asking AI
for how to get movie tickets? How to get a ticket?
Speaker 2 (43:39):
You know? Tell you about what you know?
Speaker 3 (43:40):
Shoes who won the game last night? But do that?
Speaker 1 (43:45):
So yeah that that I do that too? About being lazy.
You'll miss the brilliance. If you here's a good part,
may be sorry to the positive. We gotta wrap this up.
If you're brilliant, you know you're brilliant, and I know
you brilliant. We were doing so much with so little
for so long. We'd almost do anything with nothing. If
you're black, so if you're brilliant, he was like, I
just need a shot. I just need a shot. These
(44:07):
guys just gave it to you. Now you can ask
the question I asked three, four or five times a day,
mind bending questions of my AI agent, mind bending questions.
I'll take this and this, smash them together and say, Okay,
now tell me how to do.
Speaker 3 (44:22):
This this third thing exactly.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Now I gotta go do it. First of all, I
had to have the creativity to think about it. But
now I have to exk you on Okay, brand's got
to go. But I want you to. I'm trying to
light the fuse for you. If you are smart, this
is your time. If you're nosy, this is your time.
Go ahead, man, listen. I grew up on the edge
of a small town in rural West Tennessee. It took
(44:45):
me a very long time to figure out how to
basically get my twin sister was smarter than me to
get her. She got an affirmative bastion of scholarship at
the University of Tennessee at Martin, and then she tricked
them and to give me one. So I've literally started
my career all my sister's affirm of action, the scholarship
at the University of Tennessee at Martin. It took me
a long time to know when I I know and
(45:05):
to get where I am. But that's never going to
happen again, because you can now get you your dream
so much faster. Everything that took me so long to
assemble this relationship, that relationship, this book, that book, but
it's all right there in your phone.
Speaker 5 (45:24):
And so you who.
Speaker 4 (45:25):
Are the most creative, most imaginative, most innovative. You came
up with jazz, you came up with hip hop, you
came up with the blues, you came up with gospel.
Speaker 5 (45:33):
You found a way out of no way.
Speaker 4 (45:35):
You started black colleges two minutes out of slavery. It
wasn't Harvard Law School that figured out that the Constitution
wasn't compatible with segregation.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
That was Howard Law School. That was your school.
Speaker 4 (45:47):
It wasn't the White Church that figured out the Bible
was incompatible with racism. That was the Black Church. So
everything you have created from theology to jurisprudence, to art.
The culture has been magnificent, has been world's changing, and
you had nothing to nothing, nothing but your own brilliance
and God's love.
Speaker 5 (46:05):
Now you have a jet pack. You have a jet pack.
Speaker 4 (46:10):
Any dream you have, it's possible now in a way
that's never been true since we were brought over here
four hundred years ago. And so do not let them
call you and scare you and and all the tricks
of this. This is your time. This is your time,
and this is your tool artificial intets.
Speaker 1 (46:28):
So Van has got to go pulling him for TV.
But I want Van to hear this as he walks off,
and I want you to hear this. And then Sheldon,
you're the last word. There was a joke, not a joke.
There was a story about Africa. Somebody told me that
blacks had Africans had the land, and unethical missionaries, people
(46:50):
posing as missionaries came with the Bible. We turned around
and one hundred years later we had the Bible and
they had the land. What he's telling you is those
rules don't apply anymore. You can't be snookered out of this.
You can't be manipulate out of this. You got to
(47:11):
give it away. You got to literally just sleep through this,
your reserve evolution. This is your time. He's not telling
you not to go to college to I don't want
you might hear that. He's not telling you not to
go to college because you need relationship capital. You hang
around nine old people, you'll.
Speaker 2 (47:23):
Be the tenth.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Right, all Harvard is is a group of people who
book ease. You are there for forty years. So find
whatever group of people who are aspirational. That's college. Great, learn,
You're going to learn in different ways, but that relationship
capital will be this value at it.
Speaker 2 (47:37):
Sheldon, bring us home.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
Yeah, I said, you know before I think also, what
we're looking at here, John is you know, discrete steps
and advice that can actually give to people. So what
I very much look forward to his opportunity. You know,
you mentioned the barbershop, you mentioned a couple of other areas.
They're very discreet things that we could actually suggest and
recommend to people, particularly if you're you know, enterprising, right,
(48:01):
we're entrepreneurs. We think we have to do things to survive.
And there's so many people that come to me all
the time and say, Shell, listen, I'm thinking about starting
this business, this business that listen, I'm very flattery. You
came to talk to me. I really am. I got
someone who's better than me, ten times better than me.
It's in your pocket. You can ask anything that you want.
(48:21):
It will. It's your lawyer, it's your accountant, it's your
finance person. It's all these different things. If you're thinking
about creating a bar, you want to launch you own school.
You want to create your own Montessori academy, you want
to create your own spintech company. You want to start
doing crypto minding what it will actually write the code
for you. It will tell you the systems to get.
We've never been here before, right, and so this whole
(48:44):
notion again about agency. That's the amazing thing about this
is one thing to ask questions, other thing to say, Okay,
now tell me what to do. How do I build this?
It will give you the blueprint. It's the blueprint to
build it.
Speaker 2 (48:53):
Yeah, here's the new era.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
I Evanjol's talk called me that you need to know
chell I met Sheldon, who I think. By the way,
if you never know, if anybody listening to this on
audio podcasts only he's black, I don't know he may
have to sound like his brother.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
Colan Powell. You speak so well, what do you think.
I'm an educated man anyway.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
But for those who are not, he's black. He's just
a black genius in tech. And it's great that, by
the way, we're talking to black people about this who
can talk the same way as everybody else. No disrespect
to Sam Altman will co chair that AI at this
council with and all the other tech geniuses we need
them to.
Speaker 2 (49:31):
But he's black, and I Dvan sent me to him,
and he sent you to your phone. No, nobody's trying
to pimp you, trying to get you.
Speaker 5 (49:45):
In a way.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
And on that point, we're out. This has been a
great conversation. This is Money and Wealth on the Black
Effect Network and iHeart Radio. This has truly been a
unique podcast episode I get. I challenge you to find
another on this topic, Tell all your friends about it,
Share this on social media, rints, repeat, share, converse, discuss.
Speaker 2 (50:07):
There's no right or wrong, it's just forward. I'm out.
John O'Brien, Sheldon Gilbert's great, amazing Van Jones Love you Much.
Speaker 1 (50:31):
Money and Wealth with John O'Brien is a production of
the Black Effect Podcast Network. For more podcasts from the
Black Effect Podcast Network, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Speaker 3 (52:00):
Of Deep
Host
John Hope Bryant
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