February 11, 2026 • 44 mins
In today’s fast-paced world, where change is the only constant, leaders often find themselves reacting to disruptions rather than anticipating them. What if you could not only predict these disruptions but also leverage them to gain a competitive edge? In this blog post, we explore insights from technology futurist Daniel Burrus, who shares his expertise on identifying hard trends that can help you navigate uncertainty with confidence.
Understanding Hard and Soft Trends: In the podcast, Daniel Burrus emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between hard and soft trends. Hard trends are future facts that are inevitable, such as the progression of technology from 3G to 5G and beyond. These trends can be relied upon to make informed decisions. For instance, Burrus accurately predicted the rise of 4G and 5G technologies over a decade ago, showcasing how understanding hard trends can empower leaders to prepare for and capitalize on the future.
On the other hand, soft trends are based on assumptions that may change. Burrus highlights that while healthcare costs have been rising, this is a soft trend that can be addressed and altered. By recognizing the nature of these trends, businesses can either brace for impact or take proactive measures to mitigate potential issues.
The Power of Anticipation: Burrus encourages leaders to shift their mindset from being reactive to being anticipatory. In an uncertain environment, having high levels of certainty can boost confidence in making bold moves. For example, he notes that 10,000 people in the U.S. are turning 70 every day—a hard trend that presents both challenges and opportunities for industries like healthcare. By preparing for these demographic shifts, organizations can position themselves as disruptors rather than the disrupted.
Applying Trends to Industries: The discussion also touches on the film industry, where many professionals fear the implications of AI. Burrus, who has a background in film production, argues that AI should not be seen as a threat but as a powerful tool for enhancing creativity. He suggests that filmmakers can leverage AI to streamline editing processes, allowing them to focus on more creative aspects of their work. This perspective encourages professionals to embrace technological advancements rather than resist them.
Conclusion: The key to thriving in an unpredictable world is to understand the trends that shape our future—both hard and soft. By empowering yourself with foresight, you can turn potential disruptions into opportunities for growth. As we navigate the complexities of the modern landscape, the ability to anticipate changes and adapt accordingly will be critical for success.
Key Takeaways: 1. Distinguish between hard and soft trends to make informed decisions. 2. Embrace anticipation to gain confidence in navigating uncertainty. 3. Leverage technology, such as AI, to enhance creativity and efficiency in various industries.
#Disruption #Opportunity #BusinessGrowth #DanielBurrus #Podcast #Leadership #Innovation #FutureThinking #EntrepreneurMindset
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Welcome to Film Tech and Finance, where we explore the
cutting edge technology and financial strategies driving the
film industry today. In a world of constant
disruption, most leaders are busy reacting to change.
But what if you could see the disruptions coming before they
happen? What if you could turn
uncertainty into the greatest competitive advantage?
Our guest today is a master of foresights.
(00:22):
He is a global technology futurist.
Futurist, a strategic advisor tothe world's most influenced CE
OS and the New York Times bestseller.
Author of Flash Foresight and Amazon #1 Bestseller Anticipated
Organization. He has accurately predicted the
technological shifts that have shaped the modern world, and
(00:43):
today he's here to show us how to spot the hard trends that
will define their future. Please welcome to the show
Daniel Burroughs. All right.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Thank you for being here. So you you pretty much just tell
us a little bit what you do. I mean, it's just amazing.
I just saw some of your. Videos and saw some of your.
(01:04):
Work and, and actually it's, it's funny because I went back
to some old videos and some things you said then actually
happened now to give you an example, there was a video that
you had up there that was uploaded 12 years ago.
And you were talking about 3G atthat time.
And you were saying that, hey, the feature is 4G and you know
(01:25):
5G will come for sure. And now we are at 5G, right?
And then we're talking about 6G and stuff like that.
So you're doing something right.Amazing.
And so just tell us a little bitabout you and what you do.
Yeah, well, it's amazing how predictable the future is.
If you go back to one of my really earlier books, because
I've written 7 Techno Trends came out in 1993, there's a
(01:48):
little section, remember that's 93.
There's a little section in there that says Blockbuster is
busted. And if you read under that,
you'll get a description of whatNetflix became.
You'll also see me talking aboutwhat became the iPhone back in
93 and many other things. So instead of just today giving
you some trends and saying good luck, I'm really a teacher at
(02:12):
heart. What I want to do is empower all
of you to be much better at seeing the future accurately
because as you started to say inthe beginning, we live in an
uncertain world. I mean, there's more uncertainty
now than ever before. What's going to happen with home
prices? What's going to act been with
the stock? So let's say we're going to have
a another war somewhere. There's so much uncertainty.
(02:34):
But here's the problem with uncertainty and that is it does
not give you the confidence to make a bold move.
So what if you had high levels of certainty?
Well, when you have that, you have the confidence to make a
bold move. So to give you a just a few
minutes, maybe about a minute ofmy background coming up to help
you all with this. I started out teaching biology
(02:57):
and physics, so I'm really a teacher at heart.
I had an idea for an airplane design and I built it test fluid
and ended up with 37 national occasions in the first year.
I had an idea for another business, another.
Within two years, I had four different businesses all going
in different fields, all doing extremely well, all national
leaders in the first year, profitable in the first year.
(03:18):
But I miss teaching. So I sold them and created my
research company that I run today where I am empowering all
of you through teaching to understand how to see the future
better. And if you would like, I'll give
you just a little bit of a how to do that and then let you ask
me some questions. Would that be OK?
(03:39):
Yes. Definitely, that would be
perfect. OK, So there's no shortage of
trends, especially around this time of the year.
But which ones will happen, which ones won't?
And when I've come up with a solution for that, and it's
being used by Fortune 10, Fortune 50, Fortune 500
companies. I'm an advisor to the Pentagon
(04:00):
and the Joint Chiefs on this. And by the way, I'm going to
help you all with it. Right now, all trends fit into
one or two columns. They're either a hard trend
based on a future fact that willhappen.
Now the key here is it can't be changed.
That's the litmus test. If it can be changed, it's not a
hard trend. As you mentioned in a earlier
(04:20):
show long ago, I said you're at 3G wireless.
And I said, is that it? No, we're going to have 4G
followed by 5G. Today we're at 5G.
Is that it? Now we're going to have 6G,
followed by 7, followed by 8. A lot of people don't like AI
and we just turn it off. And the answer is no.
It's a hard trend growing exponentially, and it's more
(04:43):
than just technology. To give us some hard trends.
Let me give you another quick example.
In the United States, there are 10,000 people turning 70 years
old every day. Whoa.
Are they going to get chronologically younger?
No, hard trend. They're going to get older and
actually we could predict a lot of problems that will happen
(05:05):
because of that and pre solve those problems, or we could let
them happen. The beauty of a hard trend
future fact is that it lets you see disruption before it
disrupts, letting you turn disruption into a choice because
you're either going to be the disrupted or the disruptor.
There's no middle. You're either going to be more
(05:26):
relevant or less relevant. There is no middle.
But I want to give you a choice.And again, I'll show you more
how this works. And as I talk here for a minute,
the other thing that hard trendsgives you is it lets you see
problems before you have them soyou can pre solve them and move
forward faster. Let's face it, all of us at one
time have said, I knew that would happen.
(05:48):
And I would say, well, then why did you let it?
And the reason you let it happenis you didn't trust yourself
fully. But what if you could?
What if you absolutely knew thatproblem would happen?
You know what, you'd pre solve it.
Well, I have that problem in the1st place.
You want to move forward faster.There's a way to do that now.
I'll give you some more examplesin a minute.
Let me tell you about the other kind of trends.
(06:10):
Remember I said there's hard trends, there's soft trends.
Soft trends are based on assumptions that may or may not
happen, and a future fact that will happen is different than
something that may or may not happen.
Especially if you're an innovator and you're trying to
create something new, basing it on something we know will happen
is has a lot less risk than something that might happen.
(06:32):
And I love soft trends and hard trends.
What do I love about a soft trend?
If you don't like it, you can change it.
What do I love about a hard trend that lets you see the
future before it happens? So I'm just starting to teach
this to you all. Let me give you all a early
test. All right?
(06:53):
In the United States, healthcarecosts have been going up, up, up
for decades, decades. By the way, that's called a
trend going higher, higher, moreexpensive, more expensive.
Now, I'd like you to think in your mind, since I can't hear
from all of you right now, I'm going to give you a question.
I'd like you to answer it in your mind, and then I'll tell
you the answer. See how good you are already.
(07:14):
Is the rising cost of healthcarein the United States a hard
trend or a soft trend? Think about that for a second.
Most people would say it's a hard trend because it's been
going on for so long. But actually it's a complete
soft trend. If we think it's a hard trend,
we don't try to stop it. We just know it'll keep going
up, up, up, up, up forever. And then all of our strategies
(07:37):
are, how do we pay for the mess the baby boomers will create as
they get into their 80s and 90s and beyond?
But if we realize, Oh no, it's asoft trend, if you don't like
it, you can change it. And how would we do that?
Well, let me give you a quick example.
Right now in the United States, which is a different healthcare
system than other countries, youdon't know that a aspirin cost
(07:59):
$25.00 in a hospital, by the way, it does.
But you don't know that. You don't know what it cost.
You don't know that that artificial knee that you're
getting put in because you played so much tennis when you
were younger. The same knee, same price, same
size. It's not the same price.
It can vary in price by 100%, but we don't know the price of
anything. That's why costs keep going up.
(08:21):
It's pretty nice when we can give you things you don't know
what they cost. But if we put all of that on a
blockchain, which is extremely secure, has complete visibility,
can't be changed and altered, wewould know the cost of all this
stuff. And believe me, prices would
come down because those people that are charging $25 for an
(08:41):
aspirant aren't going to get anybody going in there.
There already is a blockchain, by the way, for healthcare.
They got 100 million in their first round of funding.
I'm just giving you one simple, quick way that we could lower
the cost of healthcare and I could give you more and more.
So knowing that something is soft is good.
(09:03):
Let me give you another one. Some industries right now are
seeing sales decline. Sales are going down.
Maybe it's because of tariffs orsomething else.
And their prediction for 2026 issales will continue to go down.
The industry's going down. That's soft.
That's a soft trend. Now you as a business owner or
(09:26):
manager or executive, you may not be able to change that soft
trend for everybody else, but you can change it for you
depending on how you what you do.
I like to take advantage of softtrends because again, if you
don't like them, you can change them.
There's advantages in everything.
So hard trend examples. I'll give you a couple more of
(09:48):
those and then I'll let you ask me some questions because I'm
laying out a foundation. And so a few more hard trends.
We talked about technology. So we know that things are
getting lighter and smaller. They're getting more powerful.
We're adding intelligence to them.
And that is going to continue toaccelerate when it comes to,
(10:13):
let's say, finance, which is an area that I know we cover quite
a bit in the podcast. If we look at the world of
accounting and auditing, I pretty clear to see that we're
going to have real time accounting and real time
auditing. So if you're a auditor or an
accountant, you might think, oh,I'm going to be out of business.
(10:35):
But if you start thinking a little more strategically, you
might realize, no, it means thatactually we're going to make a
lot more money because we're going to become anticipatory
problem solvers and trusted advisors.
You see, accountants and auditors have high trust.
By the way, if you don't trust your accountant, you better get
(10:56):
another one. And trust is core to every human
relationship. And we live in a technology
world. But let's remember we live in a
human world that's based on trust.
They already have trust. They need to leverage it in new
ways. So accounting and finance or
tends to look historically verifying the past.
(11:18):
But now what will we do going forward since that will be done
in real time And that is we're going to take those hindsights
and turn them into insights and foresights and we're going to
not be reactionary. And our consulting, we're going
to be much more anticipatory. And frankly, that's one of the
(11:38):
big messages I want to get across to anyone that's a
filmmaker in here, anybody that's in that area, anybody
that's in finance, anybody that is in any time of creative
process or service organization right now to deal with all this
change. We are agile.
We're trying to be as agile as we possibly can.
I know you've all heard that. And remember, agility comes from
(12:00):
sports. Reacting as quickly as you can
do a problem after it occurs, reacting as quickly as you can
to a disruption after it disrupts.
The more agile the better. Some people call that.
Let's pivot because things change.
But that's playing defense, that's reactionary and I'm glad
you're doing it. But what I'm bringing you today
(12:22):
with hard and soft trends is howto be anticipatory, how to play
offense, how to see the future before it arrives and take
action on it, How to see problems before they exist and
pre solve them so you could moveforward faster.
So what I am wanting all of us to do, regardless of whether
you're in film, whether you're in finance, whatever industry
(12:43):
you're in, is let's be less crisis managers, less
reactionary even no matter how agile you are.
Let's be more anticipatory, taking advantage of the amazing
predictability that technology and demographics and other hard
trends give us. All right, I've been talking
(13:03):
away. I know you've got some good
questions. Why don't you throw some at me
and we'll see how we can help everybody out there.
You know that's. Just like to listen to you,
MESI, because it's just nice andit's amazing.
Yeah, because if we all think like that and prepare ourselves,
yes, we're ready for everything,right?
So for me, some questions are first of all, let's talk a
(13:25):
little bit about film, right? Most of our people, most of our
viewers here are have to do withfilm, our producers, directors,
actors. So one question I would like to
ask is, first of all, because I,I just typically just said, and
I just want to create a questionfor AI.
There's a big issue right now inthe film industry, right?
(13:45):
A lot of people are scared. A lot of people are afraid.
There was a bunch of strikes that happened that, that, that
had issue that they were dealingwith that thing.
So should they be afraid of AI or you kind of covered it a
little bit. But with film, like for example
editing, to give you an example,AI is very advanced.
(14:06):
I like it, even though I startedas an editor and at first I
thought, OK, if this gets even better, we're going to lose our
jobs. But the way I saw it is I can
make more and better work so I can take advantage of the tool.
What is your perspective? What do you think right now?
I mean, should people be afraid or should they just embrace it
and make their lives better? Well, I'm glad you asked that
(14:27):
and long ago, because we have many chapters in our book of
life. All of us do.
I actually made four films. So I did.
I was a director, producer and did editing as well on those.
They were award winners, by the way, and even got one of them
got on national television. So in other words, I have a
little experience in that. And when it comes to editing, we
(14:48):
could use AI to help us a lot, but wow, is that a creative
task. Editing can make or break a
film. Editing can make the emotion go
higher or lower. Editing can control the
storyline. It's not just shooting the film,
by the way. That's important too as a
filmmaker, getting the lighting right, getting everything right.
(15:09):
It's not that just the actors doing a great job.
But once again, there are many different elements to making a
film unbelievably fantastic, andAI can help us augment our
thinking. But if we let it replace it, the
quality of the films coming out,which would be a lot of them,
(15:29):
would be very low, and you'll have a lot less blockbusters.
You see, we live in an increasingly technological
world, but let's remember something.
We live in a human world and in a human world, it's all about
relationships and relationships that are good are based on
trust. And I was just watching a film
(15:49):
last night and I could tell, youknow, most of it was generated
backgrounds and things. And by the way, it looked really
good. But you could still tell, you
know, this is all fake and and it was a a good story, but it
was pretty obvious. Now, if we look to the future,
that stuff that looks fake will get better.
(16:11):
But there was what was the storygrabbing me emotionally?
Was it taking me to a new place?So I forgot about the room I was
in, and I forgot about who I wassitting next to, and I was
transported to another place. Because that's what filmmaking
is all about, having you. As a matter of fact, I've given
thousands of keynote speeches around the world to audiences as
(16:34):
large as 20,000. And as a speaker on a stage, I
can tell you right now I need toimmediately transport you out of
the room, forgetting about the room, forgetting about sitting
who you're next to, forgetting about the thousands of people
you might be in the room with. It's all, it's all storytelling,
isn't it? Yes, yes.
So as a matter of fact, when it comes to story, let me just give
(16:57):
you something I want you to think about.
He who has the best story wins no matter what it is.
So let me give you how I want you to think about this as a
film maker. And by the way, this is true for
finance or any, anything else. Let me tell you how to think
about this, and that is it's going to augment our thinking
and let me help you see the future by giving you a really
(17:20):
good example. And that is if you know someone
that has cancer, heaven forbid, but let's say you know someone
with cancer, you'll probably need an oncologist.
That's the doctor that treats someone that has cancer.
And right now, AI knows more about oncology than any living
doctor. It knows every chemotherapy
(17:40):
that's ever been given globally and the results.
It knows all genetic testing. It knows all the Mris.
It sucked all that stuff in there.
No human can know all of that and keep it in their head and
recall it like that. So if you know someone that has
cancer, I'm going to give you 3 choices.
You get to pick one choice #1A really good oncologist choice #2
(18:04):
just AI choice #3 a really good oncologist that has access to
AI. That's the future of filmmaking.
That's the future of lighting. That's the future of editing.
That's the future of accounting.That's the future for all of us
is it's augmenting because AI can do things that humans can't
(18:25):
do good. It'll make us all better, but we
can do things as humans that AI can't even think about.
By the way, establishing a new relationship that has high
trust, AI is going to have a lotof trouble with that.
And I can give you a list of other things.
So what AI is helping us do is get to, instead of starting at
(18:47):
0, meaning if you're writing a script or beginning the editing
process or whatever it is, or you're in finance in some way,
instead of starting from zero, you can actually use AI with a
good prompt to help you get up to about 80% pretty quick.
I would call it. It's a good first draft
(19:08):
assistant. It can give you some ideas, but
you know, if you're a creative thinker and we're talking about
creatives, if you're in the filmworld, what does it do?
Well, it helps you get better ideas.
So if you just do it, AI says you're going to create what the
new Webster dictionaries, numberone word for this coming year.
(19:33):
They just announced it's called slop.
And slop is what AI is creating a lot of AI slop out there.
Well, that's because people are taking that 80% and putting it
out. Well, no wonder it's all slop
when we add our humanness to it,when we take it to the higher
level. Whoa.
And a lot of companies are making mistakes right now.
(19:54):
I know you've read about where they're laying a lot of people
off, especially in coding and creating code at the tech
companies. By the way, most of us don't
realize a lot of them are being hired back, by the way.
But here's the mistake they're made and other companies are
making too, when they're laying people off.
A lot of, almost all of us have repetitive tasks that we do.
(20:16):
It's the lower level tasks that are repetitive.
They're boring. And, and they suck away a lot of
our time, keeping us from higherlevel thinking and higher level
work. And in the past, if you wanted
to automate some of those tasks that are holding you back,
taking up a lot of your time, you could have gone to the IT
(20:37):
department and said, I want you to automate the stuff that's
slowing me up. They would have said, sorry,
we're busy. But today there are AI tools.
Some of them are free, some of them are 20 bucks a month that
can help you automate low level tasks, not replacing you, but
freeing you to do higher level functions.
(20:58):
Actually, I think all of us are being held back.
I mean, all of us are being heldback by all the busy work we got
to do before we can get to the really good stuff.
So we have a productivity revolution that's happening.
That's not really if you're smart about replacing people,
it's about magnifying them. I want to magnify your
(21:21):
capabilities. I want you to discover the
hidden you because there's a lotof our capabilities that are
hidden because we're too busy doing all this lower level
stuff. I would like to even think of it
as the undiscovered self. There's so much of us, every one
of you I'm talking to where you've got undiscovered talents,
(21:42):
undiscovered gifts because you've been bogged down.
If we let AI kind of free the bog so that we can do the higher
level work, I think you'll discover a lot more about
yourself and a lot more capabilities and maybe even some
extra talents and gifts. You didn't even know your head
because you were so busy doing busy work that I think it's
(22:06):
actually can be freeing. So from your experience, do you
see people not taking advantage of it though because either
they're afraid or they don't have the knowledge or or or do
you? I mean I see it in everyday.
Yeah, but. I mean.
Sure, there are. There are some blocks and the
biggest block is not technology,it's mindset.
(22:29):
It's our how we think about it. And, and this can be true of a
business or what we do. And there is protecting and
defending the way it's always been.
And I ride AI, ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
And one of the things I like about it is it does not have a
reverse. In other words, you can't go
(22:50):
backwards. You can't say, let's go back to
the way it was. You can go forwards.
But instead of letting other people determine what forward
means, I want you to unleash your creativity and humanness
and creativity to create a better future that AI could not
comprehend. Because again, it's good at some
(23:12):
things, but it's not good at at what US humans do best.
So coming back to it, if you have a new tool and you apply an
old mindset to it, you'll not like the results.
Often they fail. How many times have we gotten a
new, let's say, a new version ofOffice?
A lot of us use Microsoft products and we're giving you a
(23:34):
whole new system. What the most people say, how do
I get the classic view, dumbing it down to instead of take
advantage of the new features? What I do when I get something
new is what are the features that are allowing me to do
things that I couldn't do beforethat I would really want to do.
See, I'm looking for competitiveadvantage.
(23:56):
I'm looking for advantage, that replacement of me advantage to
help me do a better job. So here's what I would suggest
for those of you that are are fighting it and that is
experiment with it. If you're new to it, I would say
get a free ChatGPT. You can go.
You don't even have to pay the $20.00 a month and just start
(24:18):
experimenting with it a little bit and seeing what it can do
and also what it can't do. That would be a way to
experiment. Start playing with it.
I have a report that I put together that is free.
Matter of fact, you can get thatreport at aistrategyreport.com.
And what I've done is I have personally used over 1500 AI
(24:41):
tools. I don't think you'll have the
time to do that. Well, I took the time to do that
for you and what I've done. And by the way, there's a lot of
worthless tools in there, but I found some good ones.
So what I have is in this reportis the top five tools in a whole
bunch of use categories. Most of us don't even know how
you can use it. And every one of those tools are
(25:04):
actually free to try. And if you find 1 you like, you
know, they're typically about 20bucks a month and play around
with it. Check out that report.
I even have case studies of how different types of companies in
different industries have used them to their advantage.
Let me give you an example of a tool category, and that is
cloning your voice. All right.
(25:26):
So you can actually clone your voice quite well.
There are a number of really good tools for that.
And so how might that be used for good?
Well, I have a friend of mine that does quite a bit of
speaking and and consulting and he was going to have throat
surgery and they said your voiceis going to sound horrible for
about two months. So what he did is he cloned a
(25:49):
copy of his voice so that when he's talking with his garberly
voice, his clear voice comes out.
You see, now that's a positive use.
And that brings me to an important thing I want to share
with all of you. And that is AI can be used to do
horrible, bad things. Absolutely.
Deep fakes and everything else. Yes, it can also be used to do
(26:13):
amazingly wonderful things. I just gave you an example.
I think everybody that's listening to this is, I'm going
to assume you're a good person. Why don't we use AI to do
amazingly wonderful things that people would say, Oh, that's a
great use of that. And then why don't we protect
ourselves from the people that are doing amazingly bad things?
(26:34):
And by the way, how do we protect ourselves?
I would suggest using a zero trust policy.
For example, if if you get a text or a e-mail or phone call
from a bank or for somebody likethat, I already don't trust him.
I want to verify. I want to go to my credit card
(26:55):
number and call that phone number instead, right?
Some of you don't even have a family password yet.
By the way, if you don't, I think you ought to.
Why? Because right now, again, you
can clone a voice, you could geta call from a cousin or from a
grandchild or from a one of yourkids saying I'm in jail, I need
money. It sounds just like them, talks
(27:17):
like them. And you could say what's the
family password? And if they don't know, hang up.
You see, there's some simple things that we can do.
But my point is, yes, it can do bad things.
And we get hung up on that. A lot of us that keeps us from
using it. Let's not do bad things with it.
Let's do the amazing things thatour fellow film makers, our
(27:38):
fellow editors, our fellow chieffinancial officers would say,
oh, that's really good. I like what you did there.
That really helped users, that really helped people.
Let's use it in that way and you'll start seeing that side of
technology can be pretty good. So I have a question is because
(27:58):
you know, you know a lot more things in that direction, but
this part of this AI, is there any regulatory like somebody
that regulates this like or justare we just on these companies
like whatever these companies want to produce or create for
us? Is there anybody?
What a great question. That, that, you know, overseas
(28:20):
them or something. Yeah, it's an excellent
question. Thanks for asking.
Many countries, including the EUand even China and other
countries have put from pretty good regulations around AI to
try to keep it under control. the United States has no
regulations around it. We've decided that that it would
(28:42):
hold innovation back and let's just let people do what they
want. And, and again, I'm trying to
not make a political statement here.
I'm really just saying the way it is.
And, and that is some states have even tried to put some
guidelines down and the federal government has said, no, we
don't even want guidelines, but what we do need is some
guidelines. But here's what I would suggest.
(29:04):
You can't change the world and you can't change our government,
but you can change you and your company and your organization.
You need to have some good guidelines for ethical use of it
in your profession, in your business.
You need to craft them yourself and and make them good, high
level so that there's integrity to it.
(29:27):
Remember, we live in a human world.
There's got to be trust in there.
We've got people can trust us and our use of AII would like
our clients, our customers, our viewers to trust us.
So let's make sure that we take control of that which we can
control and create those guidelines.
(29:47):
And I'll make a prediction. And that is that at some point
the US will have to have some strong guidelines.
Unfortunately, usually when we wait like that, it happens
around a major problem. In other words, it's a crisis.
Something really bad happens, and then, oh, OK, we need some
regulations. But that's being, again, and not
(30:11):
anticipatory. That's being a crisis manager,
but if you're looking at the hard trends, it's getting more
powerful. I want to make sure I've got
some loops and things around that to try to keep it from
getting out of control, right? Right.
Yeah, it's and now for when it comes to because we covered film
(30:33):
pretty much and that's it's pretty understandable.
There's some issues that with you know, like content creation,
like who owns the rights of that?
If let's say for example chat, GPD create something for me or
Gemini. Or right, right.
Then I take it, do do I have therights because I told Chad to be
created for me or because theoretically chat GPD has a
(30:55):
right for me because he created it right?
If you take it like in a term, but I know it's, it might be a
legal sense like a legal question.
Well, actually, it's, it's pretty clear the, the rules are
pretty clear on this. And and that is that you cannot
copyright something that AI has created.
So because a human didn't createit, you can only copyright
(31:16):
something a human created. However, what you can do is use
it to once again, 80% let's giveme some ideas.
Oh, that gave me an idea. I'm going to now create
something much better than what Jack gave me or what AI gave me.
And that you can do. So as a author who has written
(31:36):
the best selling books and and thousands of blogs, what I have
to do is I want all my readers to be able to trust me.
So if I am using chat or some AIfor something, what I'll do is I
will put it offset in italics and I'll say I wanted to see
what chat or AI would say about this.
(31:57):
And I'll say here's what AI had to say.
But then I'll go back to now, here's what I'm saying, because
I want people to be able to trust what they read from me and
what they get from me. And by the way, AI can make
things up. He can even make references up
and people would say, oh, I don't want to use AI.
He can make things up. And my response to that is, I
(32:19):
got news for you. Humans make things up.
Humans lie, you know, So what weneed to do, since we live in a
human world and trust is the keyto all relationships and, and
that is we need to verify and double verify what we're sharing
with people. You need to, if you're getting
(32:40):
it on social media right away, you should not trust it.
If you're getting it from AI andit says, this is a Fast Company
article that this came from because it's giving me the
source. Hey, I could make that up.
I I've seen that. I haven't seen it do that.
I need to go and see, is that really something that Fast
Company did? And if they're quoting
something, where did it come from?
(33:00):
I And you might say, well, that takes a little more time.
Yeah. Or do you want people to stop
trusting you? And once you lose trust, it is
really hard to get back. So again, what I want to do is
elevate trust. So I think it takes a little
more due diligence on our part, but that's again, how we're
adding our humanness to it or making sure that this is
(33:24):
something that's valid, It can be trusted.
I'm putting it out there, I'm sharing it with people and and
they can trust me as a source. Perfect.
Now, since you like your predictions and you're very good
at it, how do you see the next step of this?
Because right now, I mean, AI looks like it's unlimited.
(33:46):
It can go anywhere, right? It can some people say replace
us, some people say make your lives better, as we talked about
it and everything. But where do you think it's
going to go? Is it something that eventually
we're just going to rely on thatAnd they were, we're just going
to become poets and the paintersand stuff like that.
Or because I saw some articles that were saying that there's
(34:06):
going to be an issue, for example, with workers, right?
If you have robots doing work, then who's going to be in the
factories, right? For example?
Is that, is that something that we should rethink the way, for
example, we educate people? Do we do we need more workers
now or do we need more thinkers,right?
Because as you said, I should think and ask AI to make my life
(34:30):
better, right? What?
What do you see? What?
What do you see in the next 10-15 years?
Yeah, well, first of all, you know, if you've got a plumbing
problem in your house, you're not calling AI and and if you've
got a line go down because of and you've got no electricity,
you're going to need a lineman to help get it back put together
(34:51):
again. And and so in other words, if if
you need electrician, you need aplumber, you need a lot of those
kind of roles are good are good human roles, but again,
augmented with AI. How so?
What if you're a plumber? How do they get augmented with
AI? Well, there'll be a little
camera on their hat and there'llbe a little thing in their ear
(35:12):
that's going to the AI that's helping them solve the problem,
helping them to come up with howdo I install this new hot water
heater if I'm a new plumber and so on.
And you might think, well, a robot could do that.
A robot would be way more expensive and way more
problematic than than having a human and not be able to problem
(35:33):
solve. Because if you talk to those
kind of professions, problems come up in real time and they
got a problem solve. They got to be good problem
solvers. And again, that's part of what
humans do best. So what I'm getting at is
there's a lot of blue collar work that won't be replaced.
I just read an article that said, you know, all trucks and
all vehicles are going to be autonomous and I would say no,
(35:58):
that would be wrong. For example, do we want an
autonomous school dress bus for kindergarteners and 1st graders?
No, I think it'd be good to haveadult supervision on that bus.
And if there's an adult in there, maybe I'd like them
behind the wheel as well. What do I want to do with AI
then? I'd want it to be a semi
(36:19):
autonomous school bus that can'thave an accident, but I'd like a
human there. How about a a truck that's going
down the road filled with gasoline with no human on board?
You know, I think I want a humanon board there so they can take
over. And what is Ferrari going to do?
(36:40):
Because back in 2015, Elon Musk made a prediction for this year,
2025, which is just over actually for last year.
And the prediction was by 2025. And no cars will be sold with a
throttle, brake or steering. It'll all be autonomous.
And he made that a 2015 prediction for 2025, by the way,
(37:00):
in 2015. I said he'd be wrong.
I was right. Why?
Well, what is Ferrari and Porsche going to do?
They're going to say, hey, it's got nice seats.
No, frankly, I like to drive. I just don't like to have
accidents. And a lot of people aren't going
to trust going down a highway at70 miles an hour with no way to
(37:22):
control their personal car or any car.
So I think we'll have a lot of semi autonomous vehicles.
We'll also have autonomous vehicles in the right places.
There's a lot of great places tohave autonomous vehicles.
So as a futurist who has been very right about the future, let
me give you all some principles that can help you to be right.
(37:42):
Number one, I want you to be thinking not either the future
is this or that, but rather the future is this and that.
Let me give you an example. Is the future going to be all
electric vehicles or all gas? Well, you're not going to get a
good forecast out of that that'saccurate.
You got to realize that there's going to be electric vehicles,
(38:05):
there's going to be hydrogen vehicles.
Those are already working and there's some great breakthroughs
on that. But there's also going to be
some gas vehicles. The key is we don't need one
fuel for everything. Depends on where you are,
depends on what country you're in.
It's so in other words, it's a both end.
We'll have some autonomous vehicles and some autonomous or
(38:26):
semi autonomous vehicles. So it's both and instead of an
either or future. And by the way, how do I know
what will where we'll have fullyautonomous vehicles?
Where do I know that? And the answer is ask this
question, what's the ideal use of the technology?
(38:47):
For example, I work with drug companies.
I work with a lot of different companies.
And one of the big drug companies, they got a campus
with eight or nine giant buildings filled with people,
and they got a bus that goes from campus to campus around
taking people around their facility.
Well, perfect for autonomous, who needs a bus driver for that?
(39:08):
So there are a lot of good uses.So let's ask ourselves, what's
the best use of it, even in teaching?
Let me give you an example of that.
I made a prediction, oh, over 30years ago, saying that what
we'll be doing is automating education and humanizing it for
the first time in history. And by the way, we're kind of at
(39:31):
that point. So what did I mean by that?
What I said was we're going to automate the parts that aren't
fit for a human to teach, like teach a kid what an adverb is
for. That's, that's rough.
I mean, man, you can get twitch in your cheek trying to teach
that. Teach a kid how to multiply and
divide. Oh, that's tough.
If that instead was taught to the little kids on an
(39:53):
interactive self diagnostic gamelike system, they would learn
those things. So what do I need the human
teacher for? So that if you're going to write
something, I'm going to help youwrite something that another
human would actually want to read.
Or if you're going to use math, I want you to be able to balance
your own personal budget. And maybe keep us from having a
(40:13):
government deficit. You see, it's now.
Let's apply what you've learned.So instead of replacing the
teacher or the creative or all of this, let's augment them.
That's what I'm getting at now. Tell us a little bit about your
future. What?
What are your plans? Because right now you're talking
about future all the time, but what are your plans?
(40:35):
Oh yeah, more. I mean, you have enough books on
7 books I'm trying to create anything else?
Do you have anything for our viewers?
Give them like a little, Oh yeah, I'm happy to hear that.
Well, I'm on a, a mission to getas many people on planet Earth
to become much more anticipatoryand less a reactionary.
Do you learn how to use these hard trends and soft trends to
(40:58):
help them not just see the future better, but shape a
better future for each other? And so I've got, you know, I'll
have a new book coming out next year.
I can't tell you the title of it'cause they don't like us to do
that at a time. I've got, I've just added a
proprietary type of AI to my anticipatory learning systems
(41:19):
that are award winners. And I'm really excited about
that because it's all drawing from my own knowledge base so
that it's not hallucinating and so on.
Spent some time getting that together.
So I'm excited as that goes out into the world and already
getting great, great reviews on that.
And I think I've did an experiment about four or five
(41:40):
years ago where I took a a smalltown out in the middle of
nowhere that had no Internet access and they were a dying
town and applied my principles to it.
And now they're amazingly thriving.
Just this last year they had 19 high tech companies come into
town. They're they not only have
Internet connection, but they'regetting ending a homelessness.
I mean, so now it's like, how can no small town needs to die?
(42:05):
I want to try to apply that to other cities.
And in other words, I've I really want to empower people to
become more anticipatory, less reactive, and to use the new
tools to create a better tomorrow for yourselves and for
(42:25):
others, because they're allowingus to turn the impossible into
the possible. Well, it's an amazing message.
Thanks. SO I don't know if right now
we're we've covered everything. We've covered the future.
We covered the technology, we covered film tech finance, we
covered our our site. We would love to hear from you.
Always when we have an update, we're going to post everything
(42:48):
we're going to put links about from their website and your
work. Anytime you have something just,
you know, to, to us, we'll, we'll try to promote it.
I will surely do that. And again, people can go to
Burris, BURRU s.com and find a link to just about everything
that I'm doing. Follow me on LinkedIn, you know,
Daniel Burris, you can find me there.
(43:09):
And let me give one last thing. I'd like everybody to do.
Can we do that? Let me give you one last thing.
I'd like you all to think about.You're going to spend the rest
of your life in the future. Maybe we got to plan a little
bit. Maybe we got to think about that
a little bit more. So I'd like you all to try one
hour a week. That's doable.
(43:30):
Put it in your calendar as an appointment to yourself.
You're not going to be a crisis manager in this hour.
You're going to be an opportunity manager for
yourself. And in that hour, I'd like you
to ask yourself, what am I certain about?
What are the hard trends that are shaping the future and add a
opportunity for you to each one?What are the soft trends that
(43:50):
might happen and what are the opportunities for me to
influence them in a positive direction?
What are the predictable problems based on those hard
trends that I'm going to have and what is the opportunity to
pre solve them? You'll get a bunch of
opportunities and then I'd like you to pick one and make it
happen and I think you'll find that a good use of your time.
(44:11):
I'll. Definitely do that.
I'll do it for sure. OK.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your
time. Thank you for all your
knowledge. And this was a perfect, a
perfect show right now for all of us because we gained a lot of
knowledge. And I think you help us, our
(44:32):
viewers. And yeah, I, I know you help
people be prepared for the future because that's why you do
pretty much all these years, right?
So. Yep.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
I appreciate it. Thanks for joining us on Film,
Tech and Finance. Don't forget to follow and
subscribe for more insights and updates.
Welcome to Film Tech and Finance, where we explore the
cutting edge technology and financial strategies driving the
film industry today. In a world of constant
disruption, most leaders are busy reacting to change.
But what if you could see the disruptions coming before they
happen? What if you could turn
uncertainty into the greatest competitive advantage?
Our guest today is a master of foresights.
(00:22):
He is a global technology futurist.
Futurist, a strategic advisor tothe world's most influenced CE
OS and the New York Times bestseller.
Author of Flash Foresight and Amazon #1 Bestseller Anticipated
Organization. He has accurately predicted the
technological shifts that have shaped the modern world, and
(00:43):
today he's here to show us how to spot the hard trends that
will define their future. Please welcome to the show
Daniel Burroughs. All right.
Thank you so much for having me on.
Thank you for being here. So you you pretty much just tell
us a little bit what you do. I mean, it's just amazing.
I just saw some of your. Videos and saw some of your.
(01:04):
Work and, and actually it's, it's funny because I went back
to some old videos and some things you said then actually
happened now to give you an example, there was a video that
you had up there that was uploaded 12 years ago.
And you were talking about 3G atthat time.
And you were saying that, hey, the feature is 4G and you know
(01:25):
5G will come for sure. And now we are at 5G, right?
And then we're talking about 6G and stuff like that.
So you're doing something right.Amazing.
And so just tell us a little bitabout you and what you do.
Yeah, well, it's amazing how predictable the future is.
If you go back to one of my really earlier books, because
I've written 7 Techno Trends came out in 1993, there's a
(01:48):
little section, remember that's 93.
There's a little section in there that says Blockbuster is
busted. And if you read under that,
you'll get a description of whatNetflix became.
You'll also see me talking aboutwhat became the iPhone back in
93 and many other things. So instead of just today giving
you some trends and saying good luck, I'm really a teacher at
(02:12):
heart. What I want to do is empower all
of you to be much better at seeing the future accurately
because as you started to say inthe beginning, we live in an
uncertain world. I mean, there's more uncertainty
now than ever before. What's going to happen with home
prices? What's going to act been with
the stock? So let's say we're going to have
a another war somewhere. There's so much uncertainty.
(02:34):
But here's the problem with uncertainty and that is it does
not give you the confidence to make a bold move.
So what if you had high levels of certainty?
Well, when you have that, you have the confidence to make a
bold move. So to give you a just a few
minutes, maybe about a minute ofmy background coming up to help
you all with this. I started out teaching biology
(02:57):
and physics, so I'm really a teacher at heart.
I had an idea for an airplane design and I built it test fluid
and ended up with 37 national occasions in the first year.
I had an idea for another business, another.
Within two years, I had four different businesses all going
in different fields, all doing extremely well, all national
leaders in the first year, profitable in the first year.
(03:18):
But I miss teaching. So I sold them and created my
research company that I run today where I am empowering all
of you through teaching to understand how to see the future
better. And if you would like, I'll give
you just a little bit of a how to do that and then let you ask
me some questions. Would that be OK?
(03:39):
Yes. Definitely, that would be
perfect. OK, So there's no shortage of
trends, especially around this time of the year.
But which ones will happen, which ones won't?
And when I've come up with a solution for that, and it's
being used by Fortune 10, Fortune 50, Fortune 500
companies. I'm an advisor to the Pentagon
(04:00):
and the Joint Chiefs on this. And by the way, I'm going to
help you all with it. Right now, all trends fit into
one or two columns. They're either a hard trend
based on a future fact that willhappen.
Now the key here is it can't be changed.
That's the litmus test. If it can be changed, it's not a
hard trend. As you mentioned in a earlier
(04:20):
show long ago, I said you're at 3G wireless.
And I said, is that it? No, we're going to have 4G
followed by 5G. Today we're at 5G.
Is that it? Now we're going to have 6G,
followed by 7, followed by 8. A lot of people don't like AI
and we just turn it off. And the answer is no.
It's a hard trend growing exponentially, and it's more
(04:43):
than just technology. To give us some hard trends.
Let me give you another quick example.
In the United States, there are 10,000 people turning 70 years
old every day. Whoa.
Are they going to get chronologically younger?
No, hard trend. They're going to get older and
actually we could predict a lot of problems that will happen
(05:05):
because of that and pre solve those problems, or we could let
them happen. The beauty of a hard trend
future fact is that it lets you see disruption before it
disrupts, letting you turn disruption into a choice because
you're either going to be the disrupted or the disruptor.
There's no middle. You're either going to be more
(05:26):
relevant or less relevant. There is no middle.
But I want to give you a choice.And again, I'll show you more
how this works. And as I talk here for a minute,
the other thing that hard trendsgives you is it lets you see
problems before you have them soyou can pre solve them and move
forward faster. Let's face it, all of us at one
time have said, I knew that would happen.
(05:48):
And I would say, well, then why did you let it?
And the reason you let it happenis you didn't trust yourself
fully. But what if you could?
What if you absolutely knew thatproblem would happen?
You know what, you'd pre solve it.
Well, I have that problem in the1st place.
You want to move forward faster.There's a way to do that now.
I'll give you some more examplesin a minute.
Let me tell you about the other kind of trends.
(06:10):
Remember I said there's hard trends, there's soft trends.
Soft trends are based on assumptions that may or may not
happen, and a future fact that will happen is different than
something that may or may not happen.
Especially if you're an innovator and you're trying to
create something new, basing it on something we know will happen
is has a lot less risk than something that might happen.
(06:32):
And I love soft trends and hard trends.
What do I love about a soft trend?
If you don't like it, you can change it.
What do I love about a hard trend that lets you see the
future before it happens? So I'm just starting to teach
this to you all. Let me give you all a early
test. All right?
(06:53):
In the United States, healthcarecosts have been going up, up, up
for decades, decades. By the way, that's called a
trend going higher, higher, moreexpensive, more expensive.
Now, I'd like you to think in your mind, since I can't hear
from all of you right now, I'm going to give you a question.
I'd like you to answer it in your mind, and then I'll tell
you the answer. See how good you are already.
(07:14):
Is the rising cost of healthcarein the United States a hard
trend or a soft trend? Think about that for a second.
Most people would say it's a hard trend because it's been
going on for so long. But actually it's a complete
soft trend. If we think it's a hard trend,
we don't try to stop it. We just know it'll keep going
up, up, up, up, up forever. And then all of our strategies
(07:37):
are, how do we pay for the mess the baby boomers will create as
they get into their 80s and 90s and beyond?
But if we realize, Oh no, it's asoft trend, if you don't like
it, you can change it. And how would we do that?
Well, let me give you a quick example.
Right now in the United States, which is a different healthcare
system than other countries, youdon't know that a aspirin cost
(07:59):
$25.00 in a hospital, by the way, it does.
But you don't know that. You don't know what it cost.
You don't know that that artificial knee that you're
getting put in because you played so much tennis when you
were younger. The same knee, same price, same
size. It's not the same price.
It can vary in price by 100%, but we don't know the price of
anything. That's why costs keep going up.
(08:21):
It's pretty nice when we can give you things you don't know
what they cost. But if we put all of that on a
blockchain, which is extremely secure, has complete visibility,
can't be changed and altered, wewould know the cost of all this
stuff. And believe me, prices would
come down because those people that are charging $25 for an
(08:41):
aspirant aren't going to get anybody going in there.
There already is a blockchain, by the way, for healthcare.
They got 100 million in their first round of funding.
I'm just giving you one simple, quick way that we could lower
the cost of healthcare and I could give you more and more.
So knowing that something is soft is good.
(09:03):
Let me give you another one. Some industries right now are
seeing sales decline. Sales are going down.
Maybe it's because of tariffs orsomething else.
And their prediction for 2026 issales will continue to go down.
The industry's going down. That's soft.
That's a soft trend. Now you as a business owner or
(09:26):
manager or executive, you may not be able to change that soft
trend for everybody else, but you can change it for you
depending on how you what you do.
I like to take advantage of softtrends because again, if you
don't like them, you can change them.
There's advantages in everything.
So hard trend examples. I'll give you a couple more of
(09:48):
those and then I'll let you ask me some questions because I'm
laying out a foundation. And so a few more hard trends.
We talked about technology. So we know that things are
getting lighter and smaller. They're getting more powerful.
We're adding intelligence to them.
And that is going to continue toaccelerate when it comes to,
(10:13):
let's say, finance, which is an area that I know we cover quite
a bit in the podcast. If we look at the world of
accounting and auditing, I pretty clear to see that we're
going to have real time accounting and real time
auditing. So if you're a auditor or an
accountant, you might think, oh,I'm going to be out of business.
(10:35):
But if you start thinking a little more strategically, you
might realize, no, it means thatactually we're going to make a
lot more money because we're going to become anticipatory
problem solvers and trusted advisors.
You see, accountants and auditors have high trust.
By the way, if you don't trust your accountant, you better get
(10:56):
another one. And trust is core to every human
relationship. And we live in a technology
world. But let's remember we live in a
human world that's based on trust.
They already have trust. They need to leverage it in new
ways. So accounting and finance or
tends to look historically verifying the past.
(11:18):
But now what will we do going forward since that will be done
in real time And that is we're going to take those hindsights
and turn them into insights and foresights and we're going to
not be reactionary. And our consulting, we're going
to be much more anticipatory. And frankly, that's one of the
(11:38):
big messages I want to get across to anyone that's a
filmmaker in here, anybody that's in that area, anybody
that's in finance, anybody that is in any time of creative
process or service organization right now to deal with all this
change. We are agile.
We're trying to be as agile as we possibly can.
I know you've all heard that. And remember, agility comes from
(12:00):
sports. Reacting as quickly as you can
do a problem after it occurs, reacting as quickly as you can
to a disruption after it disrupts.
The more agile the better. Some people call that.
Let's pivot because things change.
But that's playing defense, that's reactionary and I'm glad
you're doing it. But what I'm bringing you today
(12:22):
with hard and soft trends is howto be anticipatory, how to play
offense, how to see the future before it arrives and take
action on it, How to see problems before they exist and
pre solve them so you could moveforward faster.
So what I am wanting all of us to do, regardless of whether
you're in film, whether you're in finance, whatever industry
(12:43):
you're in, is let's be less crisis managers, less
reactionary even no matter how agile you are.
Let's be more anticipatory, taking advantage of the amazing
predictability that technology and demographics and other hard
trends give us. All right, I've been talking
(13:03):
away. I know you've got some good
questions. Why don't you throw some at me
and we'll see how we can help everybody out there.
You know that's. Just like to listen to you,
MESI, because it's just nice andit's amazing.
Yeah, because if we all think like that and prepare ourselves,
yes, we're ready for everything,right?
So for me, some questions are first of all, let's talk a
(13:25):
little bit about film, right? Most of our people, most of our
viewers here are have to do withfilm, our producers, directors,
actors. So one question I would like to
ask is, first of all, because I,I just typically just said, and
I just want to create a questionfor AI.
There's a big issue right now inthe film industry, right?
(13:45):
A lot of people are scared. A lot of people are afraid.
There was a bunch of strikes that happened that, that, that
had issue that they were dealingwith that thing.
So should they be afraid of AI or you kind of covered it a
little bit. But with film, like for example
editing, to give you an example,AI is very advanced.
(14:06):
I like it, even though I startedas an editor and at first I
thought, OK, if this gets even better, we're going to lose our
jobs. But the way I saw it is I can
make more and better work so I can take advantage of the tool.
What is your perspective? What do you think right now?
I mean, should people be afraid or should they just embrace it
and make their lives better? Well, I'm glad you asked that
(14:27):
and long ago, because we have many chapters in our book of
life. All of us do.
I actually made four films. So I did.
I was a director, producer and did editing as well on those.
They were award winners, by the way, and even got one of them
got on national television. So in other words, I have a
little experience in that. And when it comes to editing, we
(14:48):
could use AI to help us a lot, but wow, is that a creative
task. Editing can make or break a
film. Editing can make the emotion go
higher or lower. Editing can control the
storyline. It's not just shooting the film,
by the way. That's important too as a
filmmaker, getting the lighting right, getting everything right.
(15:09):
It's not that just the actors doing a great job.
But once again, there are many different elements to making a
film unbelievably fantastic, andAI can help us augment our
thinking. But if we let it replace it, the
quality of the films coming out,which would be a lot of them,
(15:29):
would be very low, and you'll have a lot less blockbusters.
You see, we live in an increasingly technological
world, but let's remember something.
We live in a human world and in a human world, it's all about
relationships and relationships that are good are based on
trust. And I was just watching a film
(15:49):
last night and I could tell, youknow, most of it was generated
backgrounds and things. And by the way, it looked really
good. But you could still tell, you
know, this is all fake and and it was a a good story, but it
was pretty obvious. Now, if we look to the future,
that stuff that looks fake will get better.
(16:11):
But there was what was the storygrabbing me emotionally?
Was it taking me to a new place?So I forgot about the room I was
in, and I forgot about who I wassitting next to, and I was
transported to another place. Because that's what filmmaking
is all about, having you. As a matter of fact, I've given
thousands of keynote speeches around the world to audiences as
(16:34):
large as 20,000. And as a speaker on a stage, I
can tell you right now I need toimmediately transport you out of
the room, forgetting about the room, forgetting about sitting
who you're next to, forgetting about the thousands of people
you might be in the room with. It's all, it's all storytelling,
isn't it? Yes, yes.
So as a matter of fact, when it comes to story, let me just give
(16:57):
you something I want you to think about.
He who has the best story wins no matter what it is.
So let me give you how I want you to think about this as a
film maker. And by the way, this is true for
finance or any, anything else. Let me tell you how to think
about this, and that is it's going to augment our thinking
and let me help you see the future by giving you a really
(17:20):
good example. And that is if you know someone
that has cancer, heaven forbid, but let's say you know someone
with cancer, you'll probably need an oncologist.
That's the doctor that treats someone that has cancer.
And right now, AI knows more about oncology than any living
doctor. It knows every chemotherapy
(17:40):
that's ever been given globally and the results.
It knows all genetic testing. It knows all the Mris.
It sucked all that stuff in there.
No human can know all of that and keep it in their head and
recall it like that. So if you know someone that has
cancer, I'm going to give you 3 choices.
You get to pick one choice #1A really good oncologist choice #2
(18:04):
just AI choice #3 a really good oncologist that has access to
AI. That's the future of filmmaking.
That's the future of lighting. That's the future of editing.
That's the future of accounting.That's the future for all of us
is it's augmenting because AI can do things that humans can't
(18:25):
do good. It'll make us all better, but we
can do things as humans that AI can't even think about.
By the way, establishing a new relationship that has high
trust, AI is going to have a lotof trouble with that.
And I can give you a list of other things.
So what AI is helping us do is get to, instead of starting at
(18:47):
0, meaning if you're writing a script or beginning the editing
process or whatever it is, or you're in finance in some way,
instead of starting from zero, you can actually use AI with a
good prompt to help you get up to about 80% pretty quick.
I would call it. It's a good first draft
(19:08):
assistant. It can give you some ideas, but
you know, if you're a creative thinker and we're talking about
creatives, if you're in the filmworld, what does it do?
Well, it helps you get better ideas.
So if you just do it, AI says you're going to create what the
new Webster dictionaries, numberone word for this coming year.
(19:33):
They just announced it's called slop.
And slop is what AI is creating a lot of AI slop out there.
Well, that's because people are taking that 80% and putting it
out. Well, no wonder it's all slop
when we add our humanness to it,when we take it to the higher
level. Whoa.
And a lot of companies are making mistakes right now.
(19:54):
I know you've read about where they're laying a lot of people
off, especially in coding and creating code at the tech
companies. By the way, most of us don't
realize a lot of them are being hired back, by the way.
But here's the mistake they're made and other companies are
making too, when they're laying people off.
A lot of, almost all of us have repetitive tasks that we do.
(20:16):
It's the lower level tasks that are repetitive.
They're boring. And, and they suck away a lot of
our time, keeping us from higherlevel thinking and higher level
work. And in the past, if you wanted
to automate some of those tasks that are holding you back,
taking up a lot of your time, you could have gone to the IT
(20:37):
department and said, I want you to automate the stuff that's
slowing me up. They would have said, sorry,
we're busy. But today there are AI tools.
Some of them are free, some of them are 20 bucks a month that
can help you automate low level tasks, not replacing you, but
freeing you to do higher level functions.
(20:58):
Actually, I think all of us are being held back.
I mean, all of us are being heldback by all the busy work we got
to do before we can get to the really good stuff.
So we have a productivity revolution that's happening.
That's not really if you're smart about replacing people,
it's about magnifying them. I want to magnify your
(21:21):
capabilities. I want you to discover the
hidden you because there's a lotof our capabilities that are
hidden because we're too busy doing all this lower level
stuff. I would like to even think of it
as the undiscovered self. There's so much of us, every one
of you I'm talking to where you've got undiscovered talents,
(21:42):
undiscovered gifts because you've been bogged down.
If we let AI kind of free the bog so that we can do the higher
level work, I think you'll discover a lot more about
yourself and a lot more capabilities and maybe even some
extra talents and gifts. You didn't even know your head
because you were so busy doing busy work that I think it's
(22:06):
actually can be freeing. So from your experience, do you
see people not taking advantage of it though because either
they're afraid or they don't have the knowledge or or or do
you? I mean I see it in everyday.
Yeah, but. I mean.
Sure, there are. There are some blocks and the
biggest block is not technology,it's mindset.
(22:29):
It's our how we think about it. And, and this can be true of a
business or what we do. And there is protecting and
defending the way it's always been.
And I ride AI, ride a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.
And one of the things I like about it is it does not have a
reverse. In other words, you can't go
(22:50):
backwards. You can't say, let's go back to
the way it was. You can go forwards.
But instead of letting other people determine what forward
means, I want you to unleash your creativity and humanness
and creativity to create a better future that AI could not
comprehend. Because again, it's good at some
(23:12):
things, but it's not good at at what US humans do best.
So coming back to it, if you have a new tool and you apply an
old mindset to it, you'll not like the results.
Often they fail. How many times have we gotten a
new, let's say, a new version ofOffice?
A lot of us use Microsoft products and we're giving you a
(23:34):
whole new system. What the most people say, how do
I get the classic view, dumbing it down to instead of take
advantage of the new features? What I do when I get something
new is what are the features that are allowing me to do
things that I couldn't do beforethat I would really want to do.
See, I'm looking for competitiveadvantage.
(23:56):
I'm looking for advantage, that replacement of me advantage to
help me do a better job. So here's what I would suggest
for those of you that are are fighting it and that is
experiment with it. If you're new to it, I would say
get a free ChatGPT. You can go.
You don't even have to pay the $20.00 a month and just start
(24:18):
experimenting with it a little bit and seeing what it can do
and also what it can't do. That would be a way to
experiment. Start playing with it.
I have a report that I put together that is free.
Matter of fact, you can get thatreport at aistrategyreport.com.
And what I've done is I have personally used over 1500 AI
(24:41):
tools. I don't think you'll have the
time to do that. Well, I took the time to do that
for you and what I've done. And by the way, there's a lot of
worthless tools in there, but I found some good ones.
So what I have is in this reportis the top five tools in a whole
bunch of use categories. Most of us don't even know how
you can use it. And every one of those tools are
(25:04):
actually free to try. And if you find 1 you like, you
know, they're typically about 20bucks a month and play around
with it. Check out that report.
I even have case studies of how different types of companies in
different industries have used them to their advantage.
Let me give you an example of a tool category, and that is
cloning your voice. All right.
(25:26):
So you can actually clone your voice quite well.
There are a number of really good tools for that.
And so how might that be used for good?
Well, I have a friend of mine that does quite a bit of
speaking and and consulting and he was going to have throat
surgery and they said your voiceis going to sound horrible for
about two months. So what he did is he cloned a
(25:49):
copy of his voice so that when he's talking with his garberly
voice, his clear voice comes out.
You see, now that's a positive use.
And that brings me to an important thing I want to share
with all of you. And that is AI can be used to do
horrible, bad things. Absolutely.
Deep fakes and everything else. Yes, it can also be used to do
(26:13):
amazingly wonderful things. I just gave you an example.
I think everybody that's listening to this is, I'm going
to assume you're a good person. Why don't we use AI to do
amazingly wonderful things that people would say, Oh, that's a
great use of that. And then why don't we protect
ourselves from the people that are doing amazingly bad things?
(26:34):
And by the way, how do we protect ourselves?
I would suggest using a zero trust policy.
For example, if if you get a text or a e-mail or phone call
from a bank or for somebody likethat, I already don't trust him.
I want to verify. I want to go to my credit card
(26:55):
number and call that phone number instead, right?
Some of you don't even have a family password yet.
By the way, if you don't, I think you ought to.
Why? Because right now, again, you
can clone a voice, you could geta call from a cousin or from a
grandchild or from a one of yourkids saying I'm in jail, I need
money. It sounds just like them, talks
(27:17):
like them. And you could say what's the
family password? And if they don't know, hang up.
You see, there's some simple things that we can do.
But my point is, yes, it can do bad things.
And we get hung up on that. A lot of us that keeps us from
using it. Let's not do bad things with it.
Let's do the amazing things thatour fellow film makers, our
(27:38):
fellow editors, our fellow chieffinancial officers would say,
oh, that's really good. I like what you did there.
That really helped users, that really helped people.
Let's use it in that way and you'll start seeing that side of
technology can be pretty good. So I have a question is because
(27:58):
you know, you know a lot more things in that direction, but
this part of this AI, is there any regulatory like somebody
that regulates this like or justare we just on these companies
like whatever these companies want to produce or create for
us? Is there anybody?
What a great question. That, that, you know, overseas
(28:20):
them or something. Yeah, it's an excellent
question. Thanks for asking.
Many countries, including the EUand even China and other
countries have put from pretty good regulations around AI to
try to keep it under control. the United States has no
regulations around it. We've decided that that it would
(28:42):
hold innovation back and let's just let people do what they
want. And, and again, I'm trying to
not make a political statement here.
I'm really just saying the way it is.
And, and that is some states have even tried to put some
guidelines down and the federal government has said, no, we
don't even want guidelines, but what we do need is some
guidelines. But here's what I would suggest.
(29:04):
You can't change the world and you can't change our government,
but you can change you and your company and your organization.
You need to have some good guidelines for ethical use of it
in your profession, in your business.
You need to craft them yourself and and make them good, high
level so that there's integrity to it.
(29:27):
Remember, we live in a human world.
There's got to be trust in there.
We've got people can trust us and our use of AII would like
our clients, our customers, our viewers to trust us.
So let's make sure that we take control of that which we can
control and create those guidelines.
(29:47):
And I'll make a prediction. And that is that at some point
the US will have to have some strong guidelines.
Unfortunately, usually when we wait like that, it happens
around a major problem. In other words, it's a crisis.
Something really bad happens, and then, oh, OK, we need some
regulations. But that's being, again, and not
(30:11):
anticipatory. That's being a crisis manager,
but if you're looking at the hard trends, it's getting more
powerful. I want to make sure I've got
some loops and things around that to try to keep it from
getting out of control, right? Right.
Yeah, it's and now for when it comes to because we covered film
(30:33):
pretty much and that's it's pretty understandable.
There's some issues that with you know, like content creation,
like who owns the rights of that?
If let's say for example chat, GPD create something for me or
Gemini. Or right, right.
Then I take it, do do I have therights because I told Chad to be
created for me or because theoretically chat GPD has a
(30:55):
right for me because he created it right?
If you take it like in a term, but I know it's, it might be a
legal sense like a legal question.
Well, actually, it's, it's pretty clear the, the rules are
pretty clear on this. And and that is that you cannot
copyright something that AI has created.
So because a human didn't createit, you can only copyright
(31:16):
something a human created. However, what you can do is use
it to once again, 80% let's giveme some ideas.
Oh, that gave me an idea. I'm going to now create
something much better than what Jack gave me or what AI gave me.
And that you can do. So as a author who has written
(31:36):
the best selling books and and thousands of blogs, what I have
to do is I want all my readers to be able to trust me.
So if I am using chat or some AIfor something, what I'll do is I
will put it offset in italics and I'll say I wanted to see
what chat or AI would say about this.
(31:57):
And I'll say here's what AI had to say.
But then I'll go back to now, here's what I'm saying, because
I want people to be able to trust what they read from me and
what they get from me. And by the way, AI can make
things up. He can even make references up
and people would say, oh, I don't want to use AI.
He can make things up. And my response to that is, I
(32:19):
got news for you. Humans make things up.
Humans lie, you know, So what weneed to do, since we live in a
human world and trust is the keyto all relationships and, and
that is we need to verify and double verify what we're sharing
with people. You need to, if you're getting
(32:40):
it on social media right away, you should not trust it.
If you're getting it from AI andit says, this is a Fast Company
article that this came from because it's giving me the
source. Hey, I could make that up.
I I've seen that. I haven't seen it do that.
I need to go and see, is that really something that Fast
Company did? And if they're quoting
something, where did it come from?
(33:00):
I And you might say, well, that takes a little more time.
Yeah. Or do you want people to stop
trusting you? And once you lose trust, it is
really hard to get back. So again, what I want to do is
elevate trust. So I think it takes a little
more due diligence on our part, but that's again, how we're
adding our humanness to it or making sure that this is
(33:24):
something that's valid, It can be trusted.
I'm putting it out there, I'm sharing it with people and and
they can trust me as a source. Perfect.
Now, since you like your predictions and you're very good
at it, how do you see the next step of this?
Because right now, I mean, AI looks like it's unlimited.
(33:46):
It can go anywhere, right? It can some people say replace
us, some people say make your lives better, as we talked about
it and everything. But where do you think it's
going to go? Is it something that eventually
we're just going to rely on thatAnd they were, we're just going
to become poets and the paintersand stuff like that.
Or because I saw some articles that were saying that there's
(34:06):
going to be an issue, for example, with workers, right?
If you have robots doing work, then who's going to be in the
factories, right? For example?
Is that, is that something that we should rethink the way, for
example, we educate people? Do we do we need more workers
now or do we need more thinkers,right?
Because as you said, I should think and ask AI to make my life
(34:30):
better, right? What?
What do you see? What?
What do you see in the next 10-15 years?
Yeah, well, first of all, you know, if you've got a plumbing
problem in your house, you're not calling AI and and if you've
got a line go down because of and you've got no electricity,
you're going to need a lineman to help get it back put together
(34:51):
again. And and so in other words, if if
you need electrician, you need aplumber, you need a lot of those
kind of roles are good are good human roles, but again,
augmented with AI. How so?
What if you're a plumber? How do they get augmented with
AI? Well, there'll be a little
camera on their hat and there'llbe a little thing in their ear
(35:12):
that's going to the AI that's helping them solve the problem,
helping them to come up with howdo I install this new hot water
heater if I'm a new plumber and so on.
And you might think, well, a robot could do that.
A robot would be way more expensive and way more
problematic than than having a human and not be able to problem
(35:33):
solve. Because if you talk to those
kind of professions, problems come up in real time and they
got a problem solve. They got to be good problem
solvers. And again, that's part of what
humans do best. So what I'm getting at is
there's a lot of blue collar work that won't be replaced.
I just read an article that said, you know, all trucks and
all vehicles are going to be autonomous and I would say no,
(35:58):
that would be wrong. For example, do we want an
autonomous school dress bus for kindergarteners and 1st graders?
No, I think it'd be good to haveadult supervision on that bus.
And if there's an adult in there, maybe I'd like them
behind the wheel as well. What do I want to do with AI
then? I'd want it to be a semi
(36:19):
autonomous school bus that can'thave an accident, but I'd like a
human there. How about a a truck that's going
down the road filled with gasoline with no human on board?
You know, I think I want a humanon board there so they can take
over. And what is Ferrari going to do?
(36:40):
Because back in 2015, Elon Musk made a prediction for this year,
2025, which is just over actually for last year.
And the prediction was by 2025. And no cars will be sold with a
throttle, brake or steering. It'll all be autonomous.
And he made that a 2015 prediction for 2025, by the way,
(37:00):
in 2015. I said he'd be wrong.
I was right. Why?
Well, what is Ferrari and Porsche going to do?
They're going to say, hey, it's got nice seats.
No, frankly, I like to drive. I just don't like to have
accidents. And a lot of people aren't going
to trust going down a highway at70 miles an hour with no way to
(37:22):
control their personal car or any car.
So I think we'll have a lot of semi autonomous vehicles.
We'll also have autonomous vehicles in the right places.
There's a lot of great places tohave autonomous vehicles.
So as a futurist who has been very right about the future, let
me give you all some principles that can help you to be right.
(37:42):
Number one, I want you to be thinking not either the future
is this or that, but rather the future is this and that.
Let me give you an example. Is the future going to be all
electric vehicles or all gas? Well, you're not going to get a
good forecast out of that that'saccurate.
You got to realize that there's going to be electric vehicles,
(38:05):
there's going to be hydrogen vehicles.
Those are already working and there's some great breakthroughs
on that. But there's also going to be
some gas vehicles. The key is we don't need one
fuel for everything. Depends on where you are,
depends on what country you're in.
It's so in other words, it's a both end.
We'll have some autonomous vehicles and some autonomous or
(38:26):
semi autonomous vehicles. So it's both and instead of an
either or future. And by the way, how do I know
what will where we'll have fullyautonomous vehicles?
Where do I know that? And the answer is ask this
question, what's the ideal use of the technology?
(38:47):
For example, I work with drug companies.
I work with a lot of different companies.
And one of the big drug companies, they got a campus
with eight or nine giant buildings filled with people,
and they got a bus that goes from campus to campus around
taking people around their facility.
Well, perfect for autonomous, who needs a bus driver for that?
(39:08):
So there are a lot of good uses.So let's ask ourselves, what's
the best use of it, even in teaching?
Let me give you an example of that.
I made a prediction, oh, over 30years ago, saying that what
we'll be doing is automating education and humanizing it for
the first time in history. And by the way, we're kind of at
(39:31):
that point. So what did I mean by that?
What I said was we're going to automate the parts that aren't
fit for a human to teach, like teach a kid what an adverb is
for. That's, that's rough.
I mean, man, you can get twitch in your cheek trying to teach
that. Teach a kid how to multiply and
divide. Oh, that's tough.
If that instead was taught to the little kids on an
(39:53):
interactive self diagnostic gamelike system, they would learn
those things. So what do I need the human
teacher for? So that if you're going to write
something, I'm going to help youwrite something that another
human would actually want to read.
Or if you're going to use math, I want you to be able to balance
your own personal budget. And maybe keep us from having a
(40:13):
government deficit. You see, it's now.
Let's apply what you've learned.So instead of replacing the
teacher or the creative or all of this, let's augment them.
That's what I'm getting at now. Tell us a little bit about your
future. What?
What are your plans? Because right now you're talking
about future all the time, but what are your plans?
(40:35):
Oh yeah, more. I mean, you have enough books on
7 books I'm trying to create anything else?
Do you have anything for our viewers?
Give them like a little, Oh yeah, I'm happy to hear that.
Well, I'm on a, a mission to getas many people on planet Earth
to become much more anticipatoryand less a reactionary.
Do you learn how to use these hard trends and soft trends to
(40:58):
help them not just see the future better, but shape a
better future for each other? And so I've got, you know, I'll
have a new book coming out next year.
I can't tell you the title of it'cause they don't like us to do
that at a time. I've got, I've just added a
proprietary type of AI to my anticipatory learning systems
(41:19):
that are award winners. And I'm really excited about
that because it's all drawing from my own knowledge base so
that it's not hallucinating and so on.
Spent some time getting that together.
So I'm excited as that goes out into the world and already
getting great, great reviews on that.
And I think I've did an experiment about four or five
(41:40):
years ago where I took a a smalltown out in the middle of
nowhere that had no Internet access and they were a dying
town and applied my principles to it.
And now they're amazingly thriving.
Just this last year they had 19 high tech companies come into
town. They're they not only have
Internet connection, but they'regetting ending a homelessness.
I mean, so now it's like, how can no small town needs to die?
(42:05):
I want to try to apply that to other cities.
And in other words, I've I really want to empower people to
become more anticipatory, less reactive, and to use the new
tools to create a better tomorrow for yourselves and for
(42:25):
others, because they're allowingus to turn the impossible into
the possible. Well, it's an amazing message.
Thanks. SO I don't know if right now
we're we've covered everything. We've covered the future.
We covered the technology, we covered film tech finance, we
covered our our site. We would love to hear from you.
Always when we have an update, we're going to post everything
(42:48):
we're going to put links about from their website and your
work. Anytime you have something just,
you know, to, to us, we'll, we'll try to promote it.
I will surely do that. And again, people can go to
Burris, BURRU s.com and find a link to just about everything
that I'm doing. Follow me on LinkedIn, you know,
Daniel Burris, you can find me there.
(43:09):
And let me give one last thing. I'd like everybody to do.
Can we do that? Let me give you one last thing.
I'd like you all to think about.You're going to spend the rest
of your life in the future. Maybe we got to plan a little
bit. Maybe we got to think about that
a little bit more. So I'd like you all to try one
hour a week. That's doable.
(43:30):
Put it in your calendar as an appointment to yourself.
You're not going to be a crisis manager in this hour.
You're going to be an opportunity manager for
yourself. And in that hour, I'd like you
to ask yourself, what am I certain about?
What are the hard trends that are shaping the future and add a
opportunity for you to each one?What are the soft trends that
(43:50):
might happen and what are the opportunities for me to
influence them in a positive direction?
What are the predictable problems based on those hard
trends that I'm going to have and what is the opportunity to
pre solve them? You'll get a bunch of
opportunities and then I'd like you to pick one and make it
happen and I think you'll find that a good use of your time.
(44:11):
I'll. Definitely do that.
I'll do it for sure. OK.
Thank you. Thank you very much for your
time. Thank you for all your
knowledge. And this was a perfect, a
perfect show right now for all of us because we gained a lot of
knowledge. And I think you help us, our
(44:32):
viewers. And yeah, I, I know you help
people be prepared for the future because that's why you do
pretty much all these years, right?
So. Yep.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much.
I appreciate it. Thanks for joining us on Film,
Tech and Finance. Don't forget to follow and
subscribe for more insights and updates.
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