March 18, 2024 • 50 mins
In this enlightening episode of the Kronos Fusion Energy Podcast, we sit down with Jon Greenwood, a trailblazer in the technology industry and the visionary CTO at Kronos Fusion Energy. Discover Jon's unique journey from artist and musician to leading the charge in fusion technology development. He shares his insights on blending creativity with technology, the evolution of software development, and the future of clean energy.
Delve into Jon's transformative contributions to Kronos Fusion Energy and his perspective on driving innovation in fusion energy for a sustainable future. Tune in to be inspired by Jon's story of passion, creativity, and relentless pursuit of innovation.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of technology with John Greenwood, a
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luminary in the tech industry and the Chief Technology Officer at Kronos Fusion Energy.
With over two decades of experience, John's career is a testament to innovation and creativity,
seamlessly blending IT, web, mobile and software application development.
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His career is a rich tapestry, woven with diverse experiences across sectors like consumer
electronics, entertainment, graphics and many more, contributing to companies and working
alongside notable names like Disney, IBM and a few other musicians currently in your playlist.
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Known for his dynamic approach and versatile skill set, John has been instrumental in spearheading,
digital transformations, enhancing data analytics and pioneering new product designs and development.
His extensive background encompasses innovation, solution and service development, digital
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transformation and much more.
At Kronos Fusion Energy, John's visionary leadership and deep technological expertise
are driving the development of the smart fusion energy generator, steering our company towards
realizing a sustainable and clean future.
(01:46):
His approach is not just about advancing technology, but about creating a positive impact on the
world.
It's personal too.
I must know John was kind enough to give me a job at Live Nation Entertainment over a
decade ago.
Our team at Live Nation was an overarching team of superstars and John was our leader.
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We were charged with designing, building and launching complex, multifaceted technology
that streamlined hundreds, if not tens of thousands of internal and external business
processes.
I have always known John to be a great leader, an exceptional technologist, an avid environmentalist
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and an all-around great human.
And so when Kronos needed a CTO to build the first ever fusion energy ERP system, I knew
John was our wild card that could make near impossible cutting edge technology a reality.
It's not just his professional achievements that set John apart.
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His passion for music, art and innovation continues to drive him towards exploring and
integrating new technologies in unique ways.
Join us as we explore John Greenwood's fascinating journey, his insights on the future of technology
and his relentless pursuit of innovation across various sectors.
(03:24):
Here's John.
You are like a heavy hitter in the technology industry.
What got you interested?
What got you interested in what you do?
So I suppose that I was originally following in my father's footsteps.
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He was an artist and a musician by trade.
And that's what I wanted to do.
And I was a musician, pretty successful musician.
We were able to open for some big bands, go on tour.
But I got an opportunity to join a company called Micrographics.
Micrographics had written the world's first vector based drawing program for the IBM computer.
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And I joined them a few years later in 86 and was able to work on a program called InnoVision,
which was a CAD program, a drawing program.
And we launched it before Windows 1.0 and we became the first commercially available
Windows application ever.
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And so I was very interested in kind of incorporating the art side of my brain with this business.
And we went on to develop Windows Draw and Windows Graph.
We went on to go public.
During my time there, I did start there as an artist.
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I didn't quite get the vector based drawing feel as an artist.
I kind of wanted to do more freeform.
So I started traversing different roles within the company.
And I was in sales.
I started their inside sales group and their dealer programs, visiting dealers, setting
them up.
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I worked in tech support, program management, release management, quality assurance, and
finally software development and R&D.
I think I was there for six or seven years.
And I think I discovered early on through that experience the intersection of creativity
and tech.
And I was able to identify how technology can make your life better, which directly
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translates into how it can make life better for coworkers and your clients and customers
when working on whatever product or solution you're developing.
So I think that was engrained in me early, and it facilitated that passion approach to
wanting to work with technology, but still getting to have that creative side.
(06:06):
That's awesome.
Yeah.
You've been in entertainment.
You've been in manufacturing.
You've been in gaming.
How does one translate their work between all of the different industries?
It requires a nuanced approach that takes into account the unique challenges and opportunities
(06:32):
and requirements of each industry.
I know that one thing that's always bothered me is from time to time, if I was looking
to work with another company, some companies would be really hard headed.
And say, well, you have to have mortgage industry experience, or you have to have FinTech experience.
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And what I've done is set out to disprove that, and then I've worked with graphics companies,
entertainment companies.
I worked for nearly five years at a big law firm, one of the biggest law firms in the
world, office products, ticketing, toy company, retail, e-commerce.
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So in doing that, it's made it a lot easier for me to pick up gigs here and there with
companies that otherwise would just kind of look at your experience and say, no, you don't
have that.
But you still need to have that passion.
And I've always had it, regardless of what it was.
And a good example is the law firm.
(07:35):
That might sound a little dry for somebody that's worked in graphics and entertainment,
but the role was chief digital and innovation officer.
And that also really drives me.
The whole digital transformation piece to me is creative.
It's getting in there and figuring out how you can streamline operations, streamline
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business processes, using technology and tools to help facilitate making things better for
folks.
So I've been able to easily kind of translate that to different business types, and it hasn't
been a problem for me.
Wow.
(08:19):
Yeah.
How does...
You must have seen quite a bit of an evolution within technology, just from the 1980s to
where we are now talking about AI, machine learning, quantum computing.
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How do you stay on top of it?
How do you consistently learn?
Is it something you are built with or do you work hard on it?
Yeah.
To the point of the last question, it becomes easier for me because of traversing all these
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different companies and industries in these different spaces.
So I'm able to more easily continuously monitor the industry trends, merging technologies
and regulatory changes that impact technological strategies in each of these sectors.
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So if I see I'm constantly...
If you follow on LinkedIn, for instance, I'm constantly posting stories that I find interesting
in digital transformation and innovation, but a lot of those, again, traverse different
industries like legal.
Maybe some things I post is on GDPR and the changes to GDPR, or there's new EU laws that
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are passed this week.
I don't know if you saw those.
Those are very interesting to me, but those traverse all sorts of industries.
They touch on legal, of course.
They touch on compliance and regulatory, but they also touch on all these other industries
I've worked on.
So I stay connected with industries, associations.
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I attend conferences and engage in knowledge sharing forums to stay informed and adapt
technologies.
I'm part of a collective of folks that are continually reaching out and helping each
other to understand the ever-changing landscape in technology.
Yeah.
(10:33):
So it's like you're naturally interested in it and you're good at it and your friends
do it.
Yeah, I get that.
That's pretty cool.
What is the most innovative project, do you think, in your lifetime?
What has been the most fun, challenging?
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So after I left Minder Graphics, I actually left with the president and COO.
And again, we'd gone public, very successful company.
I've learned a lot of things there.
I'm very lucky to have joined that company.
But he wanted to leave and start a multimedia company.
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And this was right down my alley, of course.
We actually even brought in some very famous musicians and producers.
But I was the third employee in that company.
And it was called Seventh Level.
It was a startup.
And at the time, companies like Broderbund and Disney were releasing interactive titles
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with a few hundred cells of animation and 8-bit mono audio, which is unheard of in today's
day and time.
But these were the big interactive gaming and title houses at the time.
It was very rudimentary stuff.
And our vision and mission was to create interactive titles, at least when we started for children.
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So educational interactive titles with much improved audio and visuals.
And so we set out to develop an AV engine that would allow us to produce titles in 16-bit
stereo for things like sound effects and maybe dialogue.
And in the cases where we were going to use key songs in the title, we had people, John
(12:28):
Anderson from Yes sang children's songs.
We had David Gilmore from Pink Floyd playing in the title.
Howie Mandel was our main character that took the children throughout the title.
And in those cases, we used CD quality audio or 44.1 kilohertz 16-bit stereo, which again,
unheard of at the time.
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And then moreover, again, these other titles had a few hundred cells of animation.
And this is Disney we're talking about.
Our first title contained 12,000 cells of animation.
And this allowed us to launch titles that were what you call on 24 Hollywood Bollies.
So it's like watching a Saturday morning cartoon.
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And then we were able also to localize that into 13 different country languages.
And it was very popular.
We also did things like reuse of cells and tweening.
Tweening is when you create key cells, a key character cell, but then automatically
create the cells in between, which speeds up the development process.
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And folks like Disney took attention immediately.
They hired us to create games for them, including some of the Lion King games like Timon and
Pumbaa's Jungle games.
I was able to create the world's first mix mode or Orange Book CD-ROM for Windows.
So I was interviewed by a CD Magazine for that.
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And then we just went on to use that AV engine and that experience and continue to improve
on it to create other Little Howie, Little Howie Mandel titles for which we won a presidential
award from George Bush for a lot of the children's stuff.
But then we got into other things for older children and adults, a Virgil reality series,
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and then eventually produced all the Monty Python interactive titles.
And much like micro graphics, I kind of traversed through different roles at that company.
So when I started, I started out there QA and release management group, but then I got
into some coding, actually doing some programming and scripting on the titles and eventually
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became a producer.
And I was a producer for Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail.
And we actually won at the Cannes Film Festival the first year they had an award for video
games and we won for Quest for the Holy Grail.
So super, super fun, very innovative, very challenging, a lot of hours put in on that
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company.
And we did take that company public as well.
We actually did a secondary public offering.
Yeah, it's almost like you seek to be in the forefront of ideas and innovations technologically.
It almost feels like you have some sort of instinctual insight that allows you to see
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the next move in the game, so to speak, technologically speaking, just kind of looking at your resume
and the evolution of it.
That's pretty cool.
And it shows passion, like there are passion projects for you.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
I always try to find some level of passion in whatever I do.
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And I've been lucky enough to find these organizations like Bicronos Fusion Energy that I'm passionate
about.
It shows, John, it definitely shows.
So all of these, like you've seen so many full cycle management or full cycle build
of a lot of technologies.
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I'm sure with the advent of AI and AI doing some of the programming now, helping with
data scrubbing, all of the ETL processes that we used to hire people for is now almost autonomous
and optimizes itself, et cetera.
How does a software development lifecycle, how is it going to evolve over the next 20
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years?
Well, yeah, that's a good question.
I'm not entirely sure how it will evolve over the next 20 years.
That's pretty far up.
But for easily the first half of my career, a lot of our careers, Waterfall, SDLC was
king.
And to some extent, it still exists, especially in the realms of legal and government and
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manufacturing projects, which I've worked on all of those in the last few gigs I've
been in.
However, to your point with the advent of things like DevOps, low code, AI, we've embarked
on cultural philosophies and practices and tools that increase our ability to deliver
applications and services at high velocity.
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So evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional
software development and infrastructure management processes can.
Automated testing frameworks also factor into this.
I used to manage, as you know, a large QA organizations that are a number of my roles.
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And these have all but gone away.
It's tough to find like a VP of quality assurance or anything because the developers are building
these automated testing harnesses into the code that they write.
And to your point again now with AI actually generating code and doing code reviews and
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testing artificial intelligence is changing the programming landscape and the future of
coding by making code generation and optimization much better.
Code snippet generation and performance optimization are two tasks that developers can automate
now with the help of AI powered coding tools.
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AI can analyze big data sets and find patterns to boost code quality and efficiency.
And the tools can suggest better code structures and warn developers of possible cybersecurity
risks.
I was looking at one of these the other day.
I think it's called Devon, if I remember correctly.
But I was very surprised that it was not only generating the code, but also going in and
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debugging and looking at cyber security and endpoint protection.
But it can also predict future issues using past data.
So doing predictive analytics based on the data workload.
And it can lead to a better final product or solution and a smoother, more efficient
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development process.
That said, I still believe humans are the creative element that's missing in the chain.
So AI at least currently doesn't have that creative element intact.
I'm not seeing it at least and I've played around with it a fair amount.
While AI is automating a lot of these tasks, the notion of AI replacing programmers is
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still more of a speculation than a reality due to the irreplaceable human creativity
problem solving skills.
Right.
I think it'll make things faster and easier, but I don't think it's actually going to
replace human beings.
I think you have to know what you're doing to even communicate with it properly.
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Right.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, it's like I tell my wife, my wife's an artist and a poet.
She made her a poet and I've tried but I haven't convinced her yet.
She constantly wants to spawn new ideas.
And I said, you really should use generative AI to at least get you kick started.
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You don't have to use the content that's generated, but it gives you ideas to press on and move
forward.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I talk to gamers and a lot of people when they play video games, they think that the
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next step is somehow programmed in and the truth of it is the programming for the program
is in there, but the actual visuals and everything is actually built as you play through the
game.
And I think a lot of people quite understand how well our sort of predictive modeling has
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gotten even when it comes to predicting not only your gaming moves, but the visuals that
then show up, the characters that then show up.
All of that is almost like a machine learning model.
Right.
Right.
And that's interesting because you go from playing like Pac-Man, not just less than four
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decades ago and the constraints of video games then and now you see this whole other world.
And I saw a demo of the Apple Apple Pro headset and it was mind blowing.
It was mind blowing.
It is.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
I was almost terrifyingly good.
It was almost like, you know what?
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That's it.
Like I don't think I'm going to leave my house during my retirement.
Like it's getting over.
Yeah, it's moving at an incredible pace right now.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think as technology people, like we're all excited about it, but there are a lot of people
that see a lot of doom and gloom, which I don't get.
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I only see the upside.
So maybe I'm the problem.
So John, you've generated a lot of intellectual property out there with some of these ways
where you've married technology and art and technology and music and things like that.
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Do you have time for your music, by the way?
How do you make time?
I haven't as much as I want to.
I was a lead singer in the band back in the 80s, but it was after I stopped doing that
so much is that I started playing guitar more.
And so I've performed here and there.
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I did a gig at the, I was lucky enough to do a gig at the House of Blues on Sunset before
they tore that down because that was kind of a landmark for House of Blues.
And then some other clubs are around here, but I try.
I need to make more time for it.
Have you had a chance to try the app where you train it with your voice and then you
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just tell it the song and it'll sing that song in your voice?
I have not.
It's called Dub AI.
I literally trained it with my voice and I made it sing like Whitney Houston's I Will
Always Love You and I was blown away.
There's no way I can do that in real life, but I sound so good.
That's super interesting.
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Yeah, I have a ton of patents in my name and it was always frustrating to me that a lot
of them came under Gateway.
I think I've got one at Sony and some other places, but the vast majority was when I was
with Gateway Computer and they had a brilliant way to go about generating IP.
(24:00):
They had an intellectual property program where you turned the IP in.
They also made it part of your bonus actually and they did bonuses quarterly, which I thought
was unique to them versus other companies, but they actually tried to get you to work
with other people to help generate IP, which was very successful.
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Sometimes I would come up with things that were outside maybe a little bit of what they
did and your remark about the voice AI piece reminded me.
I came up with something where you could play guitar, but as you were playing guitar, whatever
notes you were playing were automatically registered on this tool, this solution.
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It recorded everything, recorded the tempo, everything so that you can go back because
as I grew up as a musician, a lot of times in our band, the guitar player may start playing
a solo for something that you guys have written and then you get done and you're like, oh
my God, that was fantastic.
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What was that?
They just shrugged their shoulders and go, I don't know, I just did it on the fly and
that was great.
Can you do it again?
I don't know.
I don't think so.
This invention was to record the actual notes that you were playing, the tempo you were
playing, the keys, everything and gateway passed on that.
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Well, many years later, of course, other inventions came up where people were using that.
I've done the same thing with keyboards.
I actually have an invention I can show you where I turned into gateway for a foldable,
compactable phone, which I believe is the same.
Yeah, that does that now, but this was back in 1996 or 1997 that I turned that in.
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It was a phone that folded in three parts.
It was frustrating sometimes, but moreover, it was very rewarding because they actually
paid you for specific milestones as you created things.
You go to an invention board.
I eventually did so much and was privy to the process so much that I joined that intellectual
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property board and was able to review other patents that other people were turning in.
As you go in, you've just got to make sure that you approach the creation and the protection
of the IP.
As much as possible, it's good to be in a collaborative environment.
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Every so often, you'll hear a success story like Sony.
They did the Walkman.
I don't know if you know that story, but I can't remember the guy's name, but it was
a guy and maybe a few other people, and they literally went and locked themselves in a
room and worked on this in a vacuum.
Sony was obviously a great success for Sony so many years ago, but it's hard to replicate
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that sort of thing.
Apple's done it at times as well, but I find that a more collaborative environment is helpful,
especially because I wasn't a hardcore programmer.
If I came up with stuff, I would go and work with my counterparts, my friends at Gateway
as an example, and say, is this possible?
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I know it's unique because I don't see things out there, and I know it's novel, but is this
possible to generate this piece of hardware or this software process?
At times, then you can sign them on, and then they become co-inventors with you.
You just need to be cognizant to register your copyrights, trademarks, and your patents.
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Your business product or domain names, create confidentially non-disclosure licensing contracts
for employees and partners.
It's important, and a lot of companies have gotten away from it, but IP is very important.
We definitely think so.
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We spoke to a company, I want to say about two to three weeks ago, and they were making
... They call it sapphire screens, but they were making these ultra-strong screens that
could go on your phone and would also be foldable.
Producing these screens requires... Producing that material requires industrial heat of
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almost 200 degrees centigrade.
We were having conversations with them about potentially using fusion energy, like an industrial
generator, to help them process those things.
It's interesting to hear about the origins of that technology.
Wow.
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What do you think about what's happening in terms of our superconducting capability in
America?
I know that politically, there's a lot of worry about South Korea basically controlling
our computing.
I know that a lot of people talk about this.
How do you feel about that?
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As it relates to... Just the future of the availability of these
superconductors in order to have computing follow Moore's Law in the future.
If we're talking about things like quantum computing and AI, all of these things require
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not only huge amounts of energy, but they require computing that we don't have the capacity
to produce right now.
I know a lot of startups are working on it.
If you're talking about the internet, I don't have a strong opinion on some of these countries
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that you brought up and that there's always a danger there and that comes into the regulatory
and the compliance and moreover the security piece.
But if you're talking about the intersection of technology and these energy pieces evolving,
to your point, high performance computing is one to look at and advanced simulation
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techniques being essential for modeling and optimizing these fusion reactors and their
designs and the plasma behaviors.
Chemical modeling, which enables the scientists and engineers to simulate complex dynamics
and optimize the reactor performances, that's all going to be crucial to predict the behavior
(31:11):
of fusion reactions under different operating conditions.
We've seen things like... What was it?
The Japanese reactor that had an issue when it flooded, things of this nature.
High performance computing models in that respect are going to be helpful.
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The development of advanced materials and engineering techniques.
I know that I shared something with everyone at Kremes on AI being used to help find new
materials not too long ago.
Because materials and engineering techniques are going to be critical for building and
(31:53):
operating fusion reactors, innovations in material sciences like high temperature superconductors
and in-based ceramics and all these sorts of things.
We're all in that article that I shared.
But AI is going to factor into it heavily.
It's going to be very interesting to watch this space and how AI and machine learning
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can be impactful to it.
But as far as the other part of that question, I think it's all about security.
It's going to be crucial that we secure all of this.
It's tough.
A lot of these companies, I'm sorry, countries are way ahead of us in terms of the hacking
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and the breaches that they're performing on a lot of these companies and it's tough to
stay ahead of the curve on that.
I really haven't seen anybody that's been able to stay ahead of the curve.
It's been more reactionary.
That's true.
That's true.
I think the fear is that we rely a lot on Taiwan for our computer chips and things like
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that.
Everyone wonders that.
For example, for us at Kronos, when we use our D-Wave quantum computing infrastructure,
we pay about $10,000 for 10 hours.
That's the quantum computing usage going.
I fear that if we cannot scale up a larger infrastructure to build on some of these things,
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we would end up paying maybe $30,000 for 10 hours.
That's my fear going forward, just from a computing economics perspective.
I understand the concern.
In Gateway, for instance, we got a fair amount of our chips from Taiwan as well.
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There's always that danger of that market closing up to you based on geographical concerns
and politics as well.
Cyber security is a big thing for us.
We're heavily relying on you for all that, John.
What do you think?
(34:19):
Not only do we, as a nuclear energy company, have regulatory things that we need to worry
about.
There's a lot of compliance around that, but you hear about cyber attacks all the time.
You hear about the inevitability of it.
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My accounts have, at least three or four times in the last decade, I've had a couple of my
accounts get hacked.
We are, in terms of an energy asset, I worry about cyber security.
What do you think?
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How can we really ensure that we're protected?
Is there a way?
What I've really fallen back on, in regards to compliance in general, compliance first,
I need to say, I've had a lot of experience with ADA and GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI, FedBrand,
(35:23):
all these, especially in roles they've served in within legal, finance, retail arenas.
Same thing goes with security.
The compliance and security pieces are hand in hand.
You've got to do a full assessment of solutions and the infrastructure coupled with continued
audits to evaluate the adherence to regulatory requirements and endpoints in the security
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piece.
Everything, as far as compliance and regulatory, is constantly changing.
On the flip side of the coin, on the security piece, the threats are constantly changing.
As soon as we figure out a way to shut an organization down or plug up an area that
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could be breached, they find a new way in.
You have to really work on a regular basis to ensure that all these things have been
plugged up.
I've had very good luck with certain tools that protect both externally but internally
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as well.
Tools like Verona's and Big ID and things like that.
They help you protect your data from both external threats and internal threats.
You want to make sure what are employees doing with data?
Why is this guy touching that data?
Why is he moving it from here to here?
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He shouldn't be doing that sort of thing and protecting the endpoints.
Tools like that coupled with third party organizations that do this for a living, and that's all
they do.
I've worked successfully recently with Rapid7 and a number of SolarWinds and a number of
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other, CrowdStrike is another one.
A lot of the organizations that I've worked in recently are very concerned over breaches
and hacking.
I know everyone is, but when you're working in one of the biggest law firms in the world
where they're handling, they have tens of thousands of clients and they're handling
their matters, they obviously don't want to be breached because it's not just their data,
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it's all their clients' data.
It's critical and it's very private data.
It just can't be out there.
Constantly having to keep up with protecting those endpoints.
It's going to be an interesting decade for computing.
It always is an interesting decade for computing, I guess, but I feel like now especially so.
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About five years ago, I used to talk about using five, maybe six years ago, I used to
talk about using AI machine learning and even quantum computing for fusion energy.
I spoke at an event at Harvard and I heard snickering in the back of the room.
People thought that this was an impossibility and now it's in the ethos of fusion energy
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as how are we going to use a quantum computing lab and they're opening a quantum computing
lab in Princeton dedicated to fusion energy.
This happened just a week ago and it made me so happy to see this because it was proof
that I'm not crazy.
That's always good.
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That's always good, but it was cool to see that I've always seen quantum computing being
applied in a financial sense like algorithmic trading.
That's really what I've seen.
I've seen friends use it for drug manufacturing and basically health research, like cancer
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research.
I've seen that.
These are the two areas where quantum computing has really taken off and excelled, I think.
I've heard a lot of talk about quantum encryption and how they're going to be quantum encryption
programs that are going to be for banking and hospital use in the future because we're
(39:47):
going to need it.
I really want fusion energy to be like that fourth leg for this.
I feel like there's a lot of room.
Like you said, that supercomputer at Google that synthesized material compositions of
(40:08):
380,000 materials using the right AI, that's phenomenal.
Now I think, hey, what happens if we stick that into a quantum computer and speed up
that process and give it 200 more variables as to creating the perfect material?
Wow, that blows my mind.
(40:29):
I want to do that badly.
It's super interesting to watch this space.
It's all kind of coming together in the best ways.
What do you think about fusion energy, John?
What makes you interested in fusion?
Well, I mean, that's kind of been the holy grail, right?
(40:54):
Again, it kind of drives into the passion parts of it.
I'm very interested in energy in general.
I'm striving personally to get off the grid if I can.
I live on a very large property, kind of on a little mountain top.
(41:17):
The only thing we have here right now still is our Southern California Edison is supplying
electricity.
I'd like to get out of that business too.
We're on propane.
I've got Starlink for my internet.
I'd like to install solar and battery backups and all that sort of thing.
(41:39):
I'm very interested in an energy future where we can create unlimited energy and as clean
as possible to drive a lot of these clean energy and help everybody get to the point
where they can jettison that technology.
(42:00):
Yeah.
I think it'll be super cool.
I think 10 years from now we'll circle back and have a conversation about how we use computing
to crack fusion energy for humanity.
I think as a team, we're all environmentalists.
(42:22):
I think it's that basic passion that drives us.
I think it's going to be super interesting to see what the emerging technologies and
trends are.
To your point, I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know 20 years out.
Right?
Right.
Right now, in the here and now, I have to say digitalization and internet of things
(42:48):
is going to factor heavily into this.
I go out to Palm Springs a lot too and Joshua Tree, I'm actually on the board of the Joshua
Tree National Park Association.
If you go out there, which I think you've gone out there, Priyanka, you see all the
That's my favorite place on earth, man.
That's a good place to get away.
(43:10):
It's ours too.
As you know, when you're driving out there, you can't miss them.
You see all the windmills, the wind turbines.
Those have become more and more internet of things pieces.
If you look at them, you see all kinds of devices on that are measuring things.
If something fails, those things can catch fire through friction and they'll shut them
(43:32):
down beforehand, so AI is being used.
Just the digitalization of that in the energy sector for things like internet of things
and artificial intelligence, they're really going to enable more efficient and intelligent
energy management.
You've got things like smart meters and sensors and internet of things, devices that provide
(43:53):
real-time data on energy consumption, enabling predictive maintenance, as I mentioned a moment
ago, demand response, energy optimization strategies.
Another one is the integration of AI and predictive analytics into energy management systems.
It's going to enable more efficient operation and optimization of energy assets.
(44:16):
AI algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data in real-time to predict energy demand and
optimize energy production and improve reliability and contribute to overall energy efficiency
and sustainability.
Another one that I was into this a lot, I need to make more time for it, is blockchain.
(44:41):
I got pretty heavily into it when I was at the Big Wall firm and I actually became the
blockchain expert there.
When people hear blockchain, a lot of people hear NFTs and Bitcoin and things of that
nature.
But blockchain, as you know, is so much more than that.
(45:01):
It's the underlying technology that drives all those things, which may or may not be
a success, those things, I mean, NFTs and Bitcoin.
Blockchain technology offers new opportunities for peer-to-peer energy trading, decentralized
energy systems and transparent energy transactions.
(45:23):
Blockchain enabled platforms would enable consumers to buy and sell renewable energy
directly with each other.
They could foster greater energy independence to our point that we were talking about earlier,
resilience and really democratization of energy markets.
I think that blockchain is going to factor into a lot of different industries, but I
(45:47):
think that for Kronos, it's going to be another key element.
Definitely like contracts management, things like that at a large scale.
Yeah, exactly.
Having that sort of permanence and record keeping and source of truth, that's amazing.
On the flip side of it, I'm in the process.
(46:07):
I kind of have it about 70% done, but I'm in the process of writing an article about
the future of cryptocurrency and how you need fusion energy for such a thing to take off,
because there are huge energy constraints when it comes to crypto mining.
Great, great.
There's been a huge drain on the grid in small cities and people have done all kinds of shady
(46:34):
things to leverage energy prices in different locations.
I was reading something yesterday and I wish I had the exact numbers, but the water that
you use to pool a lot of these systems.
I'm pretty sure I read that there was as much water was consumed by the state of Idaho.
(46:54):
Oh my God.
Yeah, in a year.
It's tough.
You're absolutely right.
That's a great point.
I'm hopeful for the future.
I think we can make it happen.
I have friends that are very curious about the field.
(47:17):
What would a young person trying to get into computing and AI and maybe even fusion energy,
what should they know?
Yeah, on the fusion energy part, I think you'd know better than I would at this stage at
least.
But just in technology in general, there's so many unique solutions out there.
(47:43):
When the whole AI and generative AI thing started, there was only one or two solutions
out there that you can play with.
As you know now, they're popping up almost daily.
You can now generate text-based videos.
You type in some prompt text and get a full video out of it with the...
(48:05):
Sora AI.
Yeah, Sora.
Chat GPT, there's a new version.
Like I said, it's almost daily.
Google, Musk is doing his thing as well.
I would really encourage people to...
A lot of these solutions are free, at least the base models.
(48:26):
To get them and play with them and to my point earlier, with my wife, even if you've got
an aversion to generating things and then using that as your own work, that's not necessarily
how you have to use it.
You can use it to spawn new ideas.
To spawn a spring point, to spring off of it and create something new.
(48:53):
Artists, same thing.
I know a lot of artists are scared right now of the generative AI replacing them.
I think as with bank ATMs and everything else in our past and PCs even, it's a tool and
(49:14):
it's up to us how we use that tool.
I think people are going to start to realize this, that it's actually something that I
would encourage people to use to make things, make their lives easier.
Circling full back to where we started this conversation, how do you make your life easier?
(49:35):
How do you streamline things so that you have time to do other things?
How do you help yourself generate new ideas by using these new technologies?
So I would encourage people to start there and play around with some of these tools and
learn these tools because they're not going away.
(49:57):
They're going to continue to grow and scale.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Thank you so much, John.
Of course.
Thank you guys.
Okay.
Today, we're diving into the fascinating world of technology with John Greenwood, a
(00:11):
luminary in the tech industry and the Chief Technology Officer at Kronos Fusion Energy.
With over two decades of experience, John's career is a testament to innovation and creativity,
seamlessly blending IT, web, mobile and software application development.
(00:34):
His career is a rich tapestry, woven with diverse experiences across sectors like consumer
electronics, entertainment, graphics and many more, contributing to companies and working
alongside notable names like Disney, IBM and a few other musicians currently in your playlist.
(00:57):
Known for his dynamic approach and versatile skill set, John has been instrumental in spearheading,
digital transformations, enhancing data analytics and pioneering new product designs and development.
His extensive background encompasses innovation, solution and service development, digital
(01:23):
transformation and much more.
At Kronos Fusion Energy, John's visionary leadership and deep technological expertise
are driving the development of the smart fusion energy generator, steering our company towards
realizing a sustainable and clean future.
(01:46):
His approach is not just about advancing technology, but about creating a positive impact on the
world.
It's personal too.
I must know John was kind enough to give me a job at Live Nation Entertainment over a
decade ago.
Our team at Live Nation was an overarching team of superstars and John was our leader.
(02:10):
We were charged with designing, building and launching complex, multifaceted technology
that streamlined hundreds, if not tens of thousands of internal and external business
processes.
I have always known John to be a great leader, an exceptional technologist, an avid environmentalist
(02:35):
and an all-around great human.
And so when Kronos needed a CTO to build the first ever fusion energy ERP system, I knew
John was our wild card that could make near impossible cutting edge technology a reality.
It's not just his professional achievements that set John apart.
(02:58):
His passion for music, art and innovation continues to drive him towards exploring and
integrating new technologies in unique ways.
Join us as we explore John Greenwood's fascinating journey, his insights on the future of technology
and his relentless pursuit of innovation across various sectors.
(03:24):
Here's John.
You are like a heavy hitter in the technology industry.
What got you interested?
What got you interested in what you do?
So I suppose that I was originally following in my father's footsteps.
(03:45):
He was an artist and a musician by trade.
And that's what I wanted to do.
And I was a musician, pretty successful musician.
We were able to open for some big bands, go on tour.
But I got an opportunity to join a company called Micrographics.
Micrographics had written the world's first vector based drawing program for the IBM computer.
(04:10):
And I joined them a few years later in 86 and was able to work on a program called InnoVision,
which was a CAD program, a drawing program.
And we launched it before Windows 1.0 and we became the first commercially available
Windows application ever.
(04:32):
And so I was very interested in kind of incorporating the art side of my brain with this business.
And we went on to develop Windows Draw and Windows Graph.
We went on to go public.
During my time there, I did start there as an artist.
(04:55):
I didn't quite get the vector based drawing feel as an artist.
I kind of wanted to do more freeform.
So I started traversing different roles within the company.
And I was in sales.
I started their inside sales group and their dealer programs, visiting dealers, setting
them up.
(05:16):
I worked in tech support, program management, release management, quality assurance, and
finally software development and R&D.
I think I was there for six or seven years.
And I think I discovered early on through that experience the intersection of creativity
and tech.
And I was able to identify how technology can make your life better, which directly
(05:41):
translates into how it can make life better for coworkers and your clients and customers
when working on whatever product or solution you're developing.
So I think that was engrained in me early, and it facilitated that passion approach to
wanting to work with technology, but still getting to have that creative side.
(06:06):
That's awesome.
Yeah.
You've been in entertainment.
You've been in manufacturing.
You've been in gaming.
How does one translate their work between all of the different industries?
It requires a nuanced approach that takes into account the unique challenges and opportunities
(06:32):
and requirements of each industry.
I know that one thing that's always bothered me is from time to time, if I was looking
to work with another company, some companies would be really hard headed.
And say, well, you have to have mortgage industry experience, or you have to have FinTech experience.
(06:54):
And what I've done is set out to disprove that, and then I've worked with graphics companies,
entertainment companies.
I worked for nearly five years at a big law firm, one of the biggest law firms in the
world, office products, ticketing, toy company, retail, e-commerce.
(07:14):
So in doing that, it's made it a lot easier for me to pick up gigs here and there with
companies that otherwise would just kind of look at your experience and say, no, you don't
have that.
But you still need to have that passion.
And I've always had it, regardless of what it was.
And a good example is the law firm.
(07:35):
That might sound a little dry for somebody that's worked in graphics and entertainment,
but the role was chief digital and innovation officer.
And that also really drives me.
The whole digital transformation piece to me is creative.
It's getting in there and figuring out how you can streamline operations, streamline
(07:59):
business processes, using technology and tools to help facilitate making things better for
folks.
So I've been able to easily kind of translate that to different business types, and it hasn't
been a problem for me.
Wow.
(08:19):
Yeah.
How does...
You must have seen quite a bit of an evolution within technology, just from the 1980s to
where we are now talking about AI, machine learning, quantum computing.
(08:42):
How do you stay on top of it?
How do you consistently learn?
Is it something you are built with or do you work hard on it?
Yeah.
To the point of the last question, it becomes easier for me because of traversing all these
(09:03):
different companies and industries in these different spaces.
So I'm able to more easily continuously monitor the industry trends, merging technologies
and regulatory changes that impact technological strategies in each of these sectors.
(09:24):
So if I see I'm constantly...
If you follow on LinkedIn, for instance, I'm constantly posting stories that I find interesting
in digital transformation and innovation, but a lot of those, again, traverse different
industries like legal.
Maybe some things I post is on GDPR and the changes to GDPR, or there's new EU laws that
(09:47):
are passed this week.
I don't know if you saw those.
Those are very interesting to me, but those traverse all sorts of industries.
They touch on legal, of course.
They touch on compliance and regulatory, but they also touch on all these other industries
I've worked on.
So I stay connected with industries, associations.
(10:10):
I attend conferences and engage in knowledge sharing forums to stay informed and adapt
technologies.
I'm part of a collective of folks that are continually reaching out and helping each
other to understand the ever-changing landscape in technology.
Yeah.
(10:33):
So it's like you're naturally interested in it and you're good at it and your friends
do it.
Yeah, I get that.
That's pretty cool.
What is the most innovative project, do you think, in your lifetime?
What has been the most fun, challenging?
(10:54):
So after I left Minder Graphics, I actually left with the president and COO.
And again, we'd gone public, very successful company.
I've learned a lot of things there.
I'm very lucky to have joined that company.
But he wanted to leave and start a multimedia company.
(11:15):
And this was right down my alley, of course.
We actually even brought in some very famous musicians and producers.
But I was the third employee in that company.
And it was called Seventh Level.
It was a startup.
And at the time, companies like Broderbund and Disney were releasing interactive titles
(11:39):
with a few hundred cells of animation and 8-bit mono audio, which is unheard of in today's
day and time.
But these were the big interactive gaming and title houses at the time.
It was very rudimentary stuff.
And our vision and mission was to create interactive titles, at least when we started for children.
(12:03):
So educational interactive titles with much improved audio and visuals.
And so we set out to develop an AV engine that would allow us to produce titles in 16-bit
stereo for things like sound effects and maybe dialogue.
And in the cases where we were going to use key songs in the title, we had people, John
(12:28):
Anderson from Yes sang children's songs.
We had David Gilmore from Pink Floyd playing in the title.
Howie Mandel was our main character that took the children throughout the title.
And in those cases, we used CD quality audio or 44.1 kilohertz 16-bit stereo, which again,
unheard of at the time.
(12:50):
And then moreover, again, these other titles had a few hundred cells of animation.
And this is Disney we're talking about.
Our first title contained 12,000 cells of animation.
And this allowed us to launch titles that were what you call on 24 Hollywood Bollies.
So it's like watching a Saturday morning cartoon.
(13:10):
And then we were able also to localize that into 13 different country languages.
And it was very popular.
We also did things like reuse of cells and tweening.
Tweening is when you create key cells, a key character cell, but then automatically
create the cells in between, which speeds up the development process.
(13:34):
And folks like Disney took attention immediately.
They hired us to create games for them, including some of the Lion King games like Timon and
Pumbaa's Jungle games.
I was able to create the world's first mix mode or Orange Book CD-ROM for Windows.
So I was interviewed by a CD Magazine for that.
(13:56):
And then we just went on to use that AV engine and that experience and continue to improve
on it to create other Little Howie, Little Howie Mandel titles for which we won a presidential
award from George Bush for a lot of the children's stuff.
But then we got into other things for older children and adults, a Virgil reality series,
(14:21):
and then eventually produced all the Monty Python interactive titles.
And much like micro graphics, I kind of traversed through different roles at that company.
So when I started, I started out there QA and release management group, but then I got
into some coding, actually doing some programming and scripting on the titles and eventually
(14:42):
became a producer.
And I was a producer for Monty Python's Quest for the Holy Grail.
And we actually won at the Cannes Film Festival the first year they had an award for video
games and we won for Quest for the Holy Grail.
So super, super fun, very innovative, very challenging, a lot of hours put in on that
(15:06):
company.
And we did take that company public as well.
We actually did a secondary public offering.
Yeah, it's almost like you seek to be in the forefront of ideas and innovations technologically.
It almost feels like you have some sort of instinctual insight that allows you to see
(15:32):
the next move in the game, so to speak, technologically speaking, just kind of looking at your resume
and the evolution of it.
That's pretty cool.
And it shows passion, like there are passion projects for you.
Right.
Yeah, absolutely.
I always try to find some level of passion in whatever I do.
(15:52):
And I've been lucky enough to find these organizations like Bicronos Fusion Energy that I'm passionate
about.
It shows, John, it definitely shows.
So all of these, like you've seen so many full cycle management or full cycle build
of a lot of technologies.
(16:13):
I'm sure with the advent of AI and AI doing some of the programming now, helping with
data scrubbing, all of the ETL processes that we used to hire people for is now almost autonomous
and optimizes itself, et cetera.
How does a software development lifecycle, how is it going to evolve over the next 20
(16:36):
years?
Well, yeah, that's a good question.
I'm not entirely sure how it will evolve over the next 20 years.
That's pretty far up.
But for easily the first half of my career, a lot of our careers, Waterfall, SDLC was
king.
And to some extent, it still exists, especially in the realms of legal and government and
(17:00):
manufacturing projects, which I've worked on all of those in the last few gigs I've
been in.
However, to your point with the advent of things like DevOps, low code, AI, we've embarked
on cultural philosophies and practices and tools that increase our ability to deliver
applications and services at high velocity.
(17:22):
So evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional
software development and infrastructure management processes can.
Automated testing frameworks also factor into this.
I used to manage, as you know, a large QA organizations that are a number of my roles.
(17:45):
And these have all but gone away.
It's tough to find like a VP of quality assurance or anything because the developers are building
these automated testing harnesses into the code that they write.
And to your point again now with AI actually generating code and doing code reviews and
(18:05):
testing artificial intelligence is changing the programming landscape and the future of
coding by making code generation and optimization much better.
Code snippet generation and performance optimization are two tasks that developers can automate
now with the help of AI powered coding tools.
(18:26):
AI can analyze big data sets and find patterns to boost code quality and efficiency.
And the tools can suggest better code structures and warn developers of possible cybersecurity
risks.
I was looking at one of these the other day.
I think it's called Devon, if I remember correctly.
But I was very surprised that it was not only generating the code, but also going in and
(18:49):
debugging and looking at cyber security and endpoint protection.
But it can also predict future issues using past data.
So doing predictive analytics based on the data workload.
And it can lead to a better final product or solution and a smoother, more efficient
(19:10):
development process.
That said, I still believe humans are the creative element that's missing in the chain.
So AI at least currently doesn't have that creative element intact.
I'm not seeing it at least and I've played around with it a fair amount.
While AI is automating a lot of these tasks, the notion of AI replacing programmers is
(19:32):
still more of a speculation than a reality due to the irreplaceable human creativity
problem solving skills.
Right.
I think it'll make things faster and easier, but I don't think it's actually going to
replace human beings.
I think you have to know what you're doing to even communicate with it properly.
(19:54):
Right.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, it's like I tell my wife, my wife's an artist and a poet.
She made her a poet and I've tried but I haven't convinced her yet.
She constantly wants to spawn new ideas.
And I said, you really should use generative AI to at least get you kick started.
(20:15):
You don't have to use the content that's generated, but it gives you ideas to press on and move
forward.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I talk to gamers and a lot of people when they play video games, they think that the
(20:41):
next step is somehow programmed in and the truth of it is the programming for the program
is in there, but the actual visuals and everything is actually built as you play through the
game.
And I think a lot of people quite understand how well our sort of predictive modeling has
(21:03):
gotten even when it comes to predicting not only your gaming moves, but the visuals that
then show up, the characters that then show up.
All of that is almost like a machine learning model.
Right.
Right.
And that's interesting because you go from playing like Pac-Man, not just less than four
(21:26):
decades ago and the constraints of video games then and now you see this whole other world.
And I saw a demo of the Apple Apple Pro headset and it was mind blowing.
It was mind blowing.
It is.
It's crazy.
Yeah.
I was almost terrifyingly good.
It was almost like, you know what?
(21:46):
That's it.
Like I don't think I'm going to leave my house during my retirement.
Like it's getting over.
Yeah, it's moving at an incredible pace right now.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think as technology people, like we're all excited about it, but there are a lot of people
that see a lot of doom and gloom, which I don't get.
(22:07):
I only see the upside.
So maybe I'm the problem.
So John, you've generated a lot of intellectual property out there with some of these ways
where you've married technology and art and technology and music and things like that.
(22:28):
Do you have time for your music, by the way?
How do you make time?
I haven't as much as I want to.
I was a lead singer in the band back in the 80s, but it was after I stopped doing that
so much is that I started playing guitar more.
And so I've performed here and there.
(22:50):
I did a gig at the, I was lucky enough to do a gig at the House of Blues on Sunset before
they tore that down because that was kind of a landmark for House of Blues.
And then some other clubs are around here, but I try.
I need to make more time for it.
Have you had a chance to try the app where you train it with your voice and then you
(23:14):
just tell it the song and it'll sing that song in your voice?
I have not.
It's called Dub AI.
I literally trained it with my voice and I made it sing like Whitney Houston's I Will
Always Love You and I was blown away.
There's no way I can do that in real life, but I sound so good.
That's super interesting.
(23:35):
Yeah, I have a ton of patents in my name and it was always frustrating to me that a lot
of them came under Gateway.
I think I've got one at Sony and some other places, but the vast majority was when I was
with Gateway Computer and they had a brilliant way to go about generating IP.
(24:00):
They had an intellectual property program where you turned the IP in.
They also made it part of your bonus actually and they did bonuses quarterly, which I thought
was unique to them versus other companies, but they actually tried to get you to work
with other people to help generate IP, which was very successful.
(24:25):
Sometimes I would come up with things that were outside maybe a little bit of what they
did and your remark about the voice AI piece reminded me.
I came up with something where you could play guitar, but as you were playing guitar, whatever
notes you were playing were automatically registered on this tool, this solution.
(24:49):
It recorded everything, recorded the tempo, everything so that you can go back because
as I grew up as a musician, a lot of times in our band, the guitar player may start playing
a solo for something that you guys have written and then you get done and you're like, oh
my God, that was fantastic.
(25:11):
What was that?
They just shrugged their shoulders and go, I don't know, I just did it on the fly and
that was great.
Can you do it again?
I don't know.
I don't think so.
This invention was to record the actual notes that you were playing, the tempo you were
playing, the keys, everything and gateway passed on that.
(25:34):
Well, many years later, of course, other inventions came up where people were using that.
I've done the same thing with keyboards.
I actually have an invention I can show you where I turned into gateway for a foldable,
compactable phone, which I believe is the same.
Yeah, that does that now, but this was back in 1996 or 1997 that I turned that in.
(26:00):
It was a phone that folded in three parts.
It was frustrating sometimes, but moreover, it was very rewarding because they actually
paid you for specific milestones as you created things.
You go to an invention board.
I eventually did so much and was privy to the process so much that I joined that intellectual
(26:26):
property board and was able to review other patents that other people were turning in.
As you go in, you've just got to make sure that you approach the creation and the protection
of the IP.
As much as possible, it's good to be in a collaborative environment.
(26:47):
Every so often, you'll hear a success story like Sony.
They did the Walkman.
I don't know if you know that story, but I can't remember the guy's name, but it was
a guy and maybe a few other people, and they literally went and locked themselves in a
room and worked on this in a vacuum.
Sony was obviously a great success for Sony so many years ago, but it's hard to replicate
(27:11):
that sort of thing.
Apple's done it at times as well, but I find that a more collaborative environment is helpful,
especially because I wasn't a hardcore programmer.
If I came up with stuff, I would go and work with my counterparts, my friends at Gateway
as an example, and say, is this possible?
(27:32):
I know it's unique because I don't see things out there, and I know it's novel, but is this
possible to generate this piece of hardware or this software process?
At times, then you can sign them on, and then they become co-inventors with you.
You just need to be cognizant to register your copyrights, trademarks, and your patents.
(27:56):
Your business product or domain names, create confidentially non-disclosure licensing contracts
for employees and partners.
It's important, and a lot of companies have gotten away from it, but IP is very important.
We definitely think so.
(28:21):
We spoke to a company, I want to say about two to three weeks ago, and they were making
... They call it sapphire screens, but they were making these ultra-strong screens that
could go on your phone and would also be foldable.
Producing these screens requires... Producing that material requires industrial heat of
(28:44):
almost 200 degrees centigrade.
We were having conversations with them about potentially using fusion energy, like an industrial
generator, to help them process those things.
It's interesting to hear about the origins of that technology.
Wow.
(29:07):
What do you think about what's happening in terms of our superconducting capability in
America?
I know that politically, there's a lot of worry about South Korea basically controlling
our computing.
I know that a lot of people talk about this.
How do you feel about that?
(29:31):
As it relates to... Just the future of the availability of these
superconductors in order to have computing follow Moore's Law in the future.
If we're talking about things like quantum computing and AI, all of these things require
(29:57):
not only huge amounts of energy, but they require computing that we don't have the capacity
to produce right now.
I know a lot of startups are working on it.
If you're talking about the internet, I don't have a strong opinion on some of these countries
(30:20):
that you brought up and that there's always a danger there and that comes into the regulatory
and the compliance and moreover the security piece.
But if you're talking about the intersection of technology and these energy pieces evolving,
to your point, high performance computing is one to look at and advanced simulation
(30:45):
techniques being essential for modeling and optimizing these fusion reactors and their
designs and the plasma behaviors.
Chemical modeling, which enables the scientists and engineers to simulate complex dynamics
and optimize the reactor performances, that's all going to be crucial to predict the behavior
(31:11):
of fusion reactions under different operating conditions.
We've seen things like... What was it?
The Japanese reactor that had an issue when it flooded, things of this nature.
High performance computing models in that respect are going to be helpful.
(31:32):
The development of advanced materials and engineering techniques.
I know that I shared something with everyone at Kremes on AI being used to help find new
materials not too long ago.
Because materials and engineering techniques are going to be critical for building and
(31:53):
operating fusion reactors, innovations in material sciences like high temperature superconductors
and in-based ceramics and all these sorts of things.
We're all in that article that I shared.
But AI is going to factor into it heavily.
It's going to be very interesting to watch this space and how AI and machine learning
(32:15):
can be impactful to it.
But as far as the other part of that question, I think it's all about security.
It's going to be crucial that we secure all of this.
It's tough.
A lot of these companies, I'm sorry, countries are way ahead of us in terms of the hacking
(32:41):
and the breaches that they're performing on a lot of these companies and it's tough to
stay ahead of the curve on that.
I really haven't seen anybody that's been able to stay ahead of the curve.
It's been more reactionary.
That's true.
That's true.
I think the fear is that we rely a lot on Taiwan for our computer chips and things like
(33:07):
that.
Everyone wonders that.
For example, for us at Kronos, when we use our D-Wave quantum computing infrastructure,
we pay about $10,000 for 10 hours.
That's the quantum computing usage going.
I fear that if we cannot scale up a larger infrastructure to build on some of these things,
(33:34):
we would end up paying maybe $30,000 for 10 hours.
That's my fear going forward, just from a computing economics perspective.
I understand the concern.
In Gateway, for instance, we got a fair amount of our chips from Taiwan as well.
(33:58):
There's always that danger of that market closing up to you based on geographical concerns
and politics as well.
Cyber security is a big thing for us.
We're heavily relying on you for all that, John.
What do you think?
(34:19):
Not only do we, as a nuclear energy company, have regulatory things that we need to worry
about.
There's a lot of compliance around that, but you hear about cyber attacks all the time.
You hear about the inevitability of it.
(34:40):
My accounts have, at least three or four times in the last decade, I've had a couple of my
accounts get hacked.
We are, in terms of an energy asset, I worry about cyber security.
What do you think?
(35:01):
How can we really ensure that we're protected?
Is there a way?
What I've really fallen back on, in regards to compliance in general, compliance first,
I need to say, I've had a lot of experience with ADA and GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA, PCI, FedBrand,
(35:23):
all these, especially in roles they've served in within legal, finance, retail arenas.
Same thing goes with security.
The compliance and security pieces are hand in hand.
You've got to do a full assessment of solutions and the infrastructure coupled with continued
audits to evaluate the adherence to regulatory requirements and endpoints in the security
(35:49):
piece.
Everything, as far as compliance and regulatory, is constantly changing.
On the flip side of the coin, on the security piece, the threats are constantly changing.
As soon as we figure out a way to shut an organization down or plug up an area that
(36:13):
could be breached, they find a new way in.
You have to really work on a regular basis to ensure that all these things have been
plugged up.
I've had very good luck with certain tools that protect both externally but internally
(36:36):
as well.
Tools like Verona's and Big ID and things like that.
They help you protect your data from both external threats and internal threats.
You want to make sure what are employees doing with data?
Why is this guy touching that data?
Why is he moving it from here to here?
(36:56):
He shouldn't be doing that sort of thing and protecting the endpoints.
Tools like that coupled with third party organizations that do this for a living, and that's all
they do.
I've worked successfully recently with Rapid7 and a number of SolarWinds and a number of
(37:20):
other, CrowdStrike is another one.
A lot of the organizations that I've worked in recently are very concerned over breaches
and hacking.
I know everyone is, but when you're working in one of the biggest law firms in the world
where they're handling, they have tens of thousands of clients and they're handling
their matters, they obviously don't want to be breached because it's not just their data,
(37:46):
it's all their clients' data.
It's critical and it's very private data.
It just can't be out there.
Constantly having to keep up with protecting those endpoints.
It's going to be an interesting decade for computing.
It always is an interesting decade for computing, I guess, but I feel like now especially so.
(38:16):
About five years ago, I used to talk about using five, maybe six years ago, I used to
talk about using AI machine learning and even quantum computing for fusion energy.
I spoke at an event at Harvard and I heard snickering in the back of the room.
People thought that this was an impossibility and now it's in the ethos of fusion energy
(38:40):
as how are we going to use a quantum computing lab and they're opening a quantum computing
lab in Princeton dedicated to fusion energy.
This happened just a week ago and it made me so happy to see this because it was proof
that I'm not crazy.
That's always good.
(39:02):
That's always good, but it was cool to see that I've always seen quantum computing being
applied in a financial sense like algorithmic trading.
That's really what I've seen.
I've seen friends use it for drug manufacturing and basically health research, like cancer
(39:27):
research.
I've seen that.
These are the two areas where quantum computing has really taken off and excelled, I think.
I've heard a lot of talk about quantum encryption and how they're going to be quantum encryption
programs that are going to be for banking and hospital use in the future because we're
(39:47):
going to need it.
I really want fusion energy to be like that fourth leg for this.
I feel like there's a lot of room.
Like you said, that supercomputer at Google that synthesized material compositions of
(40:08):
380,000 materials using the right AI, that's phenomenal.
Now I think, hey, what happens if we stick that into a quantum computer and speed up
that process and give it 200 more variables as to creating the perfect material?
Wow, that blows my mind.
(40:29):
I want to do that badly.
It's super interesting to watch this space.
It's all kind of coming together in the best ways.
What do you think about fusion energy, John?
What makes you interested in fusion?
Well, I mean, that's kind of been the holy grail, right?
(40:54):
Again, it kind of drives into the passion parts of it.
I'm very interested in energy in general.
I'm striving personally to get off the grid if I can.
I live on a very large property, kind of on a little mountain top.
(41:17):
The only thing we have here right now still is our Southern California Edison is supplying
electricity.
I'd like to get out of that business too.
We're on propane.
I've got Starlink for my internet.
I'd like to install solar and battery backups and all that sort of thing.
(41:39):
I'm very interested in an energy future where we can create unlimited energy and as clean
as possible to drive a lot of these clean energy and help everybody get to the point
where they can jettison that technology.
(42:00):
Yeah.
I think it'll be super cool.
I think 10 years from now we'll circle back and have a conversation about how we use computing
to crack fusion energy for humanity.
I think as a team, we're all environmentalists.
(42:22):
I think it's that basic passion that drives us.
I think it's going to be super interesting to see what the emerging technologies and
trends are.
To your point, I don't have a crystal ball, so I don't know 20 years out.
Right?
Right.
Right now, in the here and now, I have to say digitalization and internet of things
(42:48):
is going to factor heavily into this.
I go out to Palm Springs a lot too and Joshua Tree, I'm actually on the board of the Joshua
Tree National Park Association.
If you go out there, which I think you've gone out there, Priyanka, you see all the
That's my favorite place on earth, man.
That's a good place to get away.
(43:10):
It's ours too.
As you know, when you're driving out there, you can't miss them.
You see all the windmills, the wind turbines.
Those have become more and more internet of things pieces.
If you look at them, you see all kinds of devices on that are measuring things.
If something fails, those things can catch fire through friction and they'll shut them
(43:32):
down beforehand, so AI is being used.
Just the digitalization of that in the energy sector for things like internet of things
and artificial intelligence, they're really going to enable more efficient and intelligent
energy management.
You've got things like smart meters and sensors and internet of things, devices that provide
(43:53):
real-time data on energy consumption, enabling predictive maintenance, as I mentioned a moment
ago, demand response, energy optimization strategies.
Another one is the integration of AI and predictive analytics into energy management systems.
It's going to enable more efficient operation and optimization of energy assets.
(44:16):
AI algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data in real-time to predict energy demand and
optimize energy production and improve reliability and contribute to overall energy efficiency
and sustainability.
Another one that I was into this a lot, I need to make more time for it, is blockchain.
(44:41):
I got pretty heavily into it when I was at the Big Wall firm and I actually became the
blockchain expert there.
When people hear blockchain, a lot of people hear NFTs and Bitcoin and things of that
nature.
But blockchain, as you know, is so much more than that.
(45:01):
It's the underlying technology that drives all those things, which may or may not be
a success, those things, I mean, NFTs and Bitcoin.
Blockchain technology offers new opportunities for peer-to-peer energy trading, decentralized
energy systems and transparent energy transactions.
(45:23):
Blockchain enabled platforms would enable consumers to buy and sell renewable energy
directly with each other.
They could foster greater energy independence to our point that we were talking about earlier,
resilience and really democratization of energy markets.
I think that blockchain is going to factor into a lot of different industries, but I
(45:47):
think that for Kronos, it's going to be another key element.
Definitely like contracts management, things like that at a large scale.
Yeah, exactly.
Having that sort of permanence and record keeping and source of truth, that's amazing.
On the flip side of it, I'm in the process.
(46:07):
I kind of have it about 70% done, but I'm in the process of writing an article about
the future of cryptocurrency and how you need fusion energy for such a thing to take off,
because there are huge energy constraints when it comes to crypto mining.
Great, great.
There's been a huge drain on the grid in small cities and people have done all kinds of shady
(46:34):
things to leverage energy prices in different locations.
I was reading something yesterday and I wish I had the exact numbers, but the water that
you use to pool a lot of these systems.
I'm pretty sure I read that there was as much water was consumed by the state of Idaho.
(46:54):
Oh my God.
Yeah, in a year.
It's tough.
You're absolutely right.
That's a great point.
I'm hopeful for the future.
I think we can make it happen.
I have friends that are very curious about the field.
(47:17):
What would a young person trying to get into computing and AI and maybe even fusion energy,
what should they know?
Yeah, on the fusion energy part, I think you'd know better than I would at this stage at
least.
But just in technology in general, there's so many unique solutions out there.
(47:43):
When the whole AI and generative AI thing started, there was only one or two solutions
out there that you can play with.
As you know now, they're popping up almost daily.
You can now generate text-based videos.
You type in some prompt text and get a full video out of it with the...
(48:05):
Sora AI.
Yeah, Sora.
Chat GPT, there's a new version.
Like I said, it's almost daily.
Google, Musk is doing his thing as well.
I would really encourage people to...
A lot of these solutions are free, at least the base models.
(48:26):
To get them and play with them and to my point earlier, with my wife, even if you've got
an aversion to generating things and then using that as your own work, that's not necessarily
how you have to use it.
You can use it to spawn new ideas.
To spawn a spring point, to spring off of it and create something new.
(48:53):
Artists, same thing.
I know a lot of artists are scared right now of the generative AI replacing them.
I think as with bank ATMs and everything else in our past and PCs even, it's a tool and
(49:14):
it's up to us how we use that tool.
I think people are going to start to realize this, that it's actually something that I
would encourage people to use to make things, make their lives easier.
Circling full back to where we started this conversation, how do you make your life easier?
(49:35):
How do you streamline things so that you have time to do other things?
How do you help yourself generate new ideas by using these new technologies?
So I would encourage people to start there and play around with some of these tools and
learn these tools because they're not going away.
(49:57):
They're going to continue to grow and scale.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Thank you so much, John.
Of course.
Thank you guys.
Okay.
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