Peter Bishop (00:49)

Okay, well, welcome to Artificial Breakdown. I'm excited today to have an old buddy of mine, Dave Nagy, on the show. Welcome, Dave.

Dave (00:59)

Peter, thank you for having me. I can't believe you would, but this is great. 

Carrie (01:03)

Hahaha!

Peter Bishop (01:04)

We were really scraping the bottom of the barrel here, Dave. Like we had run out of options. I even called my mom.

Carrie (01:10)

Ha!

Dave (01:11)

LinkedIn as hard as you could, but thank you for making me a part of this. That's really exciting. I'm happy to be here. 

Peter Bishop (01:19)

You're welcome. You're welcome. Well, so obviously Dave and I go way back. We've known each other. I can't even remember the first time we met, but it was over a client a million years ago. But I've always been semi-envious of you somehow breaking out of the norm. Like I've been the soup here, but you've managed to kind of start your own thing. I think we're both entrepreneurs by heart, but you've really taken advantage of it.

Do you mind just how you got to this point in your life, just a little bit of background on what makes up Dave Nagy here?

 Dave (01:57)

The DNA question, that's tough. Well, I admittedly have no business being here. I've been up on a farm that was out in the backwoods just a little bit in the Ozarks. And no, we actually didn't have some basic resources back in the 70s and stuff. So here we are today, you know, we can talk about artificial intelligence. That's just kind of mind boggling to me if I piece it all together.

It's like, how did we get here? What happened in my life and all of our lives really to take us from that ultra analog existence to the place where we're at today? You know, for me, I think it was just good fortune, I suppose, of meeting a lot of people over the course of time that were influential on me, know, mentored me, took me under their wing to some effect, because I was probably not ill-equipped to do this by myself.

And I was raised with good work ethic, but not a lot of smarts, I suppose. My dad was someone who was inclined to like, look, if you put your back into everything, good things will happen. And he was probably had some wisdom in that, but it takes more than that today, right? To survive in our digital ecosystem. And I got into it about 20 years ago,

Purely by accident, know, I was coerced by my wife, my spouse is sometimes more motivated and ambitious than I am. And she said, you know, you can do better and you've to change things and you have opportunities out there. So go write your ticket. And so I did. I left my career job, which was in manufacturing in the agricultural sector and went back to school and ended up, you know, taking computer information systems education, which led me into this world of development and technology creation And so since then, I've run 10 different companies.

Carrie (03:44)

Wow. 

Dave (03:51)

Mostly in the retail space. So we've been selling things on the internet and teaching people to sell things on the internet. I ran two software ventures within that timeframe and I've run service-based organizations, E-commerce Canada being one of those, which is largely focused on service, but we're evolving that into a product company. I think.

Carrie (03:52)

Wow.

 Dave (04:14)

So that's my lineage. It's mostly, you know, marked by failure along the way. The majority of business ventures don't work out the way that you want, right? mean, no matter, so many things have to go right. You need the time and space in your life. 

That's always been a problem for me because of so many things that I'm interested in participating in, you need the right people around you, a capitalization to some effect, you need to be timed right for the market. You know what human beings want out there and all those things have to kind of consolidate at the same time.

Peter Bishop (04:51)

So, okay. Thank you for indulging me on that. Cause you know, I know we all have like long sorted background, especially at this age when we're long in the tooth, but I love the thought of how you kind of need to put, I think if you're going to go the entrepreneurial phase, you have to put so many irons in the fire for one of them to spark. 

And I think it's very easy to get discouraged and you think something, everything's going to go right. You've got all the right pieces and then it just doesn't work. And it's, it's easy to just, just throw in the towel and go back into employment or something safer. kind of what, what keeps you going in those spots? Cause I've been there, right? You kind of, you're looking at the pieces of something you thought was going to be wonderful. How do you pick it up and just.

Get going to the next thing, the next thing, the next thing. What's driving you?

Dave (05:43)

Yeah, well, yeah, it's a great question and I should ask myself these questions a little bit. I think like we all take inspiration or we find peace and gratification, different things, right? 

Some people are very inclined to be satisfied with consistency and security and knowing that there's a sameness now in the day. And that's not a bad thing. There's no criticism there whatsoever, but we all, you know, find power and peace in different places in our career, in our lives, right? 

And for me It's always been a sense of adventure and that next opportunity, you know, I just kind of see this fabric. I lands very squarely in the visionary category. If you follow those things like EOS and what not, got visionaries and integrators. 

Visionaries gift, I suppose, to the world is that they can perceive the fabric of our universe in a different way and make connections and see things. wow, a thousand people have looked at that, but nobody saw it that way before. And that's what always has driven me. I get excited to wake up in the morning when I'm creating things that I don't feel have been touched upon before, that haven't been handled by other hands. So I want that uniqueness of being early on things and I'm infatuated with risk, a very high risk threshold. There's a lot of drawbacks to that, I'll be totally honest.

Carrie (07:18)

Yeah, I could imagine.

Dave (07:22)

Yeah, it doesn't go very well all of the time. 

Carrie (07:25)

But when it does...

Dave (07:26) Every once in a while. When it does, you've got hopefully a rocket ship, right? And hopefully you've got something that that endears you to people too, right? And I'll be honest about it. I love the fact that people might be affected by by what I create, you know, whether it's content or conversations like this, know, nothing's more meaningful, I think, than getting feedback from people. 

It's like, wow, man, you changed my life in some way. ran into a former client of mine not so long ago and he came over and gave me big hug and said like, my business, I spoke with you a year ago and now my business is up 300 % and that was because of you, it's because I followed your playbook and I everything that you said I should do. 

And... Like what a moment that was, you know, it was just so gratifying. So I'm in the chase of adventure, I guess is the only way I can describe it. That's what keeps me in it. Peter, it has been in this technical world, digital world for the past 20 years, but it certainly doesn't have to be. I look forward to the next one. I'm always looking to like the next one. And earlier in my career, when I probably, when I started my first one,

You have this kinship with it. You just feel like, this is the only one and it's the most special one and it'll never get better than this one. Right. And as I've been in a couple of decades now, I just noticed there's always another one, right. And look forward to the next one and get ready for the magic of what that's going to be. And thank you technology universe for keep feeding us these great things, man. Cause I've never been, I shouldn't say never. I am more excited about this industry and the that we're doing today than I have been in certainly in 10 years. think this is good time to be.

Carrie (09:13)

That's kind of my next question is, what is it about the technology space that you think sparks that or feeds into that need for adventure that you have?

Dave (09:25)

The reduction in the barriers. I started my first company and I've told this story a number of times so I will certainly bore Peter with it and most of your listeners.

Carrie (09:27)

Hmm. I'm sure they'd love to hear it. I'd love to hear it.

Peter Bishop (09:40)

Yeah, I'm go to the bathroom. Just kidding.

Dave (09:44)

Yeah, just go, just stay here and just go. You know, as an e-commerce company in 2008, it was in the outdoor gear space. Even though I was in the interactive industry, I'd worked with agencies and then I went solo and independent, worked on the value and worked for HBO and Virgin Robots, really cool company. So, you you perceive that the guy knows what he's doing.

But entering into online retail or e-commerce, this is totally different animal. That's just wild and radically different from the experience that I have. And I had three business partners as founders that started that company. 

And that first build of that online store cost $300,000, right? And it actually failed to work. know, we spent about 18 months hacking at it, building this thing, getting products on the internet. We actually built a community oriented site where it was, it was more content than it was shopping to begin with because we naively believe that that's what people wanted, that they wanted to participate in a community. And then they'd pick a jacket. That's not so, not so wise. And it took us a year and half to make that pivot. So, you know, we're hundreds of thousands of dollars into a venture and years on a timeline before we even started to figure it out.

Carrie (10:50)

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Dave (11:05)

But thankfully for us, like those barriers to entry were huge. Like how many other competitors were willing to invest in something to that extent? It's like, no, it's too much money and too much time. You would give up rationally. You would give up past that point. And so the barriers to getting into this type of business, to scaling these types of businesses were extreme back then, right? know, creating things, photography. my goodness. Just farming photography and assets for our suppliers who are

Carrie (11:33)

Hmm

Dave (11:35)

big brands like the North Face and Arterics. They didn't even have them. They hadn't thought through these types of things and none of them sold on the internet. So you're like starting at ground zero.

And 15-ish years later, look at us, right? It's like, I could slap that up on Shopify by, Monday of next week, and we'd have about 2,000 SKUs on the thing, because we just got to ask suppliers for the product data. And that's a micro example of what we're dealing with today with automation and machine learning has taken this so, so, so far.

So that truly is what excites me the most. It's like, boy, all the crazy, silly ideas that I've had and executed poorly in my life could have been done so much quicker.

Peter Bishop (12:21)

haha

Carrie (12:21)

You could have executed them poorly even faster. 

Dave (12:25)

Speed to failure, right? Fail fast. Fail fast.

Carrie (12:29)

Just kidding.

Peter Bishop (12:30)

It's, it's so true though. think it's so true that just the, even now when you look at the dollies and whatnot of the world where if you can think it up, you don't need to be good at illustration. can just make it. I, the, ability to create is getting just faster and quicker and more easy. It's that's phenomenal. 

Dave, do you mind quickly talking a little bit about what you're into now. So we talked a bit about kind of where you got to, but one of the thoughts and one of the reasons I wanted you on, we were chatting over breakfast as we do, and you had chatted a little bit around your latest pivot into AI. And I thought that sounded amazing.

Dave (13:17)

Well, thanks man. I'm glad it sounds good to somebody because I often question.

Peter Bishop (13:22)

To be fair, I was drunk at breakfast.

Dave (13:24)

Ha, like four mimosas then so that's... that presecco will hit you hard if you're not paying attention. 

Peter Bishop (13:28)

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Carrie (13:29)

That's when the best ideas happen. 

Peter Bishop (13:32)

Yeah.

Dave (13:55)

Well a little bit of a backstory on it, I I came into this like most things in my life purely by accident, it's not the intention but you know was having some kumbaya feelings in around 2017 or 2018 and you and I spent a lot of time together back then Peter and just feeling like you know the world needed a safe space to go learn and get information and craft information. 

Cause we've got a lot of great platforms and contributors into this gigantic digital ecosystem that we have. I remember, I'll share this a bit of an aside, but I remember a slide in my old pitch deck when I owned the Outdoor Gear company, liveoutthere.com. We had a slide in our pitch deck that showed all the logos of all the companies that we worked with all the like software applications that we had. And this thing would cover like a wall of a gymnasium, it was like 170 logos on it. 

We were so proud of that. We would show it off to investors like, look at how complex our business is, I like laugh out loud about that slide now. was like, that was nothing to be impressed by.

What we should be saying is like, how many logos can we reduce here? level of complexity is insane. Like that's just crazy. Nobody needs that. Nobody wants that. just what it cost, but look at the amount of complexity that we had introduced into that business. And it's because we were chasing answers all the time, trying to figure out our own business, trying to find that focus. you know, somewhere through my career, I felt that I had learned enough and trialed enough and failed enough that I had something to share with other entrepreneurs, other business owners, right?

Really want you to spend the money and waste the time that I did. We can get you there quicker and we can do it through like, you know, solid tools like a toolkit and an operating system. You will need some software.

Let's minimize its impact. You will need to work with some partners, but let's minimize how many, how far astray you go on your climbing route, so to speak. And so I created this brand e-commerce Canada to achieve that, right? I just wanted to teach people how to fish and not be the guy that was in that seat of owning the business anymore, but just being the one that kind of was a good steward of the information. 

And so it has led me to this path of working with so many companies and seeing their evolution and recognizing quite easily good numbers from bad numbers. think it's maybe the only skill I really possess is diagnostic capability, right? I can look at the chart, I can see the analytics, I can see the numbers and I can beautiful mind that shit. I know pretty fast, it's like, well, we got one here, you know, and here's what you do and this is what prioritize.

Carrie (16:26)

Nice.

Dave (16:30)

And you do that enough times and you develop muscle memory for it right and so my kumbaya moment kind of led me down this path like I want to do good you know I want to help business owners because I care about the little critters whether it's logical or not that's what I associate with that's who I want to help and so I tried to build a platform in a company that would support them 

And to address your question, it led me to this moment, Peter, of like, wow, man, technology came a long way while I was wandering in the trees. And look at all the stuff that we can now achieve. 

And serendipitously, I was sitting onlike mountains of information I had captured and recorded and transcribed using artificial intelligence as part of a client service. Cause I just thought it was a good idea to capture everything that we were doing and share it with our clients and formats like this. we had thousands of hours of transcriptions of me delivering that diagnostic service for businesses from coast to coast and into the U S. And that was just serendipitous. That was just good fortune.

And then along came AI tools that allowed us to manipulate that and do something with it. So we've been able to train artificial intelligence to deliver artificial intelligence combined with automation, I would say, to deliver a lot of the services that would otherwise be high touch. And because they're high touch, they're expensive. Because they're expensive, they're inaccessible to smaller businesses, right?

So that's the journey right now is how do you take this thing that used to be very, you know, heavy on the engagement side and the communication side and take a lot of resource, a lot of human beings to deliver and now utilize, you know, this great new set of tools that has evolved for us to be able to deliver that to, you know, a much larger part of the market and and do it quicker and do it at scale. And so that's my journey right now, yeah. 

Carrie (18:35)

That's amazing. And it's funny that you talk about luck so much and serendipity, but I mean, we talk about this a lot with AI. It's, still, you had the strategy, you had the idea, you had the insight to use these tools. so, you know, a little bit of kudos to you. I feel like that's a pretty impressive story.

Peter Bishop (18:54)

Hahaha

Dave (18:56)

I am thankful that the world today, maybe more so than 12 months ago, rewards the creative thinker. Not the genius, but the creative thinker that can think outside the box and make those connections. Because it's really, how much do we need to build anymore? It feels to me like it's like those creative energies can be applied into things that were not impossible, but certainly very difficult and had big barriers to entry even three or four years ago. I'm old enough to remember Flash websites, know, right? And Peter probably even designed some of those.

Peter Bishop (19:41)

Some of my best work, man.

Carrie (19:43)

I would love to see your flash sites.

Peter Bishop (19:47)

Ha

Carrie (19:47)

Hahaha

Dave (19:48)

But creativity. But we value creativity so much back then. We valued brand, we valued good messaging, we valued creativity and marketing campaigns. And the pendulum swing, you know, through the 2010s was more in the like, it's all about the data. It's all about the data. The four to one.

Carrie (20:06)

Mm-hmm.

Dave (20:07)

And there's value in that too. And I certainly glean myself on that and understand that stuff really well. But my heart breaks for creativity and visionaries, right? And people that are trying to map the world in a different way.

And I think we've been dropped now into this pool of emerging technology that doesn't stop with artificial intelligence. We got robotics and we got IOT and we got crypto and we got femtech and we got fintech and all of these tremendous things that are happening with this digital revolution that...

Now the pendulum swing goes back to like, man, can you be creative and think it and think of how all of these amazing things can consolidate into a new product that we never imagined we formed.

Carrie (20:49)

Yeah. And that's something I was talking about recently too, this idea that I think the people who are going to be the most successful using AI as a tool, are those problem solvers. They are those creative thinkers. They, know, the visionaries, because those are the people who can think to use these tools differently than what's obvious. 

Dave (21:08)

Yeah, I think a lot of our artificial intelligence usage to date, which has been around for a really long time, but you know, we're talking about a 12 month window for looking back on like, when has it become kind of commercially significant and users applied to it. It's really quite recent that all of that has happened. And we're getting out of that generalized AI space now and into more specialized artificial intelligence. But now we're crafting things that can actually start to have impact and evolve quicker than the human mind can. Just a case in point with the software we've built, which is called the Luminary.

Carrie (21:35)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave (21:48)

And the Luminary's job is to be your business coach and e-commerce advisor, right? He can accrue way more information and data than I can. He lives on Shopify right now and you can install it as an app and chit chat with it. 

If you're a business owner, you're marketing leader or something, you just hop in there and say, that a good number? He's watching your analytics, so he's got a pretty good idea. And you can just have dialogue with it and ask it questions, which is freedom for me because I get to like share the things that I've created with people and hopefully provide some value for them. 

But they're not limited by my capacity. They're not limited by like, hey, do you have a 30 minute block somewhere? That's come up very often.

Carrie (22:29)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dave (22:32)

365 days a year, seven days a week availability of a thing that can run on a million websites all at the same time. It will in time be a far more effective consultant than I can ever dream of being simply because of that, because it can learn so quickly. 

Carrie (22:50)

Wow. 

Peter Bishop (22:52)

It's ridiculous, hey? It's just, it's so hard to kind of imagine where this thing can actually go, but it feels a little bit, and correct me if I'm wrong, Dave, but it feels a little bit like you're in the process of packaging up your brain, which for me would take 10 seconds, but for it sounds like kind of packaging and productizing.

Carrie (23:11)

Hahaha

Peter Bishop (23:16)

... like all this experience into something that can deliver on that level, right? So it's taking the advantage of your experience, but then giving it the tools that AI can bring, which is always on, always scanning all of those things. Like it really is something amazing. I imagine trying to keep the lid on that is challenging. You know what I mean? As far as cause AI is so built on this kind of always sharing everything you put in, everyone has access to like,

How is that playing in with what you're doing? Because it would be a shame, I think, to suddenly everyone can access all this stuff that you spent years accumulating. Do you know what I mean? 

Dave (23:58)

I spoke with an investor recently about this. We had this exact conversation and he was like, his concern was that there isn't enough of a technology barrier to protect a lot of the software that's being funded these days. And that's, there are risk takers in the investment game, in the VC game, in the PA game. 

They gotta decide what's good and what's investable and how much they should put in, et cetera. I don't think there is a technology barrier, right? Like I addressed his concern with like, well, but because there isn't a technology barrier, right? Most of us can do it. The problem is most of us can't think it. And most of us aren't sitting on a resource of thousands of hours of learning and stuff, right? And so if you have proficiency,

If you're truly great and specialized in what you do, that's not commoditized yet. Material is commoditized and I believe it was Daniel Pink, he explained that like our world used to be commanded by the people who held onto intellectual property, right? No different than us earlier in our careers, right? It was like, are you the SEO guy? Well, you possess knowledge I don't have access to. And Peter, you know, you use Photoshop 3. that's special, man. We don't know how to do that 

Peter Bishop (25:15)

Hypothetically.

Dave (25:18)

... had to pay exorbitant amounts of money, which made you so rich that, yeah, it's like, this is what we need to do to access this guy's brain who holds this intellectual property, right? And that's been a dramatic swing now because the content, intellectual property, yes, everywhere, it's commoditized.

The curation is the key now. It's like, yeah, but I don't know. There's so much of it. I can't discern from good to bad, right? Could any of us set up a Shopify store? A hundred percent. I guarantee you any of us could set up a Shopify store. But do we know the nuances of what makes it special? And do we understand good unit economics? The platform itself doesn't sell anything for you. The operational piece of like, now what do you do with that tool? That's...

Carrie (26:06)

Hmm.

Dave (26:07)

And so the intellectual property piece totally commoditized, doesn't matter that much anymore. But the thought leadership and the curation of like good versus bad and be able to guide you and direct you and get you to a good place quickly, that's extremely specialized. So I do understand the concern of like, boy, how transparent do we want to be with certain things?

But it really is that seed of specialization that I've curated in this is still pretty easy to protect. That's pretty hard. Because if you haven't lived that experience, you just, you wouldn't even know where to begin.

Peter Bishop (26:44)

That's amazing. I'm to shift gears real quick here, Dave, because the other thing I really wanted to get to was we had chatted again over breakfast while we were both smashed. We talked a little bit around environment and AI, which is an area that I was completely oblivious to, I'd say for the most part. And I know this is an area you're doing some talks about now and you're getting stuck into.

Do you mind touching a little bit on that? Because I feel like it was fascinating. It was absolutely fascinating. And I think the consequences of AI, it just feels like there is none at the moment and it's probably the opposite.

Dave (27:28)

Yeah, what an interesting piece of subject matter that I stumbled into and some would say face planted. It was certainly like a pure accident once again, but I was asked to speak recently in front of an energy audience, a bunch of senior leaders in the energy industry and exploring, you know, opportunities and transition within, you know, power generation and energy resources and whatnot. And I, you know, I'm a super senior in this industry. feels like in 20 years and

And I needed something new to talk to them about because I knew that there wouldn't there wouldn't be good talking points and there wouldn't be much interest from what I had to share if I didn't relate it to their industry somehow. So I went down this rabbit hole of energy consumption within the tech industry. And I found that there's a little bit of research out there and certainly it's an evolving topic that's moving pretty quickly in this moment. But I had never in my career,

Peter thought about the environmental impact of the things that we build in technology businesses or in the technology industry. Right. I had never had an ethical concern along environmental lines about a piece of software that I've built. I had to do a double take and I had to do some self reflection. And it's a challenge that I want to make for all tech leaders, anybody listening to this, like.

Peter Bishop (28:49)

Yeah.

Dave (28:57)

what are the consequences of things that we build? What does it mean to train a large language model? What does it mean to train an artificial intelligence? With an environmental spin on that, we don't worry about jobs and ethics and human exploitation, all those things are all really valid, but I really had to take an environmental look on it. And so I learned some important stuff, know, training a large language model.

Requires the energy equivalent to powering about a thousand households in North America, right? For one year. How many businesses today are training in LLM? Lots. Is anybody stopping and saying and having a leadership huddle like this and saying like, Hey guys, should we do this? Is this a good idea? mean, it's not power to power a thousand households for a year. Should we do it?

Carrie (29:28)

Jesus.

Dave (29:47)

And I mean, we work in an industry that I've never asked that question before. One chat GPT query requires the energy consumption of about 10 to 15 Google search queries. So while we're getting infatuated with the new tech and it provides such value for us, just the methods of database calls and tokenization that it has to use consumes so much more power than a Google search query. And even Google is turning their product into an AI driver product now, right? And here are racing down this road to create new tools and new technology, I think often without giving consideration to what does it mean for the planet to power all of these things.

Carrie (30:19)

Mm-hmm. 

Dave (30:34)

And so there's so many examples out there. mean, Gemini is in its first year of infancy, right? They just kind of created, evolved it out of what was prior, it was prior artificial intelligence. But 12 months in, we expect Gemini to use more power than the entire country of Ireland this year.

Carrie (30:54)

Huh.

Dave (30:54)

That's just one AI, you know, there are many. OpenAI has out for tender, I believe, five to six new power generation facilities to power data centers for them. Each one of those power generation facilities would power a city of about three million people. Just one company with one initiative. So the global need for energy, because of the tech industry now, is at this rocket ship pace. Like we are going off the charts in terms of energy demand. And I feel fairly certain that there's not enough consideration on the other side of this conversation to say where the power comes from. I'm certain, yeah. 

Carrie (31:33)

Yeah. Pretty certain. Yeah. Agreed. 

Dave (31:40)

I know this industry and you guys know this industry and I don't believe that leadership out there I don't believe there's good stewards of saying like is it a good idea and where's all that material going to come from where's all that energy going to come from do we even have the facility do we have the energy grids to power it all get tells me and my understanding tells me that the answer today is no.

Carrie (32:04)

No, I mean, we already have energy grids that can't handle what is coming at it now, just with increased population and increased electricity use and all of that kind of stuff. So where do you think, and I mean, this is a complex question, but where do you think the onus lies then on ensuring that this is done properly? 

Dave (32:27)

It's such an interesting ethical debate because we've all been a part of digital transformation in our careers. We've helped companies digital transformation. How many businesses have we worked with that have gone paperless? We put new software in there and it all felt like a good idea, right? That's awesome. It uses less trees. Now for the first time in my life, I'm kind like, I don't know. Was it awesome? Are we doing it right? I'm not as sure.

Carrie (32:49)

Well, and it was really sold to us in that way. It's like, well, we're saving the forests because you sent an email instead of a letter, you're saving the rainforest and because, you know, and because you're going paperless, but it's like, and I've heard this so many times over the last 10 years where people are like, well, you know, it uses energy, right? And I'm terrible for this. I'm, was like, yeah, but there's no way it's using as much energy as what we were using before. But in reality it is, it's using way more energy.

Dave (33:16)

Yeah, we have a confined resource that has a ceiling on it. We currently today don't have the power generation facilities to supply everything that we're dreaming up and we're trying to create. And so we're creating quite a conundrum. I do think commercial enterprise will drive this forward. So for every technology company that needs to power a thing, most of us have heard that Microsoft recommissioned Three Mile Island at a cost of 1.6 or 1.8 billion.

I'm aware of 35 billion in infrastructure projects that American Big Tech has invested into Europe over the past six weeks or so, just for AI and cloud computing centers. So there's big investment on that side.

Peter Bishop (34:00)

OpenAI is doing that $6 billion raise, which I think is something around that too.

Dave (34:06)

That's, I mean, what does that company need more than anything else? Data centers and power, right? And coolant, coolant. That's the other thing that's like, that creates a tremendous amount of heat on our planet. We need cooling sources for it. Right now water is the primary method for using that. I'm uncertain of the exact figures, but what I have had quoted to me is that an average session on chat GPT will consume about half a liter.

Peter Bishop (34:17)

Right. 

Dave (34:36)

Fortunately not all freshwater because we're burying these things in the ocean.

Peter Bishop (34:39)

It was funny. You mentioned, I don't know if it's funny, but you mentioned when we were chatting a little bit about heralding back to the industrial revolution era, right? Where it feels like history repeating itself. Do you remember that? It was cool.

Dave (34:53)

I do, yeah. Yeah.

Carrie (34:55)

You guys remember that brunch? That's so interesting. I see. I see. Sorry. I misunderstood.

Peter Bishop (34:57)

We remember the Industrial Revolution because we were in it.

Dave (35:03)

The Bishops were known for coal power and steam factories back then. It goes way back. That's how Peter and I met. We getting white in the beard, Peter. This is still good time for us. for some of the few people that remember that era. But it's the only logical metaphor that I can make for it is like we are now in the digital industrial revolution and a better creative director maybe can help me with this will can it better than that. 

That's just the best I got. But it's like the digital industrial revolution where every man, woman, child, household, business, commercial enterprise, everything will be touched by this.

And the only thing that I can relate it to is like, you know, 150 or 175 years ago, factories are springing up all over London and it rewired the circuitry of society. You know, we went from the small independent manufacturers making a pair of shoes, knocking out five pairs of shoes a week, cause that was your capacity to a factory turning out 1500 of those. And you literally had to remap urban lifestyle, you know, you needed to send resources and energy and coal and steam to this gigantic facility to power a thing that was able to create this gigantic increase in productivity.

And our emerging tech really tells the same story to me today. And I'm still trying to grasp at how it may affect our geography, where we live, where we choose to, know, co-locate, relocate, how energy resources will be affected by, because it all needs to change. 

And that conversation unto itself is a whole other episode because it's just so, so big, the enormity of it and the fabric of our changing lives because if all of these pieces of emerging tech, again, not just AI, but robotics, right? 

Like that changes things and those things are hitting this hyper gross stage and they're being powered by artificial intelligence that allows us to do things that five years ago were inconceivable. So fun.

I think that that's what's so important about having these conversations right now is, you know, we need to be weaving in this conversation about environmental impact, about ethics, about everything else. In the conversation of talking about AI, it's not just this great productivity tool that has no negative effects on the world. But it's also not this big negative horrible thing that's going to wreck everything, but we need to talk about everything in unison.

Dave (37:53)

Yeah, we do. The consciousness of unintended consequences, I think, is an op-ed piece that I wrote recently. It's all great to create things. And most of us in these tech roles have had the autonomy of not worrying about it ever before. Just build stuff. And maybe people will buy your stuff. And maybe that'll be great for humanity, and maybe not.

Carrie (38:11)

Mm-hmm.

Dave (38:18)

I think today it really requires a bit of reckoning. really is like, hey man, maybe there needs to be like a Bane counter or something on that AI that we just built for a client to tell us, whoa, that's poorly optimized. You're draining a true mega eight. Lots of energy will go at the door because we created this thing and dropped it on the planet. That's bad. I think it's time for tech leaders to have more conversation.

 Carrie (38:31)

Hmm. Mm-hmm.

 Peter Bishop (38:44)

Yeah. 

Carrie (38:44)

I agree.

Peter Bishop (38:46)

Dave, that kind of brings us to time. Is there anything you wanted to talk about before we wrap this up?

 Dave (38:55)

Well, that's a big one right there. I do think, you know, accountability and responsibility from the people that we interact with and are in this industry. That's a new conversation. I think it's fun. think it's exciting. Past that, you know, really, I would just encourage people to familiarize themselves with the tools that are out there today. 

Most of us are, I think, you know, the curiosity of being around it is, you know, it's too tantalizing to just like not integrate artificial intelligence and everything into our businesses. I think we have an ethical responsibility as we do that. And it's not about putting everybody out of work, like truly, but know that it means diversification, no matter who you are, whether you're a designer or a copywriter or a programmer or those at risk careers. Well, in some ways, yes. 

But I think creativity trumps all things. I don't think we're at a point where it's like, my goodness, we're not going to need human beings for all of this stuff. It's like, no, we're just going to diversify. The same thing we did in the Industrial Revolution. Human beings continued to work and produce. Factories took the lion's share of some things that maybe we didn't need them to do anymore. But we're not going to fall into this pit of uselessness by adopting AI.

Carrie (40:22)

That's what we should have called this podcast, the pit of uselessness.

 Peter Bishop (40:28)

Okay. Well, as always, Dave, fascinating. And I feel like we could talk for approximately 48 hours on this stuff. I didn't know if you knew that's what you're in for. We're just going to take a quick break and be back for a four hour session. yeah, totally. None of this has been recorded so far. 

Carrie (40:42)

Yeah, this was just the intro.

Peter Bishop (40:56) But no, I've been a pleasure as always, Dave. And I hope we can bring you back. That'd be awesome. It's, like a lot of stuff to unpack here. That's amazing. Thanks again.

Dave (40:58)

Yeah, should say curiosity and learning are at the core of all of this and I'm sure for all of us on the call right now, like what is so exciting about this industry? It's the ability to learn and evolve and change, you know,

Carrie (41:00)

Yeah, thank you so much.

Dave (41:13)

That's really it, right? Like I'm so excited to see what we can do next and to solve these problems of like, where's the energy gonna come from? It's like, I don't know, man, but I'm gonna figure it out or at least be part of it, right? 

Carrie (41:27)

Love that, yes.

Peter Bishop (41:29)

Human batteries.

Dave (41:32)

Yeah, there's a Rick and Morty episode about that. It's called Turpanian Cultures, little mini-mes that we create that run on the treadmills. 

Peter Bishop (41:32)

That's the answer.

Carrie (41:33)

Ha ha. 

Peter Bishop (41:42)

Right, if Hollywood is taught as anything, this is where this all ends. Yeah, no, that's awesome. Thanks again, Dave. We appreciate you being on.

Dave (41:52)

That's my pleasure. Thank you guys. If you need anything, just let me know. I'll hop on. Take care. Bye bye.

Peter Bishop (41:56)

Yeah, we'll do. Yeah. Cheers, bud.

 Carrie (41:57)

Talk soon.

Peter Bishop (42:09)

Okay. Yeah, I think I need a cigarette.

Carrie (42:09)

That was great. That was great.

Peter Bishop (42:18)

It was good. I, there's a lot of thoughts there I really liked. but starting with, I just liked Dave's approach to entrepreneurship. think as I kind of go through that a fair bit, there's so many failures and I just love his approach to, what keeps him going and that kind of sense of adventure. Cause I do think if you don't have that is really easy to kind of be one and done.

Carrie (42:18)

Yeah! Mm-hmm.

Well, and if you don't have that, you're probably not having fun doing it. So why do it? But I said this to a friend of mine recently, her, tattoo shop recently closed and she was all stressed about it. And obviously it's like her first business and it's closing. I'm like, no, but how cool is that that you're like closing down your first company to start your next one? Like failure is what.

Peter Bishop (42:47)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Carrie (43:07)

The road to success is built on failure or whatever the saying is. Like, it's a pretty boss thing to say like, I have to insolve my company. even though it sounds bad, but it's like, yeah, but you know, like Dave was saying, the amount of failures that he has is what's led him to here.

Peter Bishop (43:15)

Right? Yeah, totally.

Yeah. And I think, you know, you talk to a lot of successful people, there usually is a path of failure that maybe it's not always, you know, front and center, but it's usually the case. have to, as long as you're learning from everything, it usually leads to somewhere good. 

So it's just, it would be a shame to be giving up along that path when you could be actually getting to somewhere awesome. So it was encouraging to hear that. And then I, yeah, I was really hoping to get to the kind of environmental impact of AI because I think it's such a new territory that hardly anyone's really thinking about.

Carrie (44:03)

Well, I think it's so easy for us. Like I'm totally guilty of this, of just turning a blind eye. Like I remember when I first started this position as AI specialist and somebody said, well, doesn't it use a ton of energy? read somewhere that it, and I was like, yeah, it can't be that bad. Like, you know, it's, but really like half a liter of water every time you use chat GPT, that's unbelievable.

Peter Bishop (44:30)

Yeah, I don't know. just, you always assume electric is clean and it's not really the case. I remember talking about to someone who's working on the grid, they're saying like if everyone had an electric car in every block, anything more than that and it has the ability to shut down the grid, which is bananas, but it makes sense. Just the amount of power those things draw. So, you know, again, it's just, just cause it's electric and the computer seems so quiet and unassuming, but you know there's a consequence to everything.

Carrie (45:01)

Yeah. And I think that there's no one proper solution necessarily to it all, but something has to be done for sure. And, and, you know, I agree that it's like, it's got to be on tech leaders. 

They've got to be thinking about this and considering that they're making this thing. So that is part of their responsibility is to make it good for the people who use it, including the planet. But, you know, also maybe. Maybe I'll Google search a few more things this week, then I will use chat GPT.

Peter Bishop (45:31)

Well, I'd be curious to see like, cause we saw like Google came out with their AI response at the top and then chat GPT just came out with their search. So the two of them just kind of. 

Cross divided or whatever that is. But I'd be curious to see if either of those things are slightly better or are they the same problem? Because Google's essentially just coming back with a list of results. Whereas the AI component is scouring.

who knows how much stuff and compiling an answer, which I get why that would be more taxing. So now is Google kind of doing both is giving you a list and compiling like, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. That's the, that's what I'm getting out of this.

Carrie (46:16)

Yeah. Well, I think that it's, it's going to be part of a bigger conversation and hopefully that conversation, like, hopefully there is a, you know, somebody looks into this and we have those stats.

Peter Bishop (46:30)

The seven steps. So the first step is what is like admitting you have a problem, right?

Carrie (46:34)

Yeah, 100%. That's exactly what it is. 

Peter Bishop (46:39)

Awesome. Anyway, it was nice to catch up with Dave and I got all the time in the world for him. He's a smart, smart dude and I'm hoping we can get him.

Carrie (46:46)

Yeah, like you said, that could have been a 48-hour episode, easily.

Peter Bishop (46:50)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, totally totally probably less productive in the last five hours, but I'm sure it would have been good for a while Yeah All right, well Fun once again and I look forward to the next one Yeah, see ya

Carrie (46:52)

You guys should have brunch more often. We'd get some good sound bites. See you then.