Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Infinite Future. I'm Todd Thomas, and today we're exploring the innovations shaping tomorrow's world. You're watching NowMedia TV.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Hello and welcome to Infinite Future.
[00:00:10] Speaker A: I'm your host, Todd Thomas.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Infinite Future is the show for people that don't just want to talk about the future, they want to engineer it. Thank you for joining us. Today, I'm joined by a very special guest, Juan Guevara Torres, the founder and CEO of NOW Media tv. Thank you so much for being on the show.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: I'm so happy to be here, actually. You know, talking about the future is always an interesting thing, especially when you're about to engineer it. And in technology is a passion of mine. And I know you're a tech person, too.
I've learned what you guys have done with. With your company, so. So thank you very much for the invite.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Yeah. So thrilled to have you on. I mean, you're really kind of an inspiration. You've been a leader in media. You've been in media your whole life, and you've been a leader for years. And now you've built our network together.
[00:01:03] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Do you have a favorite media story for a newcomer like me?
[00:01:09] Speaker C: You know, you probably have to let your ego go.
It's interesting because media is very humbling.
And it's interesting because something that might be moderately funny, if you say it on television, on the radio, it probably could be very funny.
But if you say something that it's cocky, for example, it would sound really bad on television on the radio. I've done that before.
I have my.
My share of stories that I would have liked not to do.
I fell down on TV, live television. Once in Univision 45, I was with my friend Raul Pembert. He was hosting the news. I was getting into the set, and I completely fell down. I mean, on live tv, on, you know, in the middle of the broadcast. So that was once.
Another one was actually in Cupertino covering the launch of one of the iPhones. I don't remember if it was the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5C. It was. It was probably 10 years ago, and Tim Cook agreed to talk to me.
And I had a photographer with me. And instead of pointing the camera at the CEO of of one of the most valuable companies in the world, he was trying to take a selfie.
So when you see the video, the guy is pointing at Tim Cook's shirt instead of pointing it to him. So the whole interview was actually pointing out to Tim Cook's shirt instead of actually getting that done. So that's another one.
So you have to.
When you're in media, media is going through a very big transformation.
My suggestion is you probably want to make sure that you are okay with criticism. You're okay with people telling you all the time what you did wrong. I love. I don't remember which movie it was, but I remember some of those CIA movies, you know, spying and everything.
And I think it was the recruit with, with Al Pacino, actually, when he was talking to some of the recruits and he said, our successes are not known, our failures are.
So that happens in media when, when, when there is something that you're doing correct. It's assumed that you probably had to do it that way.
But when you made a mistake, oh boy, people know about it.
Memes go out, you're on YouTube, they replay it over and over again.
So people are not saying anything. It's actually a good thing. You will hear when people don't like something.
I can tell you that now.
[00:04:22] Speaker B: Wasn't one of your most memorable bloopers something that actually occurred behind you? It wasn't even really your blooper.
[00:04:28] Speaker C: Yeah, no. Thank you for reminding me of that. We were covering the Apple launch here in Houston on the Highland Village Apple store, and I was with Fox covering this.
And what happened was we were talking about people lining up when people used to line up to get the new iPhone.
And we were talking about the lines, we're talking about the excitement. People were camping out Apple stores.
And this guy who happened to be a dj, now we know he was a DJ of a famous radio station here in Houston, he started taking his shirt off while I was wearing a suit with Andrea Watkins at the time.
If she's watching Andrea, you know, you're the best.
And this guy starts dancing behind me, taking the shirt off. I mean, completely shirtless, dude, dancing behind me.
And that is a YouTube video blooper that has been going around, has a million and something views, is one of the reels that people talk about on multiple media failures. So, yeah, that, that, that's one of the most memorable. But that teach you the thing that probably immediately you have to learn.
You have to have a thick skin.
You need to understand that people will criticize you no matter what you do.
And being a business owner, you know this. You need to deal with rejection when you're in sales. You need to deal with rejection when you're raising capital. You need to be deal with rejection when a client says, well, I don't want to have your services anymore.
Thank you very much. And you probably have to have a very thick skin when you put yourself out there in the media and people just don't like what you do for whatever reason, and they feel they have the right to criticize you harshly because they probably know better. They think so having that, it's an interesting thing. However, I believe that. That for people that are understanding media, the most important thing that you have to keep in mind is you're there.
Not because of you.
This is not about you if you're in the media. This is about you serving others and providing guidance and providing a structure where people can learn with your guests, with your contributors, what they need to know to become better people.
[00:07:24] Speaker B: That's really insightful.
So Infinite Future is going to be a show about those that want to drive the future, to build the future. Really, I love it. The entrepreneurs and innovators that are going to shape the coming decades.
Why is that an important story right now? Why is that an important thing to talk about right now?
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Well, some people believe that we cannot predict the future.
I disagree with that.
I think you can predict the future based what happened in the past.
I was never so. I'm sorry for my history teacher. If he's watching at University of St. Thomas, I apologize.
I love his class. But I've never been a history person.
You know, I tend to look forward, not backward. However, if you know where you're coming from, you probably can predict where you're going. Because at the end of the day, the sum. Your results today are a sum of all the decisions that you've done in the past.
And as a society in this country, we are in a very unique place.
And we made some decisions just a year ago that are questionable.
We sometimes ignore the future based on what we're seeing today.
I think this show is going to be very relevant for a lot of reasons. Number one, we have to talk about the future and how it's looking like based on the information that we have today, AI is a major thing.
AI will and is continue to shape the future of our society.
Jobs are going to be transformed. You have to be able to interact with an artificial intelligence system to be able to shape your career.
AI is being used to spy on people. AI is being used to coordinate wars.
AI is being used to teach people things. Now we see artificial intelligence is tutoring kids.
AI can predict outcomes.
So we have the tools more than ever to be able to see what the future is going to be like.
And it is up to us in the present moment to make sure that that future is actually something that we're proud to pass on to the next generation.
[00:10:16] Speaker B: So you're absolutely right. AI is invading every aspect of our lives. It's ubiquitous, and people are interacting with AI all day, every day, even if they don't know it.
How specifically is AI impacting media and what you do on a daily basis?
[00:10:32] Speaker C: Oh, my God, it's impacting media everywhere.
For example, you can now create a complete jingle using artificial intelligence. Suno, for example, there is radio stations that instead of hiring people to actually do the jingle for the radio shows, they're buying a SUNO subscription and they're paying for the broadcasting rights. And now they can have multiple jingles for multiple shows for $100 a month. Okay?
So that media, it's editing the stories that go out in newspapers, okay?
Media is helping people edit in real time. Media is creating long forms into reels, or artificial intelligence is creating long forms, meaning long videos into short forms to be able to publish on social media. So it's a lot.
It's a lot.
[00:11:32] Speaker B: And I imagine it's only accelerating.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: It is. It is.
You know, I don't know if you remember a couple of years ago when the writers were on strike because of artificial intelligence, they were worried about them losing their jobs. Because the creative AI LLMs are now able to produce a show in seconds. A run sheet, the one that you have on your iPad, can be created with an AI system within seconds. Although it creates efficiencies, if we don't, as humans, if we don't allow ourselves to understand that a tool now is to interact and properly address the prompts of our artificial intelligence system, you will be left behind with no hesitation whatsoever.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: The future isn't waiting for anybody. It's moving forward.
[00:12:34] Speaker C: That's correct.
And one of the things that people need to.
I wish we could convey, the fact that AI is here to stay is not going away.
We are going to need to know how to use AI to adapt it into our businesses, to adapt it into our workflows, into our processes. And the more we accept that reality, the better. I remember I had a meeting last year in Taiwan with, with Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia.
One of the things he was talking to me was one, right now we're not looking for people to code.
We are looking for people to know how to code with AI, which is a completely different way of coding.
We've seen in Mexico City. For example, an instance for Claude was used to hack the Mexican government just a month ago.
So we need to know that now the most sophisticated cyber attacks are being done with artificial intelligence, which is faster, more efficient, is stealthy.
So the future is here. The future is not waiting for anybody. And I believe it's very important to ensure that, that we have the tools and we create the guardrails today to ensure that the future is something that is shiny and is nice and it's beautiful instead of questionable and bleak.
[00:14:21] Speaker B: Thanks much for tuning in. This is Infinite Future.
[00:14:24] Speaker A: I am Todd Thomas.
[00:14:25] Speaker B: And after a short break, we'll be right back with Juan and Guevara Torres.
[00:14:32] Speaker A: We'll be right back with more conversations at the edge of technology and transformation. Stay tuned. Every week on Infinite Future, we explore breakthrough innovation across every major frontier. We talk to AI architects, biotech pioneers, space entrepreneurs, clean energy disruptors, and the thinkers redesigning global systems.
We don't just talk trends. We examine scalability, ethics, economic impact and real world implementation.
If you're building, investing in or leading the future, join me on Infinite Future only on NOW Media tv. Because the future isn't predicted, it's engineered. And we're back. I'm Todd Thomas and this is Infinite Future on NOW Media tv. Let's look ahead.
[00:15:22] Speaker B: Hello and welcome back. You're watching Infinite Future.
[00:15:25] Speaker A: I'm Todd Thomas. Today I have the pleasure of talking
[00:15:28] Speaker B: with Juan Guevara Torres, the founder and president of NOW Media tv. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks for staying.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: So we're really launching this as a new show, Infinite Future. And what we really want to do today is kind of define what the show is going to talk about. What are we going to be discussing on a weekly basis?
We really want to look at systems thinking, innovation and real world constraints.
[00:15:53] Speaker A: Why is digital progress?
[00:15:55] Speaker B: Why does it only matter when the physical world can support it?
Grids, materials, logistics, sustainability, and how the real world constraints impact the speed of innovations.
Now we're seeing the headlines right now with our new conflict with Iran. This is causing a real energy crisis. Correct.
Most people talking about innovation today, it's tightly linked with AI. AI is completely dependent on massive energy supply.
How do you see this current development impacting available energy and do you see that slowing innovation?
[00:16:31] Speaker C: Well, the importance of energy generation, it is critical for anything in the world, but specifically for innovation and AI. You know, AI is very power hungry. I mean, it's just the way it is.
Maybe through 20 or 30 years of innovation, maybe you can create an AI system that is really, really efficient with energy. And you don't have to, you don't, you probably don't need the processing power that a data center needs to be able to generate AI and have an efficient AI system. But right now we do need a lot of energy.
Now you pointed that out. The new, the brand new work in Iran is showing us how dependent we are on energy, but also it's showing us how dependent we are on non renewable energy.
And that's why I believe what you guys are doing in Woodchuck. AI is so important because we as a society, as a country, as a world, we need to be less dependent on non renewables as fast as we possibly can now.
And that means solar, nuclear, wind, renewal. Energy is something that we need to be able to tap onto. It's interesting because my understanding is the sun, you know, puts out every single second, second the energy we would need for a year.
So we already have a massive reactor kind of close by.
So why in the world are we not putting more money into that? Because it requires innovation. Because creating solar panels and creating all this sustainability is also contingent on innovation. And innovation requires power. You need to be able to have computational power, power, you need to be able to have machinery, you need to have infrastructure to be able to go through the next step of innovation to become that infinite future.
I would love for you to tell us exactly how your system works where you using AI can divert all these recyclables and make them into energy. That's something that fascinates me from the moment you told me first.
But this is what we need.
We need to make sure. I mean, the movie the Matrix is a clear, clear.
It's interesting because when I went to school I had a class called Philosophy of the Matrix, which is an interesting, it was an interesting class for sure.
But in the movie you have the AI system, okay, The Matrix using human beings as batteries, literally, you know, because we continue to believe that in the future, AI systems, computational power, LLMs, training of those AIs will require massive amount, massive amount of power.
So, so how are you guys are addressing that? It's something that I think is fascinating.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: So when we look at global energy capacity, global energy capacity right now is about 26,000 terawatts because of the surge in AI, the electrification of everything.
Most experts think we need to double that energy capacity in the next 20 years.
[00:20:32] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: If we were, it is. That's a tall order.
If we were to take all the renewables right now, wind, solar, biomass, all of them include nuclear. And if we double that or even triple the capacity of all those renewables plus nuclear, it doesn't get us to 52,000. It's not enough. We still need oil, we're probably still going to need coal, and probably more than we use right now today. So that's just to reach the energy demand that we, that we know we need.
[00:21:05] Speaker C: Now.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: There's a couple ways to address that. We can use energy more efficiently and hopefully reduce that growth pattern. So maybe we don't really need to get to 52,000, but if we do, how do we solve that? What are the real choices that we have? And I think what this current conflict is pointing out to us is we can't be too dependent on any one energy source. Oil and gas are amazing energy sources, easily transportable, they store a ton of energy, they're very reliable.
But where that oil comes from is a problem and can create issues like this where it's now all of a sudden not reliable and very expensive.
If we have a, a broader energy source, if we're being better use of solar, wind, thermal, hydro, biomass, it's going to give us more resiliency when there are world events that shake an individual energy source.
Now what Woodchuck specifically is doing, Woodchuck has really found an interesting niche where they serve really at the confluence of construction, waste management, AI and energy utilities.
Big tech companies are building AI data centers as fast as they can. We just can't build them fast enough to meet the demand for AI.
Once the data centers are up and running, they consume a ton of energy.
But while they're building the building itself, they produce a lot of carbon. A lot of the carbon over the life cycle of that AI data center comes out of the construction of building itself.
When you build an AI data center, there's actually more waste than when you build a typical commercial construction building because all the high tech equipment arrives in hardwood boxes stuffed with cardboard and plastic. Right now all of that is going to the landfill.
So all of that is happening in a world where we have too much waste. We have to reduce our waste. Our landfills are filling up. It's an expensive waste and we need more energy.
So the idea of Woodchuck is what if we can solve both of those problems by tying them together? Let's reduce our waste and turn that waste into renewable energy. So Woodchuck works with construction companies and as they are building these new AI data centers and other facilities, we use AI image recognition to identify the materials, to segregate them from all those materials. When you throw wood, cardboard, plastic, metal, you throw it all into a big dumpster. Well, that's just Trash. But if we separate out each one of those materials, wood is a fantastic biofuel that can be used to produce renewable energy. Cardboard separated and baled, plastic separated and baled, metals separated by aluminum, copper. Those are now commodities that can be monetized. So instead of paying someone to take all those materials to the trash, we can separate them, turn them into commodities, and sell them, and actually generate revenue for the client. And at the same time, while we're diverting all those materials from the landfill, all of that wood is turning into new energy. So we're reducing our waste and producing more energy at the same time. It's real innovation.
[00:24:17] Speaker C: Which brings us to the next point is how do you believe this is going to affect the infinite future?
[00:24:29] Speaker B: When we talk about an infinite future, I think people imagine infinite energy, infinite innovations.
On the innovation side, human experience is defined by innovation. I mean, throughout the entire existence of us as a species, we are constantly innovating, constantly making improvements to our lives. And I would almost say the history of humanity is the history of innovation.
But energy has always been a constraint. And now we're at a point in our lives where everything we do is so electronic and digital, really relies on energy. When you have a power outage and your TV doesn't work and your lights don't work, and your stove doesn't work and you can't charge your phone, we almost don't even know how to operate.
So how do we get to an abundant energy future?
And I don't think there's a single silver bullet for that. We really need to look at all of these different energy sources. And I also think it's very localized. What are your options in your specific geography? Do you have thermal where you live?
Does your community have hydro? Those are great renewable sources.
What's your ability to generate solar? What's your ability to generate wind? It's different in every single geography. But the one of the big costs
[00:25:44] Speaker A: of energy is transporting energy.
[00:25:46] Speaker B: How do you get it where you need it? So the more that you can harness local energy options and use the energy that's locally available to you, the less energy you have to import and the more efficient your entire energy system is going to be. So if we're looking for an infinite future and abundant energy, we really need to take advantage of the energy sources that are available to us right now, where we live, in the communities where we work and raise our families.
[00:26:16] Speaker C: That's very interesting because the important here is important point, I believe, or the takeaway is for those watching, I believe that the main problem with recycling is segregating everything. I mean, that's pretty much what it is.
Because if you have a system that helps you segregate and automate that segregation of materials, then you are on the other side. That's true innovation.
And I believe that the more we can use AI to do that, the more we can harness the power of a machine to be able to segregate better and better and better and create those lines of products that can be converted into a renewable energy source of energy.
I think we can believe that then.
I believe that type of innovation is something that it's going to become more and more needed and more and more sustainable. Because, for example, electric cars too, in my point of view, are not necessarily the right answer. Especially for example, in Texas, where we have, we're becoming, in the winter, very cold and the batteries lose efficiency when you're using a car, we don't see Tesla stations everywhere. So you don't know if you can go out of town on a car like that.
You might not be able to charge it in the middle of the way. So you have to plan ahead.
And the lithium battery that they're using is creating a lot of waste that it's very difficult to deal with.
So I don't know if that's the answer.
But you know, it's part of the human condition, as you said, to be innovating all the time. The concept of kaisen in what the Japanese believe is perpetual innovation, perpetual betterment of not only yourself, your soul, your spirit, your company, your person, it's so important right now because when we hold dear the value of innovation, when we give value to innovation, then we can probably understand how important it is as a human race, as a human person, to be able to leave the world. When you pass on the baton to the next generation, you're leaving them with, I guess, the guardrails, the information, the infrastructure they need to be able to build from there to the next stage of human condition.
[00:29:08] Speaker B: Absolutely true.
You're watching Infinite Future. I'm your host, Todd Thomas. We'll be back in a few moments and we'll continue our discussion with Juan.
[00:29:19] Speaker A: We'll be right back with more conversations at the edge of technology and transformation. Stay tuned. Every week on Infinite Future, we explore breakthrough innovation across every major frontier. We talk to AI architects, biotech pioneers, space entrepreneurs, clean energy disruptors, and the thinkers redesigning global systems. We don't just talk trends. We examine scalability, ethics, economic impact and real world implementation.
If you're building, investing in or leading the future.
Join me on Infinite Future only on NOW Media tv. Because the future isn't predicted, it's engineered. And we're back. I'm Todd Thomas and this is Infinite Future on NOW Media tv. Let's look ahead.
[00:30:09] Speaker B: Welcome back to Infinite Future.
[00:30:10] Speaker A: I'm your host, Todd Thomas.
[00:30:12] Speaker B: And today we have our very special guest, Juan Guevara Torres, the founder of NOW Media tv. Thanks so much for staying with us.
[00:30:19] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:30:21] Speaker B: In this segment, we want to talk about really connecting the big ideas of what we've talked about a little bit in the last segment. Human development is powered by innovation.
Innovation is powered by energy.
The two are interconnected. You can't separate them.
We've talked about our current energy crisis and how that may be impacting really everything. And at the same time, we're on this collision course with AI becoming completely ubiquitous, forcing us to have an even larger commitment to energy. Need for energy.
It's unending.
How do you see these two things coming together and how do we move forward from there?
[00:31:06] Speaker C: Well, is it possible to innovate faster with AI?
[00:31:11] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:31:12] Speaker C: I agree. I think so.
I don't necessarily believe AI has the power to innovate and create because at the end of the day, AI will rehash things in a way that was trained, but it can be a very powerful tool for the human brain to continue to bring more solutions and more innovations to the table.
One of the things that I believe people might not know is during the pandemic, AI systems were used to be able to develop the vaccines, the vaccines that we're using today. And it's. Instead of waiting for 10 years to be able to do the trials and the errors and everything, the formula was created within days.
It was tested really fast. And thanks to the AI models, we were able to beat that pandemic, which was a difficult pandemic because, you know, these, these gave us the tools to be able to, to get rid of that very quickly. Okay.
So I believe in the future, and to quote Michio Kaku and to quote some other people that are really focus on the future, is that AI and technology will give us the tools to be able to innovate better. Now, when you're talking about energy consumption, when you're talking about we have to be efficient in the way we balance those resources. Okay, Quoting the Matrix, it's interesting because Agent Smith in the first movie talks to Neo and talks about Morpheus, about how the human race behaves like a virus, consumes every resource that we have around until we render the environment inertia. And we've done that, We've done that.
For those watching. If you believe that global warming is a, you're wrong. It's happening.
Data supports it.
Regardless if you're blue or red, there's data that can support global warming.
So we need to continue, continue to innovate, but we have to be mindful of keeping the balance of the ecosystem that we have around.
And technology is a great tool to do that.
When in 1960, when we have the ENIAC, which was the first big mainframe which was working with bulbs, literally was creating. It was consuming a lot of power and the processing, processing capacity was less than a calculator, probably less than a calculator. Today the Apollo mission use computers that were less powerful than your iPhone and they were using a lot of energy.
They're big, bulky, everything. Now we have more processing power on an iPhone or an Android device. For those who like Android devices, I'm not a big fan, but anyways, the energy efficiency of an iPhone and process millions of operations per second was or is defined with the idea of making that efficient.
So what I think we're going towards with this is.
You said it in the last segment. The only way we can have sustainable innovation is if we have the resources on the planet, the infrastructure to support innovation.
So we have to make it more efficient, we have to make it faster. The curve needs to be shortened. We cannot wait too long, too long.
We are seeing the effects of global warming all over the planet.
Is interesting what's happening with the environment.
And we need to support solutions, technology, solutions, AI solutions, everything that can support creativity, that can support efficiency. And we have that.
It is fascinating to me how people relate to an AI system. ChatGPT, Claude, whatever. And they talk to a machine like they were talking to a friend.
I mean, we've seen that.
We've seen. There's interesting something, a phenomenon is happening in Mexico City and I probably believe is happening everywhere in the world where during the commute you see people talking to ChatGPT and kind of doing some sort of a catharsis on the way back and home and talking to them about their day, talking and thinking out loud and really talking to a machine to be able to kind of offload, kind of a brain dump.
And machines are very good doing that. Okay, so is it possible with the technologies that we have today to be able to download our thoughts, which we can, and have them be reprocessed by a machine and then give us clarity on our own Thoughts so we can be better creators, better innovators.
I believe we already have the technology to achieve that.
When you talk about your show, it's about how you engineer the future.
The question is, in your point of view, do you think engineers are embracing AI as a tool, or they see AI as a competitor that is gunning for their jobs?
[00:37:53] Speaker B: And maybe it's both. I mean, that's the paradox of all of this, right? A large part of our energy crisis is being driven by the explosion of AI, and yet the solution to this energy crisis might be AI. It's all in the same thing. And to your question about downloading your thoughts, we've had over half a dozen successful brain computer implants. So Elon Musk's company has inserted who
[00:38:20] Speaker C: I think is your friend. Yes, right. Yes, right.
[00:38:23] Speaker B: Has inserted chips into multiple people's brains successfully. And for the most part right now, it's been used to allow someone to do something that they had lost the ability to use their hands or to see.
And it's been really powerful.
I actually saw a video the other day. It was six of these successful implants. And these were people that all had lost the ability to speak or the ability to see or the ability to move their bodies. And now they were all together, they were playing a video game, and they were able to communicate with each other and laugh and enjoy life.
And the crazy thing was, the video game they were playing, none of them had joysticks. They were running the game with their brains directly from their mind to the computer chip and playing the video game.
I think the interesting question there is, clearly we can use the brain computer chip to help us use parts of our body that we've lost, and we can now have a direct computer connection to the brain. The question in my mind is if you now have a computer chip in your brain and say you're connected to the Internet, and you have a constant flow of information from the Internet directly into your brain, and part of that's going to be AI driven. Right.
What are your thoughts and what are community thoughts at that point?
If you have a direct feed to the Internet, Is that your thought talking about the Borg?
I mean, kind of, yes.
[00:39:52] Speaker C: For those who doesn't know what the Borg is, I am a Trekkie, Star Trek, Next Generation, probably, where you have a community of people that are linked directly with technology. So they.
They share their thoughts and they behave like one organism instead of multiple, which we've seen that behavior in the wild.
We've seen birds that act as one. We've seen fish that act as one, like a one organism.
And the answer to that in my point of view is when are we, we have to give value to the human person.
You went to a liberal arts school. You know how important it is as a human person, as a composite between physical and non physical material and immaterial.
I believe we should respect and honor everybody's individuality. But we also know that as of today, even if we're not connected to the Internet, we kind of are.
Everybody is connected to their phones every day and they're downloading. Instead of downloading directly to your brain, they're using their phones to be able to access the Internet. It's just an interface.
The difference is that instead of having it implanted in your brain, you have it in your hand.
So, and I think I, we have to go to a commercial break. But the, you know, as a thought to the next segment, I'm going to tell you that I don't think we have, I think we have both end.
I think we have personal thoughts that are based in our perception of identity, which can change.
But we also are influenced by everybody else.
And if we were to be implanted by a bio chip implanted into the brain and we hear other people and we can download knowledge directly into the brain, we would be learning from each other.
And that's scary, but it's also very powerful.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: It is very powerful.
[00:42:16] Speaker B: Thank you for watching. This is Infinite Future.
[00:42:19] Speaker A: I'm Todd Thomas and we'll be right back.
We'll be right back with more conversations at the edge of technology and transformation. Stay tuned. Every week on Infinite Future, we explore breakthrough innovation across every major frontier. We talk to AI architects, biotech pioneers, space entrepreneurs, clean energy disruptors, and the thinkers redesigning global systems. We don't just talk trends.
We examine scalability, ethics, economic impact and real world implementation.
If you're building, investing in or leading the future, join me on Infinite Future only on NOW Media tv.
Because the future isn't predicted, it's engineered. And we're back. I'm Todd Thomas and this is Infinite Future on NOW Media tv. Let's look ahead.
[00:43:13] Speaker B: Welcome back. You're watching Infinite Future. I'm your host, Todd Thomas.
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So now we're back on Infinite Future with Juan Guerrera and we're getting into the thinking behind the show.
The books, the technologies, the framework, the innovation that is the engine of human progress.
We touched on this a little bit at the very beginning. Why is that an important topic right now, today?
What would you like to see this show focus on in the coming episodes?
[00:44:02] Speaker C: Well, I.
I think the audience needs to guide what the show is about, but I believe the ability to bring people that can talk about innovation, people that can guide others about innovation, people that can tell them that I don't foresee Skynet becoming real.
I think the artificial intelligence is a tool that needs to be something that we embrace instead of fear.
I was reading just prior coming into the show, the decision why Anthropic did what they did in terms of their agreement with the US government and how they embrace what they called constitutional AI, where they really believe that values should drive the way. Values and ethics are the way we need to train AI to behave and to make sure that those Personas and those tools are behaving within the realm of ethics, honor, integrity, and all that.
I'm hopeful in regards to what this show should be focused on. I think the audience should let you know what they think we could bring about in this infinite future. But I honestly think there is a lot of people that can definitely be better than me sitting in this chair talking about what they do best, which is innovation, technology, bringing the future, making the future real in today.
Because we only have today, and that's why it's called the present.
[00:46:11] Speaker B: You brought up a couple of the interesting questions that seem to often come up when we talk about innovation in AI. And that is we want innovation, we want improvements, but we don't want it unbridled because to some extent, the new technology can scare us. AGI scares everybody.
Can we get to that sentient matrix universe where human beings become obsolete or tools? So I think when we talk about AI and we talk about innovation, I think there's general agreement that we need guardrails.
And so when you see a story like Anthropic and a company kind of throttling themselves and saying, yes, there is a line in the sand we won't go over, that is encouraging. But why aren't we seeing more of that? And let me ask a specific question. Say media, right? AI is impacting media. Like, again, we talked about in the first segment, big, big impacts.
One area is fake videos. It's very easy to use AI to quickly create a fake video, easily done.
At the same time, we can also use AI to very easily identify fake videos.
[00:47:20] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:47:21] Speaker B: So why don't we See more of that.
Why don't we have warnings on anything that gets broadcasted that has some kind of simple checkbox? Is this true video or is this modified video? Is this AI driven video? It seems like that's a technology that exists. We could do it, but we're not doing it. Why aren't we taking advantage of general guardrails that I think most people agree we need?
[00:47:47] Speaker C: Well, two things on that. Number one, there are some type of fake videos that we love.
[00:47:53] Speaker B: Okay?
[00:47:53] Speaker A: That's true.
[00:47:54] Speaker C: They're called movies.
Okay?
[00:47:56] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:47:57] Speaker C: And everything you see in the movie is fake.
You see movies like Avatar, you see movies now with, with, with, with amazing animation we know is fake. And we're going to the movies to escape for two hours, probably the reality that we're on. And there's a lot of movies that inspire other people and they're completely fake. And they're done with computers, they're done with, with animation software. And we know it's fake.
So those type of fake videos are good.
Now one of the things that YouTube did just in the last few days is launch a pilot program to detect deepfakes if they're uploaded to YouTube.
And they're going to do several things, either block it so people won't be able to watch it, or you will have some sort of a warning, say this video has been detected to be a deep fake, fake. Okay?
So I think that's good. Now there are tools and it is the media responsibility to vet everything you are about to broadcast. Okay.
And media has failed in doing that.
I can tell you that when a month ago, three weeks ago, when these drug dealer leader El Mencho was executed in Mexico with I believe the help of the US in combination with Mexican forces, there were videos that were picked up by the media everywhere in the world that were deepfakes and only after the fact, after they were broadcasted.
Media corrected, okay?
Sometimes with the speed of things, media outlets want to put a story out before completely verifying it.
We saw it just a few days ago.
There is debate of what happened with ABC and that FBI warning about the possibility of California being at risk.
Okay?
The White House saying is a fake story.
Sadly, I don't necessarily with these specific administration, I believe everything that comes out of the White House. But the fact is they say, they say and they question ABC's report saying, well, you had an unverified intelligence report and you use it as your news source.
So to your point is media has to have ethics and have to have rules before they put Something outside in the world.
And they have to use intelligence, they have to use common sense, but most importantly, have to use technology to detect anything that is not real content, that is the fake content.
[00:51:30] Speaker B: So that, that creates a big challenge though, right? Because it does traditional media, legacy media, double sources that they don't want to put anything out there that isn't verified. And the truth. Exactly however you're now up against, or traditional media is now up against. And in competition with personal feeds, people putting it out there on Instagram and X, I mean, one of the biggest sources of information today is the President's personal X feed where he blasts everything, including confidential information. Right.
[00:52:01] Speaker A: It's all on there on X.
[00:52:03] Speaker B: So how does legacy media compete in this world where they have to compete against a huge source of information that doesn't play by the rules?
[00:52:13] Speaker C: Well, in one of the things that I've said in multiple outlets before is social media is not a media outlet.
Okay? You have to take with a grain of salt everything you see on social media. Everything 100%.
Because if somebody's posting something on social media, they have an agenda behind it, just like the media does. I mean, the media has biases and the media has agendas. They have editorial rules with which they decide which stories are stories and which stories are not.
But the thing here is for people watching is social media is raw information.
It's a raw feed of unverified information. It doesn't mean that it's not true, but it's unverified.
So it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
And the media responsibility is to be able to dissect, segregate, separate what can be used as a new story and what it can't. And it's all about the ethics of the producer and the news director to be able to decide that you in real time.
[00:53:24] Speaker B: Completely agree. Completely agree.
This was a fantastic conversation.
[00:53:28] Speaker C: Well, thank you.
[00:53:29] Speaker B: Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Thank you so much for welcoming me into the NOW Media family. I couldn't be happier.
For all of you out there that are watching and you'd like more of Infinite Future or more of all of your NOW Media favorites, you can watch it streaming live and on demand NOW Media tv.
[00:53:48] Speaker A: I'm Todd Thomas.
[00:53:49] Speaker B: This is Infinite Future. Thanks so much for watching.
[00:53:52] Speaker A: Thank you for watching Infinite Future. I'm Todd Thomas. Join us next week as we continue exploring the ideas and innovators building what's next only on NOW Media tv.
