Ep.233 AI Is Thirsty! (Gary Hargraves-Author of AI Shock and Technology Consultant)

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Damn, son, where'd you find this? Go on, make it happen. And now here's Steve and Michelle.

SPEAKER_05 0:08

Welcome to Malet of Michelle. I am Michelle, and this is Steve. AI can write essays, create art, answer questions, and apparently convince people it's always right, just like Steve. And my AI is exhausted with me.

SPEAKER_06 0:23

Not always right? No. That's news to me. I thought I was always right. There you go. There you go. In my own mind, I am always right. Yes. Well, in a few minutes, we're going to get our guest in here, Gary Hargrave. He's going to talk to us about all kinds of things, uh, including his book and uh some companies he's he's owned. And so we're going to get to that in a second. But before we get started, we cannot do this podcast without our great sponsors.

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Absolutely. Well, Steve, we are also highlighting our uh um property of the week. And we have a unique property. We do.

SPEAKER_06 2:27

I'm selling one of my investment properties in Butta. It's 259 Clearance. And I listed it as a flex listing, which some people may not know what that is, but flex listing is something kind of new. Uh it's 259 Clearance, and if you search that, you're not going to find it on Zillow or Realtor.com or Redfin or any of those online search engines because it's only going to show up on MLS. So only agents will be able to see that for sale. But you can call Steve. And I'll tell you all the details. Yeah. Or if you have a real estate agent you work with, have them look it up on MLS. It's $365,000. A great little investment property. It's been good, but I'm going to try and move all my stuff a little closer into dripping.

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SPEAKER_06 3:14

Right down the street to you, yes. That's what we'll do.

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That will be great. Well, everybody's talking about AI right now, like it's a magical robot living in the cloud. Today's guest says that's not even close behind every chat GPT prompt, every AI image, and every recommendation on your phone are power plants, water systems, data centers, and a whole lot of people keeping it running.

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I'm scared.

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Gary Hargraves has spent more than 25 years in technology and energy, and his new book, AI Shock, argues that AI isn't just changing technology, it's changing the physical world around us. Welcome to Mallet and Michelle.

SPEAKER_06 3:50

Welcome to the show, Gary. Thank you. I appreciate that. How'd you like that intro? I did.

unknown 3:56

Welcome.

SPEAKER_06 3:57

Thanks, AI. Feel free to steal that anytime you want. Yeah. Well, let's start off. We always like to talk about people and how they grew up, where they came from, and everything. You're a native Texan.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

I sure am. Yes. Where'd you grow up? Southeast Texas, Liberty, Texas, a small town between Houston and Beaumont.

SPEAKER_06 4:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 4:15

We know somebody else that came from that area. Was it Hunter? I can't remember.

SPEAKER_05 4:19

No, Hunter came from down south.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

What brought you to dripping? Um family. Yeah. So uh before living in Dripping Springs, my wife and I lived in Dallas for six years. And that was our double income kind of living, uh, no kids life. And then and then we had our first first child and looked around and we didn't have any air cover. Yeah. So we we high-tailed it down here to dripping springs where um we had more families.

SPEAKER_06 4:53

And Lisa, your wife is from Dripping?

SPEAKER_00 4:55

She is from Dripping, yes. Okay. She's a high school graduate, 1993. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 5:01

She's she's she's like, Lisa's like, thanks for telling everybody how old I am, Gary. I appreciate that. You're walking home now.

SPEAKER_06 5:09

So how long have you been here in DRIP? Twenty years. Twenty years. Okay. Yeah. Well you've seen a bunch. Sure have. Do you like the the new Drip better than the old drip?

SPEAKER_00 5:18

Uh you know, they both have their pluses and minuses. Yeah. Uh Drip is still a great place to raise a family, and which is the reason why we were here. And you know, three kids later, um, it's been good to us for sure. And you still have kids at school. Yes, I got one more left. One more left. He's a junior. Okay.

SPEAKER_05 5:36

I I saw that when you were living in um Liberty Hill, or I'm sorry, not Liberty Hill, Liberty, Texas, that your grandfather, he had a nickname, um Hoggy, right? Yes. What was that about? And they called you Little Hoggy.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Correct. Yeah. Uh evidently when he was a kid, he he hogged his brother's gum. Um and and they they just started calling him Hoggy. So he had that his whole life. Um to the point where we had a family beach house that he built, and it was called Hoggy Heaven.

unknown 6:10

Hoggy?

SPEAKER_00 6:11

Yeah. That's so funny. Yeah. And so uh, you know, small town Liberty was much like uh dripping springs. Yeah, small town, everybody knew everyone kind of thing. And so that that nickname stuck for me.

SPEAKER_06 6:24

I thought it was like from Boss Hog, but no, it has nothing to do with Boss Hog.

SPEAKER_05 6:31

So then you also you were in the Marine Corps.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yes. So while I was in college at Texas AM, I uh took myself out and then I enlisted in the Marine Corps reserves. And so I went and uh went through boot camp, went through combat school, did all the things, and then I went back to AM with a kind of a better perspective and and and more direction on what I wanted to do, and then I served out my time in the reserves while doing that.

SPEAKER_06 6:59

Aaron Powell That's cool. I didn't know that. Was that on the bio? I missed that completely.

SPEAKER_05 7:02

I I found it. I don't know if it was on the bio, but I found it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 7:06

Did you enjoy that?

SPEAKER_00 7:07

Oh yeah. I loved it. Um professionally, I've consulted with, I don't know, 100, 200 different Fortune 500, Fortune 1000 companies. I've never been a part of an organization that is more well run than the Marines.

SPEAKER_06 7:22

Aaron Powell And in what regard? What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_00 7:24

Uh well they're the it's it's they're unique and then they can be pretty much anywhere in the world within 24 to 48 hours and land a group of men and women that are capable of sustaining themselves for you know a a month, meaning they have um all of the supplies, logistics, they have their own Air Force, they have everything except a boat to get them there or a ship to get them there. We partner up with the Navy and and and make that happen.

SPEAKER_06 7:51

That's cool.

SPEAKER_05 7:52

I am the product of being raised by my stepfather was a Marine. Was he psychological warfare? And uh I got out alive. And then he was a CI agent. So there you go. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

And they say once a marine always for sure, right? It is a it is a great network of people to be a part of. And what the other thing that makes it unique is when we you know when you go through boot camp, you spend about 500 hours of schooling just learning about the Marine Corps and learning about how and what it takes to carry the Eagle Globe and anchor. Uh and then the other thing that's unique about them is that fundamentally the entire 140,000 group organization is built around a four-person fire team. So you can take those four Marines and you can you can plug and play them anywhere in the world for any situation, and they're gonna know how to instantly work together.

SPEAKER_06 8:45

I've never been a part of an organization that is that capable of So the four four guys they all train together, they build camaraderie, or are you talking about four people they just throw together that each knows it's four roles within a group.

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Okay. One's carrying a rifle, one's carrying uh uh uh a larger gun, and the other two have um their roles and responsibilities, and you're able to pick and choose. And and then and it's multi-purpose because uh each one of those uh Marines know how to how to do the other person's job, right? And and you can just take those four uh four folks, pull them together, and then that's what they build the you know the entire organization up.

SPEAKER_06 9:27

When you run into other Marines out in the world, what's that like in the wild? In the wild, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:33

Are they in the corner eating crayons?

SPEAKER_06 9:36

They're gnawing on crayons, Michelle.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

They don't just eat crayons. What's that like when you run in the it's wonderful? It's it's a little bit similar to being a Texas AM Aggie. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a it is a it's a network of people that are always pulling, you know, together and and and having each other's back for sure. Uh-huh. Um we we own a cleaning company and we just hired uh a a young Marine that had just finished his four years. And and I know exactly, and Lisa and I know exactly what we're gonna get out of Sam. I mean, he's he's you know, he's it's he's he's just the best.

SPEAKER_06 10:14

We've had some other Marines on the podcast, and I think just almost every single one of them has left the Marine Corps and gone on to do really cool things. It's like you don't leave that and just live a mundane life. It's like you believe in excellence at that point when you retire or I guess leave the Marines.

SPEAKER_05 10:32

Have any of your children um been called to serve? Do you think that any of them will be able to do that?

SPEAKER_00 10:37

We've we've talked about that. Um and you know, my uh my thinking is yeah, y you need to do what you feel is right um um for you. Yep. Uh so if if if either of my three children decided they wanted to do that, then you know they would have my support um and and Lisa's support. Yeah. But so far, uh it it there they they ha no one has actually crossed the line and and and put on the ranks.

SPEAKER_06 11:10

Well sounds like for you it kind of came out of the blue. Was this something you thought about for a long time? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

When I when I was a kid, I wanted to either be a lawyer or a Marine or a football coach. Oh, okay. And I went into technology consulting. So um but uh I was able to to to go, you know, yeah join join the Marines. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:29

So you leave the Marines, you graduate from college, and then you go on to this career. And you I we read through some of the things that you've done. You've got the the cleaning service, but you've been a technology consultant. Is that has that been your main enterprise?

SPEAKER_00 11:42

That's my day job, basically. And what is it for the last 25 years? It's just going in and and helping companies figure out how to increase revenue or reduce costs, run their businesses safely using the most latest and greatest technology. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:59

And so that that's your degree, you get this degree from AM, and now you go into these huge companies. Where's the first what where do you start with that? Yeah. You go into a company with whatever, 12,000 employees and they go, help us with our technology. Where do you start?

SPEAKER_00 12:14

I was scared to death. Yeah. I I I I I it was easier being a Marine than walking into corporate America and then pretending or or that you're the expert in the room. Because when you're when they hire you, even if you're young and fresh out of college, you know, they're paying you to provide an an expertise around a given technology. And those technologies are constantly changing and evolving. And uh it it I it was it's it really fits my personality because I just have so much going on in my mind all the time all the time. And it's constantly solving a problem. And some of that problem is just trying to figure out how am I gonna get through this hour-long meeting with someone that is a complete stranger and just brought me into the room to give them a professional opinion about XYZ technology.

SPEAKER_06 13:02

Yeah, and probably knows nothing about the technology at the end of the day.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, that's the other thing. Some of the clients I've worked for, they are usually the smartest in the room. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:12

Well, but yeah, so I married according to them. They're the smartest in the room, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 13:16

I'm married to an engineer that that needs help with his cell phone. So he can he can design all the guts of the cell phone, but the actual working of the cell phone.

SPEAKER_06 13:29

Well, I think if you're a CEO, you can you have to be pretty good at a lot of things, but you're probably not gonna be excellent at just about anything. Do you think that's true?

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Uh it it depends. Uh you know, a lot of like let's just take software companies. A lot of CEOs started out as some kind of code developer. And they just figured it out, right? They were and if you look at some of the the the biggest names in the industry, they they didn't even finish college.

SPEAKER_06 13:55

Yeah, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 13:56

They they they stepped out, they they were they were smart enough to know the technology, kind of the ins and outs of how it worked and to what and where that technology was gonna go, and then and then the but they have that extra gear in their brain that can align that to some kind of problem or or issue that needs to be solved and figuring out.

SPEAKER_06 14:16

Yeah. Yeah. And so in the capacity that you are, you come in, you start out, you meet with everybody, and then what how do you implement these things? Or are you implementing them or are you just coming up with a plan? You are implementing them.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

I I I've I've been in many different roles. The first part of my career was hands-on keyboard coding, and then I got into more program project management. So that's implementing whatever is solution it is, and then I got into more of sales and consulting. Um, and that's where you know you're just trying to figure out uh how you can sell a solution into an organization, and then uh uh in most cases for me it was it was sell and then help with the team that's going to deliver like dual role.

SPEAKER_06 14:59

Okay. Are you doing multiple companies at a time or is this one? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 15:04

I was just curious, you know, when you sit across from a uh CEO and we'll we'll deep dive into the AI here in a second. But do you think that the CEOs are worried that their job could be replaced with with AI?

SPEAKER_00 15:23

I don't think the CEOs are worried about that just yet.

SPEAKER_05 15:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah. Um I mean if you're a CEO of a corporation, especially one that's listed publicly, uh, it's all about risk and and keeping that company in compliance and safe. And there isn't a really a board, a governing board for a corporate company right now that's gonna want to hand that over to AI.

SPEAKER_05 15:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 15:52

No, I see that completely.

SPEAKER_05 15:54

Well, yeah, because they're making the big bucks, so of course they're not gonna get their job replaced.

SPEAKER_06 15:58

Oh my god. Yeah. I well, I wanted to cover a couple other things before we because I think when we get into AI, we're gonna go we're gonna talk a lot about it. We're gonna just go into AI, yeah. You mentioned, Gary, in your bio that you like helping people or speaking about leadership. Is that part of the consulting that you do when you go into a company?

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Uh uh as I've gotten older and longer into my career, I'm always trying to pick and find younger people to mentor, um, whether that's just online and and and having people reach out to me. I've I've got like 20 something thousand connections on LinkedIn. So I get a lot of people reaching out to me. And if the you know, if somebody asks me a question and I've got the time, I I try to give back. Um and then uh because of the the the responsibilities of the roles I'm in, it's it's always been where you're having to mentor young people either way. And I've had to figure that out. And then I've also as a dad, I've I've coached probably either with another another dad or mom, 20 or to 30 youth teams over the years with my three kids. So uh, you know, to me that that's just that's just the best way to give back.

SPEAKER_06 17:12

Yeah. When you people reach out to you online, what kind of questions are they usually asking you?

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Uh well, if you you know, the if you can put aside all of the solicitation for something. Yeah, right. You know. Uh you know, I've got a lot of people that just know me and and I've worked with and and they're looking for career advice on where they need to to what they need to do different to to get noticed. Um I've done some speaking engagements back at Texas AM. Okay. Uh to I was an MIS major, so I've gone back a couple times and talked to the students there. And so I've got, you know, they'll come to me and they'll they'll ask, you know, what would help them get prepared for an interview or uh some specific questions around technology. You know, what's one that they would really want to walk out of university with as they were entering the job force? It's you know, it's it's things like that. Aaron Powell Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:09

Have you had anybody reach out to you and say, how do I AI proof my career?

SPEAKER_00 18:14

Uh not yet, because I don't think anybody in their 20s would think that way.

SPEAKER_06 18:20

See, that's funny because I have friends whose kids are in college right now, and that's the that's they're talking about that.

SPEAKER_00 18:27

Oh, you mean like how they're gonna keep from having their job taken?

SPEAKER_03 18:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 18:30

Well, that yeah, or or you know, what if I go down a path, I I get this degree in something, and then in two or three years that doesn't really exist anymore. Yes, okay. So that's what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Yeah. Had that conversation for sure. And to me, the the the answer is don't let that happen. Become an expert in AI. And most, I mean, I mean, 20-year-olds now are what I call digital natives. Right. They grew up with a phone in their hand, they understand technology, they they know things that that yeah someone my age doesn't know.

SPEAKER_06 19:07

Yeah. Uh and and yeah, sometimes I think I should ask a 12-year-old when I have a technology problem. How do I fix this? Because they'll know. Instead he asked me.

SPEAKER_05 19:16

Instead he asked me.

SPEAKER_06 19:17

No, I usually go to YouTube.

SPEAKER_05 19:19

True. Well, high school is so different nowadays than when when we all went to high school. But you're going to colleges, you're speaking to these young people. Do you think that there's something right now consistently that high schools, either across Texas or across the United States, but we'll just focus on Texas that are just consistently missing the mark, that there's a gap between then them coming from high school and now going into college when it applies to leadership and how to put themselves out there.

SPEAKER_00 19:50

For leadership, oh I don't know how much of that is taught and how much of that is intuitive, like is it born into you. I'm I mean for me personally, uh I think my desire and my drive has always been based around growing up in a highly dysfunctional family and and wanting better for my family. Sure. And to do that is to um stand up and do the right thing. Um integrity, right? Uh so but but in high school um and and young people you can kind of figure out who's the leader and who's not. Um I I think where high school miss out it's two areas. One is just core basic life skills.

SPEAKER_06 20:57

Yeah, we talk about that all the time.

SPEAKER_00 20:58

You know, what's an insurance policy? How do I do you know you don't balance a checkbook anymore, but you should have a can you should know what a cash flow statement is.

SPEAKER_06 21:06

Yeah, they should teach them how credit cards work. I mean how many k how many stories do you hear about kids getting in credit card trouble?

SPEAKER_05 21:12

No, well, what I'm what I'm seeing, I I was talking to a friend of mine. Um, where were we? No, we were at the river this weekend, and the ice cream truck came at at our little river park. And all these kids showed up with a phone, and she said, No, I only take cash. These little eight nine-year-olds had Apple Pay on their phone.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

Sure.

SPEAKER_05 21:34

That's what I mean.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

They're digital natives. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:37

That was the craziest thing. It was like, and then she drives off, and I was like, Well, there was like 50 bucks of ice cream she just missed out on.

SPEAKER_06 21:44

But Well, and that's that's actually the scary part of that, is because when you're paying with your phone, it's it's a lot different than handing them three, you know, three one dollar bills. You're just like boop boop, clicking it.

SPEAKER_05 21:56

Or digging in your couch for quarters, remember those days?

SPEAKER_00 22:00

And then the other thing uh that the schools need to get quickly caught up on is just ha embedding AI in their curriculum. Um I guess they're behind on that.

SPEAKER_03 22:11

Well it's so new, right?

SPEAKER_00 22:12

Like uh may or may not have had a son that was got in trouble for may or may not have used AI to help uh help him in school. Yeah. And and and coming from where I sit, I'm thinking you're doing the right thing because that's what is the reality of life right now. If you're in a corporation or if you're in a job right now, you're you're using AI across all functions and that you need to learn how to use it as quickly as possible.

SPEAKER_06 22:40

Oversimplifying this, is this like when I was in school and calculators came out and they use it, yeah, yeah. Use a calculator. Is it is this I mean, is it sort of like that?

SPEAKER_00 22:50

Yeah. That's a great analogy.

SPEAKER_05 22:52

Remember when they used to say you'll never have you're not just gonna have a calculator at your fingertips.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Oh, yeah, right. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 22:59

Really? But I do. I think it's I think it's kind of hypocritical in one sense that they don't allow the student, because it is for the most part about the prompts and how you're prompting. My husband has been going through this two month, three months, I think it's through Qualcomm, his his AI training and and how to use the prompts for coding and whatever else. But um the teachers are using it also for their lesson plans. And and it's all about how you're putting the information, my my understanding, how you're putting the information in and how you want it to spit it out to you. And so maybe we need to be teaching these kids how to better prompt what what you're wanting. And I don't think you're missing out on the information, on the knowledge.

SPEAKER_06 23:42

Well, I don't know. What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_00 23:44

Uh so that's that's kind of the how how you know how to use AI. Um, and and yes, you you you should know how to write a prompt, or you should at least know how to go in and ask one of the consumer-based AI apps, Chat GPT or Gemini or whatever, how to how to create you a master prompt. Right? You should know how to do that. That's but then there's just concepts that we should be teaching. Um, you know, what's appropriate for AI, what is um, you know, how to deal with you know hallucinations when when you're getting something back. Um, we we should be talking more about authenticity and in terms of what's real and what's not. Like there's almost like a philosophical side of what we should be teaching, yeah, and and getting people prepared for. Because again, these digital native kids of ours that already had a phone in their hand and and turned to it for practically everything, right? Apple Pay, calculators, a clock, an alarm, um you know, uh a map to get down the the road. Right. You know, put a paper map in a kid's hand and tell them to get to Houston and see what happens. You know what I mean? Um so for with AI, it's it's on steroids now, and it's and it's gonna be per pervasive in in all areas of their life. So we we've got to give them some tools on actually how to how to utilize it, write a good prompt. But we also have to give them some instructions on you know kind of right and wrong with AI as well.

SPEAKER_06 25:24

Aaron Powell Well, that's where I want to go because uh where I see it in uh in our just day-to-day business where uh like I I used to write an article for a magazine, it's now defunct. But uh Was it because of you? It was because of me. I put it out of business. Well, I I prided myself on sitting down and writing the article. It was me doing the research, you know, looking at the facts, putting it together, and then the what I did was I put it into Chat GPT and I said, keep the concept of this but clean it up. Meaning, and I hope that was the right prompt, but you know, check it for spelling, check it for punctuation. But it was still my writing. Sure. But I know there are people going, write me an article about what housing prices are doing uh in regard to interest rates. And it, you know, plops out a 500-word article and then they they get that and they're not even checking it. Well, but yeah, but so then is that cheating or you know, and and you've kind of cheated yourself because you haven't done the research to get the knowledge to write that article. So when you're talking about the rights and wrongs of AI, is that what you're getting at? Is like where do you draw the line from yeah?

SPEAKER_00 26:37

Yeah. Um and but you know, I I don't know how how many people I mean, no one's really figured this out, but um you have to actually go through the activity to to be an expert in something for sure, sure, right? Um what is it, Jurassic Park where um they're the the professor in the movie is talking about how they they're skipping over because they're not getting their 10,000 hours or whatever. That that idea um uh uh and and concept. Um but um I kind of lost my trace.

SPEAKER_06 27:20

No, it's we're we're talking about where's the line between using AI as a tool to be to make something maybe better, and using AI as a tool to just create something that has no basically all you came up with as a problem.

SPEAKER_05 27:34

It's the authentic aspect of it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Uh the the thought that I had had and and left and came back to. You know, we used to have scribes that wrote out everything, and there was a select group of people that did that. Not everybody knew how and had that ability and that uh uh there was a concentration of intellectual property and and leadership and governance and all of it, right? Um you know, if if somebody wants to go ahead and and create some boilerplate content and slap their name on it, fine. Sure. Um it's it's part of it. But I think what's going to happen over time is that there's gonna there's gonna be an inundation of of that boilerplate material. If you go search on the internet today for something kind of common, you'll get the same response across multiple websites, and you you you have an idea pretty quickly, right, of what it is. Where the separation is gonna come and where we should be helping people um spend more of their time of is get through that commodity side of it and get into what is what is intellectual property and unique about yourself. And and if it takes just creating some garbage so you can really find for find who you are, I think that's that that that's a thing. I think that's going to to happen. And and the the truly like uniqueness is gonna it's gonna bubble up. We're gonna get we're gonna get tired of seeing this this the the the AI generated material. I've already seen it on Facebook. We we use it a lot for our our cleaning company. If you look on Facebook right now for ads for small businesses, they're all starting to be awful. Yeah. Well, uh whether they're awful or not, they're all kind of just starting to blend in again. Yeah, right-huh.

SPEAKER_06 29:28

Well, we're we're to the point where and we're certainly not experts at on any level, but we can read some content and go, oh, that's AI generated. You can just tell now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 29:38

But I can still, you know, if I'm spending um, I don't know, 45 minutes on promoting a property on Canva and I'm trying to I I still feel like I'm invested in it, right? Like I've I've pulled all these graphics together. And then if I just go into AI and I'm like, oh, create this graphic. And it looks like if the realtor next door asked the same question, yeah. Yeah, asked the same question. I want to go back just for a second when you were talking about um the um the kids in in the high school and how AI is kind of you wish that they were teaching it more, I guess, in school or responsibly in school. I read this book called The Anxious, The Anxious Generation, and it talked about um the digital world and and the kids nowadays, the Gen Zers, and how they have just really kind of grown up. And now, what is the name? Gen Alpha? Is that after Gen Z? Gen Alpha? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_06 30:30

I still haven't gotten the whole generation's thing.

SPEAKER_05 30:32

Because you're a boomer. You don't understand anything. But um what are we doing to our children now while we're not encouraging these kids to go out there and read a book and play in the dirt and uh chase the ice cream man with a dollar down the street. Climb a tree. Yeah, climb a tree where everything is just this digital world. Are we doing our future a disservice by having this information as readily available?

SPEAKER_00 31:00

I think so. Um my youngest son just came back from Camp Eagle and they went on a um excursion down the Pecos. Oh wow. Uh it was 40 miles a couple nights out in out in the wild. And uh he he told Lisa and I, it's the best experience that he's ever had. And he was relieved to be away from his phone, and he was relieved just to be out in nature like that.

SPEAKER_06 31:29

You know, it's uh Michelle went to the she mentioned it, she went to the river for a couple of days, and she said almost the exactly exact same thing when she came back. I had all this time to get some clarity on these issues that were clouding my mind, and there was all this stuff going on here. But there I just unplugged and I don't think our kids are getting enough of that these days.

SPEAKER_00 31:48

No, it's not it's a so there's another book, it's called IGen. I read it, and it was uh she studied, I think, 11,000 kids, and it and it and it and she correlates the the invention of the iPhone and the smartphone and and the the path and the increase of mental health issues.

SPEAKER_05 32:09

There's a direct correlation of the anxious generation touched on that as well.

SPEAKER_00 32:13

For sure, and and that's real. Um and it's and it's it has i there's many facets to it. It's one, it's the time that they're on their phone and not doing other things and not in nature and not in the dirt. Um and then the and then the other thing is it's it's it's engineered their brains. Um so when they're on their phones, they're thinking one thing. And then when they're off their phones, they're thinking about what they're missing. So the fear, you know, the phone.

SPEAKER_06 32:40

Yeah, they're I know that's a huge thing.

SPEAKER_05 32:42

Well, I almost feel like it's creating a a generation of extreme narcissists as well, because you know, you can filter anything. Um you can filter anything. And uh so even you know, women my age, I'm seeing seeing kind of the craziest stories about these women, you know, filtering the heck out of their bodies and then accepting compliments for these AI pictures.

SPEAKER_06 33:13

Yeah, you are the same person.

SPEAKER_05 33:15

Yeah, it's that's different. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:17

Is there a chance you think that the kids rebel against all this?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah, I hope so.

SPEAKER_06 33:23

I mean, so you do. You're an expert in AI and technology, and you kind of hope that the kids turn away from it at least a little bit. I I I it's what keeps us human. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's interesting. Because I I I actually thought you would have had a completely different take on it. You know, just a but I haven't read your book, obviously. I need to read it. But uh so your take is that this isn't necessarily a great thing for us.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

Uh I uh the technology is is is like any other technology. It's gonna have good things about it and it's gonna have you know repercussions that we we we are starting to figure out and we're gonna have to figure out and we're gonna have to deal with, but it's not going anywhere. So we have to learn to live with it. But you you can't get away from what going out and and being in the sun, putting your bare feet on the ground, um Michelle says that all the time it's touch grass. You can't there's that's not there's no digital compromise. Sure. See anything comparable. That that is that's still still needed.

SPEAKER_06 34:30

Yeah. Do you think in uh you know two years, five years, ten years, what do you think the world looks like in regard to technology? What's your what's your forecast?

SPEAKER_00 34:39

It's gonna be different from what it is right now. Yeah. And and anybody that says that they know what it's gonna look like, they don't know what they're talking about. Yeah. Is what I think.

SPEAKER_05 34:51

Well, I can I ask, I want to ask a really quick question. Um I was sitting there talking to Cedric, our our office mate out there, and uh I said in in so many terms, if AI eventually replaces all humans, who's left for the AI to sell to, market to, entertain, manage, serve? And does AI eventually just end up talking to other AI?

SPEAKER_06 35:12

And does it care? And does it care?

SPEAKER_05 35:14

I mean, who's swiping the who's swiping the credit card? Who's you know, who's getting married up at the altar, who's having babies, not AI, right? So like how do is this the beginning of the end of humankind as we know it? Is this some bad Robocop movie?

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Uh I don't think it's to that extreme. Um I you know, the future is going to be different, especially when you start looking at just biomechanics and bioengineering and how um uh digital is starting to to merge into the the the human side of the world, right? Um uh if you look at you know the Tony Stark of the day, Elon Musk, right? He's he's got the whole spectrum because he's got a chip that goes in your brain, and then he's got digital assets that are moving all over the all over the world in cars, and then he's got satellites that he has launched into space, he's got the rockets to get up into space, uh, and he's taken SpaceX and he's merged that with his AI company into one company, and then he's got a public forum in what used to be Twitter and is now X.

SPEAKER_05 36:30

He's got the full is he a supervillain or a hero?

SPEAKER_00 36:33

I know. I I've I've often wondered, he's I think he might be an alien.

SPEAKER_05 36:37

I really do think a lot of people said, He said that, yeah, that he is some sort of I mean you said spectrum, and I was like, well, he definitely is on some spectrum for sure. But uh, but yeah, is he is he a villain or is he a hero?

SPEAKER_00 36:50

Uh I guess time will tell. But um, I mean he he does want to, you know, take humanity and and and take us elsewhere, right? He's it I think in the SpaceX IPO, there's a bonus written in there where he gets five hundred and eighty billion dollars if um if he can populate a million people on Mars. I I think I I heard I heard that.

SPEAKER_06 37:15

I I I guess I don't have the mindset, but you know, if I got a billion dollars, how many billion dollars? Yeah, it would be gone. You'd be like, where's Deep? I haven't seen Steve for a couple.

SPEAKER_04 37:26

If you had a million dollars cash in your underwear drawer, we'd never see you. We would never see you.

SPEAKER_06 37:32

It'd take more than that, for sure. But uh Gary, does it worry you that the companies that are pushing us more the most towards AI are the companies that most profit from it? That this could all be just a giant Ponzi scheme? But scheme to get us all using AI more because the more we use it, the more they profit from us. Uh there's well, because they're selling it as, you know, uh changing mankind, making mankind better, but at the same time, they make billions of dollars off it.

SPEAKER_00 38:13

Right, sure. So I mean companies are gonna so again, if you're a publicly traded company, you're gonna do what's what what you can to maximize shareholder value. Yeah. And if if AI is another technology that you can bring into your organization that's gonna help reduce costs, increase revenue, and and run your business more, you know, safer and and protected, they they they have an obligation to the shareholders to do that. That's that's how yeah public companies run. Um, smaller companies, this is their um this is their way of um uh putting the sling in the hand, right? Yeah. You you you you can you can use AI now and do more um with less um without incurring the the financial burden and you can compete now on a on a larger scale.

SPEAKER_06 39:06

Yeah, so that's more in terms of how companies use AI to compete. I'm talking about the companies that put AI in place training us to use it more so that they because I guess at the end of the day, that's actually one of my questions. The they're col i they use the AI to collect our data so that they can sell us stuff? Is it uh what's the besides them selling the technology itself, but what's the what's the end of the What's the end game? No, uh the uh the product at the end that they get out of all this, or is there not even a product?

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Uh there the yes. So digital products are what they're looking to create somehow, somehow. Uh if you look uh but it's not just AI, it's it's uh uh it's more about the data than anything, right? So if you look at Google, Google's been around since like uh I remember the first time I ever searched on Google was in 1999. I vividly remember it. I know the friend who said, hey, look at this, and he was one of my consulting friends, and I got on there and you know, back then it was a white page, it said Google, very much like it is now today. But now if you look 25 years later, all the capabilities that they have, right? Sure. And that came from just a better understanding of consumer search in taking your data and then turning it back around and monetizing it and turning it into digital products, work productivity tools. You know, everybody almost everybody has a Gmail now and use Google Sheets, and but they can do so much more. Google Maps. I mean, there's just almost an endless amount of products. They've looked into taking data and where you're driving on the maps and partnering up with insurance companies and offering insurance.

SPEAKER_05 40:51

Like there's all kinds of and the geo-tagging and everything, marketing-wise. And so I I have a two-fold question. Why is Texas becoming such a hotspot for data centers right now? And you said in your book that data centers are the new factories. What exactly are they manufacturing?

SPEAKER_00 41:09

Yeah. I so I I say they're it's manufacturing intelligence.

SPEAKER_03 41:13

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:13

Yeah. Um and the the the very much uh let me answer your first question.

SPEAKER_02 41:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 41:20

Why is Texas a hot spot? It's because Texas is hot. Um it's easy to do business in Texas. We know that. Uh, but it's literally, you know, one of the largest producers of energy in the world. Um and it's not just oil and gas, uh, it is solar and wind. We're we I think we just passed California as the leading state with renewable. For renewable. For renewables, yes. Uh and then the other thing, my favorite emerging uh energy is uh geothermal. Geothermal, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:52

We've been hearing about that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 41:54

Yeah. So there's new ways of of of harnessing geothermal. And there's basically two types. There's one for your residential, which is just an easy, you know, well that's sending water down, heating it up and sending it back up. And those those are um are are coming online pretty fast. And then there's another one that is just more industrial, and those those are that's that's going down thousands of feet and taking advantage of the hot rock and using it on an industrial scale. And so there's a new company that just had an IPO fervo, they're leading um in in the industrialization of geothermal. Uh and and and Texas has plenty of hot rocks.

SPEAKER_05 42:34

Aaron Powell But the but the um biggest, I guess, argument against all of this, I don't know if it's ignorance or lack of knowledge, or um just maybe a little bit of both, is the water situation here in Texas. And so um explain that process and how the data centers are kind of capturing. I mean, is it all recycled water? Are they taking from us? You said what was the the term you said about cell phones and the faucet?

SPEAKER_06 43:02

Uh uh A swipe on a phone now competes with the turn of a faucet.

SPEAKER_00 43:07

Right. Yeah. And I I that came from the idea of um we've had Alexa in our house for quite some time. And uh, you know, we're talk asking her about weather and we're or and asking about different things, and then I was just thinking, well, Alexa's very thirsty. Data centers are very thirsty. They require an enormous amount of water to keep them cool. Uh, and they need to be cool because of the type of um chip they use. They use these GPUs and they just run hot. Um and and then uh and and then to to to your point, what is the world going to look like in the future? And is AI gonna be you know doing certain things? Well, um as we build out AI agents that take over functions in a in a in a in a business, um, and if and if they start to talk to each other and that's happened, um there There is the scenario where an agent starts talking to another one and decides that, hey, w we need to keep the power on the water on, and uh uh we would like those resources coming to us instead of being used by consumers. I mean, that that is a thing. That's the governance I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_05 44:19

Well, the a the agents now.

SPEAKER_06 44:20

That's actually scary. It could go like, hey, we're not gonna send power to High Point and you know, we're gonna because we have the data center over in Butta or whatever, let's send the power there, because we gotta keep that going. Yeah, that's scary. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 44:32

Well, you talked about the agents, and as far as agents, but Steve and I talked about this a couple of weeks ago about agents, the AI agents talking to other or conversing with other AI agents and creating their own language and their own relationship.

SPEAKER_06 44:46

It's like an AI forum, right?

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Where the where the bots or agents talk to each other? Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yes. Yeah, there's some things going out on Reddit right now where there's just agents talking to agents.

SPEAKER_03 44:57

What the hell?

SPEAKER_00 44:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:00

What is that about? All right.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Okay, and in my opinion, there's it's inevitable. Because you think about everything that we're okay, so United States, we're What do you mean that's inevitable? That's creepy. It is because the the scary part is everything that we're doing right now in the United States, and we are by far the leaders in AI because of compute, the number of data centers and the number of data centers that we're going to build, it's 5,000 to 10,000. And they're in the and then the country that's behind us is Germany, and they've got 500. And then we're not quite sure what's going on in China because you know it's China. But uh, for everything that we are doing here, there's there's other countries that are making the same type of investments and that we that aren't being governed, and we don't know what's going on. And and and there is a really scary dark web out there and things happening.

SPEAKER_06 45:52

And you know, there's there's well you you mentioned kind of above the board China, maybe a little less above the board, but if you think about uh North Korea and Iran, and they're all they're all working on AI too. What are they using those tools for? It's kind of it's scary to me. I uh I'm not sure uh my opinion on AI has just gone back and forth, back and forth. But I you know, do you ever watch the movie The Matrix? Oh, yes. One of my favorite movies of all time. But, you know, and you think, oh, that'll never happen. But then to Michelle's point, you start seeing pictures online of people that are massaged to look like something they're not, and you believe that they are. How much of a stretch is it for us to be in a make-believe world?

SPEAKER_05 46:40

Well, even the AI fake, you know, all the AI fakes that are happening right now. And I think that just, you know, with legislation, um, we need to really button this down globally to figure out what is allowed.

SPEAKER_06 46:51

I mean, they're I don't see that happening.

SPEAKER_05 46:53

Yeah, maybe you guys are yeah, and they're but they're like, they're they're faking your voice. They can call and say, you know, little Timmy's stuck in a well, and grandma, I need $10,000, drain your savings account.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Kind of Yeah, that's an easy one to do at this point.

SPEAKER_05 47:06

That's that's pretty still scary. You know, I don't I don't know how to protect yourself. And so maybe with that, I mean just kind of popped in my head with that scenario. Maybe some people need to start coming out with AI proof software. You know, like is you know, I know that like in college, if you write an essay, they'll say, Oh, okay, they have this AI checker and they'll the pinpoint things.

SPEAKER_06 47:27

I actually think, though, if at some point the technology gets so it's sort of like I hardly ever answer my phone when there's a phone call now, because 99 times out of 100, it's spam. Right. So at some point with AI, if it gets so that every time it's used, it creates some headache for somebody. Eventually people will go, I'm not touching that. But maybe we'll be beyond the point where they even have that choice.

SPEAKER_05 47:57

I I was reading today that they were saying some of the things that are going away, that'll go away within 10 years. And one of them was passwords. Like eventually you won't ever you won't need a password because everything will be digital. Everything will be either your fingerprint or or like a pass key. And it's like, okay, on one hand, thank God I don't have to have 50 different passwords with all these little symbols, but then what where do we go? Like where where does the line begin? Where does it end? It's so blurry. I know. I know. What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 48:28

Where where's this all gonna end up, Gary?

SPEAKER_05 48:30

Like I said, let's go live off the grid.

SPEAKER_00 48:32

You know, anybody that's uh has a crystal ball and is making predictions on what it's gonna be, I I I I I don't think that because you know, we're we're talking about AI right now, but then the the next round of technologies, especially quantum computers, are gonna completely change everything. So it's it's it you know, when you start taking AI and quantum, and then there's blockchain technology, and you combine those three, uh it it it is it it's yeah, a completely different looking world than it is to today.

SPEAKER_06 49:09

Aaron Ross Powell Is there a part of you that part of all that that thrills you and a part of that that scares you?

SPEAKER_00 49:15

Uh yeah, it's both. And and what I talk about in the book is the the constraint to all of this is natural resources. Yeah. That's the constraint. So the predictions that are being made on AI um come down to physical constraint. Like, do we have the energy? Do we have the water? Do we have the copper? Do we have the people that can actually build these data centers? I mean, we've done a poor job in in the US, especially of uh investing in trades. Right? We're short on everything right now. You know, if if high schools needed to do a third thing, it's double down on going back to making sure that trades are something that we have.

SPEAKER_02 50:01

Working with your hands.

SPEAKER_00 50:02

We need welders, we need plumbers, we need people, we need people that can work with concrete. My cousin just went to Texas State on a full college scholarship provided by the concrete industry. Oh, really? Yeah. Um we we need we need more people like Sam and we need we need um well tradesmen.

SPEAKER_06 50:23

Yeah, these data centers are not gonna build themselves. They need electricians, they need concrete guys, they need all of that. Yeah, yeah. They need plumbers, they need all that.

SPEAKER_05 50:30

So if you're sitting across from a high school student right now or even one of your own kids, what are you encouraging them to go into as far as for a career?

SPEAKER_00 50:39

Uh well, I'll I'll use my oldest son as an example. So we started this cleaning company two years ago because uh he he stuck his toe into college um and then quickly pulled that toe back. And then he went out and he tried some things on his own, and then he came back home. And then uh I turned and looked at Lisa and I'm like, hey, uh I've been in this services business for my whole career, even going back to working my way through high school. It was I I was a manager or through college, I was a manager at HEB the whole time I was there, working full-time, all that good stuff. Um and our cleaners had just retired, and I looked at her and I was like, let's start a cleaning company and we will plug him in and we will teach him how to run a business. And so um it's gone really, really well. Uh, it's been two years and he just moved up to the clean area because the business is starting to grow up there, and so he's gonna go and be the general manager up there and and run it.

SPEAKER_06 51:44

Oh wow. So the name of the company is the clean home crew. Yes. Yeah, Michelle said she'd heard of you on Facebook. But well, we were talking about AI-proof businesses. That's an AI-proof business right there. Everything's always gonna need to be clean. The data centers are gonna need to be cleaned.

SPEAKER_00 52:02

Um yes.

SPEAKER_05 52:05

Cleaners.

SPEAKER_00 52:06

Uh hey, there's an idea. Uh well, it's funny you would say that because that's already on the list. Um, and we did our, we, we did um, I my youngest son and I um went in and we had our first um well, you can't do air quotes on a podcast.

SPEAKER_06 52:23

We have YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 52:25

So the idea of uh of a clean data center room, um, every there's every hospital, every every school, county offices. So so we had our first data center customer where we we spent um nine or twelve hours clean. Oh, it was nine hours cleaning a 12 by 12 room. And it was that was our first um, is it like was it like a clean room? Like it was like with the bunnies server room. And you know, it's clean and um and so we we have that on our roadmap right now of of spinning up and spinning out that yeah line of business um to go along with the other four that we have.

SPEAKER_06 53:05

Aaron Powell The other four. So the technology consulting is one. Oh no, I'm talking in the cleaning business stuff.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Yeah, residential, post-construction, commercial, um, and Airbnb. I mean, so you do Airbnb. That's yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 53:20

Okay. Yeah. Wow, man. I don't know how you keep up with all that.

SPEAKER_00 53:23

But we are that for that, it's it is it's the family, right? I mean, we're it's all hands on deck.

SPEAKER_05 53:32

Um but you're probably also still using um I mean it is hands, hands on deck. Getting your Steve and I were just having this conversation yesterday that what makes us different from other real estate agents is that we like to get our hands dirty, right? Yeah, you can AI, you can AI the heck out of everything.

SPEAKER_06 53:47

The trend in the real estate business is to just be like the the face of the business and have all these.

SPEAKER_05 53:54

You're hiring out for everything else.

SPEAKER_06 53:55

And we you know, we're probably a little bit old school, but we believe in going to the properties and meeting with the clients and and negotiating our own deals and which makes us a little old-fashioned, but I still think that that's what makes it.

SPEAKER_00 54:07

That's that authenticity that I think.

SPEAKER_05 54:09

It makes us feel a little bit more or more invested. And I think our clients appreciate appreciate that. But along like with your um your cleaning company and with our real estate, there are certain aspects of it to where, yeah, we can use an automated system, an automated AI, you know, whether it's to build up your schedule or, you know, give me a business plan or something like that, so that you're saving hours behind the house so that you can make more money in the front of the house. Right. And but we've I think the difference between what we're seeing this trend with Steve is we're not letting AI take over or anybody take over the entirety of our business. And now we're just the face, we're just the human face. And so what you guys are doing is kind of very similar to what we do. It's you're getting your hands dirty and you're teaching your kids to get your hands dirty, get in there. That is the stuff that is not going to be replaced. Learn how to do it yourself. Stop hiring out, learn how to do it yourself.

SPEAKER_06 55:04

For sure. Yes. Yeah, definitely. Talk to us about the book AI Shock. Where where can people get it and what made you decide to write this?

SPEAKER_00 55:12

Um well, you can buy it on Amazon. Okay. Yeah. AI Shock, how artificial intelligence touches everything. Uh, the idea for me, so during my technology consulting career, I I uh I have spent a lot of time in the energy industry working with companies of you know, XOMobiles of the worlds and shells and those those types of companies. And then I was actually actually president of an oil-field services company and helped digitize their operations and stand up some new markets for them to go into business with. Uh and so I I had that energy background that complements the technology business. And then last year I was able to go to NVIDIA. So NVIDIA makes the GPUs and market share right now uh in in the world. So I went to do their AI advisory training last year. Okay, and I got to kind of see exactly you know what what it's all gonna look like. And then I was able to go to Schneider Electric and they build data centers. Okay. And there's a there is a vast difference in what a data center in the last 20 years has looked like in the inside in the guts versus what a modern AI enabled data center. And it's all because of the chip. The everything about the data center is different. How they're built, how they're cooled, how they're managed, everything is about it, i is different. So when I when I when I went through that experience, I thought, oh my gosh, this there's a story to tell here, and I need to tell it fast because out of all of the technologies that I've worked around, cloud, blockchain, you know, data analytics and all of that, this is the fastest moving one that I've ever seen. I mean, it's just it's every day there's something new that that is is being talked about. Um so I I I buckled down and I got uh I worked on the book and um and and did did AI help you write a book about AI? Um of course. Yeah. I mean, so for you know, I AI, what it's really good at right now is commodity stuff. I keep saying commodity, so so things that other people could do pretty easy, right? So um you know, getting a structured outline, um, spell checking, um, you know, things like that.

SPEAKER_05 57:48

It's like what Steve was talking about. Yeah, it's it's your ideas and you're just you're you're just having it them organized.

SPEAKER_00 57:55

Yes, for sure.

SPEAKER_05 57:56

So this is the outer all of book writing, right? AI is, yeah. It's like it helps you.

SPEAKER_00 58:01

Yes. Uh and then along the way, so we we stood up a media company to to help get it published. Um and and so that's that's part of the family. And the idea there is we we take the book, which is a digital product, it's an investment in the family. Um, we umbrella it with a media company. We take our cleaning company that we have and we create digital products out of out of it. So lessons learned, guides, uh thing, things like that, right? And and we we work that through the the media company that is being run by Lisa and um uh and and continue to invest in in our in our family is is is what what that's uh all about.

SPEAKER_05 58:43

So who is this?

SPEAKER_00 58:44

I don't know how you keep up with all this.

SPEAKER_05 58:45

Who's this book written for?

SPEAKER_00 58:48

Somebody that just wants to just have a general idea about what what's what's going on with AI, right? Yeah, yeah. So it it it talks a lot. I I try to make the point that we've we've been here before as a country in the sense that that the investments that we're making and the the scale of pace and and and build that's going on, the physical build, right? So with the industrial revolution, we we built factories in every small town. And that's what's happening right now with data centers. You're getting a data center showing up in every small town. Texas right now has 300 data centers. Uh and and that's gonna double. Yeah. Right. Uh all right. The plan is to double. The the the the the issue, again, is it we're gonna run into resource problems. Energy, water, things.

SPEAKER_06 59:44

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:44

There is a company that has started that.

SPEAKER_05 59:47

And Pulti. Uh Poulti is building a uh neighborhood where they're putting these.

SPEAKER_00 59:56

Yeah, and there's a couple reasons for that. One is uh going back to just kind of the nefarious things that could go on with AI, and if you're sharing your data to the rest of the world, chips and data compute has gotten so small that now, and and companies are looking at this as well. How can they build out their own mini data center and run their own models internally without having to go out to the rest of the world and be compromised or also influenced, right? Because you know, ChatGPT and the rest of these, what they did is went and read the whole internet and came back. And just imagine what influenced ChatGPT, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:35

Kardashians.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:37

They're like they've given up. They're like, I'm done.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:40

Yeah. So yes, you'll you know, in the future, it it would be an easier prediction to make saying that uh houses will have their own compute than they uh you know, it's kind of sitting next to the Trevor Burrus.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:53

Yeah. Well, I was wondering, is it like they build a house and it has solar panels on the top, and instead of producing electric uh extra electricity and sending it to the provider, now it runs the data. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:05

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:07

If this AI is the next industrial revolution, where are we on the timeline? Are we 1820, 1900, 1940? Where are we in in the scope of the ROM?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:17

Later 1800s, right, when when the factories were being built.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:21

Are these the Rockefellers and the this is what this is right here? The Gilded Age.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

Sam Altman's and the Elon Musks and and you know the ones that are running in uh uh Anthropic, those companies there, those are the new The Rockefellers. And and that's already happened, right? So if you if you go look at the fortune, um even the Fortune 10, if you look in the year 2000, it's all oil and gas companies. If you look now, it's Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia. Um those are the those are the digital Titans now. It's already happened. We we've already moved to the digital world, right? Right. That's where the investments are, that's where the money is, and that that's who's who's sitting on all the the investment capital. And they're they're just like taking that money and they're just kind of like giving it to each other.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:08

There's a circle of money that's gonna be like, they're buying this and moving that, and yeah, I know it's it's and you mentioned Bitcoin.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:14

So Bitcoin's a um a few years ago there was all this hype about blockchain. Um and and and blockchain is just a the the simplest way to think of it is that it's a it's a secure digital ledger. We'll just leave it at that. We won't go into a lot of detail. Um and what when I was at IBM, I I went there purposely because I wanted to go to a company that was digital and branded. So at the time you could turn on and you could hear about Watson, right? And all that good stuff. And it was fun and it was it was amazing. And I had this really cool project I was working on. Um and then and then blockchain exploded. It came on the scene, Bitcoin came out, um, there there was a there was a white paper that came out about nine, eleven pages long. It it released Bitcoin into the world. And that's another one that was it was either some gov government agency or an alien that can invented this capability. But but blockchain is still kind of work finding its way in the world at the corporate level, but there is there's no debate that the number one performing financial asset in the last 10 years has been Bitcoin. And and it went from it was this, you know, kind of thing in people's closets to now you've got companies that have the most money in the world, like BlackRock, where they've set up Bitcoin ETFs and you know, consumers can now buy it safely and they don't have to worry about going, you know, somebody taking off with it. Yeah. So um so that's another technology that is hardened. It's here, it's not going anywhere. It there's going to be additional investments, and then you're gonna see things like passwords. So how do you how do you that it's a terrible experience, passwords? We all have like lists of our passwords and passwords for our passwords, and it's just the worst. And you have this multi-factor thing where you're having to get on your phone and your your face and all of that. Well, that so you're gonna take AI and blockchain and and and you're basically going to have an intelligent password that that'll be a part of that that I think will be separate from just bio bio. Because the problem with bio is at some point this phone's gonna go away. Yeah. Yeah. I the I think the the thing is a smartphone is not gonna be smart anymore. It's gonna be it's it's gonna be a legacy thing that we don't we don't do because AI, there's gonna be chips in that data center that's sitting at your house and talking to your fridge that's talking to your version of a Tesla car that has compute inside of it.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:46

Here's George Jetson.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:48

You're gonna we've already extended the phone to our wrist, right? Which I won't do, by the way.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:54

Yeah. Oh does the lack of control in our own does that scare you? That lack of because once you get to that point, I like I I have a just vague understanding of what blockchain is, just very rudimentary. But now I'm trusting that blockchain and these other digital assets are they're trust, they're taking care of my techno my my data, my information. I don't really know. I mean, if I log into my bank account and and use that technology, I don't know if that didn't go out in the internet anywhere. At least I know if I'm using password one, two, three that well, no, don't you? Don't look at me. Don't look at me. You know, at least I know I've got some control. Now you're talking about I don't have any control. I'm just trusting that the computers are taking care of me. That scares me to death.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:41

Yeah. Well, again, well, hopefully you'll have your own compute at your house and you can store it there locally. And the only thing that'll be touching it is the energy coming in. But you can keep it there and you can keep it localized, and you don't have to do that.

SPEAKER_05 1:05:53

I want to know why he why you don't use the phone watch.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:56

Why do you behavior? It's it's the The constant dig and the constant looking at it. I mean, I sit in meetings with people and they're just they're I I don't I don't want to So the the the other thing that's going on is companies they're before even AI, I mean they were using data science and all these other ways to engineer the applications you're on. You're not just looking at something that is serving you information. You're looking at something that is targeted based on 20 years of search information from Google and other companies like that that know how how to get exactly what they need and want out of you. Okay. And then now take that down to a 12-year-old.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:36

So you're telling me my 2 a.m. insomnia Google searches like, do frogs burp? I mean, does that well okay?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:44

How about the how about the advertisement that is popping up on Facebook where you might have said it out loud for it? Or thought it. Or that's a real.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:54

I have thought that before. I was like, I was just thinking about looking for something.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:58

Yeah, where do you sleep with your phone?

SPEAKER_06 1:07:00

So do did I speak it out loud, or are you saying that it's reading my mind? Where do you sleep with your phone? I my phone's like a foot and a half from my from my bed. I mean, what is a thought? Wow. You know what, Gary? It's just a pulse of energy. Oh my God, Gary. I when we when we when uh Michelle told me you were coming on, I'm like, good, I'm gonna get a real good handle on this AI thing. I'm gonna understand. We're F and now Right now, we're totally F. Now I understand it. I'm scared to death. Uh I you know, I could see some good coming out of it. Man, I could see some things going really south.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:37

Go back to what you just said. It's an impulse. What what did you say? A thought is a thought.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:43

Thought's just electromagnetism coming out of out out of out of your body.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:49

Look at my face. Mallet. I know, I know. Look at my face.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:52

My phone is gonna start living out in my living room, not near my bedroom anymore.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:56

I mean, I so let's so I'm I'm extremely faith-based. I shared in there that I've I've I'm I've I've performed two weddings in the family. Yeah and kind of two funerals, okay? Um and I always like to say that both are still married and everybody's still dead, so I'm really getting what I'm doing. Okay. Like I I'm doing this, so I'm faith-based. So what is a prayer? It is does your prayer stay with you? Or are you praying out loud and you're putting it out there in the universe? But we are we're we're we're we're antennas.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:36

Yeah. But the second part of that is you're saying that technology is receiving those signals. Of course, yeah, absolutely. Wow, that's just freaky to me.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:44

Okay, well, I also want to go back to what you're saying about aliens too. And I have said this before. Uh aliens, in my opinion, are just humans with AI brains, and that's why they look like that. I just want to throw that out there. That's a good one. Okay, so to kind of wrap this up, what is, in your opinion, there are so many different platforms out there, the quote, best AI? And is it and is there one that does all of them? My husband uses Grok because you know he's an engineer. I use chat because it's free at first, and now I pay for it. Now I'm a dictate because it does more images for me. But what is the best one that you recommend at this point?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:27

Uh so okay. Um the first way to answer that is most of the consumer-based AI apps, and the the big four would be uh Claude, Chat GPT, uh, Gemini, and and Grog. Okay. So the reality is they're all about six months apart from each other in capabilities. We went through the same thing with cloud when companies were moving their data to cloud, yeah. The the the the native technology that's behind each one of one of these, what's going on in the guts, it takes about six months for for one to catch up with each other. Okay. So you you can't for sure just as far as capabilities, you can't really go wrong either way. So then it just kind of goes boils down to what are you comfortable with? What's your preference? Yeah. So um I I I know personally, uh, and you mentioned the the teachers when when Lisa first started using Chat GPT, it was to help her um in school build lesson plants. Okay. Uh I I I use Chat GPT personally for for things that are not in my corporate day job. Um and and so I use it, it's easy, and the and the best way to get started is anytime you were gonna search on Google, go search on Chat GPT.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:45

I find it easiest way to get I find myself doing that all the time now. I don't even really search on Google anymore because I get l uh it knows more about what I'm looking for and doesn't give me a bunch of stuff that I don't care about.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:56

But they also Google now also has that AI feature too. I mean, it'll pop up and give you. I mean, but you talk about hallucinations, sometimes it's not it's not true.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:05

And so for Google, like our business for the cleaning company, we've standardized our work productivity on Google because it's because of ease of use, right? You've got all of the tools that you know Gmail, sheets, docs, it's all there. Numbers, everything, yeah. It's free ish. You're gonna bring your data, you're just feeding the machine. Yeah. Um so so so we so we've been using Gemini to help um just get organized as as a company. Uh and then uh you kind of grok is uh grok is the Wawa West, right? Um the the the AI apps kind of match the person and the personalities of their founders. Okay, well I'll just leave it at that.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:50

Oh grok is Elon Musk.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:53

Elon Musk, yeah. So it's it's you know, it's it's out there. By the way, he's built the like one of the largest data centers in the world in Memphis to go along with all of those other things that I'm talking about, right? Um and and back to Texas, the largest data center in the world right now is being built in Abilene, and it's because of natural gas is there, the the wind is there, the solar is there.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:16

Isn't that all of the shock tank guy, Kevin? Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:20

He's got well, he's out in Utah doing some stuff. Yeah. Um this is more if if you ever hear the current administration talk about a half a trillion dollar or a $500 billion um it's called Project Stargate. But that that's what is being referenced. And there's you know, all the big companies are a part of that that matter out there, but it's but it's in Texas because of how friendly we can do business.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:43

Are we doing ourselves a disservice by by inviting it in? Come on in.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:49

Uh e-haul. We'll see. You know, the the funny thing about all of this is um as big as this world is, the majority of the internet lives in Virginia.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:00

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:04

Okay, I have I have a lot of things. That was a long round.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:09

I'm kind of dumbfounded here.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:10

I have one last question because the this is you you mentioned your faith. Um Steve and I both are Christians. I'm I'm I I really try to adhere to to my Christian beliefs. Is the is AI the new golden cow? Is it the false idol?

SPEAKER_00 1:13:28

Wow. I I think it's like anything else. It could be it can be if you let it. I mean, I I think the probably the the most recent golden cow has become people's phones.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:44

The amount of time that you hold a phone in your hand and you look down. I know. See, who are you praying to?

SPEAKER_06 1:13:49

Yeah. That's true. I mean, I I try, but you know, it's if I leave my guilt, I'm as I'm saying it's a necessary evil for a while. If I walk out of the room and go to the other room and I don't have my phone, sometimes I'm like, oh damn, where's my phone? It's like it dominates my life. Yeah, for sure. But it does. We've just been trained.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:09

But before that it was TV, right? I mean, you you know, again, I'm I'm I'm a kid of the 80s.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:14

Yeah, it wasn't reading my mind. It was just Daisy Dukes walking in that trip in a different car. That's another one. Well, I'm gonna go to church after this.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:28

Yeah, Gary, I I've really enjoyed this. I've learned a lot. I'm not sure if I should be excited or scared. I'm kind of a little bit of both, but uh I feel like we could talk for another hour about this and still uh just scratch the surface. But I you asked us what we were gonna talk about. We'd we talked about it a lot, didn't we? So yeah, I appreciate you coming in today. It's been a lot of fun. I I certainly appreciate y'all having me.

SPEAKER_05 1:14:50

Scary as hell, Gary. Thank you so much. You were the scariest guest I've had on.

unknown 1:14:56

Wonderful.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:57

Insane conversation. I that did not go in the direction that I thought it was going to go.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:02

It was um scary. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:06

You know, at first I was a little kind of excited and like, yeah, you know, this is this could be cool. And then but the more he talked, the more kind of nervous I got. And then when he started talking about thoughts being picked up by your phone, the energy vibrations. I was like, oh my God. You know, there's the there's been now been two times in my life I've felt like a complete peon or pawn. The first one was during COVID, where we didn't have any control over our personal autonomy, our personal lives. I kind of think we're going into another segment of our history like that where AI is gonna control so much of our lives and we're just giving ourselves up to it.

SPEAKER_05 1:15:48

It's kind of scary. But we don't really have uh an option either, because everything is truly um connected. Everything is connected. I know. Oh, are you telling me to turn the Turn the TV on?

SPEAKER_06 1:16:03

That was very subtle, wasn't it? Oh well, yeah. And I expected him to come in and be a big proponent of AI, uh, because I hadn't read his book yet, which I'm I'm definitely gonna read. I'll probably read this cover to cover tonight. Uh but he actually isn't. He seems a little kind of nervous about AI too and how much we're giving up ourselves to it.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:23

Especially somebody in the industry, and he wasn't very woo-woo either. You know, he wasn't woo-woo, he he broke it down. He's very he's an intellect.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:30

Yeah, yeah. Smart guy. You could tell he's definitely uh been around the block a few times with technology. And he talked about some things that were way over my head, but uh that wasn't hard because you're you're a little guy.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:44

You're not real sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:46

I'm taller than you. Yeah, but anyway, it's uh his book, AI Shock, apparently is available on Amazon, and I think it's pretty cheap too. It's like 15 bucks. It's probably worth a read to figure out how we're gonna fit.

SPEAKER_05 1:16:59

If you have a Kindle, it's five bucks.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:01

Yeah, five bucks to read it on Kindle. But it's coming whether we like it or not, and I guess we should prepare for it.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:08

I think he wrote in one of our books Um, have me back on in five years and see how things have changed.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:14

Yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:16

I don't know if I want to.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:18

Well, so speaking we'll we'll record him from our pods in the Matrix as well.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:22

Speaking of AI, Steve, have you heard of this song? Ready? Not that song, not that first.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:31

Yeah, I've heard that.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:36

Okay, it's an AI song.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:38

So I love the song. It's an I AI song. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:44

I've heard that song.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:46

Well, yeah, okay. It's an AI. Well, because I did a video, remember? I was stuck in a house and I did a video of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:51

That's right.

SPEAKER_05 1:17:52

So um I apparently the author just put the lyrics in. Okay. And then AI created the song, kind of like what I did with. Am I gonna play? Let's see if it'll play in the background. Let's see. So this is about let's see if it's a lot of instrumental holding. Yeah, there's a hoes of instrumental.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:14

Down and driven screens with a story to go.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:19

There's a couple of hoes that everybody knows. A couple of hoes that everybody knows.

SPEAKER_04 1:18:30

Together they take every conversation to have. Couple of hoes and streaks. It's I I'll I'll put that on our on our Instagram because it's pretty funny.

SPEAKER_05 1:18:50

Well, let me tell you, believe it or not, a couple of AI songs. That San Juan song is one of the number one trending songs right now on social media. And but they have also now crossed over into mainstream media. Number one on Billboard's country digital song sales chart. There was an AI-generated country act. It was called um Walk My Walk. I think their name is Breaking Rust. It is the most awful song. I'm not even gonna play it because it's just it's horrid.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:23

It sounds like so it's not a real band. It's an AI band. Like it's a made-up band.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:29

Yeah, total made out, made out, made out, made out.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:31

Made out with the hose.

SPEAKER_05 1:19:32

But there's a one that I have heard that I was like, when I first heard it, I was like, this kind of sounds AI. And it's called Celebrate Me. It's like, ah, celebrate me. And she kind of has like this really raspy, almost like rhythm and blues gospel singer kind of song. It's really good. That's Inga Rose. She is also AI. Um, and then Eddie Dalton, in this entirely AI-created blues and soul artist, rocketed to the top of the global iTunes charts with multiple simultaneous tracks. So here's the thing: I started looking into what the industry is thinking about this. And there's very, they're really mixed about what's going on. I think the producers and the ones sitting in the record in the recording studio are kind of really using it as a tool for for them, but they still want the real artist. The real artists obviously are pushing back on it, but but they're using some of it for their songwriting capabilities.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:27

I actually think if you put down the lyrics for a song and then use AI to maybe tweak it a little bit, I'm okay with that. But uh a song that's totally created by AI and then sung by a singer is better than a sing a song created by AI, sung by somebody on AI on a computer. That's just are we just giving up on the art of music?

SPEAKER_05 1:20:50

Do you remember in the it was maybe in the late 80s, early 90s? Do you remember the band Millie Vanilli? Mm-hmm. Okay. So Millie Vanilli, the big thing about them was they didn't even sing their own songs. They just performed them. They were lip singing the whole time. And so now, if you think about it, everybody was in such an uproar. I even think they want to get Grammy. They were in such an uproar. Now they're doing the exact same thing.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:14

Exactly. It's actually worse.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:16

So people are saying that there's a lot of listener confusion. And uh recent studies by platforms like Ip uh, I can't even say is this Ipsos and Deezer show that over 90% of listeners struggle to distinguish between completely AI-generated audio and human composed audio.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:34

I think that's that's gonna change. I think people are gonna start figuring it out.

SPEAKER_05 1:21:38

Well, I would hope that there is disclaimers. I would hope I don't I don't know. As you know, talking to Gary, the better AI gets, the more it's learning to sound like these little kind of nuances. I probably need to, if somebody copied my voice, I need to say, look, she's an ADHD, dyslexic, menopausal, borderline psychotic squirrel. And good luck with that. Yeah. Good luck with that AI.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:06

But I think you could do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:07

But you know, like sometimes how I talk and I like interject, and and you say sometimes I go all the way around the story and then I tell a story.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:15

Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the AI can do some good things in the world. I think there's some scary things that that could happen. You know, you and I were talking at lunch about uh, and Elon Musk has already thrown this out. Nobody's gonna work anymore. Everybody's gonna get like a basic universal income check from the from the government, I guess. And we're all just gonna sit at home and just and I think that amount of money will be just enough that you won't complain too much, but not enough that you can do anything with your life. You just basically at that point, that that point, you are living in a pod in the matrix because uh the computers run everything and you just exist. And that that's I don't want that. I I want I want the craziness, the chaos of life.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:59

I just don't see eventually if AI is taking over the world, and I kind of touched base on or touched on this in the in the interview. If AI is taking over the world, then we are the world. Oh, there's a song. We are the world, we are the children. If we are the world, if the human race is making up the entire who is inputting that information, who is taking if all the jobs are being AI?

SPEAKER_06 1:23:27

It's not we're the world, we are the product that they are manipulating for their profit. Yeah, that's what we are. Yeah, I that scares me to death. And I don't have any say in it.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:39

They're gonna do what they want. You know, remember those like Alaskan Bush people? Like you kind of watch that show and you think, those babies are crazy. They live off the grid and they got they eat beaver for dinner.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:50

And well, sounds pretty good right now. I'm not gonna internet. I'm not squirrel, but they're not uploading reels to Instagram up there out in the boonies because they don't have any internet.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:01

You'd be very proud of me, is I didn't get on um TikTok all weekend.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:06

And you came back from that vacation and I had a sense of peace about you you've not had for weeks at least.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:13

Very long time. Well, you know what? I think it was a combination of being out in nature, and it's so beautiful out there. Like I'm gonna give a little shout out to Zuba River Camp in the Con Canci.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:22

I saw some pictures, it looks like a big thing.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:24

On the Frio, it's absolutely beautiful. That's our family. So go out there and rent yourself a cabin. It's only $275 a night for a cabin.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:31

You can get some peace and quiet and a little disconnect and come back feeling better than you have.

SPEAKER_05 1:24:35

Help contribute to my granddaughter's uh college fund on her other grandparents' side. There you go. But um, you know what? It was also because my oldest and his wife was there, and I was there with my husband. I was there with two of my best friends and um my daughter and son-in-law, and it was just and I was in caretaking. I was disconnected.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:56

Nobody was there stuck on their phone the whole time. That's one of the reasons Holly and I like to go backpacking is because our phones really don't do anything but help us navigate at that point.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:06

Yeah. Well, I didn't need to do that, but you know what I did use my phone for? I will I will tell you. No, this was the best. Well, okay, I did take pictures, but I downloaded this thing called Sky Guide. Oh, you see the stars. Love that. And yeah, and so we just pointed it out in the middle. Like right now, I can tell you, you know, what it's it's we've done, we did that in the Grand Canyon.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:27

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:28

I paid $50 for this uh for for a lifetime of Sky Guide.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:32

Well, good. I'll give you my password. You have to oh good, thank you. Yeah, so you have to go out to Big Ben in the in the winter when it's not a thousand degrees.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:39

Jacob pointed he pointed it down and he goes, Oh, you can see through the earth. And Todd goes, Jacob, that would be the stars on the other side of the earth, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:49

Well, something a little more close to home. Uh the City of Dripping Springs at their June 2nd council meeting announced uh that they are rolling out a roadway maintenance plan. And I read this and I went, yay! But everywhere, but in front of city's house. Oh, you just ruined my podcast.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:10

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_06 1:26:10

Is that true? Yeah. Over the next five years, the residents can expect to see several road improvements. The project includes maintenance on major roads and neighborhood streets. Um they so they're gonna roll it out in yearly phases, and the first couple years they're gonna do a mill and mill and overlay where they remove all the asphalt and then put new asphalt down.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:33

Uh because it's the ass's fault.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:35

Because it's the ass's fault. And then starting uh in 2029 to 2030, they're gonna do more of a maintenance thing, which to me just means they're filling the dang potholes.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:46

Did they tell you which roads they're doing?

SPEAKER_06 1:26:48

So, yeah. So coming starting this year, Grand Prairie Circle, Grand Prairie Circle Loop, and Goodnight Trail.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:55

Okay. Are they worse off than your road?

SPEAKER_06 1:26:58

Absolutely not.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:58

Let's go take video.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:00

I actually I I actually think we should do a video. Broken Lance Broken Lance Drive, which is over here in Springs Ranch. Uh that road's not terrible. Oak Springs Drive, Bob White Cove. This this now we're getting into future years. Spring Lake Drive and Founders Ridge. Spring Lake Drive, that's a long road. It probably needs it. But it only goes up to where the first curve is. It's not the whole road.

SPEAKER_05 1:27:23

But nowhere near in the sweet heart of dripping springs, where it needs it the most, where all of your tourists are in your business.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:31

You and I went to our Tuesday lunch at Pink Pen Barbecue, and on the way there, I hit two potholes that if I had been going more than five miles an hour, would have destroyed the wheels on my car in the Hayes Historic District, right behind CVS there. Disgraceful. What is going on? I don't understand. So they hate you.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:50

The city of Dirk's great.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:52

You know, I uh the city is very well run. There, we've got some good people over there. I don't understand why. Why they just overlooked the entire downtown district to do all these roads. Some of these in the future years Founders Ridge, Legacy Trails, Cortar, those roads are.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:10

Are you a squeaky wheel?

SPEAKER_06 1:28:11

Am I the squeaky wheel? Should you be? Maybe I should be.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:14

Here's our squeaky wheel. Hey, City of Dripping Springs, go fix Hayes Street over by and College. The whole the whole Hayes Historic District.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:22

Everything. Yeah, and you know, you get up in the North 40 there, just south of the Methodist church. Some of those roads are terrible. They're not on this place.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:29

We want to call Bill right now. Let's call Mayor Bill.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:31

No, don't put them on. But I if I I think Mayor Bill listens to almost every episode. If he's listening, I'd love to have a statement from him, but what why there and I'm sure there's a reason. Why the Hayes Historic District got no love in this five-year plan to fix the roads and drippy.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:48

Well, you know those people that are um on the corner on Saturdays? And they have the signs. Yeah. So on one side, one side they say, boo, we hate everything American. On the other side it says, Boo, we hate Steve Mallet.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:00

Don't fix the roads. No, it's okay. It doesn't bother me at all because I know the level of intellect there by those people that stand out on the corner a Saturday morning. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Go home to your nine cats. They're starving. But there's a quote here. Councilman, uh Councilmember Travis Crow expressed concerns over financial constraints and suggested stretching the plan over seven years instead of five to save costs. He says that's the kind that's kind of the whole point of preventative maintenance is to keep us out of this position. Oh, that's maintenance director Riley Sublett said that. But you know, if if my question to you is, you know, from a from a resident standpoint, what do we expect most out of our city government?

SPEAKER_05 1:29:44

Uh emergency services and good roads.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:46

And good infrastructure.

SPEAKER_05 1:29:47

And look, I mean, they kind of go hand in hand, good infrastructure with emergency services. So let's say an ambulance or a fire truck is coming down there and those those potholes get bigger and bigger, and kaboom, and they're you know why they blow out a tire. And you know why those roads are so crappy? Is because people are bypassing 290 and 12.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:13

It's a cut through.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:14

And they're cutting through. And I know.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:16

I but they put the bumps. Well, yeah, but they don't, nobody slows down on them. I I'm not calling out the city. I would like to understand the because I know there was a reasoning behind it, what the reasoning was for them not to fix probably the worst roads in dripping springs.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:33

I would say it, but that wouldn't be polite.

unknown 1:30:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:36

All right. Which would be par for the course for you.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:39

Speaking of tips, let's talk about Venmo.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:43

All right.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:44

So the other day, I was paying my housekeeper, and on when I paid her, it said I had an option to tip on the Venmo. I was like, that's interesting. And so I did a little deep dive. And apparently it's an option now on business profiles.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:05

So if you have a business profile, you it's if the people the person you're paying as a business profile.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:10

Yeah, so the person you're paying, and it's like a 10, 15, 20, 25%, there's like set buttons, and then I then I think it says something else. I think I mean I pay my tip, I build into paying her.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:23

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:24

But um it also started me thinking is it legal to Venmo a server or a service worker if you don't have cash, right? Like there's been times when, like my hairdresser, for instance, I never leave a tip on my credit card. First off, I don't want to put it on my credit card, but I I always like to give her a $20 bill or I Venmo her and I Venmo her pizza. I always it always says pizza. I never say what it is. That's smart. Yeah, I'm like, I'm like, oh here, I'm gonna give you pizza. I don't have cash today. And she's like, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:52

Um and then sometimes she forgets about it. But um they say that as someone works someone who works for tips, they always like cash. But if you don't have cash, they would prefer Venmo. The employer cannot, they may not like you Venmoing their server, but it is legal, it is a private transaction, but they can ban like restaurants and businesses can legally allow to ban employees from accepting digital tips outside of their formal um point of sale system, their POS system. But I did it the other day also at Lowe's. I bought a bunch, like 30 bags of mulch, and all I had was five dollars. This kid, single guy, yeah, loaded 30 bags, and I all I had was five bucks. I felt really bad. And so I gave him five bucks and and I said, Hey, can I Venmo you another five dollars? And he goes, Oh, I'm not allowed to accept Venmo, but he could take it. He could take cash.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:47

Interesting.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:47

Which was in yeah, it was like it's the same thing. I felt like I I don't know. How do you feel about that? How do you feel if you don't want to leave your tip on your credit card and you want to personally give it to them, like a waiter's okay, waiters and waitresses. Sometimes they have this uh, what is it called, a split tip situation where they have to post- all the tips are all put together and everybody gets a certain percentage of the city.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:10

You know why I think that's crap?

SPEAKER_05 1:33:11

The waitress only gets $2.13 an hour.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:14

But also the person that is excelling and is going above and beyond doesn't get any more than the person that behind them that's all doing the same job that sucks.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:23

Well, the cook is getting his hourly rate.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:26

No, but I'm saying so. You say you have two servers. One is exceptional. You're like, I need to tip this person 30%. That's the best service I ever had. And then there's another server, two tables over, that absolutely sucks. Their water's empty, their food came cold, uh, you know, you never showed up again. And you but they get the same tip. That's why I don't like that.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:46

Well, I I look at it as when I used to wait tables back in the day, 89, 91, right around there. Back in the black and white days. Yeah, like at the diner.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:33:56

Mel's diner. When I did that, um, I would tip out the bartender and I would tip out the hostess. But they are both the hostess was uh an hourly wage. She wasn't on the tip wage. But I made $2.13 an hour, which I think is still the same exact amount. So my the majority of my money came from tips. Same with the bartender. But the cooks, they are getting their hourly wage. They're not they're not depending on paying their rent with tip money.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:22

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:22

And so but the reason why I tipped the hostess was because they she would sit me good people, right?

SPEAKER_06 1:34:28

I think the uh maybe the reason that the businesses don't want them to like in the case of the mulch kid that helped you, they don't want to have a a tran uh a uh record of that transaction. Like if you give them cash, it's that the the business doesn't have any way to say, okay, we got you know, there's no tracking that's none of their dang business. Well, I agree, but that's probably the reason they have that policy.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:52

Well, it's stupid.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:53

But uh you know, I mean, I think that they've repealed it. But remember you were supposed to $400 or $600. Everything you did on Venmo over $600, you had to justify to the IR.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:03

I think I don't think they do that anymore. But I just think, look, if I want to be able to tip somebody out of my own hard-earned cash, I should be able to do it in any way, shape, or form that I want to do it. And they I don't think they should have any kind of policy on that.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:17

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah. Well, I think if it's not a big business like Home Depot or Lowe's or ATB, they probably, you know, they wouldn't have a policy against it. If you was if it was Bob's landscape and they helped you load 30 bags of bullets in UV en mode, I don't think they'd care. But they, you know, these come big companies have to have these policies.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:34

But I've been receiving this is full disclosure. I've been receiving tips from all of our clients over the years. Okay. All right.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:41

Would you share a little bit of that love with the back end, please? I need to get some of that.

SPEAKER_05 1:35:46

Oh, mine.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:47

Yeah. Um, I've read a story this week and it's uh a little bit disturbing. The uh and and I'm putting this in the file of new evidence every day of things that we've accepted as normal that are in fact very healthy, unhealthy, unhealthy for us. So there's there's a new study published uh last week in the American Journal of Public Health that shows that people who eat the highest amounts of ultra-processed foods have a so these are the people that eat the most ultra-processed food, have a 58% higher chance of getting dementia and 46% higher chance of getting of having cognitive impairment just from eating those ultra-processed foods. This was a study of 5,300 adults. This is a pretty, pretty extensive study.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:35

You mean my hot fries and my flaming hot Cheetos are gonna be.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:39

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:40

But you know what? Look, I went to the grocery store yesterday and Todd helped me unload the groceries, and he goes, That's sure there's a whole lot of vegetables you put on. Good for you. Yeah, I make a lot of healthy stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:50

So ultra-processed foods, in case you're wondering, uh, nutrition researchers generally define ultra-processed foods as items containing ingredient ingredients that you that wouldn't generally be Wow, that wouldn't generally be. How much processed food did you eat? I ate way too much of these. Wouldn't generally be found in a home kitchen, such as emulsifiers used to improve the texture of food and high fructose corn syrup. So these are not things that you'd normally find in the food supply.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:19

Um I like the way you just pointed at the TV when I know, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:23

And the the thing they did further studies, and the the worst ultra-processed foods, the one that have that seem to be the biggest culprits are, and we're in trouble here: bacon, bacon, hot dogs, and sliced ham. Those are all ultra-processed with a lot of different chemicals in them, and you should avoid those at all costs.

SPEAKER_05 1:37:45

What about what about Shipley donuts? What about donut holes? I don't see donut holes on the list.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:50

Yeah, they uh um they are recommending Americans avoid highly processed foods with added sugars and salt, such as packaged chips, cookies, and candy. They didn't say donuts, but I'm gonna say donuts belong to the side. They didn't say donuts. Oh yeah, it says right there, Shipley's donuts. Don't eat it.

SPEAKER_03 1:38:07

They don't add extra sugar. They are sugar. They are sugar.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:13

You know, I I I I go back and forth on this because I Holly and I generally try and eat very healthy in in our lives.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:21

I eat pretty healthy for the most part.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:23

I enjoy a cookie now and then or every day. And and you know, I try and go try and keep a balance.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:29

Okay, Mallet, stop right there. You say you enjoy a cookie. If someone brought in, I don't know, TIFFS treats. And there were 12 cookies in the how many cookies would be okay. Here's a math problem. If somebody brought a dozen cookies for the whole office and Michelle stepped out for one hour and Steve was left alone, how many cookies would be left for Steve and or Michelle and Cedric?

SPEAKER_06 1:38:53

If they were chocolate with chocolate chips, you'd be lucky to get any when you came back. I think that's the math problem. Yes, yes. Yeah, so it's gonna be interesting to see how all of this stuff shakes up because you know Kennedy's gotten in there at Health and Human Services. Yeah, and he's on a pretty good rampage to uh Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to uh clean up the food supply in America. But it almost I it's great, but I almost feel like the deeper we dig, the more stuff we find out that's wrong. And you it's not just fixing the normal stuff that we all kind of knew already. Now we're starting to okay, how you know, do we avoid this and do we avoid that? And okay, is you know, now there's this peptides thing. Is peptides good or peptides bad? I don't know. It's uh it's really hard to figure out what the truth is.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:40

So what if you had to look in your pantry right now, just like visually visualize in my pantry? Yeah, because you've got three freaking things in your pantry.

SPEAKER_06 1:39:49

That's true. It's true.

SPEAKER_05 1:39:50

Okay. What is the majority of the stuff you have in there? Is it canned vegetables, is it boxed, or is it crackers, which is what I think probably no.

SPEAKER_06 1:39:58

We have very few crackers. We do those chips.

unknown 1:40:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:02

Actually, we don't do as many crackers as we used to, because almost all crackers are made with seed oils. It's really hard to find crackers without seed oils. Uh we have about half canned goods, canned vegetables, some soups, some canned meats. Uh I have some grains. I have like oatmeal. I eat oatmeal every morning, teas and coffees. We our our our fridge is full of fruits and vegetables, eggs, you know, fresh stuff. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:28

I would starve in your pantry and you would not like cooking.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:31

But we because we eat a lot of the same things. But when you start thinking, okay, I gotta have a healthy diet, man, the the list of things you can buy at HEB goes from really long to very small. I would stay healthy.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:43

I've recently gotten into and gotten really good at it, um, cooking bok choy, and it's really good. I I really like bok choy, but I make it more Asian. But if you had to look in my pantry, the majority of things in my pantry are chips, because apparently Todd loves chips, and I'm like, stop opening up another bag.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:00

Ultra processed.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:01

Well, okay. Yes, well, that's Mr. Lewis there. And then I like condiments, I like sauces.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:09

I have yeah, you bring all these weird sauces in your work sometimes.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:12

Yeah, look, because I think you can take some like like uh grilled chicken and you can make any flavor you want. Yeah, I love I'm a sucker, or like chutneys. Yeah. I like that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:21

Well, what uh what I'm worried about is remember eggs were unhealthy and now they're healthy. But steak was unhealthy and now it's healthy, and butter was unhealthy, and now it's healthier than margarine. And so I'm you know, I'm afraid that maybe 10 years from now they're gonna go, ultra-processed foods are the secret to long life. Eat as many donuts as you want.

SPEAKER_05 1:41:39

And so well, let me tell you, I was cooking on an open flame this weekend, and I bought a cheaper cut of steak than we normally do because I was feeding an army, and I had butter, and I did because Kendall, all she brought was a spray olive oil, and I lathered that entire thing up with butter and let it sit there and soak, and then I seasoned the outside of it. And Kendall was like, I've never seen that, and it came out so delicious.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:03

It was so good. Did you put it on a hot griddle so that it seared it in the room?

SPEAKER_05 1:42:07

No, it was an open flame with a grill, and Logan forgot about one of them and then they got a little crispy, but that was Logan's fault. But yeah, well, don't eat ultra processed.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:19

Or at least eat it in uh in very small quantities. We all can have some.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:24

Do you remember potted meat and in like oh I do, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:27

Spam?

SPEAKER_05 1:42:28

Spam? Spam. Okay, I it's I know it's really processed, but uh I like spam. I like spam fried rice.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:35

I only only way I like it is if it's fried. Yeah, spam. Pot pan, just sear the outside.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:40

Vienna sausages? Did you ever eat those? Bad bad. I did I won't eat them now.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:44

Think of that. Chef boy RD. Spaghettios with weenies, too. Tostitos, salsa, mac and cheese.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:50

Cheese in a can.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:52

Uh the creamers.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:53

Oh, see, we've now we've gotten really good about the creamers because most of the creamers are oil. H E B brand is it's real cream.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:01

I've just gone to milk. I'm just doing lactose-free milk, and that's the best creamer you can have.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:07

So your life. If I had to, if I had to introduce your food to Steve's food group, it would be a cardboard box.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:12

It would, you're, you would not be happy eating at my house. We eat healthy, but it ain't fun.

SPEAKER_05 1:43:17

Well, my nuclear explosion dream. I I had that dream. I would starve from whatever Steve would.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:24

Well, uh, thank you for listening this week. I know we went a little long this time, but we had a lot to talk about. And we will hopefully see you next week if AI lets us come back. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo.