Simon Brown (01:27.493) Hello and welcome to this episode of the Curious Advantage podcast. My name is Simon Brown. I'm one of the co -authors of the book, The Curious Advantage. And today I'm here with my co -authors, Paul Ashcroft and Garrett Jones.

Garrick (01:35.84) you

Paul (01:38.233) Hello.

Garrick (01:40.798) Hello.

Jaeden Schafer (01:41.102) Super excited to be on the podcast today.

Simon Brown (01:42.469) and we're delighted to be joined by Jayden Schofer.

Simon Brown (01:48.151) Thanks for joining us, Jaden. So big welcome to the Curious Advantage podcast. So Jaden, you've been globally recognized as probably the top AI podcaster. You've got podcasts of AI chat, AI applied, and AI hustle with over 2 million annual listens, probably a good chunk of those from me as I'm a keen fan. You're also the CEO of AI Box. So can you take us through the journey on

Garrick (01:48.576) you

Garrick (02:07.442) you

Simon Brown (02:17.509) how you ended up where you are today.

Jaeden Schafer (02:20.042) Yeah, well, I mean a brief overview of AIChat and AIVox and what I'm working on now. So my background is originally was in marketing, studied that and I taught digital marketing at university. And shortly afterwards, I launched a AI life coach called Self -Pause. My wife Jillian and I kind of came up with this when we were in college. She studied computer science and so she kind of got me into software and we launched this and scaled it to over 130 ,000 users.

It was amazing to see the impact that AI could have for good. Eventually, we started thinking of this new idea, which is AI Box I'm working on now, which is a no -code AI app builder in Marketplace. In the process of getting that started, I decided to start a podcast just to get new users and raise awareness for that product. Then the podcast itself exploded, like you mentioned.

Simon Brown (02:50.219) Wow.

Paul (03:01.955) you

Jaeden Schafer (03:19.412) over two and a half million listens and a huge audience and amazing reception. So it's been a ton of fun and we've been growing that for the last year.

John (03:30.963) you

Paul (03:32.259) you

Simon Brown (03:33.957) And I mean, the podcast got a lot of attention, a lot of engagement. And I think you probably like us sort of fell a little bit into it that we also had the podcast when we launched the book and we thought, oh, we'll just do it as a marketing thing to get started. And then actually it got a life of its own. And then we got to talk to some really fascinating, interesting people along the way. So how do you look at the curation of content for your podcasts?

Garrick (03:42.944) you

Simon Brown (04:02.053) what do you believe sort of sets them apart from other AI focused podcasts? So how do you figure out what to talk about?

Paul (04:02.353) you

Jaeden Schafer (04:09.672) Yeah, well, I mean, I think a big part about it is whatever, you know, if anyone's interested in whether that's a podcast or a YouTube channel or like any sort of medium of information that you feel like, you know, inspired to share or a book, I think the most important thing is to be really dialed into your industry and your niche. So for me, beyond just, you know, reading whatever news headlines are out that day, it's, you know, following the social media accounts of Sam Altman or, you know, the CEO of

Google and Microsoft or the Google AI profiles and really seeing like what are a lot of the top players in the space, what are they releasing, what's the research that's coming out on a day -to -day basis. And if you're really kind of embedded in kind of the big players, not just companies but also people and researchers and whatever space you're in, that's kind of what I do. And a lot of times when I break news on my podcast, I think that's probably why it's got good reception is like I'll see like some crazy thing, right? Like some Nvidia researcher tweets out this.

John (04:42.451) you

Paul (04:51.537) You

Jaeden Schafer (05:06.673) new discovery they made and I'll go and record a podcast 10 minutes later and have the thing edited and published within 20 minutes. So there's like big news things happen and then all of a sudden like I'm already out with a podcast and I think that has made it quite popular because people can get the news really fast and get kind of new takes you don't always hear in a lot of other places.

John (05:15.187) you

Garrick (05:16.896) you

Paul (05:22.513) you

Simon Brown (05:28.005) So I'm curious there around how you've sort of curated that list. So, and also maybe how someone could replicate that. So if someone's out there interested in AI, as probably there's a lot of people out there interested in AI, how did you build up that list of people that you follow, places that you follow, and how could, how would you advise someone, I guess, to sort of curate their sources of information to be able to get that sort of info apart from, I guess, listening to your podcast or other similar podcasts.

John (05:30.227) you

Paul (05:45.155) you

Garrick (05:52.64) you

Paul (05:55.377) you

Jaeden Schafer (05:57.703) Yeah, well so, and I'll give you the strategy, and I'll also say this can be applied, like yeah, I use this for AI, but whatever industry or niche, whatever your listener is in, whether that's healthcare or medicine or mechanics, like this is the same strategy you'll apply. So essentially what I will typically do is look up a list of the top 100 companies within my space, and you can also, if you want like some kind of new things, you can look up like, you know, maybe like 20 up and coming companies in your space. Forbes puts out lists like that and a lot of other places.

John (06:05.939) you

Garrick (06:07.456) you

Paul (06:15.473) you

John (06:20.179) you

Jaeden Schafer (06:26.727) And then I will go and essentially follow those companies, follow the founders of those companies. And then oftentimes, you'll also just kind of see influencers that... It's kind of an interesting new space that I'm seeing emerge, but it's like influencer within a company. So there's like one particular NVIDIA researcher, and through following NVIDIA, he retweets a lot of their stuff. And so I'm following him and see amazing stuff.

Paul (06:34.161) you

John (06:34.437) you

John (06:46.469) you

Garrick (06:51.712) You

Jaeden Schafer (06:52.327) And there's people within X that are posting a lot of stuff about what they're doing with XAI. So it's kind of like that where you follow the company and the founders, but also I don't want people to miss out on like there are like internal company influencers sharing some of the amazing stuff and follow those people because they have really great takes as well.

John (06:57.171) you

Paul (06:57.731) you

Paul (07:11.377) So, Jayden, you're consuming a lot of information and then you're putting out a lot of information. How do you deal with the element of trust here, particularly if you're reacting faster things as they are coming out? How do you discern, you know, what actually that you're confident putting out there?

John (07:15.539) you

Garrick (07:21.536) you

Jaeden Schafer (07:29.171) Yeah, this is a really good point and I personally have had to like make update podcasts because sometimes you're right, I do it so fast and then I realize something was wrong. I'll give one example of this which is that Google, when they first came out with their demo of their Google Gemini model and how amazing it was, I did this whole podcast about how incredible this Google Gemini was.

John (07:42.995) you

Jaeden Schafer (07:54.599) It can see what you're saying and listen to you and see through your video and react with you. And then it came out like the next day that Google had kind of faked it. I mean, I guess that's a strong term, but like, you know, this isn't an accusation. They made it look like their model could do this. In reality, they pre -recorded and pre -selected a bunch of answers and edited it together like it was a conversation. And so I had to issue a, you know, a correction podcast, an update, like, look guys, it isn't actually as powerful as I thought it was. So that does happen. I think...

that might just be the name of the game if you want to do things quickly. Since then, what I've tried to do is say, look, this company has said they're doing this. I haven't had hands -on experience with it. I'll let you know when I actually get to try the model out and tell you where it's going. So at this point, I'm now saying like, they're saying it can do this. And I have actually have a healthy level of skepticism now on every announcement I make because in a hype cycle like this where, you know, stock prices are heavily impacted and billions of dollars are at stake,

John (08:28.965) you

John (08:39.059) you

Jaeden Schafer (08:52.871) there is a little bit of room for these companies to inflate the capabilities of what they're able to do.

Paul (08:57.585) Right. So it sounds like fail, fail fast, but fail light. You know, if you got stuck assessing everything, then you'd be way behind, behind the news cycle. Right. Yeah. But I think it's, it's interesting. We talk about when you're being curious and you're out in the world, being curious, essentially, which is what, what you are so successfully keeping the element of criticality, I guess, builds trust with the audience. Right. Otherwise you lose them fast. Did you notice that at all? When you, if you're putting something out there,

Jaeden Schafer (09:01.331) Yeah.

Jaeden Schafer (09:07.047) true.

Jaeden Schafer (09:16.263) Mm

Paul (09:27.633) that you feel hasn't landed or you're being challenged on what you're putting out. Do you feel you have to go back to your audience and regain their trust?

Jaeden Schafer (09:37.907) Well, I mean, I don't know, like I'm generally, you know, like I'm not taking sponsorships from Nvidia and Google, although, you know, if they're listening, I wouldn't say no, so, you know, hit me up. But like, I'm not like, you know, I have like a financial incentive to hype up a particular company. And so I think, you know, if I said they're able to do this and they weren't, I think people would, you know, know that it's probably, it's an honest mistake. Like I wasn't the only one saying every influencer online was saying the same thing. And so we were all kind of, but I think, you know, trust is really important. And so in light of, you know,

Garrick (09:48.768) Yeah.

Jaeden Schafer (10:07.683) situations like that, I have definitely have more skepticism and now I kind of report like this is what they're reportedly able to do. I'll let you know when I actually can hands -on test it and I'll let you know if it actually can do that. So I think making that distinction is the transparency people appreciate.

Garrick (10:25.726) I'm fascinated. We've been talking about your, your method and your process and you get a, the idea that you get a podcast in response to a trend within 20 minutes is like mind blowing for me, but I'm sure it can be done. Do you use AI tools to like help you get those kinds of turnarounds?

Jaeden Schafer (10:45.159) Oh yeah, a lot of AI tools. I wouldn't be able to do this without AI tools. Yeah, and I mean, I'll also say, like, it's not every episode is a 20 minute turnaround, but sometimes, like, for example, when OpenAI launched their Sora model, their video editor, I was literally driving in my car, going to an appointment that was, like, 45 minutes away, and right before I left, I was, you know, just scrolling through Twitter, I was about to leave, or I think I'd already gotten to, like, the gas station or something, like, 15 minutes down the road.

Garrick (10:55.232) show.

Garrick (10:58.624) Hmm.

Jaeden Schafer (11:13.703) I was looking at Twitter, I saw they dropped this model and I'm like, oh my gosh, canceled my appointment, turned around, drove back to my studio and recorded like my, I was like, this is such big news, like I have to record this right now, went back, recorded it and then I was like, you know, an hour late or whatever, went to my meeting. But yeah, so I think timely is people like that, it's good. How do I like stay on top of it? Honestly, it's just like, I think it's like Twitter X or whatever is where I.

it'll come up in the feed and if something amazing happens, everyone's gonna be talking about it. So if you kind of keep some sort of tabs on that. And the other thing I'll say is like with Twitter and X, like you can curate your algorithm. So like my feed is full of AI stuff. And I wouldn't even go so far as to say if you like different things, but like maybe you need to be more focused at work, just make multiple accounts, have one account only interact with stuff in your industry and niche. You check that account on your phone periodically throughout the day and you're gonna.

you know, never miss anything.

Simon Brown (12:15.493) So I'm intrigued, Jaden, by staying up to date with AI all the time. You must know what are the tools and the techniques more than probably anyone. So how do you, and you reference, you use a lot of AI. What are some of the productivity tools that you find super helpful or ways you can use AI that maybe our listeners could take advantage of themselves to make themselves more productive?

Jaeden Schafer (12:39.251) Okay, yeah, sorry, I forgot to mention all the tools. This is the good stuff. One thing that I'll say a lot of people are sleeping on is perplexity AI. So I love chat GBT OpenAI, I use it every day. I have a tab permanently open on my computer pretty much where I use that for writing my podcast descriptions and helping me brainstorm ideas. Sometimes if a piece of news drops.

I'll, and I want to get like a summary really quick. I'll literally copy an entire news article, throw it into chat GPT. I have a prompt and I'm like, give me 10 bullet points of key elements inside this, you know, article or this big piece of research. If it's, you know, a 20 page piece of research or whatever, and it'll be able to give me bullet points. So I use stuff like that. It's amazing, but I really think people should check out perplexity AI. It's amazing company. Jeff Bezos recently invested in it. And I think it will rep...

I don't want to say it'll completely replace Google. Google, of has a big niche and whatnot. But I've talked to many people that tell me they do not use Google search anymore. They just use Perplexity AI. You can essentially search for things on there and it will give you very good summaries with links out to where you're going, but you never actually have to scroll through links. So like, for example, when I do research on a topic, I'm going to do a Google search. I'm going to click on like five or six websites. I'm going to read them, kind of get my summaries, maybe keep a bunch of them open in different tabs and highlight.

pieces that are important and interesting for me and go back to them later as I try to put together a piece of work. Perplexity AI essentially just does all of that where it will, you ask it like, this new thing happened in the news today, what are some of the biggest takeaways, what are people saying about it, and it will just have everything laid out. So it's really, really an amazing tool. Yeah, I don't know, have you guys ever tried it?

Simon Brown (14:25.701) No, no I haven't. We'll be checking it out now.

Garrick (14:27.264) Oh, that's a new uncle theme.

Jaeden Schafer (14:29.511) Yeah, it's a really cool tool. And then I mean, as far as like a podcast goes, like one of the most incredible tools I use like frequently is Adobe Audio Enhancer. So you can record audio on essentially an iPhone, put it into Adobe Audio Enhancer and it sounds like it's in a professional recording studio. So it's a really amazing piece of technology. When I first started my podcast over a year ago, so it's February last year,

I literally had this $20 mic off of Amazon. I hadn't put a big investment into this thing. I was just getting started and I'd throw every episode into Adobe Audio Enhancer and it made it sound amazing. Today I have expensive microphones and stuff, so it cuts down the time. I don't actually have to use the software, but anyone getting started, that's amazing. Editing, I use something called AutoPod that can automatically edit an entire podcast episode together. It just clips it all up. It's beautiful.

Yeah, there's a lot of amazing tools.

Simon Brown (15:34.853) And tell me about the very cool one you mentioned, assuming it's not giving away your secrets. In our prep call, you mentioned one that blew my mind around NVIDIA eye tracking software or something. So hopefully that's not spoiling it for your audience.

Jaeden Schafer (15:49.991) Yeah.

Jaeden Schafer (15:54.119) Oh no, yeah, this is a good one. So, NVIDIA Broadcast is a kind of new beta software they came out with and it has an amazing tool which is eye tracking. You can turn on, so you can set NVIDIA Broadcast to be like your default camera and when you're on Zoom calls or anything else, it always looks like you're looking at the camera. I actually used this and replaced my teleprompter with it because in the past, teleprompter software is like buggy and glitchy and it's a pain a lot of the time in any case. I replaced it because I used to have,

like my notes when I was doing a podcast interview of a guest in the teleprompter so it looks like I'm looking at them when I'm asking the questions, right? It's professional. But the screen for the teleprompter is small and they want a small screen so that when it looks like you're looking at the camera. So I'm like squinting to read my questions half the time. Anyways, NVIDIA Broadcast makes it look like you're always looking at the camera. So I can have just up on my computer monitor all my questions and I'm just reading them off and it looks like I'm looking at the camera. So yeah, that one's pretty amazing.

Garrick (16:54.088) I'm making notes. We might have to change our whole process, gentlemen. I had a question about content, because the amazing thing about you, Jaden, is you get to scan the whole of the subject so fast and so thoroughly, and then sort of lead as an influencer in directing attention to some of the big stories. But one of the stories that you talked about recently was about the new breed of AI and how the evolution of that is happening. I wanted to...

Jaeden Schafer (16:55.751) Hahaha.

Garrick (17:22.752) talk to you a little bit more because I'm curious about where you think AI is going and what kinds of new breeds of AI you think we might be seeing in the not too distant future.

Jaeden Schafer (17:34.599) Yeah, I think one of the biggest trends that we're gonna see, definitely starting this year, but going into next year, will be AI and video. We have really solid image models with Mid Journey, and we have really solid, obviously, text with ChatGPT, and you have Anthropic and Google and Perplexity. A lot of these players are kind of fighting in that text area. I view it kind of as a base level, but really, video is kind of...

Video is kind of the ultimate AI level because it requires essentially the image generation of Mid Journey, the text generation of ChatGPT, the sound effect generation, the voiceover generation from a tool like 11 Labs that does made audio voiceovers and stuff. So I think we're going to start seeing the big trend being AI in video. This is going to be a big thing that people are tackling. OpenAI has said they're not even touching voice in their videos that they're creating yet for their Sora model.

But we have companies like Pico Labs or Pico Art that are partnering with 11 Labs to, they're like a video generator and they're putting voice on top. So I think this is gonna be something very soon that we see and I think where we get to is a place where essentially Netflix is gonna do licensing deals or all of these video streamers. You're gonna go onto the streaming service, you're gonna say, I want like an action movie, I want like Chris Pratt to be the main character.

I want it to be set on a tropical island, I want, whatever, you can just pick all your things and you're gonna be able to produce your own custom movie. And maybe it gets to the point where, and so in a situation like that, Chris Pratt's gonna get some sort of royalty for being a character in your thing, and maybe the specific location gave up some sort of custom training data or location data, and the city of Melbourne, Australia is gonna get some sort of royalty. I'm not exactly sure how it'll work, but yeah.

Paul (19:13.489) you

Garrick (19:25.632) Everybody gets a piece of the pie. Yeah.

Jaeden Schafer (19:27.943) Yeah, everyone gets a piece of the pie and you get your own custom content that's exactly what you want. And I think, yeah, I think that's coming, so it'd be crazy.

Simon Brown (19:36.069) What are your thoughts on the whole question around training data? I think it was this morning on one of your book. I've heard you referencing around Sora, maybe getting trained on YouTube and maybe a slightly awkward interview that took place with their CTO around sort of where that was trained. What's your take on how some of these large language models get trained or these tools get.

Jaeden Schafer (19:45.471) Yeah, I mean I'm gonna be a hundred percent honest on this I'm not the I know I'm gonna have a different opinion than most people on this and so it's just my opinion and whatever I'm at the end of the day all this is gonna get regulated out and decided in

in AI bills and lawsuits and stuff. So my opinion is useless, but what I will say is I'm kind of one that's all for being able to use it in AI models because at the end, this isn't from me necessarily having like a direct financial incentive for that, but as a consumer, I just love how amazing Sora, the video model is looking and I love how good ChatUBT is looking. And anything that seems to be slowing that down or making the quality less.

you know, as a consumer, I just want it to be the best quality. So I know that's not a popular opinion and maybe the outcome is like paying more licensing deals and maybe there's a future where that's possible. Right now though, I'm happy for the quality of these AI models and whatever speeds that up and makes it better I'm interested in. So I think at the end of the day, it's gonna get regulated and people will come up with licensing deals for it and maybe you'll be able to opt out of...

having your content included in training data and that kind of stuff. And maybe that's the right way to go. But right now, I mean, for me, I just, I'm happy that everything's getting created. So I am more of an open approach.

Paul (21:19.663) Jaden, I want to come back to your Netflix killer idea there, or maybe the idea Netflix will come up with to kill everybody else. This idea of people generating their own content and producing their own content. Do you see this as one of the new types of business model that's going to emerge from some of the AI tools available? You've been talking earlier in the podcast about how you're using tools or anybody can use these AI tools to create, produce, grow, market their own.

podcast series, but this applies to film, it applies to learning content, right? So what are some of the, are you seeing that at the heart of some of these new AI business models and what other business models do you see emerging in the next year or so?

Jaeden Schafer (22:03.78) Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I don't have any doubt that like that Netflix model if Netflix doesn't do it They'll get killed by someone that does because if I have the option like think about it you have your favorite TV show and I know we're not just talking about movies But like you have your favorite TV show like maybe I love The Office I get to the end of a season. I'm like, oh man. What a bummer. Okay Well generate five more episodes of the last season of The Office generate a whole new season of The Office

except now they all do X, Y, and Z. You know what I mean? Like, this is for people that love something, I think it makes a lot of sense. And so the big winners in that situation are, there's a few big shifts that are gonna have to happen. Number one, compute costs will need to come down. Energy, these things use an enormous amount of energy, and this is a big topic a lot of people are talking about. They're like, oh, we need nuclear fusion. I don't think that that's the solution. I don't think.

Paul (22:33.321) Yeah.

Paul (22:49.841) Yeah.

Jaeden Schafer (22:56.366) I mean, maybe it's a solution, so all the people working on nuclear fusion, like, go at it. I'd be thrilled if we make the breakthrough. It's not there. We need some big physics breakthroughs before that's possible. But what I will say is we have really dialed in nuclear, and I know that's a controversial topic, but I think there is, with our nuclear capabilities, we'll have enough power in the world if legislation and maybe education and safety, whatever we want to do there, we'll have enough energy via nuclear to scale these up infinitely.

But then I think one big conversation we need to have is making these models more effective. So this is not something that a lot of these big companies have been focusing on. OpenAI, for example, they're like, hey, we got $10 billion from Microsoft. We're just gonna go buy all of the H100 chips that Nvidia has to offer. And we're just gonna, like, we don't care if our model's more effective or efficient, we're just gonna scale it up. Then there's been a lot of companies that have come out and they're like, that have figured out how to train these models.

Ten times with ten times the less compute and I think that's the solution I think we got compute waste right now these models be able to trade be trained faster. That's that that's that's more of just like a technical thing but um, yeah, we'll get there and I think we have to get there because AI will be embedded into everything and it uses so much compute and energy We're gonna figure out how to how to bring those things down. But um, yeah big big industries in the future

Garrick (24:17.632) It's having a huge impact already. I there's that, I think I read in variety about Tyler Perry having stopped his $800 million expansion of his studios just because of some of the things he'd seen AI generating. And they completely went back to the drawing board and they go, right, we need to strategize what's coming down the line. So everybody's eyeing the new business model. Everybody's eyeing what it means. But it has a huge impact socially because we also used to watch telly.

Jaeden Schafer (24:32.94) Yeah.

Garrick (24:47.54) When I'm old enough to know we used to listen to the radio. Everybody listens to the same station. Then we watched telly. Everybody watched the same four channels in the UK, but different in the US. You got hundreds of channels and then we got hundreds of channels. And then we got Netflix and it's completely changed the way people consume all of this stuff. The idea that computers are generating the kinds of stories we want on the fly is mind blowing. It really is a whole new world.

Jaeden Schafer (25:03.01) Thank you.

Jaeden Schafer (25:10.362) And the thing that I think is exciting about it beyond just like, you know, the computer generating this content on the fly is that it essentially democratizes or allows anyone to be a video producer or anyone to be a musician or anyone to be an artist or anyone to be an author. Like whatever you're passionate about and whatever is interesting to you, it's like you now have the tooling to bring it to life.

And I think that for truly talented people in any of those fields, these tools like augment greatly their capabilities. Something that I think is a lot of people don't talk about is the fact they're like, oh no, AI is going to take everyone's jobs or replace everyone. Whereas at the end of the day, like if I wanted to create realistically a robust piece of software, not being a technical founder, not knowing how to code, I am not actually very capable of doing that. But my CTO for AI box, for example, who's a

Garrick (26:03.456) That's right.

Jaeden Schafer (26:06.158) very talented developer, he's like, oh yeah, it speeds me up 10x because I asked it how to do the parameters on this very specific type of thing that I wouldn't even know what he's asking, right? And it's able to then just like spit it out for him.

Garrick (26:15.04) There you go. It comes back down to the education and the learning again, because you've got to have knowledgeable, educated users of consumers to ask great questions, to get great answers. I mean, there's loads of people who might be able generating not such a great book and a few geniuses who really bring out, use all the tools, make something phenomenal. I think it's always been the way. It's always been the way. But it's just at a scale now, as you say, where it democratizes things in a way that...

been able to do before. And hopefully the really good stuff comes out. I'm quite buoyant about these kinds of developments. I'm a little less buoyant about AI in military and some of the stories you hear there about intelligent landmine fields and so on. But hey, it's the Wild West out there at the moment, do you think?

Simon Brown (26:54.359) you

Jaeden Schafer (26:58.898) Yeah, 100%. Yeah, the military cases are... That one's so tricky, right? Because on the one hand, you want to be like an AI drone flying around and detecting and shooting the enemy. I'm like, that is...

horrifying but at the same time it's like your you know your foreign adversaries are going to be developing it so if you don't then you know that's I Know so it's yeah, it's horrible. It's like yeah, that one's no fun But um it'll it kind of has to be done in a way But yeah, there's so many exciting aspects of it You know one thing that I think not a lot of people are talking about Is the fact that we are there's a number of companies right now that are rapidly approaching? very high

Garrick (27:31.456) Something that you got to stand on step exactly.

Jaeden Schafer (27:52.302) quality robotics, right? So like, Tesla is doing their optimist and there's a bunch of other companies, Amazon's invested heavily in a bunch. And when you start pairing AI and robotics, like you can imagine a world where everyone would have, I mean, you know, it's iRobot, it's the theme of a lot of these sci -fi movies, but everyone will have a robot in their home that can go do their dishes, do their laundry, walk around, do whatever they need to paint their house. Like,

There's a lot of exciting use cases, but then of course it's kind of like the military where you can, you know, we've seen these sci -fi movies before, like we know some of the dangers.

Simon Brown (28:29.893) There was a great podcast I listened to last week with Lex Friedman and the CEO of Boston Dynamics and it goes into the whole robotics piece, the AI piece in robotics, the sort of progression through the sort of dog robots up to the humanoid robots and then sort of talking about the Tesla humanoid one and where that's going. So yeah, some fascinating developments, as you say, when you throw AI into robotics and yeah, look at where that's going to go next.

So we're talking with Jaden Schaeffer. Jaden is recognized as the top AI podcast and leads the conversation in AI innovation. And he hosts the acclaimed podcast AI Chat, AI Applied, and AI Hustle with over 2 million annual listeners. As CEO of AI Box, Jaden also champions the democratization of AI through a user -friendly, no -code app builder and marketplace, making AI accessible to all. So we haven't talked about your...

Jaeden Schafer (29:19.254) Yeah, so AI box.

Simon Brown (29:23.363) new venture of AI box Jaden. So I'm curious to hear more around how, not only talking about AI, but I guess how do you put it into practice in terms of using it within your startup and what that's actually doing. Tell us more.

Jaeden Schafer (29:41.518) and I'm glad you asked, is the ability for people that use these AI tools. When ChatGPT launched within three months, they hit 100 million monthly active users. Today, I think there are over 100 million weekly active users. And so we've created a platform. Originally, the concept was, after the launch of ChatGPT, I was thinking of 10 different new AI tools every day. Jill, who helped me with self -pause, we were bouncing ideas back, and at the time, we were...

We're talking with our friend Ben and he's our CTO now of AI Box, but at the time we're telling them all these ideas and asking about the tech viability of them. And eventually we got to the point where we're like, okay, there's no way we can build all 100 of these ideas. We need to build a platform that allows us to essentially create them and anyone to create them. So the concept, and that's what we've built with AI Box. So it's the ability for anyone to link together multiple AI models, upload your prompts that you use. So if you have a workflow that includes AI,

you'll be able to automate that entire workflow. And I guess an example of that is, you know, like I have a weekly newsletter that I send out. So I've created a tool on AI Box where essentially it's using ChatGPT and Dolly and a number of other AI tools. I upload a couple interesting articles in my niche. It will go create summaries of each of those articles, images embedded with each of those articles. If it's like a blog post, you can have an audio file reading it for people that just want to listen to it.

And then we have integrations so that can get posted onto your, you know, wherever you publish your newsletters or if it's an article, wherever you publish your blog posts, all you have to do is, you know, go give it a little bit of data and it will run through that whole automation and create that whole piece of content for you. And then what we've done is given people the ability to then post those tools on our marketplace and they can get a royalty anytime someone uses the tool that they've...

So yeah, we've been working on AI Box for the last year. We just closed a, we did like a pre -seed round of crowdfunding just via my podcast and raised a little over $600 ,000 for it. And so yeah, it's gonna be launching soon and we're super excited about it.

Paul (31:52.817) I love your approach to this. So you're experimenting, right? As you said, you chat, GPT comes out, you're immediately thinking of 10 ideas that you could start to do something with this and start to apply it. As someone who's so connected into the AI community, what advice would you give to individuals or businesses who are looking to leverage AI tools effectively in what they do, as well as using AI box, right?

Jaeden Schafer (32:16.526) Yeah, so I think the number one thing is you don't necessarily need tools to do some completely new revolutionary thing. Just look at the processes that you currently are doing in your business. Look at the outputs that you're currently trying to generate, whether that's, whatever those outputs are, and then start looking at, I would just go on YouTube or Google and if it's, if you're a blog writer for your company or if you create videos or if you edit audio or if you.

create reports or analyze data, just search best AI tools for analyzing X, Y, and Z type of spreadsheet. And you're gonna find some incredible use cases, and yeah, a lot of that's gonna be on YouTube, and then start testing and experimenting with those tools and using it. You will be amazed by how much time you save. And also, it's like, there's tools out there already that can save you so much time, and you just don't know they exist. So you gotta start searching. I was recently talking with...

videographer, he's incredibly talented, he's filmed a bunch of videos that we've done for AI Box, and I was talking to him about some projects he's working on, and he's like, yeah, you know, I spend like four hours editing this video, and I'm like, oh, have you ever heard of Autopod? And he's like, oh, what's that? And I'm like, well, you literally upload the podcast, and it will just automatically cut and edit the entire thing for you in about two minutes. He's blown away. And I think about that a lot, because now he's using it, and it saves him.

four hours on every single episode that he records, which is like weekly. And I'm like, there are so many ways that AI can save literally anyone listening to this, four hours a week on something you're doing. You just gotta do the research. So for people that are like, I don't have the time to look into this, like I promise you have the time. It will save you so much time in the long run. Like just do the work now and stay on top of it. You know, put in the, I hate to, you know, plug my own podcast, but like put in a little bit of time to listen to,

any podcast or any medium, subscribe to some people focusing on AI right now. Because if you can stay up to date, as soon as one of these amazing things launches, they're going to tell you about it and it's going to save you so much time. So it's a very well worthwhile investment, I think, right now to be making into educating yourself on AI.

Simon Brown (34:32.613) And what's your take on, I guess, security with some of these tools? So many large organizations will rightfully have a conservative approach to using some of these tools because of the data risks of when data goes into them, maybe that data then becomes public or whatever. So how, I guess, what's your take on the security implications and that side?

Jaeden Schafer (34:54.942) Yeah, I mean, I think I have a hot take on this, which is that nothing in the world is ever secure and it drives me crazy to no end. In fact, just yesterday, I got a letter in the mail from my mortgage company that said, we suffered a data breach, your data got leaked, we're sorry, go use our free coupon for credit monitoring, blah, blah, blah. I just feel like this literally happens with every single platform to the point where I got, like, I literally have to use my mortgage company to get a mortgage. I got given my social security number, my address.

all my personal everything and I know and it's like some little mortgage company or whatever and I just know their data is gonna get hacked and leaked. There's nothing I can do about it. I have to give them my data. So in the grand scheme of things, and I know everyone's very different about this, people are more privacy focused than others. I don't know. I just feel like everyone's data is already gone or will be gone or leaked or stolen and there's almost nothing you can do. Like banks get data breaches. It drives me so, it drives me crazy, honestly. But anyways, so that's kind of my hot take on it. And then realistically, um,

because that can't just be the guiding principle of all of data security is that it's going to get leaked eventually. In reality, OpenAI and a bunch of other companies have made some great tools. So OpenAI specifically has an enterprise tier where you can host your own model of AI or of chat GPT on your own server. Nothing leaves the server, everything stays on the server. And so companies like JP Morgan that initially banned chat GPT, and these other big banks and kind of the financial people in sensitive areas, healthcare and stuff.

They're able to use those tools, so if your company isn't already using it, I would talk to them about getting on an enterprise tier for chat GPT. And yeah, then essentially all of the data is housed in the same server, internal doesn't go anywhere, and it's less likely that you'll have an issue. But I mean, someone could still hack your company's internal stuff and steal it, so that's...

Paul (36:43.057) Do you still see, Jane Cumming, that your AI will be talking to your bank's AI to validate? Because at the moment, right, it's doing, the bank is doing voice recognition. Well, okay, that's a bust, right? It's doing like, what's your date of birth? Okay, that's a bust, right? So what, you know, how are they gonna know that they're not talking to replicated AI of your voice and your identity?

Jaeden Schafer (36:56.19) Hahaha!

Jaeden Schafer (37:04.99) This is... So, okay, there's two sides of this that I think are really big. So, amazing point, Paul, bringing up on this. The first one is that, yes, it's going to get to a point where there's an AI that goes and argues with your bank to get them to remove a fee. There's, I think, it's DoNotPay that's doing this, and they're doing it for tons of different platforms to cancel your cable bill and whatever. And the funny thing is the cable company has an AI that's responding to customers to try to keep them or whatever. So...

Paul (37:26.671) Hmm.

Garrick (37:27.424) Thanks.

Jaeden Schafer (37:33.886) It's kind of like, yeah, the battle of the bots. You're just like, look, I don't want to pay this cable bill or I want to cancel my subscription or whatever. You tell your AI on some of these platforms and now it's just like the AI is just talking with each other. I think it's going to be, yeah, I think it's going to be, I think it's going to be common. But then as far as the identity aspect of it, I think this is a serious issue, a serious concern and everyone should be having this conversation, particularly if you have parents or grandparents or...

Paul (37:43.481) harassing each other, right?

Jaeden Schafer (38:00.678) people that traditionally get sucked into these scams and stuff, this is a big deal. Because I can go to this podcast that you guys host, get snippets of your voices, and clone any of your voices, could call any of your relatives, and it's Paul saying, hey, sorry, I'm stuck at the gas station, I can't get gas, would you just mind sending me a PayPal really quick of like 50 bucks, I'm so sorry to bother you, or $1 ,000, or I'm stuck in another. It takes those kind of scams to a whole nother level where it's your voice.

Paul (38:26.959) Yeah.

Jaeden Schafer (38:30.43) you're talking to them, you know, and so I do think this is an issue people need to talk about.

Simon Brown (38:35.749) from something like 30 seconds.

Simon Brown (38:42.245) from yes.

Simon Brown (38:50.309) I guess there's a general view of we need to be very cautious with some of these things around how to do it. And I guess particularly if one is in a corporate or organization environment, make sure everything is being done in line with the security and the guidance.

as well. I listened to, I think it was an ex -open AI person last week who was iterating what you were saying around, you we basically have our AI assistants that is doing that filter that will very, very quickly spot the things that are scams. And I guess there's a bunch of telltale signs normally in there. And so, yeah, like we have spam filters today, actually our AI assistants will be doing all of that filtering. And so the stuff that we only...

Jaeden Schafer (39:27.134) Yeah.

Simon Brown (39:35.589) only actually see will already be filtered for all of that and hopefully we trust.

Paul (39:38.873) as schools are already doing when they're checking plagiarism from, you know, AI writing homework assignments, right? It's there at that level. It's possibly not as sophisticated as we need yet. Right.

Jaeden Schafer (39:52.702) Yeah, I mean the school plagiarism checker thing I think is super interesting, or AI checking, especially because OpenAI originally had a tool that could tell you if something was generated by AI, and they shut it down because they're like, sorry, it's too hard, we can't tell. So they shut down their AI checking program. There's other companies that do it. There's lots of ways to get around it. Initially, Google was kind of not a big fan of AI -generated content, and when I was doing marketing projects,

I had tools that would essentially just reword an output from AI that made it so it was undetectable. So it's going to be a cat and mouse game on that forever. I think it'll be interesting. This is a really big point, and I would actually love to hear your guys' perspective on this, of education. Because it seems like it's impossible to... Kids are using chat GPT to write their homework, right, let's say. It seems like... How is it...

Do we need to completely change that or is chatgbt like a new calculator and we just determine how that is used? Like do we ban that or and what is the implications of not banning it or banning it?

Garrick (41:03.36) I have a very strong... Yeah, we all do. I think the key thing about the wonderful thing about this is, firstly, not to be afraid of it. Secondly, it's an incredible AI tool. I mean, I was just with my grandchildren in Japan and the way that they used AI tools and the way that they used apps and YouTube to do their research was completely new to me. And they were totally in it. We weren't telling them we weren't making it educational. They were in Japan.

Simon Brown (41:03.749) I think we're all gonna have some views on that one. Go on, Garrett, you pick us up.

John (41:04.883) you

John (41:18.067) you

Garrick (41:33.312) And what they were doing was learning and figuring out and finding things they wanted to do. And they had, you know, an AI bot that did a whole bunch of planning about where they wanted to go. It was pretty amazing. I mean, I have to say on the education front, I think the key thing is about questions. You know, we say this at the end of the book. To question is the answer. It really comes down to, you know, if you use Google, you've got to ask great questions to get great solutions from Google.

John (41:59.301) you

Garrick (42:01.312) And the same is true for Jack GPT. If you're able to create a prompt that is intelligent in its use of language and its construction, you get a way more sophisticated response from the tool. So for me, it really is about teaching people generally to question and to what is a great question and what is a phenomenal question. You know what I mean? That's my view.

Jaeden Schafer (42:01.342) Totally agree.

John (42:04.915) you

Paul (42:31.537) It is going to change the way it is. Well, I go, it is going to change the way we educate, right? Because, uh, whilst at the end of the day is a tool and you can say, well, it's also not cool to just copy your homework from a website. You can't just replicate something that chat GPT gave you. Uh, you need to teach a bunch of different schools like critical thinking. So a homework assignment might not be right. This 300 word essay, it might be, uh, here's a 300 word essay, critic critique it. How would you make it better?

Garrick (42:31.582) What do you think, Simon?

Paul (43:00.943) you know, where's the weakness in it? And that type of critical thinking skills, whether in school or whether in work, is probably what's going to keep differentiating humans, at least for a while.

Simon Brown (43:08.675) Yeah, we had Sal Khan on recently and he had some great views around sort of how AI can coach kids and sort of support the teacher, not replace the teacher, but support the teacher in providing some more personalized support than is realistic to be able to give in a classroom environment. So I think that's sort of one angle. And then Ethan Molloch, Professor at Walton does a lot of

Jaeden Schafer (43:08.858) I love that, yeah.

Simon Brown (43:36.625) writing around that and he's got some great views around how his students, he's been extending assignments from, yeah, a bit like Paul was saying, rather than just write an essay on marketing, it's write an essay on marketing and then sort of create a prototype and then put that out and do whatever, and use AI to allow you to do just so much more than you would otherwise be able to do. And in my mind, sort of that's the direction I think education should take because it's not going to go away.

So how do we teach people, encourage people to use it, adopt it, but have the right sort of critical thinking and knowledge to be able to question and know when maybe it's not telling us the truth as well. So I think it's gonna be a fascinating field to see how it impacts education.

Garrick (44:23.04) Great question. What are you personally most curious about, Jayden, right now?

John (44:27.155) you

Jaeden Schafer (44:31.134) Um, in the world, in AI?

Garrick (44:34.752) No, what about in the world? Let's go large.

Jaeden Schafer (44:37.479) In the world in oh my goodness, there's a lot I'm I'm very curious about one thing is How the One thing I'm very curious about is the shift it feels like of information and information sharing How people get information you like we talked about this a lot, you know, you guys are like, how do I get my information on my podcast and something that I think is

Paul (45:01.841) you

Jaeden Schafer (45:06.818) becoming very common. Like I definitely use like news sources and sites to get good ideas, but it never can stop there for me where I go to a news site and read like an article. I always have to go look at it on Twitter or Instagram or YouTube or wherever there's a commentary and read the comment section and what people are talking about in relation to that, what people are sharing about that. I feel like there's a relatively new wave of almost like citizen journalists, independent journalists. You have people from big,

Garrick (45:24.318) Yeah? Yeah.

Jaeden Schafer (45:36.489) news networks. Here in the United States we have like Don Lemon who used to be on CNN, he's now starting his own show. You have Tucker Carlson who used to be on Fox, he's starting his own show. Whatever your opinions about these people, I think it's fascinating that we're getting to a point where our news sources are a little bit less monolithic and are spreading out in an interesting way. So I'm just so curious what impact this will have on society and where people get their news, where we become informed.

Paul (45:59.075) you

Jaeden Schafer (46:05.101) And especially as we come into an age of AI where, you know, like, let's talk about the video thing I mentioned, where you can generate your own video. This is amazing, but I also feel like we're all about to perhaps become maybe a little bit more siloed in our thinking and maybe when we get our information, because if I can just go, say, create a movie about X, Y, and Z specific thing, it can be like my own personal preferences and bubbles, but maybe we get exposed.

John (46:06.981) you

Paul (46:10.353) you

Jaeden Schafer (46:32.909) to less opinions and less things. So I'm curious to see how this impacts the world. I just feel like there's a big trend and shift right now in personalized content. And we've been moving there already from, let's say, algorithms on most websites and social media for the last few years. But I feel like AI and this news element is kind of growing that. So I'm just curious to see where that goes.

Paul (46:43.601) you

Simon Brown (46:55.941) So we're coming close to time, but maybe just to summarize some of the things we've covered. So we've heard about your journey from digital marketing at uni through to AI, your AI life coach of self -pawse, how you scaled that and your next venture of AI box, how you then sort of started the podcasts and how that exploded into the size it is now.

Garrick (47:16.192) you

Simon Brown (47:18.949) We heard how you curate things and your recommendations for people if they want to curate information. So look out for the top 100 companies in a particular space. Follow those companies, follow the leaders, find the influencers, and that then creates that source of information that you then curate through. We talked about trust and the impact on trust from AI and also the impact on trust from moving quickly and what happens when that trust is breached.

Paul (47:20.401) you

Paul (47:40.177) you

Simon Brown (47:44.345) We looked at some of the AI tools, so we talked about Sora, the exciting new video development tool. We heard some of the tools that you're personally using, which I'll be checking some of these out. So, Perplexity AI, we talked about how you use Adobe Audio, how you can create our algorithms on Twitter and X, how you use AutoPod for podcasts, and your very cool eye tracking software within video broadcast, which I need to check out as well.

John (47:55.589) you

Garrick (47:58.208) you

Paul (48:00.099) you

Simon Brown (48:12.121) Also talked a bit about where AI is going and the exciting developments on video there. Talked a little bit about AI business models and maybe also linking that through to video with things like, in the not too distant future, we may be able to get the next episode of our favorite series when it doesn't even exist and AI is generating it. For us, some of the impact or the challenges to that around compute costs, energy costs, and how we can hurry a nuclear fusion to solve some of those.

Garrick (48:13.76) you

Simon Brown (48:41.733) how AI democratizes our passion so it can help people on becoming new musicians, artists, videographers, et cetera, and make people more productive and more capable as a result of those. And then also how we use AI for things like weekly newsletters and some of the productivity things that you use it for. And then fascinating conversation around sort of AI in education and where that might go, and then the impact on AI in news and.

John (48:41.747) you

John (48:56.005) you

Simon Brown (49:10.981) So lots to be covered there, Jodan. If there's one takeaway from all of that for our listeners, what would be the one sort of guiding takeaway that you would leave people with?

Paul (49:13.521) you

Garrick (49:14.048) you

Jaeden Schafer (49:21.372) Well, you know what I would say, and I'm sure this may resonate with the three of you, I don't know, I could be wrong, but it's to stay curious. I think in a time when so much, I think we live in the most interesting of times right now, so much is changing, so much is evolving. Some people like it, some people don't, but the one thing that's indisputable is that it's happening. And so I think stay curious, continue to discover, pursue your passions in whatever area you're interested in.

John (49:39.027) you

Jaeden Schafer (49:49.058) And yeah, I think at the end of the day, you'll come out on top on this very transformative, very innovative and disruptive time that we currently live in.

Simon Brown (49:58.021) Love it. So stay curious. Great, great closing prompt. So you've been listening to Curious Advantage podcast. Big thank you, Jaden, for joining us. It's been a great conversation. So a huge thank you for coming and sharing with us.

Paul (50:01.187) you

John (50:08.453) you

Garrick (50:09.93) Thank you, Jayden.

Jaeden Schafer (50:11.016) It's been amazing. Thanks so much for having me on.

Paul (50:11.279) Thank you.

Garrick (50:12.928) Who knows?

Paul (50:15.793) you

Simon Brown (50:16.901) So we're always curious to hear from you. If you think there was something useful or valuable from this conversation, then we do encourage you to write a review for the podcast on your preferred channel saying why this was so and what you've learned from it. And we always appreciate hearing our listeners' thoughts and having a curious conversation. So join today using the hashtag curiousadvantage. Curiousadvantage book is available on Amazon worldwide. Order your physical, digital or audio book copy now and further explore the seven seas model for being more curious. Subscribe today and keep.

Garrick (50:22.226) you

Paul (50:27.377) you

Garrick (50:34.354) you

Simon Brown (50:44.961) exploring curiously. See you next time. Thanks a lot.