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Robotics, AI, and the Future of Work: Abundance Ahead or a Dystopian Collapse?

Episode 56 · 7 January 2026 · 1 hr 15 min

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Robotics, AI and the Future of Work: Abundance Ahead or a Dystopian Collapse?

Robotics and the future of work: will it bring abundance, or a dystopian collapse? With Dr. John out, Randy Lorensen and Anthony Marino argue both sides, from the AI investment rush and the chip race to aging populations, drones and the skills people will need over the next 20 years.

Are AI, robotics, and automation leading humanity toward unprecedented abundance—or accelerating us into a dystopian future?

In this episode, Randy and Anthony break down the explosive growth of AI, the robotics revolution, the global chip race, and the massive shifts about to reshape work, wealth, energy, and society itself.

From $40–100B AI fundraising rounds to breakthroughs in battery storage, autonomous factories, drone warfare, and the coming population-driven labor shortage, this episode dives deep into the forces rapidly transforming the world. The conversation explores whether robots will replace workers entirely, how companies are preparing for an automated future, and whether individuals can adapt fast enough to thrive.

The hosts also unpack historical lessons—from the Luddites to the printing press—and debate whether Elon Musk’s prediction of “optional work” is the future or a fantasy. Plus: what skills matter now to survive and succeed in the AI economy.

Will Robots Take Our Jobs? Work Will Be Optional, the Luddites and Battery Storage

What you'll discover:

  • The AI investment rush, the real AI chip race, and why GDP is a poor measure
  • What the Luddites and the stocking frame teach us, and bubbles that leave infrastructure behind
  • Battery storage, Venezuela's oil, and the opposite of abundance
  • Will work become optional? Aging populations, dangerous jobs and who wins
  • Drones and the military, history lessons from ATMs to the printing press, and real demand for robots
  • The skills to build now, and why people may need to move for opportunity

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome: Randy and Anthony on robotics, AI and the future of work
  • [00:57] Abundance Briefing: OpenAI's fundraising and the AI investment rush
  • [03:46] GDP growth, hiring freezes and why GDP is a poor measure
  • [05:09] The downside of the AI build-out for neighborhoods
  • [08:09] The real AI chip race
  • [10:50] Power as wealth, and the stocking-frame lesson from history
  • [12:57] Bubbles that leave infrastructure behind
  • [13:13] Battery storage is booming: hybrids, solar from space and pumped storage
  • [18:29] Venezuela, oil and the opposite of abundance
  • [21:42] Break: Premium Cabinets business opportunity
  • [22:18] Robotics and the future of work: will work become optional?
  • [23:47] Running out of people: aging populations and fewer workers
  • [24:46] Robots for dangerous jobs
  • [27:34] Who wins? Low-cost labor and concentrated wealth
  • [28:08] Drones, armies and the military of the future
  • [33:34] Beware the little guy, corporate welfare and capitalism
  • [36:44] History lessons: ATMs and bank tellers, cars and blacksmiths, the printing press
  • [40:26] Is there real consumer demand for robots?
  • [44:21] Industrial robots: Amazon, 60 Minutes and the stamping press
  • [49:01] Shovels vs. backhoes: why productivity matters
  • [49:59] What skills should people build for the next 20 years?
  • [56:02] Creating opportunity, and teaching people to think from first principles
  • [58:23] Will people move for opportunity?
  • [1:01:02] Lessons from immigrant journeys
  • [1:06:11] Automation in practice: a human-free airport and tip screens
  • [1:07:54] Final thoughts: who controls the technology
  • [1:12:31] Google didn't die: learn AI for what you need now
  • [1:15:03] Wrap-up

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About the hosts

This is a hosts-only episode with Randy Lorensen and Anthony Marino (Dr. John Oberg isn't on this one). Host bios are on the host pages linked below.

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Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from the episode recording and has speaker labels. It hasn't been proofread yet, and the time markers follow the raw recording, so they can run a minute or two off the published audio.

Randy Lorensen [00:10]: Listeners, welcome to Tales of Abundance. We have no Dr. John today, but we are blessed to have Anthony Moreno here all the way from Columbus, Ohio today. What are you doing in Columbus, Anthony?

Anthony Marino [00:22]: Taking care of a couple of grandchildren in 27 degree weather with four inches of snow instead of being in Texas where I golfed this past weekend. But nonetheless, I'm here. So I'm ready to go.

Randy Lorensen [00:31]: Yeah, it's about, I don't know, 65, 70 out. you're, you know, hurry home, hurry home. All right. As always, download, subscribe, tell your friends, tell your neighbors, et cetera. You know, give us feedback. Feedback's definitely a gift. Let's jump into the abundance briefing today, Anthony. We're going to, we're going to talk about robotics and automation. And if it's, you know, this abundant future or dystopian or, you know, kind of argue both sides of it later on, but as always, let's start with the abundance briefing and our first topic. is the OpenAI is raising $40 billion. there are, know, SoftBank has put in, this is according to Reuter, SoftBank has put in $41 billion. And there's another rumor of $100 billion going in on a $750 billion valuation. So. This is big money. This isn't just some money going into a little bit of research. This is, you know, this is even nation states are involved, Anthony, and, you know, mean, Saudi Arabia and I mean, this is really kind of the new arms race, I think. I what's your take on all this?

Anthony Marino [01:43]: You know, it seems so over my head in the sense of I can't wrap my arms around where the ROI is going to come from or who it's going to come from. So obviously these are folks that are smarter than I am and they wouldn't be throwing this kind of money at it. But it does seem to me that it's a bit of a race. among people with capital to not be left out. I better get into this game. Not exactly sure what's coming out of it. But just the other day I was listening to somebody on either a podcast or somewhere that talked about the sudden demise of chat GPT. And what they were saying was that, you know, two years ago when chat launched, were the, they were the bell of the ball, if you will. And it's kind of the only game in town. And here we are a couple of years later and did just another LLF, uh, with, know, maybe $20 billion in run rate revenue with a $500 billion or a trillion dollar valuation. And, know, the old story of beware of the little guy seems to be nipping at their heels. And, you know, there's really, it's really hard to see the end game. Later on, we're going to be talking about, you know, automation and robotics. And, you know, to me, that might be the real end game for for AI, you know, medicine and space and what have you.

Randy Lorensen [03:32]: Well, I think we're already seeing the impact. I know you asked this on an episode maybe two months ago when we were discussing this topic or similar is where is the productivity coming from? Well, GDP growth last quarter was 4%, which is double historical averages, right? Now some of that's because of inflation and don't get me started. GDP is one of the worst ways to judge an economy because you know, if you hire 10 guys to do something with shovels, it adds more to GDP than one person with a backhoe, right? And there's a lot of things wrong with it. doesn't really track what the economy actually is, but a 4 % growth and these companies are laying people off or at least have frozen hiring. So even with fewer employees, they've got more productivity and more profit.

Anthony Marino [04:26]: Well, the 2 % of that, 50 % of that growth, I may, know, spot check me on the exact numbers, but my understanding is that 2 % of that growth, or almost 50 % of it is because of the investment in infrastructure and data centers. So had those investments not be made all over Texas and Missouri and everyone's backyard. the real GDP growth, which I agree with you, isn't the best measure of an economy, would have been in the twos, if you will. again, there's a ton of investment. I don't know, and I'm concerned because this investment is also leading to what appears to be some negative consequences for neighborhoods and populations, right? This tremendous investment, 50 billion here, 20 billion there, 2 million square feet of this and 2 million square feet of that is resulting in noise pollution, water problems, electric rates going up. And frankly, my belief is that the balance sheets of these companies should be taking some of that money and, you know, easing the pain, if you will. of the people that they're having an impact on. you know, never have ever been really of that kind of mind, but this disruptive technology, this disruptive infrastructure build, it's not like we're building a bridge. It's not like we're building a new highway or a rail system or something that's going to benefit people. We're building things that people hope will in fact displace people. In long run, it's going to make things better, right? And there's a reason to be happy about it. But for the short term, there's some negative impacts.

Randy Lorensen [06:24]: got to tell you, I would say two years ago, I was almost considered like an AI super user. I would say I was using it better than 99 % of the planet. The amount of growth I've had in the last couple of months, I I am using it for some pretty amazing things lately, right? And even this abundance briefing that we're covering right now, it this morning ran a report automatically and did research for like 30 minutes. put it in order and gave us potential topics. Now we didn't choose all the topics, but it made it a lot easier than, you know, me, you, John, you know, going through and figuring out topics. I just, I don't know, I'm seeing the productivity and I think big corporations have to be, have to be seeing it. So let's move to our next topic or go ahead.

Anthony Marino [07:13]: Well, yeah, I don't know what I going to say. I think it's elevating my personal skills. know, things that I never was able to do relative to mathematical analysis, the time, the literal time to do analysis of data has shrunk to minutes where in many cases I would have avoided it altogether. or if I did undertake it after banging the keys for a couple of hours, may or may not have come up with a good solution. So I think it's elevating my skills and I assume it's elevated yours and others in terms of their capability, pure capability to do work.

Randy Lorensen [07:59]: Yeah, I get so much more done. It's unbelievable how much more I get done, you know, with that assistant. Right. So anyway, all right, let's move to the next story is it's along the same same vein. Right. But it's, know, the real A.I. chip race chips, tools and who gets to build. in a lot of ways, this is talking about, you know, they again, this is from Reuters, but they're saying this is more about the picks and shovels. Right, which is a phrase I know you're familiar with in different versions. You know, there's things that Samsung is being allowed to create a bunch of chips. You know, the government's got to deal with Intel that we've talked about before. And back to you're talking about the data centers and the power and all of this stuff. So any comments on that?

Anthony Marino [08:49]: Well, it's just that again, there's so much activity out there and so much information, but what are the chips going to do? And who's going to do it? So there's a whole discussion about gathering the information to create an answer and then having the right chip that can process that information into an actionable output that someone can use. to be more productive. the, you know, whether it's Nvidia or whoever's making the chips that are better at one or the other of those things is really important. And it's, you talk about something that's nebulous, you know, they're the, the person I listened to yesterday talked about this very small company that's developed a chip that does the second half of the analysis and the work far better than what the Nvidia chip does. Although the Nvidia chip can do more with operate much faster with more data. So it's just a wild, wild west of who's going to come out on top on these things. And can we and who is going to produce them, where they're to produce them, what are they going to cost, and what are they going to be used for is all, again, part of this investment. race that's going on, one person said that some of these data centers are to be unnecessary if these chips become as efficient as they think they can make the chips. They're just not going to need the same amount of power, but who knows?

Randy Lorensen [10:31]: Yeah, my guess is though that the market will swell to fill whatever I almost throughout human history, progress has been limited by our access to energy. Like the more energy, the more successful, the richer, the fewer poor people, the less disease, the better. Power is the number one indicator of wealth. And, you know, I'm thinking about it like back in, I don't know the year, but when the sewing machine was made in England, there was this big business of making these fancy stockings, but they were expensive because they were hand woven. The only people that could afford them were pretty much like royalty and really, really rich people. And there was a huge backlash when they said, oh, they're going to have these sewing machines. We're going to be able to make stockings. And they destroyed factories. And, you know, there was all kinds of uprising about it. Well, it turns out that after a few years, that not only did the price, the, the output of stockings went up and the price went way down so much that within a few years, there were like 10 times as many people working in the industry, right? Because it creates, I just think that having more energy and more power in these data centers, that it will become cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and more accessible, right? And as it gets twice as good, five times as good, 10 times as good as it is now, all of that creates opportunity and abundance. We're getting into our kind of our main topic here, but

Anthony Marino [12:03]: Yeah, you're referring to what we'll call the Luddites who were against the factories of the automation. actually, it's an interesting story. They really weren't upset about the automation. What they were upset about initially was the quality of the product that was being produced. So that's what the uprising initially was about. And then you're 100 % right. As it turned out, Number one, they fixed the quality. Number two, they increased the productivity making those things, the stockings affordable. And by the way, number three, someone still had to run the machines, fix the machines and so forth. And as we get into the next topic, we'll talk more about that. So yeah, interesting.

Randy Lorensen [12:46]: Yeah. I mean, I look at what's happening right now a lot about what happened in the internet in the late eight or early's early aughts where, you know, they were building internet infrastructure. And even though there was an internet bubble and it popped, that's allowed all the things that we have today, right? Like we wouldn't have smartphones. We wouldn't be doing, you know, this over a riverside, et cetera, if it wasn't for all that infrastructure that was built then. So, all right. So next thing, battery storage is booming. I'm heavy on Reuters, so I'm gonna look at this other article from a mining company because everything is a lot of Reuters stuff today, but basically just battery technology is getting better and There's hopes that it's gonna become better yet and this allows, you know Again kind of what we're just talking about right? I mean all of a sudden If battery technology goes up, wind and solar, lot of things being able to save become better sources of energy, more reliable, and energy prices should go down. And hopefully this helps us keep these data centers full of energy.

Anthony Marino [13:56]: You know, it's just a, you know, I'm putting off, you know, replacing one of the vehicles in our family because I really want to, I want a hybrid, but I want a hybrid that has a hundred miles of range to it. Because the person that I'd be getting the car for, you know, drives probably 30 to 60 miles a day, something like that. And the hybrids of today only get, you know, less than 50 miles, no matter what they tell you on pure battery power. And I'm amazed at, I mean, the length of time that these batteries have been around and how little progress we've really made in terms of battery storage. I remember your best friend at Microsoft, Bill Gates, who I know you're a big fan of, talked about the hundreds of millions of dollars he's lost chasing battery storage, you know, because he felt that that was kind of the panacea for very poor nations to be able to harness the sun and have long-term and effective storage. And they just have not solved the problem. And I don't know why. Maybe it's just the scale thing, but

Randy Lorensen [15:13]: But they're getting better, right? Solar's becoming cheaper, batteries are becoming cheaper. So when I put solar on my roof, I bought a Tesla Powerwall. if you compared, like I think I bought the three or something, right? Compared to the two, it was way cheaper, had more storage. was a better, you know, lithium or whatever, better quality. Like, there's definitely advances happening, but I don't think they're happening as fast as we would like them.

Anthony Marino [15:44]: Well, someone that I know you do like, Elon, his philosophy is to have continual delivery of solar as opposed to storing it. And he wants to do it from space. So if you can get the panels into space and get that delivered directly, you're bypassing the need to store. uh... energy you because it's a constant source of energy right the sun is a is a continual source again technology hasn't been invented yet people are working on it but it's just you know it's just interesting that something so straightforward how long have batteries been around i mean i don't know when the first battery was invented i guess we should know that but it really they really haven't changed much in terms of uh...

Randy Lorensen [16:33]: Well, it on your definition of a battery, right? Like, for example, really a dam. is a version of a battery, right? Like all the water that gets stored up behind there is potential energy that can be produced by opening up and having the water go. So there's different types of energy that, there's another thing with this battery storage that all of the land, let me get this right. So anywhere where there's like lakes in the U.S. and there's big hills around it. people are using to store energy because it's super efficient. If they take the energy to lift something heavy up onto these mountains, the fact of gravity bringing it down ends up as a really, really efficient battery actually and way to create the energy back into the grid when we need it.

Anthony Marino [17:28]: One of the biggest issues with wind is the fact that those turbines don't operate all the time because the grid doesn't need that energy at that particular time. It only needs the energy at peak times. But if there were a way to store it cheaply to be called upon, then those things could run 24-7 and keep those batteries ready, willing, and able to meet the demand at 5 o'clock on a to 150 degree day in Texas to power those air conditions where people get home from work. So yeah, I'm very hopeful for that. And I think there'll be a breakthrough at some point, but we'll see.

Randy Lorensen [18:10]: I mean, this is all back to the arms race where we started, right? I I really think that this AI data center race is really about energy. Who can gather it the most? It's also about rare minerals and lithium and all these different things that they need to build the batteries, et cetera. I would say, I don't want to get into war too much today, but we just invaded Venezuela. Well, from what I read, they have 14 trillion in oil. They've got rare earth minerals like crazy. They've got gold like crazy. They got the most oil in the world. I'm guessing a lot of that was about the fight, the battle. You know, and Iran, Russia and China all had, it had pretty big influence in Venezuela. So it's giving us access.

Anthony Marino [18:58]: You know, talk about anti anti abundance, right? I mean, all of those resources and the highest inflation, poorest population, people living in abject poverty, despite all that abundance in that in that in that country. So. They used to be they used to be.

Randy Lorensen [19:13]: Yeah, they should be the richest country in the world, right? They have the biggest oil reserve, far more oil than Saudi Arabia, the biggest gold reserves. They're full of rare earth minerals and under socialism, I mean, they have gone from a pretty wealthy country to god-awful poor. I read a thing recently, I forget the timeframe. I'm going to call it five years, but somebody have to fact check me on that. And it showed like what would buy a family of four a basket of groceries five years ago now basically won't buy anything in a grocery store. Like you can't go there and buy a banana with what would feed an entire family of four for a week. Just five years ago.

Anthony Marino [19:58]: Not to be too political, but paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher, socialism is the greatest form of governance until you run out of other people's money. So that's essentially what happened there. Anyway.

Randy Lorensen [20:08]: Yeah. Well, yeah. All right. Well, let's go to our final story before the break here. And I don't know that we're going to talk about this a lot, we'll talk about it after the break, but, you know, multiple things from LG, Verge, et cetera. And just that there's robots folding laundry and making breakfast now. I just saw a thing over the weekend, they were showing how they trained robots to do 200 things in five minutes, like 200 human tasks with a different company. And you see stories about this all over the place right now. So again, we'll go into detail about this at the break, but are you ready to have a robot folding your laundry and making your breakfast, Anthony?

Anthony Marino [20:53]: I'm going to pass on that, but I do when we get into the next part of our discussion. There's a lot going on with robotics and. population growth or lack thereof and the need for these things and who's going to be the winner, who's going to be the loser. Where will they be ubiquitous? Where will they be just like the guy that Moses lawn with the little rumble in my neighborhood? There's 50 of us in the neighborhood and two of those things running. So, we'll see. We'll see where that takes us.

Randy Lorensen [21:28]: All right, well, let's go to break and we will be back to dig more into robotics automation. And is this going to create true abundance in the world or is this the dystopian future? So talk to you after the break. Listeners, welcome back to Tales of Abundance. I'm still here with Anthony all the way from the cold and the snow of Columbus. See, just, I grew up in Minnesota. I can't help it, but rub it in a little. It me, it makes me feel proud. So anyway, Anthony, we've been talking about AI, robotics, automation, and...

Anthony Marino [22:26]: You

Randy Lorensen [22:35]: You know, Elon Musk had a quote recently that I think passed around. A lot of people saw it saying that work will be optional in the future, that AI, robotics, automation is going to become so advanced, so cheap, will have so much energy that working will become optional for people, right? Doesn't mean you can't work. just, it will become optional because everything will become cheaper. And That's what technology is supposed to do. That's been happening for thousands of years. Technology makes everything easier. you know, I think part of that we don't see because of broken money, but that's a different story. But there's a lot of other people that think this is dystopian. If you look at any sci-fi movie, you never see the Elon Musk future, really. Right. It seems like it always ends up something breaks, something goes wrong. So what says you? Where do you fall on this argument?

Anthony Marino [23:29]: I have a lot of positive thoughts about it for this reason. And I hope I have at least partially right in the long term, probably long after I'm gone. given the fact that we're running out of people, literally running out of people that can support the aging populations around the world. Right. We're going to have fewer and fewer qualified workers to do the work. So we're going to need automation. We're going to need, you know, robotics, if you will, call it what you want. I look at it as automation. You know, in our in our agricultural world, you know, Eliminating the need or, you know, lowering the need, the sheer numbers of people needed to harvest our crops, the sheer number of people needed to work in a factory, moving metal plates from one rack to another rack. Not to mention, you know, doing jobs that are dangerous. You know, the what elements of a firefighter's job. Can a robot do what elements of an infantry or a bomb crew in a war environment? What can they do? So I see an absolute need for this because we're running out of people. The number of workers necessary to earn enough money and pay enough taxes to pay the retirement, right, the social security of the aging population is just not there. So we're going to need to get it somewhere.

Randy Lorensen [25:35]: Well, the other side of that that people would argue, right, is that if you automate away all the jobs, the tax base is going to drop even more, right? And how are we going to, if we don't have enough workers and taxpayers now to pay for all of the things, I mean, there's a reason we're going a trillion dollars in debt every hundred days right now. mean, it's, we're what five six months away from being or less from being a 40 trillion in debt well what happens if robots take all those jobs

Anthony Marino [26:10]: Well, someone's got to fix the robots. Someone's got to supervise those robots. And those jobs are higher paying jobs. know, a $40,000 a year or less, you know, probably a $20,000 a year person picking crops in California being replaced by, you know, a robot or two or 10. still has to have maintenance, still has to have supervision, still has to be guided. And those jobs are gonna require talent that are at a higher price tag, right? And because you can't have a robot supervise a robot, you can't have a robot fix a robot. So I never take anything Elon Musk says lightly. I think, you Of course, I don't know, but I think he's, taken it to a place that, you know, it's not going to be likely in my lifetime, but, you know, it certainly may be somewhere down the road. So I do think there's an upside in terms of people having, they're going to have to change what they do, be educated at what they do. otherwise you're right. We're going to be in a position where, you know, nobody's working and you know, what's going to get done. That said companies are going to. you know, seek out low cost labor for the sake of harnessing wealth, right? And what's the impact of all that? You can, that's, that's a long discussion. you know, who the winners are going to be, is it going to be governments? You know, cause they, they have most of the money and most of the power right now. they have the armies. So is it going to be private companies or is it going to be governments or some combination? Or are they any different anyway?

Randy Lorensen [28:08]: I'm hoping it's humans that win, That we have Elon's future, we have a world of abundance. I would hope that actually having all of that makes armies a little bit obsolete. I don't think that's tomorrow or next month or six months from now, but I think we're getting a lot closer. If you look at the things they're doing with drones, if... If drone prices keep coming down and keep coming down and get more and more effective, it becomes cheaper to build a defense and makes it harder and harder for other countries to attack you. And I'm hoping that's the direction we're moving, which would mean more peace, more cooperation. And if things really do come that easy, it gives people less incentive to go around the world and kill each other. But we still need the resources.

Anthony Marino [28:55]: Yeah, it's almost a form of mutually assured destruction. We went a significant period of time where we had nuclear weapons, they've never been used since World War II because of the mutually assured destruction if one fires, the other fires, and everybody kind of suffers. And if technology brings us to the point where it's very easy for anybody, any you know, small, medium or large company or, or government to, you know, attack somebody else. And I can do the same to you. It it's interesting as I think about it today, the, that we could be in a position where no one does any of that because it's so easy for them to get wiped out. just as easily as they can try to wipe somebody else out. Now there's the, world is always full of evil. And so there's this still that, that concern and, know, we have, you know, certain elements of, of our world where, people are determined to destroy a particular, ideology. So who knows, but you're right, you know, certainly warfare, you know, jets pilot was jets pilot was, the chap that Chinese already have. automated autonomous ships.

Randy Lorensen [30:30]: Yeah, it's somebody I can't remember. think it was Ukraine used underwater drones to sink some Russian ships recently. You know, but if you can, it's funny, I was watching a football game, I think Saturday night, and they cut to a scene where there was a, it was an Air Force or Navy base, and there was a really, really sexy jet, like fighter jet in the background. And my friend's like, wow, look at that thing. That thing's awesome. And, And my thought, and I told him at the time, said, yeah, and we probably should stop building these. Like that jet is tens or hundreds of millions of dollars or whatever. Like how is that jet gonna beat the 10,000 or hundred thousand drones that you could build? know, it's just, it's gonna get overwhelmed by pure mass or number of drones. It seems to me that building all of these huge ships, huge planes, expensive stuff is something that's a little outdated. I'm not an expert in this area, but one big ship or one big plane can't beat a hundred thousand little drones, I don't think. So.

Anthony Marino [31:39]: Well, you've got this situation where you talk about displacement. All this discussion has been about lower on the salary scale, people being replaced. What you're talking about is giant companies like Lockheed and Raytheon being completely displaced because who builds those big, ugly, expensive 20 million $20 billion defense systems. If you can build a drone in your driveway or in your garage, that's just as effective as the Ukrainians have sorted out, then those big companies are going to be displaced. that's an irresistible object against an irresistible force. And what's going to happen there and how that's all going to go down is going to be very, very interesting. mean, the military industrial complex

Randy Lorensen [32:34]: Well...

Anthony Marino [32:38]: in 30 years is going to look very, different than it looks today. And who are the winners and losers?

Randy Lorensen [32:43]: somebody has to make the drone still, right? Like whether you're making one big plane or for the same money making a hundred thousand drones, somebody's still got to produce them. Now, maybe that is the robots and automation and more, but there'll still be people involved in the process.

Anthony Marino [33:00]: But we know from history, and let's use IBM as a perfect example, the most brilliant minds, the more resource than anybody could imagine back in the late 70s, early 80s, completely missed on the personal computer. I mean, they gave away technology. They completely missed it. know, upstarts like Apple and Microsoft and Wang computers and all these companies spun. always you guys hear me say it all the time. Beware of the little guy. So it's going to be a little guy that becomes a big guy, you know, in over a five or 25 year period of time. They're going to produce this technology and these these replacements for what these big guys are after, because these big guys are just not a droid. They're going to hold on to, you know, their cash cows. know, a $20 billion fighter jet, it's going to take a tremendous amount of effort by those companies to start making 10,000 drones a year to earn that $20 billion. In the meantime, someone else with a fully automated factory with minimal headcount is going to be the place where that stuff gets developed. So it's going to be a big change.

Randy Lorensen [34:24]: Yeah, but this is really basic economics in a lot of ways that we are fighting or it's basic capitalism, right? We do not have anything really almost even resembling capitalism in this country at the moment. But if somebody can't keep up or if you're building a plane that isn't useful, that company needs to go out of business. And I don't want to see people lose their jobs. But if you're building something useless, You just, it's not good for anybody to keep that in that business around and keep paying to make something useless, right? It's just, and so.

Anthony Marino [35:03]: Great. the yeah, but you're missing that missing the irresistible force. The irresistible force is who's benefiting from that useless plane being developed. We know it. We know in 10 years that plane is going to be of no value to anybody yet. We're going we are producing it. So why is that? Why is that the case? Well, these big companies have lobbyists who are getting funding, who are talking our politicians, local, state and federal into continuing to fund this, what ultimately is going to be waste. I mean, do you think Ukraine's building a factory right now to build a $20 billion fighter jet? Hell no. No, they're in garages building these hundred dollar drones that are just as effective or more effective.

Randy Lorensen [35:58]: Well, that's the broken system we have, right? I mean, you know, know it always, for me, it always comes back to money, but it really does, right? Like there, if you have lobbyists to your point and politicians that benefit from the lobbyists by getting reelected, they are gonna keep, as long as those defense companies keep funneling them millions, they will keep funneling out trillions in return. in contracts, right? So, I mean, we need to have something better. It's creative destruction is the term, right? Is that if they're not producing and they're not adding benefit to society, they should go away. Unfortunately, we have corporate welfare now. Like, and that's a problem. But I asked AI, by the way, for examples from history where people thought that new technology was going to cost jobs. And I just asked it for a list. The first one it came up with was the ATM versus bank tellers. When they came out with ATMs in the 1970s, the predictions were that machines were going to take all the jobs and people weren't going to work in banking. But actually, the number of bank tellers increased after after we had it. And it just made it cheaper to operate a bank. So there became more banks and the banking footprint actually expanded because of the efficiency. The second one that came up was the automobile versus the horse industry. You know, there was, think about it, if you were a blacksmith, right, at, you know, 100 and whatever years ago when things, when cars started coming around, you were a blacksmith or you were a saddle maker or any number of other things with that industry, you would be in a panic. But what really happened is there were way more people that were making cars. than we're making carriages or saddles or blacksmiths or whatever else in it. You know, that led to probably a lot of the growth of the petroleum industry, oil, et cetera. You know, the Luddites was the third one that came up, which we already, we already really talked about, you know, from the automated looms before the break. And then the printing press versus scribes, you know, they were The assumption was when the printing press came all around that all these that all God these scribes aren't going to have a job anymore. But yet now, instead of only a select few people, I think primarily the church being able to to produce books. and it had to be handwritten, the fact of the printing press, became much, much cheaper and lots of, so many people started producing books that that became a massively larger industry over time. So that's the four examples that Gemini gave me.

Anthony Marino [38:49]: Yeah, and I think those are all good examples, but they all have something similar in the sense that the automation, if you will, let's just call it what it is, automation and the new industries that they created were all benefited, if you will, what became big companies that provided a service in the case of you know, newspapers and automobiles and so forth to a ready buyer. So they, it was, no one knew that getting a newspaper on your doorstep every morning at six o'clock in the morning was something that they wanted. But the printing press allowed for that. Right. It allowed for dissemination of information in a way that had never been seen or heard of before, and no one was asking for it. But it became something that all of a sudden you couldn't live without. And the same thing with the automobile and the other things that you mentioned. What I'm, what I, my, my skepticism of robotics is this, not that robotics isn't going to automate factories and make companies more efficient building the things that they're currently building and being able to build things as we were just talking about. you know, weaponry that we're not necessarily building today, but building those things for the future and whatever else someone can think of. But I just don't see a consumer need for robotics. Yes, there will be people that will have people, robots folding their laundry. But let's talk about the working class person living in an 800 square foot apartment. in New York City. is, they really going to want a robot? Where the hell are they going to store it? Are they, do they really need it? Is there really a, a market? I'm just, I'm just, again, I don't know.

Randy Lorensen [41:02]: Anthony, let me ask you this. Does everybody have a maid? Does everybody have a landscaper or a yard person or a lawn person? Does everybody have a swimming pool person that needs to come check the swimming pool and do the chemicals, et cetera? Not everybody has those things now. But there's plenty of people that have maids. if you look at places in other, like you go to countries that are much poorer than here and the percentage of people with housekeeping staff actually goes up because the wages and the cost of doing it is so much cheaper. So I think there's a small percentage of people in this country that currently say have a maid. But if you could get a robot to do it for a fraction of the price over time, many more people would. shoes are opt-in to having that service is my opinion.

Anthony Marino [41:56]: And I'm not disagreeing with that, but I just don't see I who knows really nothing about the future. I don't see that as scale. I don't see that as the as the the core benefit of this effort. OK, I think it's I think it's elsewhere. And the example I'm going to give is this in I was in China in 2002 and I'll get these numbers not exactly right. But the there was something like 80 % of the population was had an annual income of under a thousand dollars. Okay. That was their annual income. Or it was, was something in that neighborhood. And the reason for that is they were all working on family farms. They were in agriculture and the Chinese at the time saw human labor as much more cost-effective than buying John Deere equipment, you know, and to harvest their fields and so forth. I could tell the story about seeing people in fields next to factories that were pouring waste into the fields and it was an awful situation. And then the Chinese said, wait a minute, if we become, if we increase our manufacturing capacity, we can be a provider of inexpensive products to the world. And this is going to grow our economy faster. So what they did was they moved people from the farms into the Nike factories, into the GM factories, into the BYD factories, and subsequently bought all that John Deere equipment to harvest their crops and so forth and grew their economy by moving those people into something else. Where I'm going with that is it's a form of robotics, right? We took people, we put them into very efficient factories, they manage those factories, and we replace them with a robot that was going to harvest our crops. That's where I think the opportunity is for us in robotics in terms of the real economics that someone can cash in on. Yeah, sure. Someone's going to develop a, you know, I forget her name from the Jetsons. the robot lady. Yeah, those will be out there, but that's not where the scale is. That's not where the billions and billions of improvement is going to be someone folding my laundry or emptying my dishwasher. It's a nice to have, but the real gain in these robotics are creating new consumer products at a very inexpensive price. That's what's going to change the world for us, not someone folding my laundry. This is how I feel about cutting my grass.

Randy Lorensen [44:55]: I'm not, on one hand, I'm not disputing what you're saying and I would say it's yes and, right? Like it doesn't have to be one or the other. can be that, you know, somebody chooses that, God, I'm tired of unloading the dishwasher or folding my laundry. And that robot really changes their life or they hate mowing their lawn or whatever it is, right? That they have them do. Somebody else, a company, there's all kinds of companies now that are using these. think I heard the other day, a third of Amazon's workforce is now robots. And my guess is it won't be that long before it'll be two thirds of their workforce. as robots. So it could be being used in that. It could be used for war. It could be used to save a firefighter from having to go into a burning building where the robot can do it and save a person. There's a zillion ways that this could be used. And I think they're all good. And I'm just for the free market. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe people agree with you and they're not going to get it to fold their laundry. I think that if that's what people think and that makes their life better, then the world's a better place.

Anthony Marino [46:05]: Well, you finally said something I agree with, which is let the free market decide. Yeah. I mean, let's see. Let's see what happens. But, I just, was watching 60 minutes last night and I was watching this robot take these, I don't know how many pounds steel bars. And it was taking two humans, you know, to pick it up from each end and move it to another, you know, another.

Randy Lorensen [46:07]: It only took 10 years.

Anthony Marino [46:33]: piece of equipment and so forth. And this, this fricking robot just turned around, picked it up, swung it around and did it faster and more accurately with much more precision than the humans were doing it. And I say, now there is a reason that's the reason. And it's, it's, we're calling it a robot. It's a machine. And that's what we got to think of these things. There's just another machine, you know, we used to bang out metal and Henry, you Pre Henry Ford's factory used to bang out steel into a fender. Then we came down and came up with the press. You know, the Japanese invented the, the lantern press so that they could build twice as many manifolds for a car as they did, you know, the day before the guy thought of the, the, the lantern press. So these are just machines that are doing things in advancing our productivity, which we've been doing all along. We, that's all we've ever. It's all we've ever done. is, know, before we had fire, we didn't have fire. We just left the meat out and get salt and kept our meat, you know, safe that way. And then we found fire and you can make jerky. So, you know, we've been chasing technological improvements since the beginning of man and it will never stop. You know, that's the absolute fact of the.

Randy Lorensen [47:56]: Yeah, and I think that it's going to free us up. Like all these things we've been talking about today, whether it's more energy, more chips, more this, more that, AI robotics, what it really does is allows humans, there's so much more we can do. I we are just starting to. explore the stars, right? Elon's talking about going to Mars in a couple of years. Somebody's going, think Jeff Bezos is trying to go back to the moon now. And all these things are happening, like humans will find new projects, new big things. I think it's inherent in us. by lowering prices, by lowering friction, all of new industries open up over and over and over again. So I think that's the future we're going to. you know, whether it's solar in space or 100 years from now or 500 years or now a Dyson spear, whatever it happens to be. And I think everything in between. you know, back to the to the productivity, it made me think of the Milton Friedman. I don't know if you ever heard this story when he was visiting China and he went to a canal and they were working on the canal and he was surprised that they had hundreds of men out there digging with shovels. And he's like, he asked the bureaucrat that was with him and given it to him. He's like, look, why don't you have tractors, bulldozers, backhoes? You got all these guys with shovels. Like the machines could do this a lot faster. And the guy, the bureaucrat explained that you don't understand this is a jobs program. If we use machines, these people would be able to work. And Friedman's response was, here, I got it exactly actually. I thought you were trying to build a canal. If it's jobs you want, then you should take away their shovels and give them spoons. Right? And so I think, you know, that we need to move in that direction. By the way, we fall circle back to the GDP. That would be really good for GDP having hundreds of people with shovels instead of one backhoe. But so Anthony, what? OK, so this future, I think we both think it's going to be abundant, but it could be dystopian, especially if you don't have the right skill set. So What skill sets should people be developing for 20 years? Actually, let me change it. I think it's almost impossible to answer this question for 20 years. I would say for the next three to five years, what skill sets do you think people should be developing?

Anthony Marino [50:29]: Well, I don't know specifically the skill set. My belief is that because of the, we have this pig in a python, I'll call it, which is a significant population in the, kind of in the middle, that is just not properly educated to deal with what they're about to see going forward. They don't have the math skills, they don't have the reading skills. And in some cases, they don't have the social skills because maybe they haven't really had an opportunity to work in an environment where there are a lot of other people and so forth. And I'm really concerned that we don't have enough skill, okay? What I do think is gonna happen, and I've said this before, I think that these... the major companies are going to step into the breach. And they're going to willing, enabled people into their companies and teach them what they need to know about how to manage robotics, how to manage this new machinery that's been automated, how to replace a sensor, how to determine what needs to replaced. Monitor the precision. you know, notify whoever needs to be notified of the of the maintenance that's required. So I think I don't know what someone needs to learn about to manage and handle a robot or to determine if that's any different than a Lamp-In-Press or a stamping machine. You know, certainly the components are different, but there's still the same same thing in terms of, hey, it's not doing what it's supposed to do. Let's get Who's the engineer that's going to come in here and fix it? So I think we've got a problem. And again, it comes back to numbers of people and people with the right amount of talent. And the breach is going to be filled by these companies that are going to need human capital. And they're going to have to be the ones that teach people what they need to know to help them run their factories and their facilities, which further narrows their skill. In other words, we need you to learn how to do this one thing. in order for this thing to continue to work. Whereas today, engineers, you give an engineer a problem, you give an engineer a problem in a auto factory or a steel factory or chip factory, and they'll figure out what they need to know. Tomorrow, I think it's going to be very narrow skill sets. You you're going to be, you're really going to be more of a worker bee going forward. You're not going to be a generalist.

Randy Lorensen [53:23]: I think I'm gonna disagree with you on that one, because I will tell you, I have just watched myself grow and grow and grow and get better and better and better with AI. The number of things that I have done in the last two to four weeks that I had no capability of doing, that I was able to do quickly and easily by asking AI to become my assistant or become my expert in that. Now, I...

Anthony Marino [53:24]: So, let's go.

Randy Lorensen [53:49]: I know John, his constant thing, if Dr. John was here, he'd be saying, he'd be giving the warning, right? That it has to be something that you're good at, that you know about. And I agreed with him 30 or 60 days ago. I actually disagree with him now because I've watched how I've learned to get around that and have it check itself and write better prompts and... Like I'm not saying it doesn't make mistakes, it makes mistakes all the time, but there are things that I can look at. And I think that it's allowing me to be a generalist. And there's so many things that I would have just sent to somebody else. And now I do them myself because I can put them in AI and do them faster than I can explain to somebody else what I want.

Anthony Marino [54:34]: Yeah. And I think, you know, you are the exception, not the rule. In other words, there there's a significant population of people that are capable like you. They've got some education. They've got desire. They they they live in an environment where they have opportunity or they can find opportunity. But you got to just step back and look at the concentration of our population that's living in places where they did not get the education. They did not get the social skills. They did not leave their neighborhood. They never got outside of it. And all they know is what's directly in front of them in terms of what do I have to do today to survive tomorrow? And that's the population that I'm really, really worried about. And I don't have a solution for it.

Randy Lorensen [55:25]: No.

Anthony Marino [55:32]: but it's millions and millions of people and they're not being replaced in either numbers, right? Because our birth rate is below replacement. with that comes, they're not being replaced by people that are more capable. So it's a cycle that's continuing. I don't know if I'm right. I just have this feeling that we're just running out of resource, human resource.

Randy Lorensen [55:49]: Well... I'm- Well, Anthony, okay, I think the greatest thing we can do for that group of people is give them opportunity to create real opportunity in the world. And whether that means through increased robotics, energy, AI, that the barrier to starting a company becomes easier, that somebody that grows up, whether they grew up in the inner city or they grew up in the hills of Appalachia or whatever, and never really had a chance growing up now, they can, there's access to it much easier, much more cheaply. I think that's the greatest thing we can do for those people is give them true hope opportunity. Hell, it's what this country was founded upon, right? Like immigrants that came here, they came here with zero promises. They were almost all dirt poor, but they had an opportunity to be more in America. To me, that's what America is really about. It's very different than how we treat immigrants now. We're not gonna get into that, but it's anybody that wants to come here and have an opportunity to build the American dream, I think we should welcome and put our arms around. As far as the education, you know, I listened to a podcast the other day and this lawyer, very successful lawyer, she was telling her son, don't go to college, become an electrician. You will make way more money than going to college and you'll make more. And you know, she was talking about how in the short term, There probably is more money in being an electrician than being a lawyer, right? And you don't have to go through however many years of college. So that was her advice. But I do think that college needs to probably get back to how to think and the classical education that... you know, is more traditional if we go back throughout time and we need to get away from this Prussian system that was made, you know, the current education system we've talked about before. It was created for people to initially go to war in Prussia and then for here, we turned it into creating people to work in factories, right? And we need to

Anthony Marino [58:03]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know.

Randy Lorensen [58:07]: We need to get back to teaching people how to think and how to problem solve and how to make good fundamental decisions from first principles.

Anthony Marino [58:15]: I don't know if this is a fact or just something that I personally believe, but there seems to be less mobility in people today. how do you take, I mean, there's no data center being built on the outskirts of New York City or Chicago or Washington, DC or Memphis. mean, maybe there's one in Nashville, guess, but Elon's got one down there, but there's no, where are these people gonna go? If they're not mobile, if they're not willing to pick up and move to West Texas or Dallas or wherever we're building this new economy, then they're not going to have that opportunity. And I feel terrible about it. I really do because mobility gives you an opportunity because you could pick and choose where you mobile to.

Randy Lorensen [59:07]: But people will be mobile for opportunity. again, go back to the people that really built this country and that immigrated. You know, look, I'm more than half Swedish. Most of the Swedish people that came here came here when Sweden had similar to Venezuela. They went from the richest country in the world to they turned very socialist and went to the poorest country in the world. were people starving and they fled for America for opportunity. Right. And they were willing to move because there was something better over there. And people still do it, like, some people go to Dubai or they go to Japan or they go wherever for a job. Most people don't do that because most people aren't offered that, right? They haven't put themselves in that position. So again, I'm concerned about them too, but I think the way to help them is by making it easier, by making opportunity. And the other thing that's happening, Anthony, that, know, again, back to this theme of it's, this isn't capitalism. If big corporations write the rules and write the laws and you want to compete with them, in a lot of industries, you just can't anymore. You can't start because it costs too much money and you can't afford the lawyers and to buy off the, you know, bureaucrats or whatever you have to do that the big banks, big pharma, big corporations, you know, big corporations can do. It's not, it's really, really hard for poor people without resources to compete in those arenas when it takes millions or sometimes hundreds of millions or billions of dollars just to start the game.

Anthony Marino [1:00:46]: Yeah, I keep coming back to, you know, the the talent, right? So we just had some number of millions of people over the last four years or so. Do exactly what you said. Chase a better life, right? They they this this this population, say what you will of them right or wrong, journeyed very difficult with great difficulty. to come to a better place. But did they come to a better place for opportunity or did they come to a better place because there was free stuff? I find that to be, I wonder, I don't know for sure. I'm sure it's some of both, but the people you'd refer to, well, but the people you refer to that came from Italy and came from Germany and Sweden and Norway and...

Randy Lorensen [1:01:33]: son of a...

Anthony Marino [1:01:44]: France and Eastern European countries in the early 1900s, there was no welfare system. The only thing they had here was tough work. And look at the places they lived in when they first got here. Every one of them came through the same places in Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York. They lived in the worst conditions and they battled their way out of those conditions. And the Germans migrated to Chicago and the Italians migrated to different parts of the country and so on and so forth. They worked their way out of it. But do you see that happening today with the people that came and others that are coming? I just don't see it. I hope I'm wrong. I don't see it.

Randy Lorensen [1:02:28]: If I'm a big, big, I'm a big, big believer in the Charlie Munger quote, if tell me the incentives and I'll tell you the outcome, right? And if we created, if we went back to a more free market, capitalistic, give people an opportunity, doesn't matter if you grew up here. and you grew up in the rich part of town or the mountains of Appalachia or you came from Mexico or you came from Somalia or you came from China. I don't care. If you're able to come here and compete and make society better and contribute to society and reap the rewards and making that so that you don't have all the bureaucracy, there would be much more growth. And the people that want free stuff wouldn't come for that. If the incentive is you come here and they give you more money than you get making home just by coming in the country or on welfare, of course people are going to come here. That's again, this goes back to being mobile. Plenty of people are mobile that have come here just for free stuff.

Anthony Marino [1:03:24]: Yeah, I'm- I mean, there was no safety net back then. Now there's a safety net. So when a job gets displaced today, there's a safety net. Don't worry. We've got unemployment insurance. We've got free healthcare. We've got anything you need. So you don't have to be mobile. And that's my concern is that these jobs are gonna present themselves in different parts of the universe. And not just in the United States, by the way.

Randy Lorensen [1:03:46]: Well... I would

Anthony Marino [1:03:55]: You know, these jobs are going to present themselves in other countries, English speaking or otherwise. And, you know, will people be mobile and willing to, you know, leave what they know and go to these places? I don't know. I don't think so. And so I'm nervous about that.

Randy Lorensen [1:04:11]: I think they already are, right? There's lots and lots of people that would love to come to this country and contribute, right? If they want to come here for free stuff, I'd rather they stayed home. If they want to come here and, you know, do fraud, like all the stuff happening in, you know, my home state recently in Minnesota, right? Like, I'd rather they didn't come here. But if they want to come here and contribute, again, bring them. There's plenty of people around the world. I think America is not about anything more than that freedom, that opportunity. And to me, if you go back to the founding fathers, what is America really? It's an idea. And it's that free and that anybody can be happy and successful. That you have the pursuit. By the way, they don't guarantee happiness. If you read what they said, they said the pursuit of happiness, right? As an imminent right, not that you deserve to be happy or that you could do it, but you had the pursuit of it. I think that if we start just like we talk about core values, if we go back to the core values, that that will build abundance for everybody in this country. And we will, if it won't be a matter of, you know, we can't afford to take care of this person, but we bring in people that make the world better contribute here. That, you know, to me, that's the answer, right? There's nothing more American than that.

Anthony Marino [1:05:34]: I couldn't agree with you more. What will happen if we don't get enough of those people and people aren't willing to be mobile, this will be a self-fulfilling prophecy where technology will just continue to accelerate to make them unnecessary. The work is going to get done. The production is going to get done by these companies to fulfill the needs of consumers and other businesses. And if there aren't enough people to do it or to do it well, they'll, they'll, they'll automate it. They'll figure out a way to automate it. Look at, look at your simple example, your fast food restaurants. was, I was in the airport. didn't talk to a human being in the airport yesterday. Not one. I needed, I needed a bottle of water. went, I went, grabbed the bottle of water, went to the machine, self checkout out the door and literally. 30 seconds, no need to talk to anybody. And that's just going to be the way it is. Fast food's the same way. You don't need to talk to anybody. Go in, punch a few keys on the keyboard. Even at the drive-through now, you can just enter your stuff on the keyboard. So yeah, we'll replace people for sure if they're not willing and able to come to work for us. my God, there's nothing.

Randy Lorensen [1:06:58]: Did it ask you for a tip?

Anthony Marino [1:07:03]: You can't do anything without getting a tip. mean, it's, yeah, it actually about a tip. Yeah. Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [1:07:04]: But did it? It asked you for a tip? That's really insane. My first real experience of that is six months, a year ago, we went to a show at, I forget, the new arena down in the UT campus, the new basketball arena, whatever it's called. Used to be the Irwin Center, and I forget the name now. But anyway, we went there and we went in and for drinks, they had the concession area. And again, it was just coolers. You took them. they were ungodly expensive, but there were four of us and I got like four drinks. And I think it was four drinks and it was, you know, like four beers or bottle, you know, things of wine or whatever. I think one was a Topo Chico for God sakes. And it was 80 or 90 bucks. And then it defaulted to like a 20 % tip. Like there's no humans here. Why would I tip you? Yeah. So insanity. All right. Let's wrap this thing up. What, you got any final thoughts? You want to put a bow on this thing?

Anthony Marino [1:07:48]: Yeah, Well, again, I think we're going to be OK because we've always figured out how to be OK. I think there'll be a very rough ride for some individuals that are going to be, again, displaced because of the way things are, just like they were displaced over the Internet. And when we shipped all our manufacturing overseas and put a lot of people out of work, but somehow they managed to find ways around it. I'm concerned about the education system and what we've produced up to this point in time. I'm also concerned about the concentration of wealth and what the intent of some of the people that have control of this wealth and control this technology, what their intent is. I never used to be worried about that. I didn't mind that Apple and Microsoft and other companies, you know, concentrated the wealth because they were providing a useful consumer product that I was willing to buy. I don't know about this, about AI and the, some of the, some of the output of AI and what it can do for, can do for good versus what it can do for, let's call it evil for lack of a better word. And some of the people that are managing it, I just wonder, you know, really what's beneath the surface of those people. So I'm really hoping that the consumer meeting, not just the individual consumer, but companies that are looking for automation to improve their ability to, you know, produce their product, produce their output, whether it's lawyers or engineers or whatever, I hope they'll create such demand that these companies will provide those tools that they don't presently have. through the use of this technology, we'll see. I'm always hopeful, I always have a little, growing up the way I grew up, I always have a little concern with what people are up to, so.

Randy Lorensen [1:10:16]: Yeah, I choose to see the Elon Musk future of an abundance that that's what's coming. That's what technology has historically done. and that we will have work will be optional, right? I also think humans will keep reaching for the stars and whatever else. And I agree with you, like it's gonna be messy if people don't prepare themselves, right? If somebody doesn't prepare themselves for that future, the examples I gave earlier, some of the people that hand sewed those stockings, they did lose their job. They either had to go work. you know, running a sewing machine or they lost their jobs or had to do something else. Same thing, the people that made horses and blacksmiths that lost their jobs, maybe they went and worked in the automobile industry, but probably they had to find something else. So whether it's what I talked about earlier, becoming an electrician or a plumber, I think being an entrepreneur and being flexible. is another skill set for the future that gives you more and more more security is if you're in charge. And I guess my last thing I would say to people is I think that if you're not spending an hour a day learning AI right now, you're doing yourself a disservice. I don't care if you have never used it or you consider yourself a super user. You should just be spending an hour a day, minimum, trying to get better at it. I think that is the skill set that is really going to be in demand and is really going to guarantee you have a place in whatever this new economy is.

Anthony Marino [1:11:54]: I would, I would, I would agree with you a hundred percent there. And I would, I would use this term. would keep my head on a, on a swivel and I'd be looking around constantly for opportunity. What's coming my way. What, what did I just see? Let me understand. Let me dig into what I just saw, what I heard, whether was the healthcare industry or engineering, whatever the case might be, what, what's coming next, what just happened? Because things are happening. They've always happened fast. But there are some things that are happening, I mean, so fast. mean, and it's surprising. You one of the things that's really caught everybody off guard, and no one's really talking about it, is everyone, when these LLMs first came about, you know, all predicted the end of Google, right? And they said, Google, yep, they're gone, they're searched. Guess what, guys? Not the case. Google had their head on a swivel, figured it out. Yeah, maybe a little slow to the upbeat, but man, they're doing just fine. So again, winners are winners for a reason. And is it, bet on the cowboy, not the horse? So I would give my head a.

Randy Lorensen [1:13:06]: Yeah. Yeah, I, and by the way, I think with that, it's okay if people feel overwhelmed right now. Like I think to your point, Be adaptable, would say, I'd summarize your last things. Be adaptable, be ready. But it's okay to be overwhelmed. Again, I was listening to a thing and I can't remember the guy's name, but he was the primary AI engineer at Tesla and is probably more responsible for self-driving than anybody else. Well, Elon funded it and had the vision, but this is the guy that kept the trains moving on time. And so this guy is one of the elite AI people in the world. And he said, he goes, things are changing so fast. He's like, I can't keep up. And I'm overwhelmed and I feel stupid and behind. So if you're just learning this stuff. realize it's just it's moving fast and if you want to be an expert I really think that if you put time in and continually learn you can be an expert in this area really really quickly starting from nothing.

Anthony Marino [1:14:19]: Yeah, I would advise, but I would advise people to keep it contextual to where you are in terms of your job, your interests, your personal interests or otherwise. You can't beat everything to everybody in AI because it's got to be conditional to where you are and what you're doing in your day to day life. You can expand it in time, but use it. for what you need it for now, learn how to use it, and then expand into other things and learn more as you go. Take it slow. What is it? The smoothest slow is fast. No, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So.

Randy Lorensen [1:15:02]: There we go. All right. That's a good thing to end on. Listeners, if you're still here, you like us, go download, subscribe, tell your friends. I don't care. Apple podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you go, please give us a follow, give us a thumbs up. We greatly appreciate it. You can always check out the podcast, talesofabundance.com for free tools, things we like, et cetera. Anthony, it's been a pleasure and I will talk to you next week.

Anthony Marino [1:15:28]: All mine.