AI: Unpacking the Black Box

Tonya J. Long 0:05

Welcome home , friends . I'm Tonya Long , and this is RESET , where purpose meets possibility . Each week , we share conversations with thought leaders , innovators and the dreamers and doers who are reshaping the future of work , technology , longevity and purpose . Whether you're navigating AI's impact , reimagining your career or searching for deeper meaning , you're in the right place . So settle in , open your mind and let's explore what happens when purpose meets possibility , when purpose meets possibility . So everyone , hello and welcome to Reset where purpose meets possibility . I am here with my friend , John McElligot , and we're going to have a good time today . John just offered up what do ? A missionary , a Marine , and what was the other one , John ?

Tonya J. Long 1:07

A missionary a Marine , a technologist and a futurist . Yeah , and a futurist and a futurist . What do those things have in common ? Not one thing , until you meet John . So John McElligott is the host of PBS's AI Unpacking the Black Box . We'll talk more about that and he can tell you how that show came about and how he created it , from his root in a deeply religious family , through to his service as a United States Marine and now one of the leading voices in AI and robotics . John has a fascinating history of resets , of looking at things differently and pivoting into new models , new ways of being . So , john , welcome , I'm so happy to have you here . Tell us more about what you're working on .

John McElligott 1:52

Awesome . Well , thank you for having me , Tonya . This is going to be exciting and a lot of fun . As you said , I've had a life full of resets , so hopefully your listeners will get a lot from this . Most recently , I was the CEO of York Exponentials . We were a collaborative robotics company , with human-sized robots or smaller , designed to work next to people , not replace them . I'm jumping around a little bit , but I guess we'll start with the TV show .

John McElligott 2:12

So about maybe a year ago two years now when ChatGPT came out , things had died down after the pandemic and a lot of the bigger projects that maybe we can talk about later that I was doing in York , Pennsylvania , which is the little town I live in kind of all faltered in large part just because of the shutdowns . I really was running my company and a lot of my passion kind of disappeared . And then all of a sudden , ChatGPT comes out and you know , for the last 10 years I've been talking about AI and robotics and how it's going to impact everybody and I was viewed kind of crazy for a while and ChatGPT changed all of that . Well , one of the folks that called me was a technology company in central PA that wanted me to come and be their keynote for their annual conference . I came , and it just so happened one of their board members' wife was a host on a television or a radio show for the local NPR in central PA . They asked me to come on and talk about ChatGPT what I thought it meant for their viewership , which is a middle America so not a technical , not a coastal kind of town normally left behind by technological leaps like this and it was so well-received that they offered me my own television show , and so that's how "AI Unpacking the Black Box came about .

John McElligott 3:20

One of the things that I'm very excited , though , is the show isn't really about artificial intelligence . It's about humanity in the age of artificial intelligence . The AI is going to keep going , and right now a lot of people are looking at how do I do productivity gains , how do I maybe replace my HR people , but we're not really understanding how this technology is going to touch every single aspect of our lives . So throughout the series , from episode one to episode eight , we start with kind of the history of artificial intelligence , and then we work through topics like religion , so I had priests that were advising the Pope , and we got into a discussion of could God take over an AI , and his response was well , I don't know why he would , and I was like , well in the Bible , didn't he talk through a burning bush ? And you could see him think through this , and we got to the conclusion that maybe God will , but your iPhone will catch on fire .

John McElligott 4:06

There'll be something that lets you all the way , to folks that were working on solving aging and curing death , to luminaries like Peter Diamandis , who came on to talk about exponential thinking . So I've had this chance to talk to people from all of these different backgrounds , and the one thing that I think has been unique for me is before , when you wanted to have these conversations , you had to go to the Valley . You go to New York , now it's the kitchen table , and so that's what got us really excited about this time period of doing this show . The other thing is we also used the older models , and we finished with Sora , with the last .

John McElligott 4:41

So the whole show is like , except for me and the guests , everything else was AI . But you see the artificial intelligence grow up from episode one to episode eight and it's that tiny little window . And now you've seen the video models , now that are almost indistinguishable .

Tonya J. Long 4:58

They blow my mind what they can produce .

John McElligott 5:00

Yeah , yeah .

Tonya J. Long 5:01

Since I met you , it has been clear that your focus, you're a solid technologist , but your heart is tied to middle America and helping create this bridge to bring Middle America along . What do you attribute to that focus point ?

John McElligott 5:19

I think there's probably a couple of different things . - So, for a little bit of my backstory, I was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to the IrishAmerican family . I'm a McElligott . My uncle and my dad , I think , both worked in a factory and my dad ended up hurting his back and made the decision that he felt My dad planted churches in England, Ireland, and Scotland, and I saw him a sacrifice and work a job he hated so he could never ask for money for the people, and I saw him do this over and over, and so probably the desire for not leaving people behind came from watching my dad . he was called to be a pastor , and so he decided to go to seminary when I was a couple of years old and then him and a friend of his made the decision that they were going to be missionaries . So at the age of eight my family moved to the United Kingdom . Now , the love for my country probably really came when I came back , when I was 18 . And I was going to school for criminal justice and I made the decision I wanted to serve my country and ended up in the Marine Corps , and that was , I think , the first time that I felt what it meant to be an American . Now , later I would learn this was not a universal experience , but at the time that was the only place I ever experienced . People put their differences aside . It didn't matter if you were rich , didn't matter if you were poor , your skin color , none of that . You're all a Marine , and so I think that's where the love of country came from . So the love of people came from my dad . They're not leaving people behind . The love of country came from the Marine Corps .

John McElligott 6:41

I moved to York , Pennsylvania , my little town , probably about it's got to be 18 years ago now . It's been a while , and one of the things I noticed was it was a beautiful town . Actually , we were the first capital of the United States industrial powerhouse in World War II . Big , beautiful buildings , empty storefronts everywhere , and so I looked and I said how did this happen ? We were this industrial powerhouse and now it's not here anymore . So the more research I did , I realized that in the first industrial revolution we did great . In the second we did fantastic , because the same entrepreneurs that harnessed steam learned about electricity and they grew their businesses . Third industrial revolution , that was different . When computers come along and the internet , all of a sudden the people that started , the companies were passing them off to their kids and our communities went from risk taker to caretaker , and those are drastically like Rust Belt community , drastically different , and so innovation and thinking outside the box and building businesses and dreaming big almost became counter to the culture they were built on , which is why you saw a lot of folks who live in Silicon Valley came from towns like mine . Actually , one of the founders of Pinterest is from York .

John McElligott 7:46

I mean , this is a very common story . You go to the Valley . People weren't born in the Valley , they were run out of town places . You know as well as I do . You hear from a community where it's not normal to talk about technology in the future and dream big , and so I think that's where my passion for Middle America came from is I saw what happened when we went from risk taker to caretaker and new opportunities were seen as risks , and it was all about how do we hold on to what we've got , not how do we grow the pie for everyone , and I saw how that created haves and have nots , and with the advent of robotics and AI , my fear was we would have haves and have nevers , and that's where my passion was to make sure everyone's included . I think there's a practical reason too , but personally , that's where I think my motivation comes from .

Empowering Communities for the Future

Tonya J. Long 8:36

When I get asked the question when I'm speaking , what keeps you awake at night ? It's family , who I don't feel will be able to make the transition will be , able to get on the bridge .

Tonya J. Long 8:49

And then I talk about a staff that something like 63 million Americans read below a sixth grade level , and so we've got so much to bring forward in order for everyone to be on this journey . But fear is a large part of this, fear of the unknown , and when people don't know , they often make things up and it's so much worse than reality . So how have you worked with those communities to get them past that initial fear pushback response that is so common ?

John McElligott 9:22

So it took a very long time and a lot of patience and , quite frankly , a lot of listening and a lot of getting booed out of rooms .

Tonya J. Long 9:31

Amazing resilience you have . I've never been booed out of a room . I'll have to work on that , yeah .

John McElligott 9:35

It was more of a "preposterous .

Tonya J. Long 9:39

Yeah , yeah , I get it , I get it . You figure it was about 10 years ago, you were the boogy- man .

John McElligott 9:45

It was about . It's funny when I started I was way more optimistic and my message was more positive . You know what I would get People at the end go . I remember when I was young and they would mistake my excitement for being naive of how the world worked .

John McElligott 10:01

And so I realized that I was like you know what ? The people that respond to motivation and big dreams and swinging for the fences and we're going to be the next X for X . Those people live in Silicon Valley , not in York , Pennsylvania . The thing that motivates people in York and I saw that with the third industrial revolution, it's not about what you can get . It's about losing what you have . And the minute I started to say it will threaten your jobs and your children's future . Kids and jobs If you can tie it to that , instead of talking about all of the amazing things that can happen , it motivates a lot of folks to realize "okay , I need a future for my children , I want my family to be able to provide , I want to have a say , I don't want to have my freedoms taken away .

John McElligott 10:48

Once you start letting people know that , hey , this is the hell scenario , you can give them the heaven scenario , and that just takes a lot of empathy and a lot of time . It's been 10 years that I've been refining this message and we can maybe get into it another segment of how that came along . But that empathy and patience , I think , has been probably one of the big and willingness to learn .

Tonya J. Long 11:10

All of those are traits that you groomed through your childhood years seeing your father at the pulpit and then moving into the Marines , something largely by activity counter to the work of the church , just different activities . So you've been groomed Still service .

Tonya J. Long 11:29

Learned also . Yes , both tremendous service and higher purpose , but a different way of delivering that service , the messages around family and children being part of how you get people more engaged for the future . I'm wondering if that's been easier in the last two years or more difficult , because technology has really barreled mainstream into people's living rooms , in their back pockets with their cell phones , and so is it better or worse than 10 years ago when you talk with these middle America crowds about the opportunity ?

John McElligott 12:05

I would say so there's a couple of things speaking to , like the kind of speaking engagements I was getting , were normally like an organization would bring me in . So I would say , while I had a chance to talk , speak to middle America in a big way . A lot of my interesting conversations would be at the truck stop , leaving town with the server or like just a random person , because very often in the business world we tend to think we're talking to a group of a bunch of people and they're diverse , but very often they don't represent the population they might represent , like the business population , but they don't represent everybody . And so I think it was a combination of not just speaking to big groups and hearing from them at the end of an event , but the conversations I would have with the bus driver or the conversation I would have in line with somebody waiting to get some ice cream , like just these random little interactions , gave me , I think , the sensitivity to learn what would not only work but how to meet people where they're at , but that everyone is different . There isn't this one size fits all blanket that we're just gonna be able to roll out , and so I think the meeting people where they are is something that I did learn from my dad .

John McElligott 13:17

My dad was very patient , and he would take people on a journey that , at the time , was a journey of faith and that was very common in his world . It was how you would plant churches . It was how you were taught to do it Like you don't force it down their throat . You're patient , you understand people are on a journey , and I think I applied a lot of that same thinking that everyone's on a journey . I want us all to get to the same destination , but we're all taking different modes of transportation , and so I think that requires me being willing to go . All right , I'm on a train now , then I'll be on a bus and then I'll walk with you and then I'll help you ride your bike , and however you want to get there is it's not my . It's my job to help you get there , not mandate how you do .

Tonya J. Long 13:57

Beautiful , beautiful . In the Valley . I live in Silicon Valley . I live in San Jose . Everything is focused on this and everything is focused on fast time to market and what you've just described is difficult to scale . One person at a time . Meeting them where they are could take a lifetime . You'd only scratch the surface . So how are you addressing that , Because your message resonates ?

John McElligott 14:24

Yeah .

Tonya J. Long 14:25

How are you addressing ? The issues , because your message resonates . Yeah , how are you addressing the issues of scale beyond ?

John McElligott 14:28

the TV show . A big part of what we're about ready to do now is we're getting ready to launch the Frontier Futurist Tour , so a lot of these same communities that I spoke at 10 years ago which we can get into how I got to we're all saying , hey , this stuff is happening .

John McElligott 14:39

This stuff you said is happening is happening . Please come back . And so I made the decision that I'm going to trade in my Challenger . I went out and bought an RV and I'm going to spend the next year traveling across the United States , going back to some of these communities and working with them , because now it's the single mom in the Rust Belt community talking about AI , it's not the economic development director . It's drastically changed , I think . So the interest level is different , so people are more willing to talk about it , because AI isn't seen as this far- away science fiction kind of thing . The other side of it , I think , also is the pandemic forced people of all ages and all backgrounds to get online and start ordering things using internet services . Zoom calls , I remember . In manufacturing with robotics you had to meet a manufacturer and shake their hand . The pandemic changed all that . So I don't think .

John McElligott 15:36

For me it's about . I have to reach every single person . I have to empower archetypes Like that divorced , that single mother in a Rust Belt community that's maybe just going paycheck to paycheck but wants their children to have a fantastic future , but knows nothing about AI or how AI can solve their problems . If I can spend the time with them and say listen , I may be this initial messenger , but the message needs to go beyond me , which means it has to be translated , and so I don't think it's going to be about me meeting every single person . I just need to meet types Like those people that are willing to be the mavens that are like when the startup world .

John McElligott 16:07

We use a lot of these words , but the reality is there's no reason why I can't create like a frontier founder , like somebody that they know nothing about the technology but they know a lot about being a person like that particular archetype in the tech world we'd say our customer profile , but the reality is it's a person archetype In the tech world .

John McElligott 16:22

We'd say our customer profile , but the reality is it's a person . And I may be enough to inspire that one person , but I need to equip them and find a way to so they can inspire other people with their shared experience . And very much like the church , If you look at , the church isn't a company . It's people from all different backgrounds . Same thing with the Marines it's not really a company . So I tend to view sometimes I've got to battle my entrepreneur side like intentionally , because , like you , even use the word how do you scale , and it's . I can't say the word scale to you because we use it all the time , but they just want to know how . Like in this context , we don't mean scale , we mean how do we help as many people ?

Tonya J. Long 17:11

Now that is something people can get excited about and that's where this is . Just like the church , this is just like the calling to go into the military . It was a calling for you , I think , but this is a calling to help people awaken to the opportunities for their future , and it's not just programmatic work , it's how we're going to live and how things are going to change . Robotics will change the face of middle America in a big way . I think that calling that you have is going to lead you to convert people and then enroll them . I like the word enroll .

Tonya J. Long 17:42

I did some leadership development work a few years ago and it was all about enrolling others in your thought leadership , and I think this is going to be the same way . We talked about hairdressers in the Rust Belt who want to think about how to have a different life . It's not a better life , it's just a different life , and the way AI enables that for them is going to be huge . But getting them excited about it on the beginning and ready to embrace it is where I think that you are particularly gifted .

John McElligott 18:13

So I appreciate that it's going to be something that takes all of us , but I do think time's running out . I think the tech is speeding up and our time is running out .

Tonya J. Long 18:22

So you mentioned urgency and we see the urgency because we live and breathe these conversations every day . I'm not sure middle America embraces or even maybe recognizes the urgency . You and I had a conversation a couple of days ago and you talked about the five stages of acceptance .

Tonya J. Long 18:43

And I wanted to say grief and was hedging on that , because the book is about grief but it has become acceptance and they've added in the last couple of years . They had a new book , susan Kubler-Ross and her group did a new book and the sixth is around action . I think that really inspired you to think about how you engage others to move forward . Can you talk more about that process ? And since I tripped the grief card , let's go ahead and address what are those stages that people are pretty familiar with .

Tonya J. Long 19:15

But then there's this new sixth one that I think really does change the framework to acceptance of where things are going because , by the way , there's grief and what we're losing , and my goal is and so it's unique .

John McElligott 19:26

So we'll just quick get through the first five . So the first is denial right when you deny this is happening , and then you'll get very angry .

John McElligott 19:33

Now I did experience this when I would talk to people like I would get them through some of these stages and it took me a while Then there'd be the depression , and then there'd be that bargaining though before that , or it's maybe there'd be the depression and then there'd be that bargaining though before that , or so maybe , if I just do this and you're starting to see this now , with people going , I'll just learn how to use TPT or I'll learn how to use an agent or this and I'll be fine , like all of a sudden you're bargoing and trying to figure out ways that it'll be fine and then you hit that like a depression . I don't think we've hit that yet around AI . I think it will come , though I think very soon we will have to have support groups , the same way we have for someone that loses their spouse , for accountants , because they may be the first that get massively displaced in the workforce . I've had enough conversations with artists that are struggling with this right now because , especially for artists , something's so deep in their soul . For them it's got to be just so defeating to see work just come up out of nowhere , and at the beginning it looked kooky , but now it's getting very good , it's incredibly good , and then there's that final stage of acceptance Now for most people , I think when you're dealing with something traumatic , right , this idea of getting through those five stages is the goal for , I think , most people .

Future of AI Ethics and Urgency

John McElligott 20:44

But there's something unique that happens and only a small group get to it . And that's like , after that acceptance , what do you do now ? What do you do after the loss ? Because it's almost like saying this is the end of my journey , but this experience can be such a motivator to do amazing things . Now , a person like a Michael J Fox would get to that sixth level where they createa foundation with the goal of trying to solve this problem . Or maybe someone like parents that lose a child to cancer will start a foundation in their child's name . So that doesn't happen . But why doesn't everybody hit that ? And I think it's because our goal is not to get everybody there . Our goal with typical therapy is to get to acceptance so you can go on and live your life .

John McElligott 21:26

So it's almost like you put that behind you instead of using as a catalyst to create a sense of urgency . So that's what I've been really refining is how do I get people through those five stages very quickly but to the six , because five is not enough . If it's going to take all of us , it's not enough for me to get people to accept this is happening . Now we all have to come together and make sure that we do it right . Does that make sense ?

Tonya J. Long 21:50

It does , it does and moving people into action . Because , especially as you move that framework into what our future is going to look like , with the changes that will occur , Right . You can't just accept that it's here .

Tonya J. Long 22:03

You have to . We really do all have to take some form of action or it will happen to us instead of for us . You mentioned urgency just a minute ago . Sometimes I do feel like we operate on a different frame for urgency those who operate in these tech sectors , in particular , the Valley versus the rest of the world . But we've had something that's happened in the last few days with DeepSeek and in fact , I looked at your LinkedIn profile this morning and it hasn't changed . It's been this for a long time , as much as I've known you and your LinkedIn profile header is change is coming , dot , dot , dot , dot dot .

Tonya J. Long 22:41

Well , change happened a couple of days ago with DeepSeek and NVIDIA . The gem of the AI factory that is being built across the planet lost $589 billion literally overnight when investors realized that a small amount of money was spent in China to create an LLM , a large language model that has nearly the same efficacy as OpenAI and the other large models . So they spent like $6 million and I think it was 600 million to build one of the early chat GPT versions . So it signifies a real shift in where we're headed and urgency . This new model coming out , being so small , so inexpensively built , is going to change how everyone thinks about what we can do , what possibilities exist .

John McElligott 23:36

Yeah , there's been a couple of things happening . I own NVIDIA but I invest more in the company In the robotics space . They're doing a lot of interesting things with simulation . Overall , I think NVIDIA will be fine .

Tonya J. Long 23:45

But they're a barometer , I think , for the rest of the industry . I agree .

John McElligott 23:50

I think this was a wake-up call , not just for the tech industry , but because the stock market tanked . You were talking about what's going to motivate people to get to understand . This is real , I think their savings , what you're seeing people calling you and going . What does this mean ? What this thing came out of nowhere . I think it's a precursor to the destructive power of AI . It is a real world example of , and this is a taste of , the disruption we're about to have , and this happened over the weekend . Do you know what I mean ?

Tonya J. Long 24:16

Like it happened in a very short period .

John McElligott 24:18

Now let's caution this with . I do not believe that they trained it the way they said they did . I'm sure they stockpiled high-end NVIDIA GPUs , but they definitely did it much faster and for a lot cheaper . The thing that I think scares me the most is there's a national conversation going on right now to ban TikTok , and that's been going on for a while . The dangers of this particular kind of technology , what it means , and right when that is in the news completely . And if you talk to most Americans if they don't make a living on TikTok or kids that use it for fun , most Americans get that this is not good . And then , all of a sudden , Monday rolls around and DeepSeek , which is a Chinese , developed . It says in their terms of service that your data is held in China and if you do that , the Chinese government has access to it . It's the number one downloaded app .

Tonya J. Long 25:11

Yeah , it's clear when you download it . When you download it off of the Apple store , it's all Chinese characters in the company name . They're not trying to hide who they are and where this was built .

John McElligott 25:23

And the fear that the thing that scared me the most was the speed of adoption , with the public knowledge and consciousness that China's going to take my data but not caring because it's cheaper than chat GBT .

John McElligott 25:38

Now , this is not me advocating for open AI , but I think the speed at which this particular AI was adopted , with very clear downsides , and it happened anyways . That's where I think this discussion on what this actually means . There's a real thing . If , all of a sudden , our next generation of AI startups maybe in the Valley , maybe in other places begin to build on DeepSeek , what does that mean ? I don't know long-term what that means for us , but there are some ethical questions for us to have Now . The one upside is that part of me was a little I don't want to say the word happy , but I do want to say maybe validated to see how shaken a Mark Zuckerberg is now a Sam Altman , right after the president announced 500 billion .

Navigating the Future of AI

John McElligott 26:28

I think what that shows is these four companies don't have a lock on the future . There is a place for us to get involved .

Tonya J. Long 26:35

A relative unknown over the weekend to become the number one download on Apple .

John McElligott 26:41

And could there be the single mom in the Rust Belt community that now , because of this , has the ability to create a startup that serves the problems that she struggles with , that can then be shared ? That makes me excited to know that it isn't just superpowers that have control of the future . Superpowers that have control of the future . That shows , I think , and to your point , not only that it's possible , but the speed at which this could change and everyone could be included . This doesn't have to be a 20-year ordeal . This could really happen in a matter of six months , 12 months , that we turn the tide to where AI really does begin to serve humanity and make sure we're all included .

Tonya J. Long 27:17

I want to go back to something you said about . The average American doesn't appreciate what it means for China to hold our data . They know it's a bad thing , but they don't fully embrace why it's a bad thing . A year ago almost a year and a half ago now China had invested 15 billion in cracking quantum . I'm sure it's more at this point , because everyone wants to be first to win the race for quantum compute power . And for those of you who are listening who are like she just lost me , it just means orders of magnitude faster , stronger and more unstructured in its ability and capacity to use data .

Tonya J. Long 28:02

My real question for you is not about technology . It's about humanity . How do we help people understand the risks that exist out there ? Because the debate on whether or not to have TikTok has been fierce . It's been a religious war as to whether or not to have TikTok a religious war as to whether or not TikTok . But people like you and me want to take a balanced approach to not scaring people in order to convert them Right . So I've said enough about quantum . If , if China cracks quantum and they're holding our data , what they can do with that data is indescribable . So how do we most effectively help people see the potential and the potential for harm and not dismiss us , because we're just lighting a bridge on fire versus understanding that wise choices are everyone's responsibility , not just the government and large corporations .

John McElligott 29:00

Yeah , I think there's a couple of things , so one I just want to make it clear I grew up in the United Kingdom and so at the time Hong Kong was still a part of the British empire and so I was very close to Chinese culture , like I took Kung Fu , like I love China and the Chinese people and the Chinese culture .

Tonya J. Long 29:14

I opened Dallian for a company and have people still send me baby pictures and yeah , the people are amazing .

John McElligott 29:22

So I want to be clear that it's the Chinese Communist Party has been . They have a very specific way that they're willing to develop artificial intelligence that , at its core , is the opposite of our belief system Using it to facially profile Uyghurs like a very particular ethnic group . Those things are commonplace in China and they are building that technology . And as we build upon the technology they give us , we make it stronger . So the flip side is maybe it means I can create a startup faster here , but it also means they can imprison more people at a faster rate there . So there's these two competing philosophies on what AI should do . Now , I don't think actually either one of them is right . I think you've got the one where the middle America and everybody can get involved . You've got the one in China that's a Chinese Communist Party . I believe we should be augmenting the individual's capacity . They believe augmenting the government's capacity . Now , over here , we've got the corporations that I think are not focused on empowering the individual . They're focused on empowering the corporation , right . So you've got the government getting powered over here , which is one philosophy right . You've got much of what's happening over here , which is more power of the business , which ultimately means a reduction of headcount . I was in robotics . I can tell you at its core whatever the CEOs are saying publicly and all of the other stuff they are trying to figure out how do I cut headcount . But I think that leaves a lot of room in the middle , because I think , as DeepSeek just showed , nobody has a lock on the future , and so that's where I think the upside of all of this is .

John McElligott 30:59

Now I think it's very clear that we paint two very distinct pictures . Obviously the one if the Chinese Communist Party gains superintelligence or AGI and quantum , to think they're not going to use it for control is silly , because they use every other technology for control . So it would make sense . On the flip side , if it's just like the big four that get it , is there any reason for me to think that the first people they help is everybody , or that single mom or the family with special needs kids , or the small town entrepreneur ? No , it's going to go to all the big corporations to start , because there's a lot of money that's been put into it . And that's where I think maybe this middle ground where we can learn from both right , at least learn what not to do in .

John McElligott 31:44

Some groups like to see , if I use this for bad things , it will hurt humanity Well . At the same time , understanding that business , the business case isn't the thing that I should be primarily concerned about , because I think that creates an us versus them right . Workers scared they're going gonna lose their job , corporations buying from big tech . And that's where I think we need to show that there's a lot of room in the middle . There's a lot of room in the middle and that wasn't really the case before . Chatgpt you can use for free . I would have never imagined that anybody would be able to use this and get it on their phone without having to give a credit card . That should motivate us that we finally have access to all these incredible tools and you don't need the degrees , and that's where I'm hoping people can get really excited about the amazing positive things that they can do once they start harnessing the power of this technology .

Tonya J. Long 32:37

So the future and getting everyone to come to the future is about nudging people forward , right ? How do you encourage those audiences ? I know it varies location to location and the purpose of your audience being brought together . All those things are variables . But how do you encourage your audience to step toward the technology when they're an audience who clearly wouldn't necessarily do that ?

John McElligott 33:03

Yeah , I think we're in a little bit of a sea change . So the way I did it 10 years ago was different than the way I did it six years ago , was different than the way four , different than two and very different . Now . Before it was me , like my dad would preach there's one person , maybe then two show up and then three . But this is very different , where now everybody is like what does AI mean ? Before ? I was normally brought in if people wanted their group to adopt artificial intelligence and they've tried everything else , like I was the person you brought in as the last person . I was not the person you would bring in at the beginning , and that's , I think , the sea change is . There's an awakening to what's happening and the negative potential , but not a lot to the positive . I think the challenge we've got right now and it's very similar to probably what it must've been like in the old West right , when people would come to the United States and they'd hit the East coast and they'd see posters that say there's gold in those hills .

Tonya J. Long 34:01

Go west right , and it was like .

John McElligott 34:03

I liken that to a sam altman right like a microsoft saying there's gold . Or if you watch larry ellison talk about how , in the future , their ai , that they're building , will be able to cure cancer for individuals and that's like the there's gold in these hills that is gold , and it is

John McElligott 34:19

the probability keep going right but nobody talked about to get from the east coast to the west coast . Do you know how difficult it was to get to those hills ? Now , if people put the poster up and said go west , come to california , here's your future , and then showed the list of all of the people that died on the way trying to get there , nobody would do it . So what got people from one side to the other ? No one did it as an individual . People didn't start a corporation . They had wagon trains , like they had a realization that a wagon train , you were stronger all together . And yeah , there were risks and bad things , but going together as a group is stronger . And once we're on that wagon train it was rich people , poor people , doctors , educated , uneducated because you all right and realizing that this over here , the promise of the future .

John McElligott 35:14

but I'm not going to get there on my own . That's what we see . We see the go West and I'd say they're out West , Come here here's the future , and I think we've got to be honest with each other of how difficult this is going to be , but how much easier it will be if we go together .

Tonya J. Long 35:29

Beautiful Good .

John McElligott 35:31

It's just not the full picture . I'm an abundance thinker . I tend to think that the world's amazing and this is going to play out amazingly for everybody . I don't think it'll happen by accident but I tend to be an optimist not a pessimist .

Tonya J. Long 35:46

We had talked quite a bit about . This is a now issue . This is not a we're going to put a man on the moon in 10 years . This is happening around us . We had a weekend event with Deep Seek that created so much effort and reevaluation of where we are . I like the conversation that we had around moving people into action All people , not just tech people , not just entrepreneurs , but all people into action . What's the thing that you would tell people who are just getting started , that are fearful about breaking something ? Or I'm going to enable quantum in China by doing this ? What would you lead an audience with who is curious but cautious ?

John McElligott 36:33

So I would say I used to always think money isn't the most valuable thing . The most valuable thing is time . Right , that's always was in the back of my head . It's not money , it's time . But as we've moved into this age of accelerating and potentially intelligent machines , I think money's not the most valuable thing , and it isn't time , it's timing , and that's different , and so that's what I would encourage everyone . And that's different , and so that's what I would encourage everyone .

Navigating AI's Age of Wisdom

John McElligott 37:03

It's never been easier to do amazing things than it is for this moment . Now , give it a couple of years . Whatever we are locked in , we may be locked in indefinitely , like the decisions we make in the next couple of years .

John McElligott 37:14

There are some folks that I tend to have a little bit of a beef with online , where they tend to be like oh , you can mess up in your 20s , don't worry about it for 10 years , you can do this and just start a business in your 30s . That was good advice in 2008 . But we are fundamentally on the verge of a species level event that will determine the future of our species . Like this is not an overestimation . This is the first time we've actually created intelligence like potentially real intelligence .

John McElligott 37:41

So I look at that and , like I said , you can always make more money . You can never make more time , but the only thing more valuable than time is timing , and that's what I like the idea of the reset , like if there was ever a time that you could reset and reimagine yourself and shape the future . The tools are here . You don't have to be a coder . You can access the stuff to mess around with it for free . Like your stocks are getting affected , so you're starting to see how this connects to that , connects to this . It's becoming . It's almost like it's getting ripped out of the future to today , and so that's what I would encourage people is is the most important thing is timing , and right now is this window .

Tonya J. Long 38:19

Beautiful . You made the species comment . A woman that I have had some interactions with networking spoke at Davos and she pitched that we should declare AI a new species and spoke at length about how , in the future , leaders will be managing groups of people , groups of machines and groups of people and machines and talked about how lifestyle will change with this new species being introduced . So your comment is not outlandish .

Tonya J. Long 38:50

A lot of people are thinking about because we interact with domestic pets cats and dogs but we have a framework for interacting with those species , and we're going to need a framework for interacting with the species of machine intelligence that , in a lot of ways , acts and behaves like us . And I think that's going to take wisdom and discernment . You and I have had some interesting conversations since I last saw you , but you've come into some thinking lately around wisdom and a lot of people confuse wisdom with ethics . There are two different things . Can we have that conversation and start by helping our audience understand the difference ?

John McElligott 39:33

Yeah , and just to put a cap on the species conversation , when I said a species changing event , I don't mean just the human species . Ai is helping us understand more about the animal kingdom and the intelligence of octopus . So AI is not just going to change our relationship human to AI . It's going to change our relationship as a species to other species . Are we going to all of a sudden realize that octopus are incredibly smart ? I think I told you I was going to try and build a little robot that I could put an octopus in and see if I can get it to control the robot , and so in my head , AI is showing that there's so many commonalities . And will we be able to communicate with our pets ? Probably Whales . So AI will define the relationship with other species , not just ours . But when it comes to something that you said about specifically around the wisdom , the difference between wisdom and ethics the one thing I've realized very much is I used to be a very I was a move fast , break stuff guy .

John McElligott 40:30

I was very get it done , just plow ahead . And then I started to really realize that in handling big , overwhelming situations , which AI will be like , it will be a big event . It will be this big thing that happens Very often . It's not about how much money you have and it's not about how much power you have . We're going to have amazing amounts of power . It's the wisdom on how we use it , and the difference between the wisdom and an ethics is if you read wisdom literature , regardless of the religion , regardless of the culture , there is a common thread of wisdom . Right Now . The ethics of those communities and cultures may be very different , but for some reason the wisdom seems to connect all over the place . So , as I looked back , there are certain elements that I think we can pull from . There are things , for example , artificial intelligence .

John McElligott 41:21

I often tell people that success in the future is not about the skills that you're going to get . It's going to be about what are you willing to let go of , because we're not the beginning of AI , we're at the end of everything before AI , so that ability to let go part of it is very difficult . Who was really good at that ? The stoics , like the stoics , understood that there were things you could change and things that you cannot , and , quite frankly , for americans especially , and entrepreneurs , that is a very difficult pill to swallow , but if you read back to the stoics , it makes a lot of sense .

John McElligott 41:56

Ai is not this . It's not this thing coming . It makes a lot of sense . Ai is not this . It's not this thing coming . It's a tsunami . It's massive and you can shake your fist as much as you want at the ocean , it's not stopping . So a stoic would look at it and say I cannot stop this , but what do I care about ? I need to build a boat and be willing to know that maybe this wave is going to come in and it's going to wipe my house away , but I can't pick my house up and move it . But I can build a boat that I can put my family in , and so I think there's wisdom on how to handle overwhelming situations . Humanity's been through turmoil and trial before , and we have this bank of wisdom . I just wish our AI it used to be . You were data rich and knowledge poor . Now it's your data rich , knowledge everywhere , wisdom less , and that's the role I think that humans have to play , and that's not something that an AI can scrape the internet , it's just not there .

Tonya J. Long 42:54

But I think you can train . Llms on the great thinkings across all modalities for a broader word , and we can be trained to seek wisdom from the corpus of information available from those writings , because wisdom is something that a lot of people with wisdom for centuries can't help themselves a lot of people with wisdom for centuries can't help themselves .

Tonya J. Long 43:23

They have to write and think . Yes , they do , because we have all the different flavors that , to your point , all still have a common thread about impact , and so I think training ais with wisdom gets into some sticky territory . But I think that we have to because in the very near future , people will be seeking big answers from their AI enablement tools . How would that work in your mind ?

John McElligott 43:53

So that's one of the reasons that I say just having it scrape the internet is not going to be enough , because there's wisdom , literature .

John McElligott 44:00

But if you look at wisdom throughout the ages , it was built , it got wiser and people built on other people and it just kept going and going .

Collective Artificial Wisdom for Future

John McElligott 44:08

One of the most amazing things that I've experienced which is why I'm really excited to hit the road again is very often I might be speaking at an event where there's like a hundred people it's a very small town and someone at the end will go it's a very small town , and someone at the end will go hey , I'm from this and can I use AI to do that ? And they'll say a thing that never would have occurred to me and I'll go wait a minute , why do you want to solve that problem ? And they'll say something to me and I'm like I've never read that online , I've never thought about it , it never crossed my mind and all it required is a little unlocking . Sometimes the wisest people are not the most technologically savvy , but that's okay , because AI can write itself .

Tonya J. Long 44:45

Do you know what I ?

John McElligott 44:46

mean I do . We need to figure out how do we harness the wisdom to have the AI actually serve the individuals . I don't know that it'll be like we tend to talk about who's going to hit AGI in a large language model . Maybe it'll be small language models trained in a very specific type of wisdom to tackle one specific thing , to help a specific group of people , and , like you were talking about how leaders will have to organize an AI to do this and this . Maybe it's going to be us working hand in hand with an AGI that controls lots of these smaller language models that are designed to help different human conditions that have to be trained on specific wisdom . That's where I think the crossover , the ethics , probably comes in right , because we keep thinking of this big LLM and the reality is that's going to be a . It's either going to be a God or a very schizophrenic AI that has to pretend to be different things all the time to different people , which I do not think that is necessarily what people building the AI want to see .

John McElligott 45:43

But I do think that the concept of we get into like universal basic compute , like , should your family own an AI and it's trained on your family , like I've thought about this . I went through a very terrible divorce and , in all honesty , it was my fault . I take responsibility and I think back to moments that you could have said a different thing , or maybe if I'd reacted in a different way , and I think about that as if I could talk to an AI and maybe my kid or my grandkid .

John McElligott 46:09

The AI hears them starting to argue with their spouse and I can hop in , whether I'm there or not , or even alive , to say , say my son's name is Jim , take a breather . Not . Or even alive , to say , say my son's name is Jim , take a breather . And it's my voice , because I've worked with this AI , that I've passed the personal wisdom on . It's not the wisdom of the Stoics , it's the wisdom from my experiences . And all of a sudden , now everybody has an ownership to this AI that is designed to help their family and help their community .

John McElligott 46:37

And maybe you get an argument with your neighbor or someone you don't agree with and you go I can't handle this . And your AI talks to their AI and they go oh listen , this is where Joe is coming from . And you're able to have this real servant that helps you in your humanity , not just replaces your job or makes you more efficient when you show up on a Monday . That's , I think , the world that I strive for and , quite frankly , when robots can do the menial work and knowledge work , there's going to be a value in something else , like to keep capitalism going , value is going to have to shift .

Tonya J. Long 47:10

Absolutely . Do you see a future where we have these customized household AIs and with the monetization that you just mentioned being something we always seek to ? Further how we can earn incomes ? And I want to buy the John McElligot chapter I want to buy . We buy components of people we admire . To plug their thinking into Digital twins is one thing . Those are a lot of fun to think about .

Tonya J. Long 47:38

I've worked with some universities on how do we deploy digital twins of professors , but it's still more transactional . It's more their body of research , their assignments , what their students are working on . It's still it's in the box . And you're talking about how people feel , how people self-govern , how people react , and some people feel very justified in reactions that are considered very hateful by others . So is one right and one wrong ? I think it would be fascinating to consider gosh . I really liked the way Sally handles things . I'm going to plug in her wisdom offering so that I can get feedback that helps me grow and how .

Tonya J. Long 48:22

I execute .

John McElligott 48:23

I think exactly what you're describing is it will be a capabilities , because the AI . Right now we're scraping all of the data that we have and as well as I do . We're hitting a ceiling . Now it's like 50% of the internet's synthetic and it's just going to get more and more . So the only way to break the cycle is we have to find a way to do what you and I are describing , where the AIs begin to learn from humanity and then learn from each other . So then we create this virtuous cycle where our families become stronger , our communities become stronger , we start to understand each other more .

John McElligott 48:53

The AIs are learning from each other , but learning from us and I think that's the real promise that artificial intelligence can bring is the amplification of good . I really think that , because once you solve the basic needs , where people aren't fighting over resources , your family is fed . It's like one of those things where it's hard to care about other people that aren't like you , when you're going paycheck to paycheck , but the minute you can lift your head and go oh , what do I do now ? Quite frankly , helping people's addictive . It feels good to help people .

Tonya J. Long 49:28

And seeing your own improvement is addictive . You and I both invested a lot of time and money in our years in becoming better and having other people tell us what better looks like as a human , as someone who connects with others .

Tonya J. Long 49:44

We've invested in that development . Not everyone's wired to do that and not all the development training we've taken is correct either . But I just want to use a quick example .

Tonya J. Long 49:56

Early in the Gen AI explosion of information , a friend of mine , a neighbor who had moved to Texas , saw that I was doing a lot with AI and said can I get 15 minutes with you just to catch up on this ? And we did . And I wouldn't classify her as an exceptionally technical person at all , but she was talking about how she was dabbling with chat GPT and she had the most beautiful example she was in disagreement with her adult daughter . I'm sure the lines of ethics , morality , all those things is what you argue about with your adult children and it was coming between them . And so she asked chat GPT . So she was arbitrating this like a therapist with chat GPT and she was telling what she thought .

Tonya J. Long 50:43

And then she threw in the curve ball of help me reframe this from the perspective of crucial conversations the really famous book on communications . And it totally reframed how she was coming at this family issue that was dividing the family , yeah , and I thought how brilliant was that . And now it's like secondhand . We do that all the time , but to see someone who normally wouldn't use it to solve a difficult problem within her communication with her family and for her to learn from it I collect these books , but I don't read them and to have it apply to something and we learn from that experience is amazingly powerful , and I don't think that we have , at an enterprise level , captured that capability to really help people just change their lives and their interactions using the best of what the world has to offer . It's this collective artificial wisdom . I think you used that term the last time we talked , uh , to move forward , yeah .

John McElligott 51:48

Yeah , I think part of this is , and I just want to be very clear this is not a woo-wah-wee nonprofit , I'm a non-profit-y kind of guy .

Tonya J. Long 51:58

Nope , not at all .

John McElligott 52:00

I legitimately believe that this will be the future of business . It will be the future of capitalism . Right now , we expect people to do things we say are very important and we say volunteer , which means work for free , and so it changes the nature of work . But I think the one thing I don't ever want to see is a lack of purpose , Because once that gets taken away , the future is going to be very bleak . It could be a very billionaires explore space and edit their jeans and do stuff and the rest of us go home in a little box that was provided by the government and you put on a headset and you're just willing to . That's your reality and you escape to it . I think that's a high possibility . Right now , there's an epidemic of a lot of young men that are staying home into their thirties playing video games , not getting jobs .

John McElligott 52:47

It's not crazy to think that the government may just meet all of our basic needs and then the rest of it is just an escape . That's not the world I want to see , because it's not the future I want to live in .

Tonya J. Long 53:01

So that's probably a good way to wind down our conversation . What is the future that you want to live in ? What does it look like from an AI enablement perspective ?

John McElligott 53:14

Since my big focus is I want to be the person that is , one of the people that helps get people to the future . So I'll tell you what I hope the first phase I was talking about the wagon train like after the wagon train , when we get west , right , this is the world I think will be in transition , and I'll use this story . An engineer of mine , abhishek he doesn't work for us anymore I think will be in transition , and I'll use this story . An engineer of mine , abhishek he doesn't work for us anymore . I think he's at Tesla now , very early on .

Embracing Human Potential in AI

John McElligott 53:42

One of the reasons I started my robotics company was because I saw everyone else starting the robotics companies were how many people can I get ?

Tonya J. Long 53:46

rid of per robot I put in .

John McElligott 53:47

And so I was like I want to start a robot company that puts people first , and my philosophy , I thought , was a sound business philosophy , which is I might lose work in the beginning , but people will want to work with the robot company that puts people first when they realize what robots are going to do . And so I've always kept that in the back of my head . I've always trained my employees on it , and so Abhishek somehow got left at a facility a manufacturing facility . He got left overnight at a facility a manufacturing facility . He got left overnight the next day . He was sleeping in the break room and this big factory worker just stormed in , looked around , saw Abhishek sitting eating his breakfast and started yelling at him and said did you put these robots in ?

John McElligott 54:25

And Abhishek was like I didn't really know what to say , and he was like yeah , I'm one of the engineers . And this guy got furious and he said how would you feel if a robot took your job ? And Abhishek , without missing a beat , said , oh , that would be great , I would just play video games all day . And this made the guy so angry . So I had to come in and talk to this guy because he was getting all the other workers riled up . So he asked me . He said how would you feel ? And I go it all depends on what I care about .

John McElligott 54:50

And I said if you could do anything you wanted all day , what do you love ? I don't say lottery , because when you ask people the question of the lottery , it abstracts them into this crazy world . That isn't what we're describing , right , it takes them away from who they are as a person and makes them a rich person , right , and so it's like a big disconnect . But if you tell people , what would you do all day , do you love ? And he told me I love to fish , and I said , all right , what if for two days a week , you came in and you worked with the robots and and you got paid ? Right , you came in , you got paid , made your job easier , and then for two week days a week , you fish and I pay you to fish .

John McElligott 55:27

And he goes oh , why would you pay me to fish ? And I go there's a catch . You have to teach kids in the city that don't have a dad how to fish and teach them just about life and pass on knowledge . Would you be willing to do that if I paid you ? He goes wait a minute , so I only have to work two days a week , it's going to be easier . And then you're going to pay me to fish and teach kids how to fish . And I'm like , yeah , would you consider that a good life ? And he goes , yeah , but that'll never happen .

John McElligott 55:52

And I'm like one of the two is going to happen because I can tell you you can't stop the robots . So if you want to fight the machines , you will lose . But if you participate and you show that , hey , listen , I'm willing to work in this transition to build a better future . I think we've got a lot of problems that AI and robots won't solve in the short term . I think it's going to take a generation , but if we can be freed up and augmented to do it , that's , I think , how we usher in the age of abundance . I think the future is going to look a lot like it does today , with robots , like it's not going to be the Jetsons and stuff like that , so it's going to I'm all in that for Rosie .

Tonya J. Long 56:29

I want a Rosie .

John McElligott 56:30

It's funny I think we'll have a Rosie . It's funny , especially with industry 4.0 . And I was always asked to come in and talk about the factory of the future and every time you'd see GE put one up . Those aren't the factories of the future . The fact of the future is going to be a factory that looks like it's from 1950s , with old machines that have new robots working beside , humanoid robots working besides people . That's going to be the factory of the future .

John McElligott 56:50

Because the future is happening too fast , we have to find a way to bring it into our days responsibly , Otherwise it will get forced down from the top . To see how excited that factory worker got , who went from being angry to being like , I wouldn't say supportive , but to get him from the level he was at to be willing to sit down and talk to me about that potential future . That's a massive step in the right direction and that's what I'm hoping . We can have these conversations with people and that's why the whole concept of the reset , what you're pushing this is a great opportunity for everybody to think about the future that they want , regardless of whether they're an entrepreneur or yeah , absolutely , I'm going to ask one more question what gives you the most hope about human potential for the future .

John McElligott 57:41

That is enabled by ai I would say honestly don't get me wrong I have a lot of fears . Fears , I think the hope is and this is actually very interesting so I was one of the folks that helped create the world's first artificial intelligence high school art competition . I don't know if I told you about that .

Tonya J. Long 58:03

Yeah , I don't think I knew that one .

John McElligott 58:05

Yeah , it was a couple of years ago in a small town in Greenwood when mid journey first came out and basically we had 20 applicants and I taught them how to use Midjourney and I taught them about natural language processing . The idea was to create their vision of what they want Greenwood's future to look like , and some of them look like a city in the sky , others had robots , some looked like it was from the 1950s and the next day I had a chance to bring in some busloads . A couple of different buses would bring in students and some of the students . They would walk around and they'd ask questions and I would sit them down and explain to them how this technology made these images . And you could see they started to panic a little bit but they made connections very quickly , so much that one who wanted to go to school for graphic design said I guess I shouldn't go to school for graphic design , and I'm like that is an appropriate response to the information I just gave you and you came to that conclusion in five minutes . I had another one who wants to be a marine biologist go , could I use this to talk to whales ? And I'm like there's two startups trying to do that now .

John McElligott 59:04

I think pandemic had to do with this . Before I would have said it would have been the younger generation , but now I think it's everyone . We all went online and so we all plugged into this and using that technology actually wires your brain differently , like it connects things . So the same way with given certain information in a certain framework , you see the impacts of social media . On the positive side of that , it's allowed us to process data much faster , which means , I think , if we do it correctly , you've got to figure out the medium and the language , and that's why I want to travel and spend time with people and empower them to talk to other groups , because , unfortunately , while social media could have united us , it made us more tribal , which means language doesn't make sense anymore .

John McElligott 59:47

But that's the hope that I get is that the internet and narrow AI and AI now has reshaped our brain for being better consumers . I actually think it may have laid the rail , the railroads and the groundwork for us to make us better creators like curators and community builders , I think , and it could happen in a short period if I can do the face-to-face and leverage the technology to reach as many people . And now we're finally at the point where AI can translate your voice in real time to other languages and for the first time , this is possible . So I think the thing that gives me the most hope is , while the technology up to this point ripped certain things down and built new scaffolds , that scaffold can be used for good if we have the right amount of patience and empathy , while at the same time understanding that we can leverage this technology to impact as many people as possible . So I've seen that shift happen in almost real time and that's what gives me the most hope .

Tonya J. Long 1:00:46

Beautiful . I really want to bring you back in a few months when you're on the road , when you've had a couple months seeing these communities , because I think you're going to shift again .

Tonya J. Long 1:00:56

I think you're going to learn more about what is in the heart of people who don't live this , and the ideas and the creativity because that's what I've been struck with in our conversation today is the creativity of the people who don't live this , because they're not constrained by some of the technical channels or the monetization channels that we think about first . They're just thinking about can I talk to whales ? It's that thinking . I want to operationalize your tour , for how do we get all these ideas into a bucket so that we're tracking and monitoring and enabling these people to make these things happen ? So they're more than just a good idea . We've enabled them toward action .

Tonya J. Long 1:01:33

Let's plan to come back together in a few months when you're on the road . I might if you get close enough to the West coast I might even bring Bella out and meet you halfway . Bella is my airstream . I was so excited it was one more thing that we have in common when you told me that you'd bought an RV so you could make this tour , and I think it's brilliant and I need a long haul with mine , so let's go that would be awesome .

Tonya J. Long 1:01:56

Beautiful People no doubt , after listening to this conversation , will want to see your show on PBS . How can they get to that information ?

John McElligott 1:02:06

So it aired in central Pennsylvania . It just got picked up nationally . So , depending on the state , it'll be on your local PBS station . Thank you , yeah , this is apparently a very big deal , so we're not sure which states yet , but we were told that it got accepted for national distribution .

John McElligott 1:02:19

If you don't want to wait you can download the PBS app and find AI Unpacking the Black Box , and all eight episodes are on there right now . If you want to learn more about me , you can follow me on LinkedIn , john McElligott , or if you want to support the tour , you can go to the frontierfuturistcom , and that's where we're building this out . There's people that have already said they want to sponsor , that believe in this . Communities are already stepping up , and it's looking like South Carolina may be my first state , and so I'm really excited , and my big hope is , though , it's just that people realize that . I think the opportunity for everyone to be included , like you said , in the past this sounded frou-frou and it sounded like this utopia world , but I think it's the only path forward , and something like a deep seek showed that all the money in the world and $500 billion announcements , the data centers all of a sudden flipped upside down over a weekend . That should give us the encouragement that the future isn't written , that we can all participate and make a difference .

Tonya J. Long 1:03:17

And it doesn't belong to just the people with really big wallets . I think that is the most misunderstood thing with people who aren't here and seeing it is that you have to be Sam Altman or Larry Allison or Greg Jensen to have a stake in this game .

Tonya J. Long 1:03:33

And , if nothing else , I'm rooting for Deep Seek because they are the little guy . They are the little guy that came in and made a big splash and they weren't trying to go big , they were just trying to go better . Yeah Right , so good . It has been wonderful to spend time with you in this forum and I look forward to doing it again , and I look forward to our community getting more excited along with you , and we'll do some updates from the road .

John McElligott 1:03:59

Tonya , thank you so much for inviting me on this has been a blast .

Tonya J. Long 1:04:02

All right , see you soon Everyone . This has been Reset . Where Purpose Meets Possibility with John McElligot , change is coming from your LinkedIn website . So thanks everyone . Thanks for joining us on Reset . Remember , transformation is a journey , not a destination , so until next time , keep exploring what's possible . I'm Tanya Long and this is home . This is Reset , thank you .