Google Video, AI Call Show, and Adding Value

Welcome to wake up with AI, the podcast where human powered meets AI assisted. Join your hosts, Chris Carillon, Niko Lofakas, and George b Thomas as we dive deep into the world of artificial intelligence. From the latest AI news to cutting edge tools and skill sets, we are here to help business owners, marketers, and everyday individuals unlock their full potential with the power of AI. Let's get started.

Good morning. Happy Wednesday, December 18, 20 24. It's time to build some more AI skills daily with Niko and George. How you fells doing today?

Doing well. Excited. A lot of stuff coming out this week. A lot of launches from a lot of different companies. A lot of features.

Definitely looking forward to this weekend. There's a lot to catch up on. It's only Wednesday.

Frankly, I'm nervous. I have to go out of my house today, which I don't typically do. I have to go do a a half day strategy workshop with a client. So, hopefully, everything doesn't fall apart as far as AI while I'm not at my desk, making sure that I'm paying attention to all the AI things. No.

I'm doing good, Chris. I'm doing good.

How are you doing? Come on, augmentation. Why is it then you won't have to worry about it.

Send my bot to the strategy. Anyway, just

Oh, your bot stays there, I think, and Oh, oh, and I know.

Yeah. See, you've gotta like the outside anyway. I'm just Okay.

That is true. I'm doing good. Doing good. As much as I, might limit otherwise, enjoy the fast pace of change right now because there's lots of things that, lots of value to be realized still. So excited to to dive in.

Niko, what's what's on tap?

Well, this week, I well, I mean, like, obviously, there's the shipments that's going on. There's a couple new features. There was really more in terms of what you can do with the model as opposed to, like, feature release. So while that was happening, sort of behind the scenes I I shouldn't even say behind the scenes, but this week has just turned into, like, everybody should show something off week. And I can only assume that's because, you know, it's the last I think I believe it's the last or the end part end week of shipment, so I'm assuming that Friday is gonna be something big.

I think we all kind of assume that, but we'll see. That being said, there was a really great talk in, like, an open forum little fireside with Sam Altman yesterday for dev day. And that was really interesting only because of the fact that he did finally hit on the fact that he wants an on device and that he's really excited to have, like, an on device version and to see what that is. So I'm hoping that we at least get I mean, even if it's not a release, don't care. Just an announcement of it and what they're looking to do would be awesome.

Right? Because hopefully they have, you know, patents filed and all that kind of stuff so so they have some room to breathe. But outside of all that, there was this release from Google. And if you've been following Google, they've put together this Google Labs which is their little suite of AI toys and they have a Google Wisk which is a sort of like prompt engine for you, image f x which is their image engine, music f x which is their music engine. Now added to the suite of tools is a video f x model.

And I have to say it is very surprising. The quality is is really, really surprising. I really wouldn't expect it. Let's put it that way.

That's interesting to me. I had the immediate other take on this because and then I'll I'll tell you why, then I'll shut up and you can rant on your thoughts there. But when I saw the video, I was like, Google, all the videos in the world to be able to train a video AI on. If there's anything under the sun that Niko can't complain about when it comes to Google, it should be a video AI platform. And so I was like, thank you, Jesus.

We're probably gonna get something that is done right because they have all of the real stuff. Okay. I'll shut up.

You took the words right out of my mouth in that yes. They do. And so realistically, it's not that I'm upset that, you know, Google has the better model. It's awesome. I don't care who has the best model when it comes to what the cool thing is.

I only wanted to say the only reason that this is better than Sora, which kind of speaks to how good Sora is, is that they have a decade or more of training data to use. Right? So while I am happy, again, not so impressed about like it's more like took this long, but same timing as sort of release. So kind of wonder if it was a matter of Google waiting for OpenAI to do it and to see if people would have a negative reaction or if it was a matter of they were gonna do it anyway. Interest.

Kinda wanna see, like, what would go.

But To be a fly alone, understand why people make decisions when they make decisions and do things when they do them. Here's the thing that I'll say. I started to say this in the green room before we hit the record button is I kind of hate this crap. I hate these releases. Right?

Because here's the thing. Like, you go over to Sora, and you see, like, the samurai dude, and you're like, oh my god. This is awesome. You know? Or, like, the mushroom thingy.

Or you come over here to Google, and you're like, oh, flags spaghetti meatballs and, like, you know, cartoon people. And you know that this was hand picked. You know that you coulda generated 75 pieces of, and then all of a sudden, you got, like, 4 or 5. And so what happens? That becomes the stuff that you show on the releases.

And so here's the thing. I just hope it's as good as it looks. You know what I mean?

Well, I mean, we come back to it's as good as the human input at this point.

This is a true fact. This is this is a true fact.

It's not unlike any other marketing, you know, activity we've been a part of. Like, are you are you just taking the first title? You come up without the door. You're asking your team for 10 or 50, you know, to choose from. And I think, again, the iteration of this kind of of content, the the speed to be able to do it and iterate, That's where it's like, don't treat it, like, differently from the rest of the things where you actually look at different opt that's what I love.

Like, when I first a big difference between, like, just going into the chats and doing stuff and using these, you know, applied tools like Sora and Suno. Like, just giving me 2 options right out of the gate from the first prompt was really exciting just to be like, okay. Alrighty. I have I can see a couple different options, and I think that's a good idea to prevent, like, the one shots that are really bad and just somebody's like, okay. This platform is not ready.

Alright. This is not what was advertised. But I think it's been interesting to see Google, and I agree with Jordan on the games. I also agree with Nico on how disappointing they have been so far because before OpenAI, that's all we heard about was Google's building supercomputers and and just this massive compute to handle all this stuff. And then this whole lead out was, we're like, what are what are you doing over there?

Can you just stop worrying about your ad? I know you need to worry about your ad revenue. That's just gonna be destroyed. But if there's a model to be had, it's this one. And so it's good to see that are they not the biggest, you know, data repository of all types of data, like, in the world?

So when if we're saying the same what I said about Amazon when they came out with stuff, like, they had access to all of this stuff, so you'd expect good tools. I mean, that's the thing. Google should be crushing based on that, but I would imagine they're also in a position to be fairly agile and make adjustments quickly, but that's where there's strategy. It's like maybe they're just letting everybody else come out, and now they're gonna, you know, crush with quality, and they've been just fine tuning and no reason to come out first. And yeah.

I'm with you, George. It's like this hype machine will be when it slows down or or takes a different route, will be nice to be kinda refreshed. But that happens, like, days after sometimes too. You know, we've talked about where it's like, okay. Yeah.

It's good to see all the people with the data and the power, really, like, giving us, you know, good tools and and options. I think at the end of the day, like, having these kinds of options, we should all be be grateful for that if we want to leverage these tools to, you know, to help us out.

Yeah. I agree. I mean, that the competition definitely helps push things along. Right? The fact that each one's to be better than the other definitely pushes them to to make more progress as quickly as they can.

And what's interesting to me, and I'll kinda leave it here, is that now I think there is the greatest understanding of sort of the difference between, like, a lot of these these companies. Right? Because Anthropic isn't even like, they don't care. They're not trying to do this. They're not even trying to do a image generation model.

That's their aim and their goal is very, very different compared to everyone else's. And even though OpenAI is on that sort of same path, at the same time, I guess, they kind of feel like they owe a little bit more to that. And I don't I don't know. I don't know where the, mentality on that differs necessarily. I think they do it mainly because it's like, oh, this is a cool offshoot thing that it can do that we didn't really know that it could do.

As opposed to, like, oh, it's something that we're actually gonna spend time developing per se. Because DALL E wasn't even something necessarily that they developed. Sora kind of was. Right? Like an offshoot mixture or something like that.

So, yeah. It's and then Google is just they're playing catch up. They're doing a really great job. And at least at this point, they're doing a really great job. Gemini 2 also have started using it, and it is surprisingly better than Gemini was when it first launched.

So I don't know if it's the if it's comparable to what Gemini Pro was, the the first edition, but it is definitely nicer. Still not using it over quad and over GPT, but definitely using it more resourcefully. So I wasn't even using Google for search. I was using Perplexity. So I'm kinda back to using Gemini for search because you do get a little bit more with no ads.

But, yeah. It's it's still a little little bit of a toss-up. What do you guys think of the notebook l m, by the way? There's also that update. Now you can actually interact with the podcast itself.

So it's almost like advanced voice.

Yeah. That that part to me was trippy where it now becomes almost like a call in show. Like, long time listener, first time caller. I was wondering, could you tell me how the hell you're doing that? Like, first of all, you know I'm a big fan of, like, notebook LM.

I'm like I was like, I'm gonna start a podcast just with AIV, and I'm here whatever. Like but it but it is cool, like, from a learning perspective too. But to have a pro version and then be able to, like, just natively, hey. I hear what you're saying. Could you go deeper into that, or can you tell me about it?

Like, talk about holy learning. Because, by the way, that's so teacher, teacher, I know we're talking about samurais in the, like, whatever century. Why were their suits brown? Like, I don't even know if their suits are brown. Right?

You know what I'm saying? That's human interaction. You're now talking about filling something up with information, it having more information to be able to search through, and you then being able to be like, oh, well, this interest in this thing now led to these 5 other questions, which takes me to a deeper so from just a learning perspective, dude but I'm I'm curious how people are gonna hack like that to be some sort like a call in show of, like, certain information or I I don't know. I don't know. But it's very interesting.

I wish I could remember what the commercial was, but there was a commercial that my wife and I were listening to on the radio, and I'm not even joking. It's only because, like, we use it often. I've I use it when you know, not necessarily on a daily, but, you know, probably every other day just to, again, summarize information. And, you know, I can take a bunch of AI stories that are going on that are in text from different places, throw them in there, and then listen to them while I'm in the shower. It's it's just a really great way of being able to to if you're more of an audio or visual learner, it's a really great way of translating into that.

But we so needless to say, I know the voice. I know the voices. Like, they're they're already, like, memorized. Right? There's not even too many AI voices out there.

I mean, they're like, if you go to 11 Labs, there's plenty of stuff out there, but those are actually human voices.

Right? Or or if you go to, Natural Reader, there's a metric ton of AI voices there. But, yes, in general, to, like, interact with or listen to or create something out of not a ton. Not a ton.

That and, like, do you also find it getting to a point where, like, you understand the flagship voice of that app?

You mean, like, iterations of Bob that happened to be, like, Robert, Dick, whatever, different like, it's a little bit faster and a little bit higher, a little bit slower and a little bit lower. But we know that it was it's almost like the, Jay z, Nicki Minaj thing. You know? No. I'm just kidding.

I'm kidding. I'm not I'm not gonna even throw that out into the world. Yeah. I'm not even throwing that out into the world. But, yes, I I do understand, like, I'm like, that's cute.

That's a variation.

Yeah. We we heard a commercial that was using it. Like, they took the language they would normally use for the commercial, gave it to notebook lm, and used that as as the audio. Yeah, man. It it actually really was.

It was because Laura knows it too. She's heard it enough. And she was just like, yeah. I can tell. Like, that that is actually that thing.

I was like, hey. I mean, that's that's kind of part of what it's supposed to be used for.

But and here's the thing. Like, for all of you people out there making 1,000,000 of dollars on Fiverr, Voice overs anymore? What? If you don't have 27 different AI voices to just plug the script into and enhance and tweak a little bit, like, you could be pumping out some dollars. I'm I know I'm moving away from Google LM and the fact that there's that voice in a commercial, but but, like, again, everything's changing.

Your your industry is getting like, you know when here's here's my brain. You're breaking my brain. When if I'm if I'm a voice over talent, I'm giving them a big f word if I hear that on the radio. You know? I'm like, hire a human.

Like but or I can be the human that has, like, a plethora of voice talent that isn't even, there I say it, human. Like

It's an interesting thing that you brought that up because me and Chris were talking about this this past weekend. Specifically, we were talking about, you know, what it looks like, you know, the whole job replacement thing or transition and all that kind of thing. And I was talking to my brother about it the next morning. And the the idea holds really well to me that, yes, we're gonna have, like, a lot of assistance. Sam talked about this yesterday, too.

He talked about the fact that it should be the case that by 2030, we look back at today and have the mindset and have the attitude of, gosh, I can't believe we were actually working that hard. We could have just, like, had a lot of assistance and focus on other things that were not nearly as, like, physically difficult as mentally tasking this, that, or the other thing. Right? And we were me and Chris were talking about the fact that it works Because even though you have all this extra help, even though you have all this extra stuff, at the same time, maybe I, like, I still understand the importance of driving that that truck of groceries from Cali all the way out to wherever. And I wanna do it.

I wanna do it because I know that it helps that person. Right? Or if I were to wake up tomorrow, I want to go somewhere, be somewhere that I can teach people, that I can help people learn how to do stuff. Like, I I would love to do that or be somewhere where I can, you know, philosophize with people and talk to people about what might come in the future and what we're doing. Yeah.

Not everybody gets to do that. But if everybody were doing what they really love to do, things would still, oddly enough, things would still kind of be they would still be the same way. You know?

Yeah. And, like, this is where the assistance thing you know, sometimes, I'll say things like, I'm happy to have AI come and solve this problem for us. Right? It's not in a negative context as much as it's just an observation of we have not solved this problem yet. It doesn't appear like we're going to solve the problem, and it's because of all the humans involved that we're not going to solve the problem.

And inside of organizations and this is where you just look at industries. It and you look at the Fortune 500 versus everybody else. You look at all these books that get written about best practices and how to grow and how to scale, and then you're in these really, like, successful organizations that cannot transition into that mode. And the leaders that don't understand, like, if they're spending their time in their email inbox and in their calendar and in all these things, when they could be adding value at a rate of, like, let's say, $1,000 per hour, like, to their organization, and they're doing $10 an hour, $20 an hour, like, work, yet they will not get on board with executive assistants and things like that. Meanwhile, you look at the most some of the most successful people, and they have these things figured out.

Like, one of the most powerful books I read was 80 20 sales and marketing, and it it described that about how the levels of $10 an hour, $50 an hour, $100 an hour, $500 an hour. If you have the expertise and you're in your position to provide that, you know, $500 value an hour and you're spending time not adding that value, like, that's why your organization can't can't compete at the highest level. That's why you're not transitioning. And that was just an example that came to mind as far as, like, when we talk about having this thing in our pockets, having agentic activity all around us, that gets solved. You can't avoid it.

Like, you you're gonna get to a point where it's gonna actually be hard for you to, like, schedule things on your own probably. Oh my god. It's like, no. I like this tool. Now that it's in here, I, like, I don't have control over my calendar, which I shouldn't have control over my calendar anyways because I constantly schedule over shit, and I don't leave spaces.

And, like, all the other human things that have made me not good at calendar management. Yeah. Handle that for me.

Yeah. I gotta say one of the things that I love the most about the fireside, yes, at that day was that even Sam said 2 things. 1, scaling laws are not. Like, there's no wall type deal. Right?

Because and maybe I put something together. I kinda wanna get get your guys' feedback on this. So one that, like, there's really no thing to scaling because of the fact that scaling to him or at least them internally really does mean just, like, more, better, stronger. It doesn't necessarily mean, like, buy only this thing. So, like, it's not just locked down to compute.

It's not just locked down to amount of data or the parameters. What he was talking about, like, was how the the the blend and how the the line between what we have now in AGI, like, how thin that's getting. And when I stopped to think about it and I don't know if this is true. Again, I I could be just saying the most idiotic thing possible. But when I stop to think about it, to me, it kinda feels like the difference between what we have now and AGI to be very much the same as the difference between whatever the last primate was that then transitioned into, like, sort of Lucy esque, like, human mode that, like, started, hey, I can take this rock and smash this thing open.

Right? Or take this stick and fend off this wolf. Right? Create a spear. Kinda seems like that because it's like prior to that, you have an understanding of your environment, but very little.

You can't build tools. You don't quite know how to, like, go beyond your basic mode of survival. Whereas after that, you start learning really rapidly, and you start putting things together, and you start, you know, building onto it. So that's that's my take on it. What do you but it was just a passing thought.

I I kinda wanna know what you guys think.

Chris, what are your thoughts?

I don't know much about that transition, but in general, the difference between humans and everybody else is related to our brainpower and the things we can do in terms of rational thought and and future thought, future planning probably just comes down to reasoning. The thing that we've been thinking about, and and I would imagine that was a transition that might have been that transition. I don't know exactly. But just being able to interact with the environment in an independent, meaningful way, I'm sure, is one way to describe that transition, and that's kind of what we're waiting for AGI, you know, to be able to do. So I think that makes sense.

But, also, like, it would be interesting to see, like, could people tell between Lucy and the other person, like, if you were one of those animals walking around? Like, oh, this is this is different. This person knows what they're doing. Probably not, I would say, right out of the gate. And that's where I come back to, like, the difference right now.

It's fun to talk about in theory, but, you know, for most people, we might as well already be there, like, based on the stuff that we can do now that we have never been able to even fathom.

I don't know. Like, I I feel like we're in this weird time of flux. I think a lot will change, and I think a lot will stay the same. That's such a marketing answer, but that's my answer.

I was gonna say that's just that's so right down the middle.

I mean, look. What I hope everybody realizes, and I'm even trying to understand and lean into this, is that there's no other time in my life that I have felt like I'm walking on a balance beam. And on one side of the balance beam is nice soft cushy clouds. And on the other side of the balance beam is hot molten lava. And depending upon the decisions that I make as I'm walking down this balance beam, determine on what side I end up falling into pertaining to AI and what AI can do and what will happen.

The only thing is it's not just me walking this balance beam. It's the entire effing planet of humans walking the balance beam. There's a little more of a take on

it. Yeah. That is a take for sure. And I think it's important to have these conversations as much as we want. I've been relistening a couple times to the song of significance from Seth Godin, and, like, I just went through the part where it's like this.

He wants to change the phrase soft skills into real skills. And, like, everything is focused on hard skills and all the interview processes. Can you do this? Do you know how to do this? And then we, like, automatically play down all human skills that are needed by calling them soft skills.

Like, all of these tools can help you do something in at almost any level, in any walk of life to help you with something you were able to do before effectively. It just matters a lot less when you don't have the right mindset, and we hope that conversations like this can help you get into the right mindset or understand what a good mindset might be for you if you've been struggling to kind of understand your place, if you feel like you're also on that that balance beam. You know, I think that's as important of skill as any to learn, you know, talk about growth mindset all the time. If you've had trouble getting there and you maybe don't adhere to the the flexible brain stuff and, like, I was, you know, born to do this thing and now you have the best collaborator, the best assistant ever that can help you realize some of those things. I will say that everybody has the capability to get into the growth mindset.

It's the beautiful thing about the the human brain. But, obviously, we could I could keep rambling about this all day long. Again, same message. Like, get in there. Start using this stuff.

It's so easy. I think that's the difference I see between, like, Sam when I hear him talk in OpenAI. Like, it's clearly, like, get this stuff in the hands as many of as many people as possible in the way that they can use it. That's why it's like, yeah. Let's do all the video, all the image, all the text.

Like like, no disability will be turned away. Like, let's figure it out, and let's build AI skills daily. Have a great day, everybody.

That's a wrap for this episode of wake up with AI. We hope that you feel a little more inspired, a little more inspired, a little more informed, and a whole lot more excited about how AI can augment your life and business. Always remember that this journey is just the beginning and that we are right here with you every step of the way. If you love today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review. You can also connect with us on social media to stay updated with all things AI.

Until next time. Stay curious, stay empowered, and wake up with AI.