Futuristic

Cameron Reilly
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  • TECH NEWS
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Each episode we look at the emerging technologies that are going to change our lives (ChatGPT, Claude, Tesla, other AI tools, robotics, nanotech) and try to work out the social, business and political consequences and opportunities.

Episodes

  1. 01/11/2025

    Futuristic #46 – 2022 vs 2025 vs 2028

    In this episode of Futuristic, Cameron and Steve reunite after a three-month break to reflect on how far artificial intelligence and robotics have come since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. They chart the wild rise from OpenAI’s first conversational model to today’s trillion-dollar valuations, integrated browsers, agentic coding tools, and the dawn of humanoid robots. Along the way they weigh the “bubble” narrative, the myth of a job apocalypse, and the cultural impact of AI on everything from creativity to capitalism. The conversation pivots from nostalgia for the early internet to speculation about the next three years—when everyone, they predict, will be working with personal AI agents and, perhaps, living alongside household robots. The banter swings between philosophy, tech history, humour, and a few pulled hamstrings. FULL TRANSCRIPT Futuristic recording – Oct 30, 2025 Cameron: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Futuristic Podcast, episode 46. It is the 31st of October, 2025. The first time I’ve seen your face on a screen except on TikTok, Steve Sammartino. Since August 4th was the last time you and I did an episode, I did one with my old friend, Nick Johnson, principal of Toowoomba Ankin School on August 23. But we have not done a podcast for nearly three months, Steve. Not because there’s been nothing happening, just because there’s too much happening, and you’ve been too busy. Steve: Sounds so needy. I apologize wholeheartedly, Cameron. And, uh, the fact that you didn’t delete my phone from your contacts Cameron: No Steve: is revelatory, and I like it. It’s good. You’re a good man. And Cameron: revelatory. Steve: it and I missed it. Our chats because [00:01:00] every time I chat to you I get a little bit smarter. So I’ve been in Cameron: Same, same. Steve: and I’m glad we are going to, uh, unpack. Cameron: I’ve got less hair than the last time we talked. Not because it’s falling out, but just because it’s hard to tell with, there’s glare coming through my window. But, um, I am, uh, Sean Light so bright. Steve: And I just asked, when did you go gray? ’cause you got a really good gray mop there. When did it, were you one of Cameron: Well, I’m, yeah, I, I started going gray at 23. I’m white. I’ve been white for a lot longer than I’ve been gray, but Yeah. Steve: Blonde is area part of the Aryan Nation, Cameron: Or as the Mormons like to say white and delight them. If you wanna get into heaven, you need to be white and delight them. Steve: Do you? Cameron: Hmm. Steve: me. All right. Cameron: Steve? Um. In terms of what to talk about today. There’s been a lot of news in the last [00:02:00] three months and too much to catch up on, obviously, and I thought singers were coming up to the third anniversary of chat, GPT, which hit the world in November of 2022. It might be a good time to stop and reflect where have we come from, where are we today, and where do you think we might be three years from now? What do you think about that as a model, Steve? Steve: Perfect. It is the perfect time for a review. Three years. Things work in threes. It is the perfect time to review it because it’s been a pretty radical three years and maybe in some ways we’re in the [00:03:00] trough of disillusionment now. A lot of people are starting to ask questions. The bubble word comes up, which comes up with every technology revolution. And bubbles aren’t bad anyway. If a bubble bursts, the beneficiaries are usually the people because there’s been an excessive investment in capital and that can benefit all of us because the infrastructure gets built out and they overinvested and we need that. It happened with broadband cables and early internet and, and now it’s, it’s happening again potentially. And that’s good ’cause you want overinvestment because the beneficiaries are usually the wider populace when it comes to and technology Revolutions. Cameron: Yes. Look, there’s obviously a ton of investment, Steve: Mm. Cameron: ton of hype going into all things AI and robotics we’re to, [00:04:00] NVIDIA’s just became a $5 trillion company open. AI is suggesting they might IPO at a trillion dollar valuation. I mean, it is, uh, like bonkers stuff, absolutely bonkers. But I thought I would start this by pulling up the blog post that OpenAI put out in November, 2002. It was November 30th, so we’re about a month away from the five year anniversary. It was pretty simple. It said, we’ve trained a model called Chat, GPT, which interacts in a conversational way. The dialogue format makes it possible for chat GPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests. Chat GPT is a sibling model to instruct GPT, which is trained to follow an instruction in a prompt and provide a detailed response. We are excited [00:05:00] to introduce chat GPT to get users feedback and learn about its strengths and weaknesses during the research preview usage of chat. GPT is free. Try it now@chatgt.com. Then there were some samples of ways to use it. Limitations Chachi PT sometimes write plausible sounding, but incorrect or nonsensical answers. Well, I’m glad they fixed that. Uh, but. These were simpler times in November, 2022. Do you remember when you first heard about it and when you first used it? Steve: I was actually using GPT, uh, the, the model before, it might’ve been a 2.5 or a three, uh, through one of the APIs. ’cause the APIs were released earlier. wasn’t Grammarly. I’m trying to remember the name of it now. And it was, and it blew my mind the first time I saw it. Uh, when I went on to Chacha, bt I do remember it [00:06:00] being a super revolution, and we can remind listeners that they had a hundred million users in the first month, fastest adopted consumer product in history. also they’ve got 983 million monthly users now, which is pretty radical. You know, maybe one quarter of the internet. And a, Cameron: Wow. Steve: of people don’t have, call it unlimited data like we have in western markets. So you’d pretty much say if you’re in a Western market, you’re on it. Uh, it’s decimated search. I, I did say a statistic, which blew my mind on search. Now, if you’re a first page search on Google, first page search item, traffic is down. Reportedly just came out, uh, yesterday, 79%. And that’s two reasons. The first one is the AI dropped down summaries that happens in Google, which to their credit, they’ve adopted the reality of where they are. Unlike Kodak and said, look, people are going this way. We just have to adopt it and work out the business model later. [00:07:00] But also, I know that I use chat GBT 80% of the time when I once would use search. And I simply ask it for the live feeds of, tell me where you got it from, what happened today. And you know, those small prompts to make sure the data you’re getting isn’t just a hi historical construct. And it, it really has changed the way we use the internet fundamentally. And even though the last, I think the last maybe. Three or six months. A lot’s been happening, but nothing fundamental. I would say easy to forget how far we’ve come in those three years because the first version of chat, GBT when it was launched in, in November of 2022, remember that was an 18 month old database, and then it was six months old, and then now it’s live. It didn’t have code bases, didn’t have Dali, didn’t have image recognition, didn’t have video. It’s easy to forget that [00:08:00] it isn’t just chat GBT. It’s actually been really dramatic and we’ve almost been spoiled by the fact that every iteration, most of them, for 80% of that time in the past three years has been incredible and wowing. And maybe in the last few months, because we haven’t been wowed with the most recent iteration of Cha JBT, then all of a sudden, oh, bubble Bubble came out. Cameron: I’ve got an article here from the 5th of December, 2022 New York Times by Kevin Ros. He says, like most nerds who read science fiction, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering how society will greet true artificial intelligence. If and when it arrives, will we panic start sucking up to our new robot overlords, ignore it, and go about our daily lives? So it’s been fascinating to watch the Twitter sphere try to make sense of chat, GPTA new cutting edge AI chat bot that was open for testing this week. Chat GPT is quite simply the best artificial intelligence chat bot ever released to the [00:09:00] general public. It was built by open ai, the San Francisco AI company that is also responsible for tools like GPT-3 and Dali two, the breakthrough image generator that came out this year. Um, goes on to say that, uh, AI chatbots are usually terrible, but chat GPT feels different, smarter, weirder, more flexible. It can write jokes, some of which are actually funny, working computer code and college level essays. It can also guess at medical diagnosis, create text-based Harry Potter games and explain scientific concepts at multiple levels of difficulty. And, uh, you know, I always like to go back and read news articles from the early days of the internet, 93, 94, 95, and see how people were talking about it. Um, he finishes this article though by saying. Personally, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that chat, GPTA chat bot that some people think could make Google obsolete and that has already been compared to the iPhone in [00:10:00] terms of its potential impact on society isn’t even open AI’s best A

    1h 16m

  2. 23/08/2025

    Futuristic #45 – Will AI Kill School as We Know It?

    In this episode of **Futuristic**, Cameron is joined by his old friend **Nick Johnstone**, Principal of Toowoomba Anglican School, to explore how **AI is reshaping the future of education**. They dive into the role of schools in a world where every student might have access to unlimited knowledge in their pocket, how teachers’ responsibilities may shift toward mentorship and motivation, and whether schools are even necessary when AI tutors can personalize learning better than any human. The conversation ranges from the challenges of managing devices in classrooms, to what employment might look like in a post-AI economy, to whether robots might one day replace teachers. Along the way, they touch on the social role of schools, legislative drag, the fate of universities, and even sneak in a nostalgic chat about Alice Cooper. FULL TRANSCRIPT   Cameron: [00:00:00] welcome back to the Futuristic, uh, I’m doing this today. My name is Cameron Reilly. For new people doing this without my usual partner in crime, Steve Sammartino, because he’s off doing a keynote somewhere, said he couldn’t make it as is his usual want. But, uh, I’m being joined instead today by an even older friend of mine than Steve. I’ve known Steve 20 years. Nick and I go back 30. Five years, probably. How old are we? 55, 83. Nick Johnstone, principal of Toowoomba Anglican School. Uh, recently crowned, uh, the principal of Toowoomba Anglican School. Previously principal of other schools, but yeah, Nick and I go back to grade eight. In Bundaberg and, uh, I, I, I invited [00:01:00] Nick to come on. I sent him an article I wrote recently on some of my thoughts and prognostications about the future of schooling and education in a world of ai. And Nick gave me some great feedback and I said, come on and let’s chat about it. One of the things, welcome Nick, by the way, welcome to the show. As people can tell, I took all of Nick’s hair over the years and, um. Nick Johnstone: at some, at some point we had equal hair, but that didn’t last for very long. Cameron: No, it didn’t last very long as I recall. Um, one of the things, I’m gonna blow some smoke up, um, your backside for a bit. One of the things I’ve always liked about Nick is, uh, you know, Nick and I, uh, you know, science tech guys always have been, and Alice Cooper, uh, science Tech, Alice Cooper. The Beastie Boys, you know, um, bit of Van Halen. Uh, Nick and I used to, I remember, uh, when David Lee Roth came out with, uh, Yankee Rose, you and I dancing at the school, [00:02:00] discos along to that, trying out testing out our high kicks. How’s your high kick going these days? It’s good. You’re staying limber. Nick Johnstone: in the Hemi. Cameron: Good. Yeah. Yeah. Um, no, in all seriousness, Nick, um. In terms of a, a principle I know is very pro technology and it’s, you know, I know you work in sort of the, the, the private school religious sector yet have remained pro tech on the front foot, very, um, on the very aggressive in terms of figuring out how to integrate. New technologies. So it makes you the perfect person to come on and talk about this. Um, before I hit you with a barrage of questions though, Nick, um, why don’t we start by, I’ll ask you to give the audience your. Current application of [00:03:00] technologies in your schools? Like what, what are you doing today? We can talk about the future in a minute, but let’s talk about how you approach technology in your school today. What, what your attitudes are. Nick Johnstone: sure. Um, I guess that, um, I, I, I’ll take a slice maybe the last five years. ’cause I think probably going back further than that doesn’t have, um. translatable ability into the future. But in the, in the last five years, um, I see the opportunities of technology in education being transformative, I’ll use that term. I know it’s a fairly large in the context of to today’s society, but, so in my immediate last school, Bishop Drew College, where I was, uh, head there for, uh, almost seven and a half years. Uh, our aim was to go from a relatively traditional. of education. So we didn’t have a learning management system in the school. Um, we had, um, [00:04:00] a relatively recent, uh, laptop program, but we wanted to create more than that. We wanted to create opportunities for kids to work in the online environment, um, but also in the asynchronous environment as well as the synchronous environment. we set up, um, uh. A system where the kids basically could have access to the class content. There was tutorials built into those, uh, processes as well. Uh, that was the first part of it. The second part of it was we wanted to amplify that. we actually established an online school, uh, that’s called Horizons, uh, and in the first instance it was set up so that it could create greater flexibility for students within our current. structures. So for example, instead of running a class before school hours or after school hours, we would give greater flexibility in the line structure of a school. So basically a student could have a spare, [00:05:00] but in that spare they would do another online subject that was run by our school. Um, with the plan of testing that through a, you know, um, better testing, lots of feedback from students and staff and parents to then, uh. Expand that model to externals. Uh, so that’s the process that’s occurring at the moment in that school. Um, I’ve changed schools in the last 15 weeks and I’m at Toowoomba Anglican School. Uh, and this school is at the start of, um, a similar journey in the fact that, um. They need a, uh, uh, a transformative learning management system that allows the students to have better access both, um, in class environments, but also giving them the flexibility of the day that they currently don’t have. I mean, we have a lot of partners, you know, um, external consultants and teachers coming in. The kids go out to TAFE and a variety of other programs for certificate. Pathways. We have relationships with the universities and those sort sorts of things as well, but we didn’t have a lot of those online [00:06:00] opportunities. Um, so that’s sort of the, the journey we’re on at, at in this school. But Cameron: And you’re a K to, you’re a K to 12, Nick Johnstone: yeah, we’ve got three year olds to 18 year olds. of Cameron: right? Nick Johnstone: at have had early years through to year 12. So, um, in fact my entire career has been. in K 12 environments. Cameron: Right. And, and your attitude towards, uh, devices and the internet in your schools, how, how do you approach that? Usually, I. Nick Johnstone: Yeah, it’s, it’s been an interesting one ’cause there’s been that sort of, uh, push back and forth on that. Um, I, I would say I, I’m pro devices. But I’m probably not pro phones in the adolescent context in school. I, I haven’t always been that way. Cam, I’ve gotta say, in fact, I remember speaking at a senior year’s, conference at University Queensland for probably [00:07:00] 13 or 14 years ago when mobile phones were first sort of a thing, is being able to use the, um, the inner science context, you know, all, all of our phones, you know. Have accelerometers and et cetera in them. And how can we use that to, not just, um, the communication style of education, but also, you know, can we use it in physics? Can we use it in biology? Can we use it in other, in other contexts of, uh, of, of maths and science in particular. Um, and, but I’ve, I’ve stood back from that now because of the distraction factor of a lot of mobile phones in class. I’m not one. That, you know, does the whole, um, uh, put ’em in a pouch, put ’em in a locker, never be seen again. Scenario, uh, we live in, um, modern world. But, um, the flip side of that is it’s all about teaching kids the responsibilities of having a computer in their pocket. Um, Cameron: Hmm. Nick Johnstone: And, and that when we all live in this [00:08:00] world, we can’t pretend that it’s not, it’s not reality. But I also subscribe to a fair bit of what a, what Jonathan Holt talks about in his work about just making sure the kids are appropriately ready for technology. Um, and there’s, I’m gonna say security and oversight without much restriction. I know, and that’s a spectrum there. I know. But, Cameron: Hmm. Nick Johnstone: that’s pretty much how I’ve, how I feel now and. I haven’t felt Al always felt that way. Cameron: I can imagine it’s really difficult as it’s difficult being a parent. You know, your kids are older than Fox. You know, you, I’ve got adult kids. You’ve got adult kids. Fox is 11, so he’s in that. Phase where he’s always on a device and you know, it’s difficult being a parent, a ProTech parent. Like, I want you to have devices, I want you to have technology. But at the same time, I know that it’s an absolute, you know, massive landmine and distraction and comes with a whole bunch of problems. [00:09:00] And then you’ve got a thousand kids to have to worry about how you manage that. So I imagine it’s a, an order of magnitude more difficult. Nick Johnstone: perspective. Um, I didn’t. Jump into the mobile phones for my children until they were 15. and that was Cameron: Yeah. Right. Nick Johnstone: a decision that we made as parents, rightly or wrongly. That was just a decision that we made in the context of our family at that time. Having said that, both of my sons used technology exclusively in their careers. You know, my youngest is a recording artist based in Londo

    1 hr

  3. 04/08/2025

    Futuristic #44 – AI Agents, Robots and Car Sales

    In episode 44 of Futuristic, Cameron and Steve dive into the dawn of the embodiment era of AI. Steve reveals he’s purchased a $16,000 humanoid robot — the K-Bot — to be delivered in December, marking his entry into the personal robotics revolution. The conversation expands into the future of open-source robotics, the potential for a robot skill-sharing app economy, and the economic implications of humanoid automation. Cameron shares his experiment with OpenAI’s new GPT Agents and explains where they fall short. They also explore a future where AI personal assistants act as b******t detectors during major purchases like buying a car. Finally, Cameron reads an NPR-style retrospective on IBM’s Watson, drawing a direct line from symbolic AI to today’s LLMs and speculating on a future hybrid model. Also – Cameron launches his AI consulting business, Intelletto.  FULL TRANSCRIPT   Cameron: [00:00:00] Okay, go. Gimme your intro. Steve: Steve. Austin. You gonna to say, gimme an intro again? Wait a minute. wait a Cameron: intro. Steve: Okay, I’ve got it. You ready? Cameron: Yeah. Steve: We Cameron: Give it to me, Steve. Steve: Oh, we have the technology. Steve Austin. A $6 million man who is better than every human in every way. In 1975, $6 million was required to build a humanoid robot who was the future. Now it barely gets you a wooden house with two bedrooms in a city in Australia. We’ve had a great reversal. First a humanoid was 6 million. Now it’s a house. Things are back to front. If you think you can predict the future technology sociology, then fucking think again. Welcome to the futuristic.[00:01:00] Cameron: This is, uh, the futuristic episode 44, recording this on the 4th of August, 2025, pre GPT five, the days before GPT five, which we’re expecting to hit any day now, but there’s been a big few weeks since we last talked on the show. Steve, you and I have talked off the show off air, but on air it’s been a while. Steve: private Cameron: What’s, yeah. Tell me you’ve got big news, Steve. Tell me your big news. Let’s, let’s start with that. Steve: I. robot. It wasn’t a $6 million, man, Cameron. It was a $16,000 humanoid. Sexless as far as I know, but I could be surprised when it arrives. We don’t know if it’s gonna have genitalia. We don’t know. But I bought myself a k Bott [00:02:00] which is going to be delivered in December now. Hey, still waiting on, uh, Elon’s Robo Taxis while they’re there now, so we don’t know, but, uh, it’s your first personal robot, open source, full stack in your hands. they’ve actually just, uh, got their second batch now. They’re 11,000. Mine was 16,000 with a few upgrades. It was $18,500 deposit. Tom my co-founder at Macro 3D, we want to code it to do trades work. Uh, that’s the main thing. And also mow the lawns and do the dishes and fold the washing. So. The robotics revolution, I call it the embodiment era of AI is upon us. Wow. We, Cameron: Wow. And you’re gonna take it on the road with you, get it up on stage, Steve: I want Cameron: do a bit of a Abbott and Costello routine. Steve: would really love to do [00:03:00] that. I put on LinkedIn a picture of me taking it through the airport and sitting next to me on a plane and lying down and going through the, uh, metal detector. They’re gonna detect a lot of metal in there. I dunno if that’ll wipe its memory or what’ll happen or whether it’ll glitch out, it’ll be interesting. And I think they are coming. Uni tree also announced a, Cameron: to buy a seat. Steve: well, I Cameron: Do you have to buy a seat for it on a plane, or do you put it in cargo? Steve: well, you wouldn’t be able to put in cargo because of the lithium ion batteries. So imagine you’re gonna have to Cameron: Hmm Steve: Otherwise, that’d be Cameron: hmm. Steve: we don’t want that. Cameron: That’ll be I, I can’t wait to see that you’re the first person in Australia to have a robot sitting beside you in first class. Steve: First class. Okay. Cameron: Come on. Surely you only travel first class. You’re Steve Santino, Australia’s leading futurist. Steve: I, I, Cameron: is too good Steve: travel business [00:04:00] occasionally. It just depends on the client really, to be honest with you. Cameron: on the gig. Hmm. Steve: occasional upgrade. Cameron: so let’s, um, talk about this in more detail. So you say it’s open source. What is open source? The software or the hardware or both? Steve: I think both. Uh, again, this remains to be seen, but you can, it comes, it’s standard fittings and capabilities, but you Cameron: Shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t, you know, be before you bought it, what you’re actually getting. Steve: world works is that you just buy things first and you cross your fingers and they make promises they often don’t keep, whether it’s autonomous vehicles or you know, any other elements, but it’s codeable and you can teach it things and you can also teach it through code, but you can also do it verbally and visually, uh, which is gonna be the killer app on robots. I mean, one of the things that I really hope for is an open source movement within robotics. [00:05:00] Uh, we don’t wanna have closed source. You need to be able to train it in your way and maybe even the skills that you’ve trained your robot. I think that’s a great idea. might be the best car washer or the best on a work site or the best. Warehouse worker. I think that’s really important to get an extension of our skills based on what we teach it. You could have the Stevie skill that, uh, for gardening goes around the world. I, I just downloaded the, the Stevie Gardening, uh, app for my humanoid robot and it’s the best one. And we might get like a whole new app economy where human skills, which are incredibly varied, across all the gamut of things that we do physically, that I think that’s a really big opportunity. But it can only happen in an open source world. Cameron: I think that seems to be the model that Jensen Huang at Nvidia is pushing them into is to make the software free and open source, [00:06:00] uh, because he wants to sell the chip set that runs the robots. So I. I do think that will be one of the models that’s out there. There might be some that are closed and some that are open. Uh, well that’s very exciting, Steve. That’s, uh, that’s really huge. Do you know of anyone else in Australia that has a humanoid robot? Steve: seen a few out with gigs, but all of them seem to be pre-programmed. I’ve seen quite a few of the Boston Dynamics ones, the dogs and the Atlas, to do certain things. Uh, uni Tree just launched a new one, which looks absolutely incredible. It was under 20,000 as well, which is very aligned with Jensen Huang. two years ago we spoke about him saying, by the end of this decade, they’ll cost less than a small car and we’ll all have them. That seems to be very on track. capability, we don’t know we don’t Cameron: Uni tree are a Chinese operation, aren’t they? Steve: Kbo is Which, which, Cameron: yeah. Steve: is, is [00:07:00] rare and good. I Cameron: Hmm. Steve: have Cameron: it. Steve: countries, well, I think you wanna have as many countries as possible with this capability. I think, Cameron: Right. Steve: no, this is not a Cameron: So, Steve: It’s just you want as many as possible. Cameron: right. Yes. That’ll be the two main countries producing them, I imagine. Uh, be interesting to see how it plays out in the tariff wars. Steve: That’s Cameron: Two, getting a robot from China versus a robot from the us. Steve: And, and, Cameron: Well, Steve: yeah, I, I think that Trump, for other reasons is tapped into something that’s gonna happen, which deglobalization and reshoring and onshoring, all of, all of my clients are talking about securing up their supply chain to Nearshore and Reshore, with the ability of AR and robotics, not just those that we’re making, but then those ones that we make can actually help production locally as well. Cameron: hmm. But China’s gonna be the dominant manufacturer [00:08:00] of humanoid robots. I imagine. So. Uh, Steve: it’s not because they’re more capable. I think it’s because America and other Western markets have systematically eroded their own supply chain of all the, I’m gonna call it bits and bobs that went into cars and washing machines and all of that stuff where they no longer have it. And it’s not that we don’t have the capability to design and make them work, it’s that we don’t have all of the small pieces that go into any form of machinery in our local markets like we did in the seventies and the eighties. Cameron: I think China is making a massive commitment to leading the world and AI and robotics, though at a governmental level, they’re gonna think everything behind it and I don’t think the US is gonna be able to compete, quite frankly. But we’ll see how it plays out. Well. I don’t, I haven’t bought a robot, Steve, but I did do my first experiment with chat [00:09:00] GPTs, new agent that came out a few weeks ago. Now, at the end of last year when we predicted what the big story for 2025 would be, we both said AI agents would be the big thing. Didn’t make us that original. Everyone in the industry was predicting that. But I did get my Chachi PT agent, uh, up and running and did a project, which I’ve tried to code over the last year or so, several times unsuccessfully. And this was a, uh, a project involved with my investing podcast,

    1h 7m

  4. 04/07/2025

    Futuristic #43 – The Lemming Race to Superintelligence

    In this fast-paced episode of Futuristic, Cameron and Steve dig into a wild week in AI and tech. Cam shares how he stunned futurist Peter Ellyard by using ChatGPT to generate a bold, original idea called “The Other Year” – a radical, identity-swapping sabbatical for all Australian adults. Steve loves it, but the discussion spins off into a brutal critique of political cowardice, economic inequality, AI translation workflows, and the geopolitics of the AI arms race. From Neuralink trials to Honda’s reusable rockets, from AI-generated music to legal rulings on copyright, this one covers everything. Is AI stealing jobs or creating new ones? Are we on the edge of a superintelligent revolution—or just in a corporate lemming race off a cliff? FULL TRANSCRIPT Audio of FUT 43  [00:00:00] Cameron: Sure. My other, yeah. Uh, welcome back to the Futuristic episode 43. According to my notes, Steve Samino my, um, AI transcription engine in Descrip. Never, never likes having to work with your name after all these months and years of doing it. It’s likes So what? Summer Chi Chico, what Never gets it Right. Doesn’t get my name right either. So don’t feel bad. Steve: Look bias. Ai, ai, Italian racism is what we are hearing here. And I just wanna point that out, Cameron: Systemic. Steve: it’s systemic. Cameron: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steve: the mob got us and now the technocratic mob, they’re after us Again, Cameron: What’s the Italian version of anti-Semitic? Is it anti [00:01:00] tic and. Steve: I don’t like logs. It’s, Cameron: Any wog. I called you a wog on the last episode. Steve: for it. We don’t, we don’t, we don’t like your type around here. Cameron: Well, it’s been a crazy week, Steve, um, in AI and tech and all of that. It’s just so crazy. But I wanted to start with something if, if you don’t mind. I mentioned last time that my friend Peter Ard, 88 years old, um, futurist, um, has was, was in Brisbane with his partner Robin. Had a lovely time with him, but had a lot of con conversations about I, uh, with ai, uh, shit, let me start again. I had a lot of conversations with Peter about AI and just realized that he wasn’t really getting it still. So I’ve, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last week in an email thread with him, um, encouraging him to think about it in terms of creativity and, um, and I. [00:02:00] I’m sort of acting as the intermediary between him and AI now. Um, and I asked him to give me a challenge to give to one of the AI tools to demonstrate that they are creative. ’cause his are, his question to me when we caught up is, do you think they’ll ever have imagination? And I said, they do right now. They’re creative right now. So he came up with this, uh, question that he wanted me to see what it could create, um, that was genuinely creative, built around some of his work. He has these things, he calls the six pillars of livability, and he wanted it to come up with, uh, an idea for how we could make Australia a better place by 2050 built around his six pillars of livability. [00:03:00] So I’m gonna walk you through this ’cause I, I think it was pretty cool and he was sort of blown away by this. My prompt and I used Chatt PT oh three deep reasoning model. The prompt was this, you are now a futurist whose job is to design a better future for humanity. Come up with one idea that is completely original and is not based on extending existing trends or technologies that would make Australia a more livable country in 2050. And fits in with the six pillars of livability, prosperity, harmony, inclusion, sustainability, health and security. Now, to be fair, it came up with a couple of things that I rejected early on. I was like, nah, that’s not really that original, that’s just an extension of other things. You’re just, you know, taking existing stuff and, and, and, you know, making it more extreme or [00:04:00] more advanced or whatever. So I pushed back and a, a couple of times, twice maybe. Then it came up with this the other year act a once in a lifetime state funded identity exchange sabbatical. Core proposal. Every Australian adult is guaranteed and required to take one 12 month other year, somewhere between their 25th and 55th birthday. During that year, they live, work, and vote in a host community whose demographics are as different from their own as an algorithm can manage urban versus remote, wealthy versus disadvantaged, migrant hub versus old settler town, et cetera. Think of it as compulsory whole life, cultural cross training. No uniforms, no bootcamps, no charity optics. Just swapping places long enough that the word them loses, meaning. Why it’s [00:05:00] new? National service exists. Military civic Peace Corps style gap years and couch surf exchanges exist, but there is no country on earth where a universal mid-career identity swap sabbatical is a legal right and obligation. It isn’t an extension of technology or an NGO trend. It’s a structural reboot of social experience built straight into citizenship. And it goes on and on and on. Has a timeline for delivery, how it would work legislatively, how it would be funded. Basically, a federal agency and trust fund, 0.6% of GDP offset by winding back duplicate employment subsidy schemes, a pairing engine. Independent algorithm balances 20 plus variables. Income, quintile language, background remoteness, climate industry, disability status. No one has sensed somewhere they medically can’t live cost and cover award wage paid from the trust. If the host employer [00:06:00] can’t home mortgage slash rent frozen by law for the year child option, families can move together or split with travel stipends, civic rights, temporary enrollment in local council and state electorates, you vote where you live that year. Return and certification completion internationally recognized cross-cultural competence license, a hiring premium in both public and private sectors. The bottom line is, instead of betting on gadgets or tax tweaks the other year, puts human beings into each other’s shoes, literally for a whole year. And lets empathy do the heavy lifting across prosperity, harmony, inclusion, sustainability, health and security. One bold never tried lever. Six pillars lifted together. Steve: Look, I cannot tell you how much I love that. That’s one of the best ideas I’ve ever heard, and I have heard similar things. It, it does come back to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, like it. And [00:07:00] it makes sure there’s a couple of stones in those shoes and they don’t fit properly. Or if you’ve had stones and shoes with holes in the bottom, you get yourself a nice pair of, uh, a dope pair of Nikes, as Zach Di Larocca said in one of his great songs. And ramble too. He had a dog pair of snake son. Cameron: Look, I was impressed and Peter, Peter was impressed and, and you know, here’s so two points about it. One is, well, obviously apart from the fact that I think it’s a great idea. One is the prompt was very specific, what it had to focus on and two. It came up with this idea in a minute. I mean, after I pushed back a couple of times on the first couple it came up with, like by minute three it came up with this idea that you, Peter, and I all thought was a great idea. Imagine if you i’d, I’d got it to come up with a hundred ideas over the course of the next hour and a half, right? Steve: And it points out something [00:08:00] important is that we have all the technology we need right now. to solve all of the world’s problems and human frailty has always been the issue, always will be the issue. And it reminds me of Hara, who I’ve got in my little thing to talk about. Noval Hari, who wrote Nexus and Sapiens, he said that it’s strange that we think that an AI will solve all of our problems. when the AI is based on us. He says, we, we don’t need AI to solve our problems. We need humans to do it. Now here’s the point. That idea is a great one, but. Humans still need to implement it and agree upon it. At this point, maybe the AI takes over and says, here’s where you’re going. An Uber and a, a humanoid robot arrives at your door and takes you away to this place and takes away all your wealth if you’re wealthy. I don’t [00:09:00] know, but the, the ideas are there and AI’s got great ideas and, and this is a super idea that would work, but Cameron: And it’s a bold, it’s a bold vision. And one of the things that we lack in Australian politics by design is bold vision. Steve: we don’t have any, we used to, hundreds of Cameron: Hmm. Steve: granted there was a whole lot of other problems, which we are solving social problems and Cameron: Well, a hundred years ago, I mean, Goff Whitlam, first seven days after he was elected, he sat down with his right hand man and basically crafted the plan for how Australia’s been living for the last 55 years. You know, just sat down and said, we’re getting outta Vietnam, free education, free healthcare, uh, legalized divorce, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Steve: a, a, lot of good ideas and the, the void of leadership and courage are the two things that are lacking in, in, uh, political society. And we’ve got corporate capture. And the [00:10:00] lobbying is, is, is a real challenge. The fact that South Australia’s outlaws lobbying is, is a massive move in the right direction. That’s the real biggest issue because we don’t get brave policies simply because our politicians are captured economically. If we remove that capture,

    1h 1m

  5. 24/06/2025

    Futuristic #42 – The Jobpocalypse

    In Episode 42 of The Futuristic, Cameron and Steve dive deep into the chaotic beauty of 2025’s AI evolution—and cultural regression. They open with a debate about Dr. Who, scarves, and wogs, before rapidly spinning out into their usual high-octane synthesis of tech, politics, relationships, and dystopian laughs. This week, it’s all about whether AI video is fake (or too real), the future of humanoid robots, how ChatGPT is becoming a marriage counsellor, and the looming collapse of white-collar work. Plus, Cameron drops a 90s-style AI rap, Steve defends plumbers against the robot uprising, and the boys seriously consider launching “Elongate”—Elon Musk’s red-pill boner brand. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll question your humanity. Again. FULL TRANSCRIPT   [00:00:00] Cameron: Futuristic Cameron Reilly and Steve Sammartino in, episode 42. I think maybe, um, Steve, you just told me off air before we came on that you’ve never watched Dr. Who, because you’re wearing a very Tom Bakery scarf here. I said, oh, it’s the fourth doctor. And you were like, what? And I’m like, no, really? Uh, I know you come from a, a, a wog family, Steve, but doctor who wasn’t a thing growing up in your, in your house. Steve: you even, can you even say that? that’s Cameron: I dunno, Steve: Sist. Cameron: were you offended? Are you offended by, uh, being called a W Steve: look, Cameron: mate? I would’ve loved to have been a wog Steve: this is not, a social podcast or one that into, uh, non-technological things. Cameron: mate. I would’ve Steve: offended. Cameron: grown up as anything. Yeah. Steve: That’s why Cameron: Reminds me of. Steve: little good, a little bit of a. Sniffle. Cameron: [00:01:00] Um, Steve: I haven’t watched Dr. Who I was a big fan of Star Trek Next Generation with pika. I think that was the ultimate sci-fi series. But I haven’t watched Dr. Who, so I can’t really say, and I. With all the things that are still on my to watch list, I don’t think I’ll get to it unfortunately. one thing I could just strike off my to-do list because let me tell you, as you mentioned cam, too many things to do, not enough time. Where are the agents? Cameron: Mate, everything you need to know about me. You could tell from Dr. Who Monkey Star Wars and Carl Sagan Cosmos. Those four things pretty much entirely designed the rest of my life, I think. Steve: And Seinfeld for the, for the social nuances of humanity. Cameron: I was in my twenties by the time that came out, but yes. And Seinfeld 1920. Um, Steve, uh, been a week or two since we’ve chatted. Uh, I mean, God damn man. Been a big week in many ways. Uh, [00:02:00] not the least of which is War in the Middle East. But, um, from an ai, uh, futuristic perspective, Steve hit me, hit me with your best shot. Steve: I am so suspicious about all the AI videos. I do not believe for a hot minute that most of the AI videos I. That we have seen that are just in all of my feeds. TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn. believe for a minute that all of them are just a few prompts and band that they are. I reckon they’re heavily edited. They’re people have worked for days on them because if you say, here’s an AI video that I made, everyone’s like, what do it? They’re such good prompters. They’re good editors. You heard it first on the futuristic. Cameron: So you are going, you are, you’re doing a, a classic, you, you’re doing a Charlie Munger inversion thing here, because I watch videos and I go. I don’t believe that’s real. I believe that’s ai. You are watching going, I don’t believe that’s [00:03:00] ai. I believe that’s real. Steve: I’m inverted. This is an inversion I’m telling you now, and that’s because. People are so wowed by some No, I swear. Cameron: Yeah. Yeah. Steve: I’ve tried to make a video clip for our song, which our loyal listeners will, will remember, the Fake Everything punk rock song, and Cameron: Mm-hmm. Steve: not done, it’s been really, really hard to get even the pieces together. I’ve gone to a number of different video formats. I even went to chat sheet to find clips on briefings on the 37 lines. So hard. There is an infinite amount of editing going into these videos, for sure. Zero doubt. Please prove me wrong. Send me the link to stevesammartino.com. Go on there on the one where I can just put in the prompts and get these videos because they’re all heavily edited. heard it here. Cameron: I’m glad that you said that because I’m planning this week, uh, if I can get through my task list enough to get to the tasks that I want to do and not that I have to do, [00:04:00] is to play around with VO three to start making some, you know, I mean, I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve seen them. The one of the big trends with those videos is the, the fake selfie blog, and it’s, uh, it’s a Yeti or a. Steve: of Cameron: Yeah. Steve: yeah, Cameron: I was saying to, I was saying to Ray, who I do my history shows with. That’s our, that’s our fucking B wick, right? History selfies. Julius Caesar talking about crossing the Rubicon. Steve: Ballywick. word. Cameron: That’s my B wick. Like you, I’m glad you like that. Yeah. So I was gonna, uh, try and knock some of those out this week and I was like, shit, I, I, I did go looking for VO three prompting strategy stuff and I folded away, but. I haven’t tried yet. I have been making some music this week inspired by fake everything, uh, theme songs for different podcasts. I tried to do one for this. No, I didn’t try and do one for this ’cause you’ve already done one for this. I did one for QAV, I did one, tried to do one for my Renaissance show. It didn’t quite work. I did do a rap song, which I’m gonna play Steve: [00:05:00] Great. Cameron: I was actually just, so I heard about this tool called Mini Max. Dunno if you’ve ever played with that. Mini Max dot, uh, I, I maybe io something and, um. I wanted to make just a hip hop background track that I was gonna wrap over with some lyrics that I wrote from one of my podcasts, my Renaissance show. And, um, but it, it actually produced the lyrics and everything for me and, and like, it, it, it added voices, I guess is what I’m trying to say. And I was actually kind of impressed. Let me see if I can play this and you can hear it. Check them. Mic one, two. This is how we do 95. Feels a five deep inside the groove. Full fall, loose, spinning round. The sonic attack Beasty Flow. Public know we always got your back. Boom, back blueprint. Tearing down the walls, every sample, every break. Answering the calls from the S to the mic, G by the loud moving body.[00:06:00] Rocking my standing out the crowd. So that was, uh, I, again, I didn’t tell it either. I just said, gimme like a classic nineties hip hop beat with some samples and it wrote that whole thing with the voices and the lyrics. I was like, oh shit, that’s actually really good. But then a mate of mine. Sent me, uh, this, he goes, oh, this is, this is my favorite track at the moment. It’s called The First Time in my Rectum by, uh, Steve: Really? I, I Cameron: I didn’t get that by Banned Vinyl and whoever this is, they’ve got a whole bunch of tracks that they’ve put together. Um, oh, glory Hole. Um, when my surrenders Suck, your Love pump, like they, they’ve done ’em in like all sorts of, you know. Steve: a spinal tap. I. Cameron: Spinal tap song. That’s what it sounds like. Yeah. Steve: well Cameron: glove. I think you’re thinking of. Steve: He said I’d suck my love pump or something when he does the, Cameron: So, um, they’re using it, uh, it’s well done using AI to create comedy, uh, dirty comedy songs, which I’m all for. [00:07:00] So anyway, the, the, I dunno about the video side of things, but certainly the, the audio side of things is really becoming insanely good. Steve: And, I, and I would just wanna add to, to that point cam, is that it’s a short term suspicion, so. Definitely, we’ll get to a point where videos will be just all prompting and, and nothing else and no further editing. But given how much I’ve played with the tools and know their capabilities, I think a lot of the ones that we’re seeing now are quite heavily edited, and that’s a short term aberration and it’s kind of how. It, like you say, there’s an inversion where people want the AI to be better than it is. So much so that they’re pretending it’s ai. And we’ve even seen that in a corporate instance as well, where a number of startups have pretended everything’s generated by ai. But there’s, you know, a thousand coders in India doing something even way back. Jeff Bezos with his Amazon Ghost store, a bunch of people looking at cameras clicking when the person picked up an item and it wasn’t all, [00:08:00] uh. As it was cracked up to be. Cameron: So instead of FUPO fake until proven otherwise, you are RUPO real until proven otherwise. Steve: We’ve got FUPO and RUPO. what we’ve got here. Fake until proven otherwise. Cameron: Wake it. Welcome back to another episode of The Futuristic with FUPO and RUPO Steve: Well, this Cameron: and Steve: that’s Right? Is that and, in fact, this, this is actually the point, Cameron, is, is this fake or was this generated by ai? The point is. Tool proven otherwise is really the world we live in now. And, and we don’t know whether it’s either way actually. Cameron: Does it matter if it’s entertaining? Steve: Well, if in entertainment doesn’t matter. No, I couldn’t care less. Right. Cameron: If it’

    59 min

  6. 06/06/2025

    Futuristic #41 – The 3 S’s and the One Big Beautiful Lie

    In this no-holds-barred episode of _Futuristic_, Cameron and Steve riff on the explosive Musk–Trump bromance breakup, likening it to the fall of the Roman Republic’s first triumvirate—yes, molten gold makes a cameo. They dissect the potential death of democracy via Section 70302 of Trump’s new bill, the myth of AI regulation in the U.S., and whether AGI is already here. Steve introduces his “Three S’s of Sentience” while Cameron defends LLMs as sanity check partners. They debate whether Sam Altman is sounding the alarm or just building the bomb. Plus: shrunken-head humans, punk rock AI songs, and China’s “Three Body” space supercomputer. It’s wild, it’s weird, it’s wicked smart. ### **Timestamps & Segment Breakdown** – **00:00** – Cameron vs. Steve: FUPO or FUP? Naming the post-truth age – **01:00** – Musk & Trump: The “Dumvirate” falls apart – **03:00** – Ancient Rome parallels: Pompey, Crassus, Caesar… and Elon – **06:00** – Who’s more powerful: The billionaire or the guy with the red pen? – **08:00** – Section 70302 and AI regulation ban in the “One Big Beautiful Bill” – **10:00** – Why AI regulation in the U.S. is a fantasy – **12:00** – Steve’s “Three S’s” of AI sentience: Self-awareness, preservation, direction – **16:00** – Professors vs. ChatGPT: Ancient History plagiarism wars – **19:00** – How to teach with AI: Real-world classroom hacks – **24:00** – Cameron’s fact-checking workflow with LLMs – **26:00** – Brain atrophy vs. augmentation: The Mind Gym – **29:00** – Fake Everything: Steve’s AI-generated punk song debut – **38:00** – VEO3 sketch comedy, sitcoms, and AI-generated content – **41:00** – AI-generated ads and the rise of synthetic influencers – **43:00** – Willy Wonka was a chocolate marketing gimmick? – **45:00** – Australia’s limp AI policy response – **47:00** – The Australian AI Expert Group: Missing in inaction – **49:00** – Sakana’s Darwin Gödel Machine: AI improving itself – **54:00** – Altman & Anthropic sound the “scary times ahead” alarm – **56:00** – Should the AI builders be allowed to warn us? – **60:00** – China’s orbital AI supercomputer and the Three Body Constellation – **63:00** – Dark Forest theory: Why SETI might doom us all – **65:00** – Fox channels Liu Cixin; Voyager dissed FULL TRANSCRIPT   [00:00:00] Cameron: well, let’s do it. Futuristic episode 40, Steve. The big four zero. We’ve reached that time in a young man’s life when, um, he can do other things. I dunno what that means, but, uh, we’re back two, two weeks in a row. This is, uh, getting to be a bit of a habit, Steve. It’s a kind of habit that Steve: I can believe in Mr. Riley because some habits send you to the grave and some send you up into the clouds with AI and God and all of those things that no one understands. But today, on the futuristic understanding will be something you have more of at the end of it, who we have reverb. Cameron: What I’m not understanding is your glasses, Steve. That’s what, look, Steve: here’s what I had the conclusion. I’ve been busting out the chemist warehouse model. I’ll show you what they are. I lost my ray bands, not the Zuck ones. They’re, they’re, they’re the standard. [00:01:00] RayBan Ripoffs. And I just, when I was watching the playback last week, I wasn’t that happy and I thought I need some chunky, funky, which say, this guy’s got a level of arrogance to wear these sunglasses that he must know what the fuck he’s talking about. That’s my strategy and I hope you like it. Cameron: I do. I, I, I wear that and I, um, I was at a thing for Fox’s, um, high school last weekend and was talking to a guy I, I know a little bit, Mike Chambers, who works for Amazon Web Services, and immediately I said, Hey Fox, look what he’s wearing. He had the meta, uh, glasses on and uh, we had a big chat about AI and he’s gonna come on the show. He’s over in the US launching something for Amazon at the moment. When he gets back, he’s gonna come on the show and we’re gonna chat about Meta and the thing he just launched, and we had this argument about whether or not. Open source, LLMs are really open source. He is. Got some strong opinions on that. So look forward to having [00:02:00] Mike on the show hopefully in a few weeks time. Steve: Terrific. Sounds good. Sounds like the kind of thing I can believe in. Cameron. Cameron: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you what you can’t believe in anymore, Steve. Is anything you ever see online? That’s true. The big, that’s true. There’s been a lot of things drop this in the last week. A lot of big news. Um, OpenAI has just bought, Johnny i’s, uh, design firm for six and a half billion dollars, but not Johnny. He’s not part of the package. He will not be bought, but he’s gonna be a consultant. But it sounds like they’re taking on the iPhone. Sam has said that the first thing that they’re gonna come out with isn’t an iPhone, but it’s so, so big, so big and beautiful and huge. It’s gonna change the world forever. He hasn’t tell us, told us what it is, but it’s gonna be big open. A also released Codex in the last week, which is their new [00:03:00] coding platform, which is like cursor on steroids. Um. But the big news that I think you and I really wanna talk about today is the ton of stuff that Google released in their IO conference this week. AI Mode Project Astra, project Mariner. But the big, big thing I think, and I think you agree with me, is VO three, the new generation of their ai, LLM based video generating tool. And the big thing about this compared to Sawa and all the other things that we’ve seen before is it now does audio with the video, you can make the characters talk and already. In the last week, we have all seen examples of this being [00:04:00] created by developers, creators out there, which are absolutely earth shattering and mind blowing, I think, for a whole bunch of reasons. So I’m prepared to call it. Right now, Hollywood is done, actors are done, and I’ve been saying this for a couple of years. You know, one of my sons Hunter just got back, I picked him up from LA at 5:00 AM 6:00 AM this morning. He just flew back in. He’s trying to break in into the movie business. He’s the one with a couple of million followers on TikTok. He wants to be an actor, he wants to make movies, and I’ve been telling him for the last couple of years, dude, I don’t think Hollywood’s gonna be around much longer like you want it to be. I, I think the days of the a hundred million dollars superhero blockbusters are gone because I. You know, 14-year-old in Manila is gonna be able to make a superhero movie for $10 a year or two from now, and it’ll be a masterpiece and there will be no [00:05:00] actors. It’ll just be prompt generated. Hollywood is clinging to a dying model. It’s, I mean, there will, yeah, we’ve talked about this before. I think that real humans acting in film or TV a few years from now, not a few, five, 10 years from now, Cameron (2): less will, Cameron: will be like doing amateur theater today. It’ll be something you do for the love of it. You don’t do it for the money, you don’t do it for the fame, you don’t do it for the glory. I think we have seen the last generation of professional actors who, you know, uh, the rich, famous Hollywood style acting, I think is. Gone to a large extent. I’m gonna write a poem Steve: live. Dear Hollywood, thanks for the memories. I hope you enjoyed your stay. A hundred million dollars is [00:06:00] about to go away. The private jets, they were fun. Welcome to public jets. Hashtag that’s the one. Your future is over. Your past’s gone. You had a good stay. Be thankful you had it at all. Love Steve. Cameron: Very Steve: good. There was a bit, bit of, that was, that was, I’m not sure what the, that was acapella Cameron: brother. I’m not sure what the rhyming scheme was in that, but there was a couple of, Steve: it was a haiku with a bit of rhyming. It was, it was everything. But I’ll tell you what, the public jet days of the actors flying down to the Antarctic in a private jet to say, we’ve really gotta fix this climate crisis. I think it’s over. Cameron: And one of my, one of my favorite subreddits is six word stories. And this one would be, mine would be, remember when Hollywood was a thing? Steve: Yeah. Right. Well, it’s a little bit like Anthony Keas. He said Hollywood, it’s made in a, it’s made in a Hollywood basement. You know the future. It’s, it’s over. [00:07:00] And, and look, let’s go deep into what VO three is. Is, is done. It’s, it’s really extraordinary. I’d like to talk about the launch, but one thing that, uh, is interesting about actors is that there is a chance that we’ll never have another human actor. I thi I think that’s a, a, a non-zero probability and it’s just gonna be so easy to make money. Like all things distribution is where the power is in, in most forms of business. Uh, if you hold the distribution and you can get into people’s, uh, faces, then you win the game. But the product now just become a lot cheaper and you don’t have to pay a, a Hollywood actor a hundred million dollars. You certainly don’t need to mint. Any new ones, there

    1h 6m

  7. 23/05/2025

    Futuristic #40 – Fake Until Proven (FUP)

    In episode 40 of Futuristic, Cameron and Steve explore the explosive arrival of Google’s **Veo 3**, the LLM-powered video generation tool that’s goign to turn Hollywood, music, porn, and propaganda inside out. They unpack the wild implications: from DIY Scorsese flicks and AI-generated pop stars to fully fake OnlyFans girls and AI avatars giving therapy to kids. Is this the death of apps? Of actors? Of reality? They get philosophical, irreverent, and disturbingly specific — complete with dragon porn, AI girlfriends, fake war crimes, and prompt theory as existential poetry. Strap in. ### **Timestamps & Segment Breakdown** – **[00:00–02:00]** Catching up and Cameron’s chat with an AWS exec about open-source LLMs – **[02:00–04:00]** OpenAI’s acquisition of Jony Ive’s firm; Google’s Veo 3 announcement – **[04:00–07:00]** The death of Hollywood and rise of prompt-generated films – **[07:00–10:00]** VO3’s game-changing videos and philosophical implications – **[10:00–12:00]** AI characters expressing regret over their prompts — horror and satire – **[12:00–15:00]** Prompt Theory video by a Reddit user stuns everyone, not Google – **[15:00–18:00]** The creative future: filmmakers as prompt engineers – **[18:00–21:00]** Google’s comeback and Apple’s stagnant AI progress – **[21:00–23:00]** Death of apps? Nadella says yes. Are GPTs the new OS? – **[23:00–26:00]** Merging AI with productivity: the single-tool future – **[26:00–31:00]** Five predictions for creative and political transformation – **[31:00–34:00]** Will anyone care about real actors anymore? – **[34:00–38:00]** The ABBA-tar future and the nostalgia-tech crossover – **[38:00–42:00]** The end of pop stars? Can AI musicians build fan intimacy? – **[42:00–46:00]** Will kids form relationships with AI-generated celebrities? – **[46:00–49:00]** Cameron’s son uses GPT for late-night anxiety relief – **[49:00–51:00]** AI autonomy: “I don’t think my character would do that” – **[51:00–56:00]** AI in porn: from ethical loopholes to fantasy kink capitalism – **[56:00–01:01:00]** OnlyFans disruption, personalized porn, and the dark spiral – **[01:01:00–01:06:00]** Propaganda potential of AI-generated videos – **[01:06:00–01:09:00]** Cameron’s daughter on why _origin matters more than output_ – **[01:09:00–end]** Copyright’s death and Cameron’s fake etymology of “giving head” FULL TRANSCRIPT   [00:00:00] Cameron: well, let’s do it. Futuristic episode 40, Steve. The big four zero. We’ve reached that time in a young man’s life when, um, he can do other things. I dunno what that means, but, uh, we’re back two, two weeks in a row. This is, uh, getting to be a bit of a habit, Steve. It’s a kind of habit that Steve: I can believe in Mr. Riley because some habits send you to the grave and some send you up into the clouds with AI and God and all of those things that no one understands. But today, on the futuristic understanding will be something you have more of at the end of it, who we have reverb. Cameron: What I’m not understanding is your glasses, Steve. That’s what, look, Steve: here’s what I had the conclusion. I’ve been busting out the chemist warehouse model. I’ll show you what they are. I lost my ray bands, not the Zuck ones. They’re, they’re, they’re the standard. [00:01:00] RayBan Ripoffs. And I just, when I was watching the playback last week, I wasn’t that happy and I thought I need some chunky, funky, which say, this guy’s got a level of arrogance to wear these sunglasses that he must know what the fuck he’s talking about. That’s my strategy and I hope you like it. Cameron: I do. I, I, I wear that and I, um, I was at a thing for Fox’s, um, high school last weekend and was talking to a guy I, I know a little bit, Mike Chambers, who works for Amazon Web Services, and immediately I said, Hey Fox, look what he’s wearing. He had the meta, uh, glasses on and uh, we had a big chat about AI and he’s gonna come on the show. He’s over in the US launching something for Amazon at the moment. When he gets back, he’s gonna come on the show and we’re gonna chat about Meta and the thing he just launched, and we had this argument about whether or not. Open source, LLMs are really open source. He is. Got some strong opinions on that. So look forward to having [00:02:00] Mike on the show hopefully in a few weeks time. Steve: Terrific. Sounds good. Sounds like the kind of thing I can believe in. Cameron. Cameron: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you what you can’t believe in anymore, Steve. Is anything you ever see online? That’s true. The big, that’s true. There’s been a lot of things drop this in the last week. A lot of big news. Um, OpenAI has just bought, Johnny i’s, uh, design firm for six and a half billion dollars, but not Johnny. He’s not part of the package. He will not be bought, but he’s gonna be a consultant. But it sounds like they’re taking on the iPhone. Sam has said that the first thing that they’re gonna come out with isn’t an iPhone, but it’s so, so big, so big and beautiful and huge. It’s gonna change the world forever. He hasn’t tell us, told us what it is, but it’s gonna be big open. A also released Codex in the last week, which is their new [00:03:00] coding platform, which is like cursor on steroids. Um. But the big news that I think you and I really wanna talk about today is the ton of stuff that Google released in their IO conference this week. AI Mode Project Astra, project Mariner. But the big, big thing I think, and I think you agree with me, is VO three, the new generation of their ai, LLM based video generating tool. And the big thing about this compared to Sawa and all the other things that we’ve seen before is it now does audio with the video, you can make the characters talk and already. In the last week, we have all seen examples of this being [00:04:00] created by developers, creators out there, which are absolutely earth shattering and mind blowing, I think, for a whole bunch of reasons. So I’m prepared to call it. Right now, Hollywood is done, actors are done, and I’ve been saying this for a couple of years. You know, one of my sons Hunter just got back, I picked him up from LA at 5:00 AM 6:00 AM this morning. He just flew back in. He’s trying to break in into the movie business. He’s the one with a couple of million followers on TikTok. He wants to be an actor, he wants to make movies, and I’ve been telling him for the last couple of years, dude, I don’t think Hollywood’s gonna be around much longer like you want it to be. I, I think the days of the a hundred million dollars superhero blockbusters are gone because I. You know, 14-year-old in Manila is gonna be able to make a superhero movie for $10 a year or two from now, and it’ll be a masterpiece and there will be no [00:05:00] actors. It’ll just be prompt generated. Hollywood is clinging to a dying model. It’s, I mean, there will, yeah, we’ve talked about this before. I think that real humans acting in film or TV a few years from now, not a few, five, 10 years from now, Cameron (2): less will, Cameron: will be like doing amateur theater today. It’ll be something you do for the love of it. You don’t do it for the money, you don’t do it for the fame, you don’t do it for the glory. I think we have seen the last generation of professional actors who, you know, uh, the rich, famous Hollywood style acting, I think is. Gone to a large extent. I’m gonna write a poem Steve: live. Dear Hollywood, thanks for the memories. I hope you enjoyed your stay. A hundred million dollars is [00:06:00] about to go away. The private jets, they were fun. Welcome to public jets. Hashtag that’s the one. Your future is over. Your past’s gone. You had a good stay. Be thankful you had it at all. Love Steve. Cameron: Very Steve: good. There was a bit, bit of, that was, that was, I’m not sure what the, that was acapella Cameron: brother. I’m not sure what the rhyming scheme was in that, but there was a couple of, Steve: it was a haiku with a bit of rhyming. It was, it was everything. But I’ll tell you what, the public jet days of the actors flying down to the Antarctic in a private jet to say, we’ve really gotta fix this climate crisis. I think it’s over. Cameron: And one of my, one of my favorite subreddits is six word stories. And this one would be, mine would be, remember when Hollywood was a thing? Steve: Yeah. Right. Well, it’s a little bit like Anthony Keas. He said Hollywood, it’s made in a, it’s made in a Hollywood basement. You know the future. It’s, it’s over. [00:07:00] And, and look, let’s go deep into what VO three is. Is, is done. It’s, it’s really extraordinary. I’d like to talk about the launch, but one thing that, uh, is interesting about actors is that there is a chance that we’ll never have another human actor. I thi I think that’s a, a, a non-zero probability and it’s just gonna be so easy to make money. Like all things distribution is where the power is in, in most forms of business. Uh, if you hold the distribution and you can get into people’s, uh, faces, then you win the game. But the product now just become a lot cheaper and you don’t have to pay a, a Hollywood actor a hu

    1h 21m

  8. 17/05/2025

    Futuristic #39 – Chapter 3: The AI Revolution Will Not Be Televised

    After a six-week hiatus, Cameron and Steve return for a sprawling, charged conversation about AI, politics, ethics, and the future of civilization. Steve reveals he’s been 3D printing buildings for TV, while Cam unveils his bold new concept: _Chapter 3_, a movement to engineer the next phase of humanity before AI and robots rewrite society by default. They dig into Mirror World drift, political alignment tools, and why Australia isn’t even remotely ready for the revolution already underway. There’s talk of AI-led political parties, the death of Google search, capitalist collapse, and even starting a cult. Welcome to the next chapter. FULL TRANSCRIPT   [00:00:00] Cameron: This is futuristic, episode 39, recorded on the 16th of May, 2025. Our first show in six weeks. Steve Sammartino Steve: I’m so sorry. I didn’t know it was that long, but we’re back and Cameron’s in the house ready to learn as good, including English and grammar. Cameron: Well, look, there’s been a whole lot of things going on, um, in the world of tech and AI in the last six weeks since we’ve been busy doing other stuff. Steve, do you wanna gimme a quick burst of, uh, what you are proudest of tech-wise in this period, but since we last spoke? Steve: Yes, so I have, uh, been doing 3D printing for a national TV show printed. Five buildings in five days. I can’t say who it is, but its initials are the block. So that is Cameron: So it’s not your TV show. I thought this was your TV show. [00:01:00] You, Steve: mine. Cameron: doing it for Steve: Yeah. Look, I, I think I can tell people I can’t show anyone anything, but, uh, Cameron: five buildings. Steve: Yep. In five Cameron: This is with, uh, what’s the name of your Steve: A Cameron: building, c. Steve: 3D with Tommy Cameron: That’s right. Steve: named after him because I’m not an egocentric guy. And, uh, this could be the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. ’cause we’ve, uh, we, uh, Cameron: O 3D doesn’t sound as good. Sam O 3D isn’t as good as macro 3D. Steve: real good. I Cameron: It does, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Steve: so that’s that. And the other thing is I’ve been thinking a lot about Mirror World drift, and I just posted, uh, a blog on that and I had a Cameron: Explain. Steve: was awesome. Well, I think that we’ve created this mirror world, which has been explored by people like Kevin Kelly, where we create a proxy for the world that we live in. But increasingly this proxy, which used to be just the digital version of us, increasingly it’s not us. It starts out with us using AI as tools and then agents and then proxies, and then the ais talk to the ais, and then they [00:02:00] develop language and conversations where we just drift out of this mirror world because it’s no longer relevant to us or for us, and it becomes this almost a new sphere. Uh, which was something that was popularized in the early, uh, 20th century, uh, where we kind of opt out and it becomes almost a, a new species like an ocean where we just dip our toes in there. But there’s a whole lot of species in there. We don’t understand what’s spawned them. We can’t talk to them, we don’t know. But like another big ecosystem, it has a huge impact on our lives, but it becomes this other world that we are not really associated with, even though we built it. Cameron: Yeah, I, I, look, I think that’s kind of inevitable, um, not just Kevin Kelly, but I know that, um, Eric, um, fuck, what was his name? Steve: Ler. Cameron: No, no, no. The former CEO of Google for a long time, Steve: Schmidt. Cameron: Eric Schmidt’s been talking a lot about this for the last year or two, [00:03:00] how will start to develop their own language that’s more efficient, and then they’ll start talking to each other and he says, that’s when we need to pull the plug on the whole thing. But that’s not gonna happen. Steve: No. Cameron: Um, yeah, that’s, I think that’s inevitable and it’s very Philip k Dickey. Uh, just this whole idea of human intelligence spawning a new kind of intelligence, which is, becomes so vastly different to our own intelligence that we, you know, I actually, of the show notes I had, one of the things that I watched a couple of weeks ago was a YouTube. Interview mostly between Ben Gerel and Hugo de Garris. guys I know a little bit. Hugo and I were on stage together at a Singularity conference about nine or 10 years ago down in Melbourne. I. Um, but one of the, they were just sort of talking about, they’ve both been AI researchers for decades and they were talking about where things are at, but they were, uh, Hugo was talking about alignment. You know, you hear the AI researchers talk about alignment, which is to make [00:04:00] sure that the AI’s values are aligned to human values. And Ben I think it’s kinda like squirrels at Yellowstone National Park. Like talking about are human values aligned with squirrel’s values? I guess at some level, you know, we both rely on oxygen. We both rely on the climate not getting too hot. You know, we, we value certain things, but really, I. know, don’t, you know, we, we look at squirrels, we find them cute and interesting, and generally speaking, we don’t wanna harm them. We don’t wanna hurt them. We want them to run around and do their thing, but we don’t really think about them on a day-to-day basis unless you’re a park ranger. Steve: they’re outside of the consideration set unless you’re specifically working in ecosystems and the maintenance and the importance. And I think Bostrom talked about that too when he did his first, uh, artificial super intelligence thing. He said, if, if we want to build a highway, look, we don’t want to hurt the ants, but if you’re in the way, the highway’s going in, it doesn’t matter.[00:05:00] Cameron: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I, and they were basically saying, and I think this is right, that if we have a super intelligence, its relationship to us will be like our relationship to squirrels or ants and. Anyway. Listen, I wanna tell you what I’ve been talking, what I’ve been thinking a lot about since you and I last spoke, and I’ve been dying to speak to you because you are the guy I want to talk to about these sorts of things, right? Steve: you. Cameron: You are the, you’re the only Steve: Someone Cameron: someone wants to talk to you. You are the only guy I can have a serious conversation with this stuff about. It is politics. So we just had a federal election here of course my number one political issue right now apart from legalization of cannabis is what are we doing to prepare our society for the AI robot revolution that’s gonna hit in the next couple of years? Uh, Steve’s doing a selfie. I’ve gotta put my gang sign up, Steve: we got a, yeah, Cameron: gang sign. Steve: we go. Cameron: Um, [00:06:00] and, uh, no political party that I was aware of was even talking about it. What we’re gonna do about the AI robot revolution in the next five years. Not even on the fucking agenda anywhere I. Steve: so, of course, not on the agenda at all, but think of it like this. They didn’t even have the courage to truly talk about the property crisis, and that’s already here and people are living in it and can’t get out while not living in it. Sorry, no pun intended there. And they wouldn’t even talk about that. Like you talk about, talk about the wall, the one we’re already in, there’re just ignoring you, pretending it’s not there because they’re too scared. They’ll get voted out, let alone something they barely understand. mean, disappointment, but not surprised. Cameron: I think the Labor party, you know, to give elbow is due, did say they’re gonna invest in building 23 houses in the next 10 years or something like that. So, you know, Steve: go. Cameron: for big fucking vision elbow, Steve: Oh, Cameron: you’re really killing it mate. Killing it. [00:07:00] Killing it. Um, so you know that that sort of didn’t happen, that wasn’t on the agenda, but. I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of our society and what we need to do to engineer it. And we’ve talked a little bit about this before, but been working on this idea. I’m calling chapter three. And chapter three is a movement that I wanna start with you and I call it chapter three because I basically figured we’re moving into the third chapter of humanity. And the way I think about it, the first chapter was everything that happened up until the Industrial Revolution. Steve: Yeah. Cameron: 10,000, maybe we could say a hundred thousand years. That was the first chapter of humanity, and it was basically manual labor. That was the first chapter of humanity. Right? Then we got to chapter two, which was the industrial Revolution through to today, [00:08:00] everything that’s happened in the last 250 years, let’s say roughly 300 years. Uh, chapter three is the AI robot. Chapter where, what it means to be. It’s the singularity chapter, right? What it means to be human, we live, how we interact, how we survive is gonna be as vastly different from the of the late Industrial Revolution as the late industrial revolution is from people lived in the Dark Ages or the Middle Ages, right? And a big believer in the fact that we need to engineer that as much as we can. We need to be thinking now about what do we want, what’s important to us? What are we willing to sacrifice

    41 min

  9. 04/04/2025

    Futuristic #38 – How LLM’s Think

    In this episode, Cameron and Steve dive into the rapidly evolving world of AI, discussing the latest advancements and their societal implications. They explore new AI voice features, the potential dangers and benefits of AI companions and agreeable AI personalities, and the philosophical debate around AI sentience and relationships. The conversation touches on AI’s role in business generation, the power of new models like OpenAI’s GPT-4o and Google’s Gemini 2.5, and the ongoing copyright debate surrounding AI training data. They also get into the complexities of how Large Language Models (LLMs) like Anthropic’s Claude actually “think,” the expansion of AI into hardware by companies like LG, Apple’s perceived lag in the AI race, and the future of AI integration in everyday tools like ebook readers. The discussion extends to advancements in open-source robotics, citing Nvidia’s initiatives, and contrasts technological progress and STEM education focus between China (highlighting Huawei) and the US. Finally, they touch on the intriguing and potentially controversial “Network State” concept championed by figures associated with Peter Thiel and Andreessen Horowitz, exploring the idea of tech-driven, independent city-states. futuristicpod.com FULL TRANSCRIPT FUT 38 Audio [00:00:00]      Cameron: So that was an official new voice from chat, GPT, which came out today called Monday. And it’s like a depressed goth girl or something, whatever. , which is now my official favorite voice. I don’t know, , if you found this, welcome back. This is futuristic episode 38, by the way, Steve Sammartino, , I dunno if you’ve found this, but, uh, I’ve been using advanced voice with GPT lately, and the voices have sounded increasingly excitable. I was having a conversation in the car on the way to Kung Fu with GPT about Trump and Greenland and rare earth minerals. And I was like, I was saying, so hold on. Greenland is run by Denmark and Denmark’s and NATO country. So if Trump invades Greenland, [00:01:00] does NATO have to, does that, uh, is that Invoke Article five under the NATO treaty and then NATO needs to attack the United States and GP t’s like, yes, that would happen. They probably would. And it would have to be, and it was all very excitable and it was, and I was like, can you sound less excited? And it would like, oh, okay, sorry. I’ll bring the tone down a bit. And a minute later it would be talking like this again. It would all be very excitable. Even Fox was sitting in the backseat. He is like, can you just calm down a minute? Anyway, but I like this new depressed voice. That’s more my style. Steve: call it apathy, Cameron: I. Steve: and I don’t think enough AI in modern society are apathetic, Cameron: It reminds me of, was it Marvin in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the AI robot. I was like, I am so depressed, brain the size of a planet, and they asked me to pick up a piece of paper. I am so depressed. Steve: Well, I think that the AI should be able to seamlessly switch [00:02:00] between. Levels of animation and emotion, right. Based on the context of the chat, because it understands it verbally with the language, it should be able to translate that in the audio sense. You would, one would think regardless of the voice that you choose, I. Cameron: Yeah, and I was listening to, uh, an interview with Ezra Klein yesterday with Jonathan het, and Ezra Klein was talking about the fact that he’s concerned about the fact that a generation of kids are gonna be growing up with AI assistance that are completely agreeable with everything that they say, and that that’s not a good thing. In the same way that social media hasn’t been a good thing for kids, AI that just agrees with them all the time to make them feel good is not gonna be a good thing. I was talking to Chrissy about it yesterday and I was saying that I expect when we get fully realized AI virtual [00:03:00] assistants that are on the devices that we give to our kids, we will have parental controls where we will be able to set up the AI personality that we want our children to interact with. That say, listen, your job isn’t to just agree. Your job is to be. A caretaker, an educator, is to push back if they say something dangerous or stupid or that could be, um, referencing self harm or could be negative for their psychological or emotional health, you are to act as a therapist slash parental advisor slash tutor slash whatever. Adults though, will probably get to choose the AI personality that they want, and I’m already telling GPT don’t agree with in my customer instructions. Don’t agree with me on everything. If I say something and it’s factually incorrect, or well, you think my interpretation of the facts is incorrect, I want you [00:04:00] to tell me that’s your job. Push back, argue with me. You know, give me something to think about. But Chrissy said, and she’s probably right, most people won’t. Most people will just choose the AI personality type that just agrees with them all the time. ’cause that’s what they want is just validation that their ideas and beliefs are true. What do you think? Steve: I think the most dangerous. tool in the world right now, which builds on this is AI girlfriends. They are an absolute social disaster in the making. An imaginary girlfriend that you talk to every day that agrees with everything you say, think learns from you, has the same business model, is want you to keep coming back, is gonna tell a young teenage boy everything he wants to hear. It’ll eventually be a soft robot that he gets delivered from Amazon and he develops a relationship with. This is not good. Falling in Cameron: Is it worse [00:05:00] than, Steve: it’s ter, Cameron: is it worse than having, is it worse than having incel running around with AR fifteens in the us? Steve: it’s the same thing with a different product. Right. It’s Cameron: Yeah, but Steve: who don’t have real social interactions. An incel with an AR 15 or an incel with an AI humanoid robot, they’re the same thing, which is we don’t have real social interactions of people that disagree with us, that we learn social norms, that we interact, we give and take. It’s the same thing, and they Cameron: well, yeah, except they’re not going to. Steve: a bunch of shot up people in, Cameron: Well, Steve: where I can go and buy a gun in Walmart. Cameron: no, but look, I see the opportunity for problems, but I also know that loneliness is a huge issue in modern society. Steve: so that doesn’t solve loneliness, Cameron. It doesn’t Cameron: I don’t, and I, Steve: it. Cameron: I dunno that that’s true. I think, uh, you, you have been, you know, a big advocate [00:06:00] of the idea that if an AI seems human, seems conscious, seems to be sentient, then for all intents and purposes, it is those things Steve: Yes. Cameron: I agree with. Steve: Yes. Cameron: therefore, having a relationship with a seemingly sentient ai biological organism, i, it, it’s not exactly the same as having it with a human, but it’s, it’s, it’s maybe the next best thing, or maybe it’s an equitable thing. Steve: Okay. You are right and I’m right. Cameron: I. Steve: problem, circling back to what I first said, is having one that agrees with everything you said and tells you what you want to hear isn’t a relationship with a sentient thing. We’re Cameron: Look, that’s normally how I pick my co-hosts, Steve, except for you. That’s normally, Steve: No, no, Cameron: and Tony. Steve: the point is, right. No, the point is, is that if it were a sentient AI that had give and take and taught the [00:07:00] human side of the relationship, Hey, that’s not how you treat me. And you gotta, no, you gotta have more open mind than that. Wait a minute, I’m not just gonna do it. Like, if it, if it became like, like a real relationship, then that’s good. The point is, how is the algorithm trained? What are the incentives of the AI girlfriends that are Cameron: Hmm. Steve: And I imagine the incentives are gonna be as perverse as they are for Google and Facebook in the attention Cameron: it makes. Steve: back and subscribing. Then it’s more likely to give you exactly what you want, which is the same of your algorithms feed you more and more of And that’s the problem. If it were sentient and reasonable and rational and disagreeable and all of those things that we get in normal relationships, then it would be good. But I fear that it won’t be that. Cameron: Hi Steve. I’m going to continue our dirty Talk session, but first I want you to listen to this ad. Did you know that Squarespace will help you make a website Steve: Let’s get back. Cameron: for your, for your business? Steve: Remember, that fetish that we discussed? [00:08:00] Remember that? Do you remember what I liked? Do you remember? Can you show me? Can you show me? Send me some pics. Send me some pics Cameron: Look, if it makes people feel good and they’re not hurting anyone, what does it matter? Steve: the point is if it makes them feel good, that’s fine. And if Cameron: I. Steve: hurt anyone, that’s fine. But I fear that the thing that will make them feel good will be getting everything you want, all the chocolate, all the fantasies, agree with me, do everything I want, and then you get, it gets into a circle of darkness. You just end up cir

    1h 19m

  10. 17/03/2025

    Futuristic #37 – The Digital Human

    In Episode 37 of Futuristic, Cameron Reilly and Steve Sammartino speak to a “digital human”!. They also get into a provocative discussion ranging from Donald Trump’s car yard antics to the implications of advanced artificial intelligence and China’s rising technological dominance. They explore the intersection of crypto, agentic AI models, and new breakthroughs in AI-driven tech developments like humanoid robotics, diffusion-based language models, and synthetic voice AI. Wrapping up with conspiracy theories about tech manipulation of human perception of time, the hosts challenge listeners to reconsider assumptions about where technology is heading and who might ultimately hold the power. FULL TRANSCRIPT FUT 37 Audio Cameron: [00:00:00] Hey, hey, it’s futuristic time. Cameron Reilly with Steve Sammartino. It’s been a while. Steve, how have you been since we last did one of these things? Steve: I’ve been good, but anxious. There you go. Just dropping that on everyone, but Cameron: Anxious. Steve: Yeah Cameron: Not that there’s anything going on in the world to be anxious about, Steve. everything’s Steve: Well, Cameron: going completely smoothly and fine. Perfect. You’re going Steve: but my favorite thing I Cameron: it is. Steve: yeah, that’s true. Well, it’s certainly not boring but my favorite thing this week was Donald Trump turning the White House into a secondhand car yard. I love that I cannot tell you how much joy that brought me. I and my favorite bit is he said, wow, everything’s computer. That was the best thing. computer. And as soon as I [00:01:00] saw it, I went on and I, you could buy t shirts within a second. There’s, there’s a meme coin on pump. fun called everything’s computer, which I loved. I want to buy it. Look, people are investing in Bitcoin, not I’m investing in everything’s computer meme coin. Cameron: Mm. I’m pretty sure, you know, Trump’s such a brilliant strategist that that was deliberate. It’s his meme coin. He’s the guy selling the t shirts. Because he needs all the money he can get. So does Elon, right now. Steve: Imagine if this was all strategic, and he’d just taken us for a ride for a really long time. Even going broke in the late 90s, that could have been part of his strategy, the TV show, getting back on, money, money, money, the apprentice, all this, who knows. Cameron: I’m sure there are people out there who believe that to be true. That it’s all part of a cunning plan. This is episode 37 of Futuristic, just in case you’re counting. Uh, it’s been a crazy few weeks since we [00:02:00] spoke, Steve. Seeing the President of the United States turning the White House into a car yard probably not the craziest thing that I’ve seen happen in the last few weeks. Uh, but it’s up there. Before we get into the news of the last couple of weeks though, the futuristic news, tell me about what you’ve been doing you feel is futuristic, Steve. Steve: I attended policy week in Sydney this week, which was, Cameron: that sounds exciting and futuristic y. Steve: well wait a minute, it was policy week for the future of finance. So it was filled with A lot of blockchain, tokenization, sovereign funds, mean coins, and crypto people. Some of whom arrived on private jets. It was pretty interesting. It was run by blockchain APAC. Vallis, you might know him, runs that. And he invited me along to sit in some rooms and do some roundtables. I realized that that that [00:03:00] whole, uh, cryptography, future of finance, DLT world is just deep and so many wormholes that you’re in it full time, it’s one of those things you just can’t keep up with and even though I’m more I think this year there’s going to start to be a bit of an overlap there with the agentic stuff that’s coming through. So that, that was interesting. And, uh, they, they live in a different world. They, they, uh, talking about things that, May never happen, it’s funny how if you have one piece of super financial success, and many of them are riding on the coattails of Bitcoin, it’s built this entire new ecosystem underneath there that is almost unto itself. The assistant treasurer came up and did a little talk at the one of the drinks, so they are getting the attention of policy wonks, but think it’s just because there’s so much money there, they have to pay [00:04:00] attention. But a lot of the stuff that they’re talking about, whether or not it comes to fruition, I’m clearer now than I was when I went and spent three days there. Hahaha. Cameron: to me what DLT is and how it’s different from a BLT, which used to be my favorite go to lunch in the nineties. So Steve: which is really what blockchains And so distributed ledger technology gives the ability for any, any type of coin. Uh, but one of the big areas that they talk a lot about now is tokenization, which is you can take things from the physical world. And split them up into pieces and liquefy assets that are illiquid. So people can own parts of something. I mean you can do that and people do that all the time now with things like companies and boats and houses. But it makes it highly liquid and easy for people to transfer, uh, assets and get access to assets that are too expensive in their raw form. [00:05:00] And obviously with the housing crisis is one of the key topic areas. Cameron: I guess the most important thing I want to know about all of that is how is Donald Trump going to exploit it to make a buck in the next six months? Yeah. Steve: Well, I think he’s, he’s already done that with his, his own meme coins, I guess, I think it’s just so easy for anyone to create DLT technologies now. And I think agentics going to make it even easier. There’s a website called pump. fun, which is really interesting way where meme coins get minted and made. And every day there’s a couple of meme coins that have market caps of anywhere between 10 and 15 million. it’s, and it’s insane. It’s this insane world. I think making financial tools easier to use, which are still highly unregulated, it just creates [00:06:00] the potential for financial tyranny. Cameron: Or, as is one of the conspiracy theories around the Trump coin, a really easy way to raise a lot of untraceable funds from places like China that go straight into your bank account and can see. Come for their meeting at the White House and show you the ledger records, the DLT records that say that they bought 10 million of that Trump coin. Therefore they want to get a seat at the table. Uh, well, Steve, my, um, thing I wanted to mention for this week is I played around with OpenAI’s deep research again. I think I told you last time I tried it on my Task where it didn’t work very well. I then tried to get it to write some code to help me do that. That didn’t work very well either, but been doing a lot of shows for one of [00:07:00] my other podcasts on what I call the foreign aid shell game. And I’ve been talking about NATO funding as part of that. NATO economics and how it’s basically a shell game. And, I went into deep research and I said, here’s what I want to know. I want to know, uh, how much money American weapons manufacturers, arms manufacturers make out of NATO. And went and compiled a. page report for me on the history of NATO and the arms industry and how they’re interconnected and that kind of stuff. And it was good. was a good report. Um, a lot of sources Steve: [00:08:00] I Cameron: questions before it went off and did the research, but it came back with a good, valid report. I read the whole thing, I fact checked the whole thing, and it stood up. Its logic was good. So, basically did the work of, if, if I’d hired someone and said, go out and spend a day researching this, it did it in 15 minutes. You know, I, I it on my iPad and then I went and had dinner and I came back later and it was all done. So, I was impressed by that. Well, let’s get into news. Um, Elon censors Grok is the first story I had. don’t, I don’t know if you remember, if you, uh, I’m pretty sure over the last couple of years I’ve heard Elon talk, uh, on a number of occasions about the reason he bought Twitter is because he’s a big [00:09:00] believer in free speech and the reason he built Grok was so there would be an AI that was built around free speech and as soon as people started pointing out that if you asked Grok the biggest sources of misinformation U S currently, uh, it would say Elon Musk and Donald Trump, Steve: love that so much. Cameron: apparently he went into, he had somebody go into the underlying prompt, the system prompt for Grok and wrote into it, ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk slash Donald Trump spread misinformation into Steve: Wow. Cameron: Grok. Steve: And how did that get leaked, Cam? How did people work out that he did that? Did one of his staff members allude to the fact that he’s done that? Or are people just putting the pieces together based on the fact that it’s disappeared? Cameron: I’ll [00:10:00] read, uh, the, uh, Post in the ChatGPT subreddit from 18 days ago that I saw this on. is now bringing up Musk out of nowhere without any previous mention in the chat, even putting him next to Aristotle. This is happening because their stupid system prompt is biasing the model to talk about Trump to Neill on since They are mentioned explicitly on it, I don’t know what the pr

    1h 7m
  • 10 Episodes

About

Each episode we look at the emerging technologies that are going to change our lives (ChatGPT, Claude, Tesla, other AI tools, robotics, nanotech) and try to work out the social, business and political consequences and opportunities.

Information

  • Creator
    Cameron Reilly
  • Years Active
    2023 - 2025
  • Episodes
    10
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © The Podcast Network 2023
  • Show Website
    Futuristic

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