AI Lens
AI news, hot topics, advancements, and discussions about how AI is reshaping business and society.
Your focused view on the emerging hot topics in the Age of A.I.
AI Lens
Episode 1: Happy New Year 2026
AI News, Hot Topics, Advancements and Discussions about how AI is reshaping business and society.
Your focused view on the emerging hot topics in the Age of AI.
Hello, everybody, and welcome to AI Land.
SPEAKER_01:This is AI News, hot topics, advancements, and discussions about how AI is reshaping business and society. It's your focused view on the emerging hot topics in the age of AI.
SPEAKER_00:And I can't tell you just how excited we are to bring this initial podcast to you. We love AI, we're all in on AI, and we're excited to share whatever insights we can with you as we move forward.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, and I want to welcome you. I'm Liz and I'm John. And we have been involved in AI for a while now. I've been looking at AI since 2015, believe it or not. Um, I came from the legal business and I started watching articles by Davenport in the Wall Street Journal talking about how it was going to reshape and change the legal industry.
SPEAKER_00:Liz is definitely an OG when it comes to AI, but John myself, I've been involved in AI now for two and a half years. I was first intrigued by it and then just was enthralled by everything that I could do initially and where it's come since that point is absolutely stunning. But the best part is the best part is yet to come.
SPEAKER_01:And can I tell you, John's being a little humble. He's the founder of AI Research Technologies. I'm co-founder on that, um, where we keep up to date on what's going on in AI and provide consulting services for businesses who want to reshape their business to be more efficient, more profitable, and ready for the new age of technology.
SPEAKER_00:It helps them better compete on a go-forward basis through added productivity, again, improved profitability, improved workflows, et cetera.
SPEAKER_01:So and this podcast is going to be done daily, hopefully daily, and it's a focused view on what's going on in AI. What are the hot topics? Now, John, why don't you start with a brief history of AI?
SPEAKER_00:So AI really came about, um, I think it started gaining notoriety when ChatGPT was first released as uh a product that everybody could access. At that point, it already was passing the AP exam in biology. Bill Gates was all in, Microsoft invested, I think it was$10 billion. That's when it first started gaining a lot of traction in everyday society. But AI has been a software in development for quite some time or a system in development for quite some time. And it is to say, uh, where it's come from the initial days of that Microsoft investment to today, now it's much more efficient. You've got workflows, you've got customized LLMs, uh, all different apps that can do all sorts of different things.
SPEAKER_01:And you got you have companies like Artifact that are focusing on coding. Now you don't even need a computer tech to say computer program to do your coding. It is moving very rapidly.
SPEAKER_00:Um fact, vibe coding, just to interrupt real quick, is a is a whole different whole area of AI that's exploding right now. Uh Claude, I think, is one of the uh best examples. You can leverage Claude and do vibe coding now. Uh Grop does some vibe coding. Um, vibe coding meaning that you can speak an app into existence without having to actually code a single thing. It's absolutely amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so what we're gonna be going over on our podcasts are the news, the interviews, the deep dives. And next week, John and I are gonna be at the CES convention in Vegas.
SPEAKER_00:So excited for that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the CES convention in Vegas should be real fun. So we are going to be looking at what's going on for 2026 in AI and the future of AI.
SPEAKER_00:And robotics too, because as we move forward, I think you see a emerging of a further emerging of AI and robotics. That's gonna do some pretty remarkable stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, but AI, most people know it from ChatGPT, which I think was uh it came out in November of 22. After that, just things started exploding so fast. Right now, autonomous vehicles are going, there's healthcare AI. In fact, they are doing more and more with healthcare technology to make it advance at a at an unbelievable rate now using AI. Um, and you know, we've heard things in the news whether or not the future of AI is dangerous. Uh if you look at what's going on, they were saying the same thing about the internet in the late 90s. Was it dangerous to be on the internet? And it it has its problems, certainly, with cybersecurity, but if we move in the right direction and you learn how to use it to be productive, it can be a game changer.
SPEAKER_00:So you have the the application of you personally being able to apply AI to your everyday life personally. You have the ability to apply it to your role at work. If you're an employee, your role is an entrepreneur, if you're an entrepreneur, uh and if you own a business, then you absolutely should be leveraging AI to again improve productivity and profitability.
SPEAKER_01:The way we see it, John, you remember I was talking about this. You had the industrial revolution, basically at the turn uh of the century from uh 1900s. Um back then you had blacksmiths disappearing. I think there are only a couple left in Williamsburg now, um, and machinery taking over. Trains, planes, automobiles, uh, machinery for manufacturing, all of that changed. And yes, it does put a lot of people out of business, but they adopt. They adapt, excuse me. They adapt and they adopt. Um, and when they do that, it makes for a much better economic situation for everybody.
SPEAKER_00:Long-term, yes. There'll be some short-term challenges, but long-term, it's gonna be beneficial for everyone. In fact, you also were talking about this notion of universal basic income well before saying Elon Musk first mentioned it. You want to elaborate on that?
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah. Well, I remember on Halloween, Elon Musk was on uh Joe Rogan, and he was talking about how there could be socialism out of abundance as one possible outcome, not a definite outcome. Um, I had been talking about that for a while.
SPEAKER_00:That's a potential outcome, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, because what what is gonna happen when so many people are out of work and things are getting done? Well, you're gonna have a a huge growth in the GDP, you're gonna be able to do a lot more with a lot less effort. Hopefully, it won't be like Wally, where people are scooting around on their chairs watching TV or playing video games all day. Um, but instead, people can focus on what they really enjoy in life. It will be, I don't think that's gonna happen in the next five years, but it is a very strong possibility. And it's interesting because socialism has always been an attempted out of scarcity in China and Russia. Um, and now we have a possibility of socialism developing out of abundance. So very intriguing. I am a capitalist at heart, I'm an entrepreneur, but given what's going on, because it's it's going after all the knowledge fields. So you have the doctors, the lawyers, the engineers, the computer scientists, uh, the architects, every, you know, when people went to uh college for professional degrees, engineers, everybody like that can basically be replaced with AI coming very shortly. Um I come I come from the legal field and I've already been developing companies to work on automation and AI to complete paperwork for people. But there is also a possibility of AI private judging, which I've I've been taking a strong look at. Um just because you it's applying case law statutes to series of facts. And we're people are human, judges are human, they don't have everything memorized. So you input things like that, you could have AI private judging and taking a lot out of the court system heard in the public judging arena. Um basically, if you've heard of arbitrators, um, it would be something like that, but with using computers and AI to come up with the decisions.
SPEAKER_00:Pretty compelling in that it can eliminate bias in multiple directions. Uh fatigue. I know that judicial decisions are study that was done once where based on fatigue uh decisions were altered, believe it or not. So for the second half of the day, or very different than the first half of the day, for instance, fascinating stuff. But let's back up and talk about just what uh economic impacts AI is going to have. Uh Goldman Sachs did take a look at this in a very detailed study.
SPEAKER_01:And that was in 2023, right?
SPEAKER_00:So they think there's going to be at least or up to 3% annual growth per year. Um McKinsey, uh, the famous consulting company, thinks that there could be as much as$4 trillion worth of GDP growth from AI. Global AI spending is expected to hit at least$2 trillion by 2026. So the amount of investment that's going into this uh uh this uh industry is astronomical. And if you think about the ability for computing to grow, for them to get better at managing the energy costs and the energy supply, there's just gonna be a massive amount of growth in the ability of AI because it's based on those factors that it's gonna do more and more.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and right now the industry's being replaced. I mean, when uh a lot of tech companies are laying off why they can use technology to do what some of these employees are doing. Um, and there's you you think about it, some of those robocalls you get are AI.
SPEAKER_00:Can you yeah? So we we received a phone call one time, probably about a year ago now, even, and it took us, and now again, we're somewhat familiar with AI, right? Well, familiar, we're in the business. Well, what I'm saying is that if anybody could have an eye for it, then it'd be us, but or an ear for it. But this call took us about three to five minutes for us to actually start to realize it was an AI person making that phone call.
SPEAKER_01:Mean meaning an avatar. It wasn't a real human. When he says AI person, it wasn't somebody using AI. It sounded like a real person, and that's very common now. And and it can be adopted. You can upload just about any material from your business, and AI will sound like a real person answering questions and directing to different extensions. Uh I mean, things right now in clerical and reception and all of that, it's gonna be taken over very fast with AI.
SPEAKER_00:Marketing's already uh being completely up-ended with the different things that AI can do. Um, in fact, I'm kind of curious to see are we gonna face like this massive onslaught of marketing? Because the cost to reach people is gonna decrease significantly, and the I guess the um barriers to producing content is gonna go away. So you have to figure we're gonna get innovative with marketing.
SPEAKER_01:It's already there. Yeah, it's already there. Yeah, I mean, you can make videos in in less than minutes now that would have taken a production company days to do. You can do branding on Chat GPT, Copilot, ProP, ProPlexity, Grok, all of that. Yeah, you can you there's so much you can do, and we'll get into more and more detail with different episodes. This episode is really an overview, an introduction, and by the way, a very happy new year. It's January 1st, 2026.
SPEAKER_00:Happy New Year, everyone.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and this is one of our New Year's resolutions to keep you guys informed, what's going on, make sure that you understand how it could impact your industry and make your business more efficient.
SPEAKER_00:Speaking of which, I know the World Economic Forum released a 2025 report on AI and the jobs that it would that how it's gonna affect jobs. They say that 92 million jobs will be displaced by 2030. But to Liz's point earlier, the nice thing is they estimate 170 million new ones will be created. Yeah, and that'll arrange everything from AI ethics to data curation, etc. So it might be a net positive impact, but it will require reskilling. That means you're gonna have to learn AI.
SPEAKER_01:Basically, what you're saying is uh people who know AI will get the jobs and be and replace what's going on. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00:Or keep their jobs necessarily, right? As we as we companies become more efficient, there'll be less entry-level hires, uh be less uh uh uh growth in terms of like employees because they can become more efficient.
SPEAKER_01:I wouldn't hire somebody in marketing and sales today unless they knew AI extensively. Because it can AI right now in marketing and sales can replace a hundred people in a business easily.
SPEAKER_00:So I think some of the things industries that you're gonna see change in, we already talked about a healthcare, faster drug discovery. I mean, you're condensing what would take like 100 years into 10, for instance, uh, and that's only gonna improve over time.
SPEAKER_01:When you say drug discovery, you mean formulating different prescription drugs to help people. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Prescription, maybe not prescription, too, for that matter.
SPEAKER_01:Uh I don't want to be in that industry. Wait, hold up.
SPEAKER_00:I think professional jobs in general, right? Um in fact they're gonna be there's let's talk about like lawyers as an example. Like what is it, year and a half ago, there was a company um that did legal contracts and they actually tested their AI software versus actual lawyers, and they uh the AI software actually was more accurate than the lawyers were on average. Oh yeah, and analyzing contracts.
SPEAKER_01:The two big online research companies, LexisNexis, and Westlaw, both already have AI available. Lexus Nexus has Protege. Um I was using Protege when it first came out. Um initially it had little annoying delays and issues, but right now it is pretty impressive. Now, the one thing with AI, you always have to double check. You always have to triple check. Um, just like I would if I hired an associate attorney or if I hired a paralegal. You don't just rely on it because AI is really it's kind of programmed to try and please you. So it may give you an answer it thinks you want to hear, and it could come up with hallucinations. So a lot of times in prompts, I will tell it I don't want hallucinations, I don't want you to make up cases, only cases that are published, um, things like that, just to make sure that you're getting the correct information, and then I go back and double check it, but it saves a ton of time.
SPEAKER_00:You talk about prompting, that could be multiple episodes in and of itself, but how you prompt is going to be critical so that way Liz eliminates or at least lessens hallucinations slash misinformation. Different AIs have different biases, right? There's been some studies done that show that different um chat platforms have biases.
SPEAKER_01:Oh yeah. I I think Elon Musk talked about that in that same uh interview with uh Joe Rogan.
SPEAKER_00:I've seen some other uh posts about it, etc. So there's definitely some biases that you have to watch out for. There's ethical issues that we'll discuss down the road as well. Uh energy demands, um, they're coming up some creative solutions and how to meet those. But as AI scales, it's gonna require more and more energy, so that's gonna be critical.
SPEAKER_01:And you know, one important thing with business is it it's a shortcut to get over obstacles. Every business hits a bottleneck, every business has problems. And a lot of people sit there and try and figure it out over and over and over again. Dick the question or the problem in AI and ask different different um whether it's Chat GPT, grok, perplexity, whatever, co-pilot, ask them each how to solve that problem. I had a very simple issue that I helped somebody with maybe a year ago, for example. They wanted to know how they could get free airline tickets to go to Nepal. It was a nonprofit. And I said, you need to build relationships with the airlines that fly to Nepal and make sure that you're hitting what they're looking for in a charitable donation. So at first you start off simple, which airlines go to this city in Nepal. Then you say, out of those airlines, who are the who are the executives who deal with charitable donations? And then you go, I'm I'm oversimplifying it, but then you go into, okay, these executives, what's their contact information? What are they looking for in giving charitable donations? What is their mission for uh for uh assisting charities? Because you want to speak their language. Then it was what conventions do they attend, what events do they attend on a regular basis? Then it was draft a marketing event calendar so she knew where to go, when to go, draft emails, draft um text messages if you were able to get their cell phone from somewhere. But speak their language, know what they're looking for. Um and she was shocked. I had a whole marketing plan ready for her in like less than 15 minutes by doing this. And I would do things like when they were drafting as the top PR firm for, you know, like um for charitable or nonprofit organizations whose um main uh relationships are neck networking with these different airlines, draft, and then it would. be like key points, elevator speeches, stuff like that. Um in just 15 to 20 minutes this was all done for her.
SPEAKER_00:Unbelievable. We've done similar things with um issues about longevity, for instance. We've gone through and create crafted longevity plans. We've also done it with business plans as well. I think I think you know when I sit there and think about the future of AI and what are some areas, at least initially, that people can differentiate themselves. I think it's around the creativity around it and how do you leverage it and how do you implement it. I think that's critical. There's some other a lot of unanswered questions in the industry too. I think there's an importance in terms of like us versus like the United States versus China how will it be regulated?
SPEAKER_01:But overall what we're going to be addressing are issues for businesses. How you can use it to to change your business, transform your business and this will be your AI lens. And you do need to know certain ethics issues and you do need to know things that are going on but overall realize this is for businesses, enterprise and individuals who are looking to advance their careers using AI.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I was just more given a broader landscape to understand how that we can be the first podcast and how we can fine-tune it and bring more focus to business needs. The industry's tied in I think all these different um logic platforms are actually getting better and better and it's becoming very close in terms of what you can do with different tools for instance. But understanding which tools do different things better which changes over time. So understanding today what works what doesn't work what which is the most efficient way of doing it all important insights.
SPEAKER_01:And like there are certain things you can do with AI that can help you for example a lot of people are doing marketing on social media. There is so much you can do with AI to know who your customer is or who your employer is or who you're if you're B2B what the businesses are looking for. You can draft your QAs or your fat or your um FAQs you can do whole websites now in minutes minutes in in different in Wix will do it in minutes. There are all kinds of I think lovable does uh that kind of work too there is so much you can do now that you used to pay people a fortune to do over a long period of time that you can do really fast.
SPEAKER_00:Well another example is uh process automation right workflows is what you'll hear the buzzword um you can sit and have a workflow run overnight and it'll intelligently go out scrape the web look for your competitors see what they're offering understand what the pricing is see how they position their product to understand how you can best position yourself relative to them right or partner with them.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely there are different ways to handle it. And I mean just I when young people talk to me because you know there are a lot a lot of young people who reach out to us who are in the tech world and I and I'm like okay you want to be more marketable have you used AI to ask those questions have you used AI to find out where the demands are have you used AI to find out what your potential employer is looking for because right now companies are looking to be cost effective efficient and fast and old school isn't the way to do it. A lot of computer programmers aren't even understanding that right now and I'm telling them you need to be specialized in AI to get things done.
SPEAKER_00:Again going back to that McKinsey study they say 88% of companies do in fact use AI but few scale. So basically they don't have the expertise and the knowledge to understand how to take this and make their businesses better. And that's another area people come in and make themselves more valuable to their board.
SPEAKER_01:2025 was a lot of infrastructure for AI. It was a lot of companies emerging for the infrastructure of what AI will be 2026 is supposed to be on scaling that's what a lot of people are saying that now that it's being perfected more and more and more there are still issues but more and more and more it's being perfected that it's going to be scaled a lot more this year. So you need to get on that and you need to get on that wave real fast and learn how to use it.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's it's also becoming broader and simpler not easier but the way they're they're forming things now like vibe coding used to be it would help you code then it'd be it'd actually do some coding now it's you just speak the instructions and it'll do the coding for you entirely.
SPEAKER_01:Oh artifact blitzy uh there there's so many of them that will code even chat GPT codes um yeah and quad oh and right now the programmers even in the AI companies start out using AI to code it codes 80% and then they come in for the last 20. So it's a big shortcut even for the professionals in that area. And how long to it goes to 10% 5% 2% and then it's 100% right right so you know just fascinating it is absolutely but John what what made you first pay attention to AI? Because I remember I was watching it develop on the legal end since 2015 but then right around February of 23 you started talking to me about it and uh about Chat GPT.
SPEAKER_00:Great question. I think just its ability in the very beginning to do you know what it could do was so uh shocking to me. Its ability to reason and sound almost like a human was responding and its ability to do it over just a broad swath of topics. And then and then once you delve into it just even a little bit you start to understand where it was going to go and how it was going to get there exponentially. So it's improvements um I mean again we're still at the infancy of it and it's improvements that it's experienced already is off the charts. So I can see all of this and understand it was going to be revolutionary for society. It was obviously it would just completely reshape our our whole entire society.
SPEAKER_01:Oh I I think ultimately and I again coming from the legal field I think ultimately there's not going to be any sort of IP intellectual property I I do just where it's going just like Napster kind of killed IP for music in the music industry um it it's not completely dead in the music industry but it's much less profitable. I think that ultimately intellectual property is just going to be it it'll just be out there with AI and there's very little you can do already with photographs and artists and all of that. When the Writers Guild um went on strike and put up a big you know rebellion against AI I I was just like guys harness it use it use it instead of trying to stop it because trying to stop it these studios will just go out of business to independent filmmakers because an independent filmmaker can take AI, do an amazing motion picture with a fraction, a very small fraction of the cost and much faster. So by trying to tie the hands of the studios they were putting the studios in a situation where I mean if I were the studios I I'm not sure I would have reached an agreement on that because they can go out of business competing against independent filmmakers now with with what's out there. Instead if actors find a way to harness they they could have their AI forever Tom Cruise could be making Mission Impossible 879 you know and writers can take their ideas and build something even more amazing. Now is the time to build business out of it because we don't have socialism yet and you can build an amazing business do a lot for society give value to people with very little cost with with most of this stuff.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah I think businesses have to be careful right you don't want to be displaced because you're slow to adopt AI I think that's a great point. So it's it's going to be how businesses compete going forward. It's gonna be one of the biggest competitive drivers in the industry. So it's something to pay very close attention to and if nothing else to at least start trying to get your arms around it or bringing people in to get your arms around it so that you can figure out a way to leverage it on a go forward basis.
SPEAKER_01:All right this is we're wrapping it up at the end now. We are looking forward to talking to you every day and we are going to be giving you this is AI lens your focus view on the emerging hot topics in the age of AI. If you want AI news hot topics advancements and discussions about how AI is reshaping business and society check us out. Like us listen we're here for you and if you have any questions please do reach out because we'd like to address those.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely thank you everybody