The Exchanges

Q Okay, interesting. So what are you developing? What is the technology that Andrew is working?

A I mean, fundamentally, our main product is a piece of AI software called Lattice. It's an AI sensor fusion communication and analysis platform that can take data from hundreds or thousands of different sources, Merge them all into one comprehensive picture of everything that's going on in an area, and then, you know, tell what machines to do what, uh, to get the right information to the right people at the right time. And it's the, really the underpinning of all the hardware products that we make. So, you know, we make, we make, uh, military base security towers that run on top of Lattice. We make border, you know, border security tools that run on top of Lattice. We build aerial drones, multiple ones that run on top of Lattice. We build, Counter-drone interceptor systems that knock drones out of the sky, jam them, hack them, and physically destroy them, also running on top of Lattice. We build loitering munitions that are built on top of Lattice. We build robotic submarines that dive to a depth of, of 6000 meters that run on Lattice. And I think actually our submarines are the longest range electric vehicles of any kind anywhere in the world. And all of these things are built together, and it's also worth noting Lattice is not just a tool for our own hardware. We actually integrated more external systems that the DoD already owns Than internal products. So we're degraded with …

AI assessment note: “fundamentally, our main product is a piece of AI software called Lattice.”

Q And so when you say that they're investing in what the future is going to look like, what is that? I mean, do you have any indication of, like, what all that money might be going for?

A Well, I mean, I think there's two, there's two big parts of the future. There's hardware, and there's software. And software is definitely important, because without really good content, or, you know, not even this, like, content, that makes it sound like you're just watching movies, but without good use cases, you know, whether you're, uh, you know, being co-present with somebody working on something, or virtually merging two different meeting rooms in the real world, or Maybe one that's virtual, one that's real. You know, there's obviously a lot of great stuff on the gaming side. There's a lot of great stuff on the trading side. Uh, but I think the other thing that you have a lot of this money going into is the hardware side. Uh, hardware, as they say, is hard, and it's very expensive to live on the bleeding edge, especially when you have, uh, multiple efforts to try and build VR headsets, and kind of, uh, re-projected AR headsets, and optically transparent air headsets. None of those things are going to be ready for quite some time, and the hardware that we have today, it's good for enthusiasts, but the hardware we have today is not, is not going to, uh, be something that the majority of people want to use, certainly not as part of their everyday life, for hours a day. I, I, I wrote a article in my blog called Free Isn't Cheap Enough, and I, I, the, my general thesis was tha…

AI assessment note: “there's two big parts of the future. There's hardware, and there's software.”

Q not gonna get mass adoption. Maybe we'll get a little bit more then. But it does feel like there's almost this step change moment where you end up like, Getting good enough at those other sentences where you do feel like you're in another universe, and then people take hold of it. Question is, if that's 30 years away, right, potentially, then can Medic keep investing this amount of money?

A Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No, no, I, I, I think there's no problem. I mean, so the, the visual, the visual side is going to happen. The audio side is, again, barring these, these kind of extreme edge cases that are going to be very hard to simulate, the audio side of it is going to happen. And you don't have to simulate taste, uh, well or at all. You don't have to simulate touch well or at all. You don't have to simulate even locomotion well or at all. If there are compelling things you can do with just sight and sound. And remember, most of what we experience is sight and sound. That's what most of our brain is dedicated to. I mean, what if you could hallucinate anything in the real world? You know, and when I say hallucinating, I mean functional hallucinations, not, not holograms, but, you know, full on hallucination of, you know, people in spaces, things in spaces, being in a different space. Uh, I, I think there's a huge number of things that you could simulate. I mean, Think about all of the times you've ever had to do business travel, and I've lamented this before, but, you know, I'll, I'll travel to the other side of the world, I'll go to some company, and then I'll sit in a room just so I can talk with people, and, you know, look at a physical model of something, we'll talk for a few hours in a fluorescent lit conference room, we'll shake hands, and then I have to fly home. And…

AI assessment note: “Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No, no, I, I, I think there's no problem.”

Q of Andrel. And actually like, I mean, we definitely went long about, uh, virtual reality in the first half of the show and I'm glad we did, but, um, I'm actually even more excited to speak with you about what you're doing, uh, inside Andrel. So, um, I think the public perception of Andrel is that it's a company that uses AI to develop military technology. How correct is that?

A That's more or less correct, although I think that the structure of the company is as important as the output of the company. We're, we think of ourselves not as a defense contractor, but a defense product company. And what that means is we use our own money to decide what to develop, how to develop it, when it's done, and then we sell it to our customers as a working product. When we go to our customers, we're not going to them with, you know, just a white paper and asking them to put, to give us a bunch of money to make something that we don't Put our own money into. We're going to them with prototypes and products that we've built and say, hey, we've already built this. We've already, we've already taken the risk out of it. You just need to buy it and deploy it and get it out there. The risk is on us, not on taxpayers. And that's a really important distinction because most companies in this space are defense contractors. They work on cost plus contracts where they get paid for their time and their materials, and then a fixed percentage of profit up to, uh, on top of that. Usually a very, a very small percentage of profit. And so the only way for them to make money Is for their systems to be as expensive as possible, for them to be as exquisite as possible, for those contracts to go on as long as possible. In fact, they're incentivized in many cases to drag things out and for…

AI assessment note: “That's more or less correct, although I think that the structure of the company”

Q the other side of it is, okay, so you're working in an AI, you're, you've created an AI weapons company or AI defense company. Sorry about that. So you created an AI defense company. Um, how, how, uh, based in reality, do you think people's fears are that like AGI could like take over some of the systems you're developing and kind of on its own start going to war?

A Well, let's work backwards. Uh, Look, it's a, it's a valid concern, but to be honest, for me, it's so far down the list of other valid concerns. I am so much more terrified of moderately intelligent, very morally bad people Doing bad things than AGI doing really bad things. I'm, I'm actually a lot more worried about, uh, about bad people with dumb AI than good people with really, really, really, really good AI. I, I, I'm even more worried about, you know, bad people with bad AI than really good AI with really good AI. You know, I, I, I feel like people say, oh, you know, what if it, what if it wants to exterminate us? What if it turns out that it's hyper intelligent and it's going to take over? I, I've seen those scenarios. I think they could exist. I think at the end of the day, we don't need to be worried about the AI nearly as much as people using AI as a tool to enact totally human perversions on the rest of the world. It's going to be religious extremists who decide that they're going to use this to exterminate the people of some other religious sect. It's going to be the people who are a rogue state that decide they're going to be able to use AI to Settle a war that has been brewing for hundreds, maybe thousands of years between them and a rival country. I mean, it's gonna be bad people with okay AI that I'm much more worried about than AI itself, if that makes sense. And…

AI assessment note: “it's a valid concern, but to be honest, for me, it's so far down”

Q I mean, it does literally look like the product for them is just kind of all over the place. Is that, if you, let's just play the hypothetical game, if you were there today, is that sort of what, I mean, yeah, seeing you smiling here, so I'm kind of curious. You know, I mean, is the, the focus thing, or what, what, yeah, what would be your plan for?

A Look, I'm not close enough to the problem. Look, at the end of the day, I'm, I'm focused I'm focused on my new company, Anderil. And because of that, I don't know everything that they're having to factor in. You know, like, I know they're having to market to shareholders. I know they're having to market to partners as well, who are going to be important for me this forward. They want to work with a lot of other companies. They have to convince them that they should work with Facebook. And to do that, they have to set a broad vision, not a niche vision. So there's, there's a lot of constraints they're working under that I didn't have to work under. Uh, and so that made my job easy, their job harder. Um, I will say, Ashu, there was a really, there was a really good point. What was, what was the question that you had asked?

AI assessment note: “Look, I'm not close enough to the problem. Look, at the end of the day”