AI with Alec. Get smarter on AI. The easy way.

Kyle Wallack’s art is phenomenal, but the way this “refined graffiti artist” has embraced AI? That’s an inspiration for artists everywhere.This AI with Alec interview is for you if you’re into…Street Art.AI enabling artists to spend more time creating art vs everything else.Intersection of culture, fashion, sports, creativity etc.Humans + Machines not Humans vs. Machines.6 of my favorite parts of our conversation?1️⃣ Intersection of high fashion + sports:“Michael Jordan shooting a Louis Vuitton basketball.”2️⃣ AI enables Kyle to overcome dyslexia:“I always felt like I can’t portray what I’m thinking in my mind because it’s just hard for me to put it together in a way that makes sense.” 3️⃣ Kyle isn’t running away, he’s running towards AI:“I look at AI as just another tool we’ve created to help us.”4️⃣ Clearly Coinbase recognizes talent:Kyle collaborated with Coinbase on “a robot on the back of a jacket for the NBA All-Star game, and Franco Finn wore that.”5️⃣ AI is good for artists:“I can speak on 10 different reasons why AI is good for artists…It’s going to make you push yourself, if you use it the right way…I’m trying to become better versed in art, just out of respect for people who did it before me and out of the need to continuously get better.”6️⃣ Kyle’s response to fears about AI creating art was absolutely lights out:“The biggest fear that I've heard is, my friend who's in medicine said this to me. He's like, ‘What are you going to do? They physically have AI painting oil paintings?’ And I was just like, yeah, but that's not my painting…there's still that human factor that comes with making physical art.”👇 Most importantly, link to where you can find and buy Kyle’s gorgeous art: https://kylewallack.com/Chapters and timestamps:0:00 - Introduction & Discovery1:27 - The Cancer Journey & Finding Art3:19 - Robot Art Origins & Evolution5:27 - Sports Influence & Legacy Mindset7:53 - Culture Meets Sports: The Jordan & Ali Pieces12:14 - AI as Accessibility Tool for Dyslexia16:31 - AI as Creative Secretary & Manager19:03 - 10 Reasons Why AI is Good for Artists25:48 - Addressing AI Art Fears27:28 - Upcoming Projects & Contact Info

Is AI thinking or just imitating our thinking? A new Apple research paper, "The Illusion of Thinking," suggests these reasoning models are doing the latter. Sophisticated mimicry at a previously unimaginable scale.In an AI with Alec fireside chat, I spoke to Henry Saba to gather his perspective on the paper and get his take on what this really means for businesses and builders in the near-term. As a leader in the space of building data infrastructure, automation and intelligent systems for Citadel and Lazard before starting his own company, Specialized Data Company, Henry’s perspective was insightful and clear. Exactly the kind that is the most helpful when trying to make sense of the exponential change all around us:1️⃣ Biggest takeaway from the paper is “their inability to solve generalizable problems” 2️⃣ Think of LLMs as pattern-matching machines (aka massive idioms / Mad Libs → s / o Jack Clark and Rick Rubin) vs LRMs as systems that appear to think through problems step-by-step 3️⃣ Put “AI at the core of the systems that you build” but be sure you’re asking it to solve problems it has seen before 4️⃣ Near-term, “tightly scoped” and “very refined, very purpose-built agents for specific use cases” is where a ton of value will be generated 5️⃣ Gap between AI marketing hype and product / capabilities is getting really wide, critical to know the difference Research link: https://ml-site.cdn-apple.com/papers/the-illusion-of-thinking.pdf

After meeting the client in real life, the first job for an Athena Intelligence client-facing leader is to “build a carbon copy of themselves in the product for the customer”...If that doesn’t capture your undivided attention, go to the 19 min and 12 second mark and listen to Brendon unpack this concept in 175 seconds. For laughs, watch my reaction...AI with Alec Episode #16 is with Brendon Geils, founder + CEO of Athena Intelligence.While everyone is now talking about enterprise AI Agents, my man has been doing it in highly regulated environments because “we want our brand to reflect the security and sensitivity of some of the most important institutions” (i.e.) Financial Services. “We're building an enterprise analyst, or as we like to say, an AI employee for regulated industries.”Gnarly.Top 3 takeaways:1: Athena is a horizontal play focused on enabling clients to solve the hardest problems, the ones they don’t see coming but need to read and react to, fast“I think we shine best when there's some brand new thing that hits someone's desk and there's not an off the shelf solution for it.”2: Brendon believes it’s “better to be small in this business” because you can “scale in other ways by building agents to do the job that maybe historically you would have to hire people for”“Because for this thing to work well, it's gotta live in less people's heads. The more heads you live in, the more it becomes a Google PM’d project, a Microsoft PM’d project. So I think for us, we have to stay small as long as we can.”3: Technology, no matter how powerful, is only one leg of the stool.“What I found was most of the time the technology wasn't the rate limiter for a successful pilot, either at Scale or at Palantir. It was your ability to introduce change management to an organization.”

What’s the first thing you think when you hear about a start-up launching data centers into outer space?For me, it went like this: “Wait, what? Why outer space…ohhhh wow, the AI energy issue. That’s a massive idea…”Watch this AI with Alec episode with Philip Johnston, co-founder + CEO of Starcloud who is doing exactly that and has “the best space engineers in the world working on it.”1: A bunch of “firsts” coming up“By the end of August we'll have an announcement out about the demonstrator satellite that's going up. So that will have the first terrestrial data center grade GPUs in space. So about a hundred times more powerful GPUs than are currently in orbit.”“We'll be the first to train an AI model in space, the first to run high-power inference, first to do fine tuning of a model in space. Lots of firsts are coming up on that mission.”2: Yes it’s hard but “nothing is against the laws of physics.”“But like we're heading to a world where the launch cost is insignificant compared to everything else. And I think people just have a hard time getting their heads around that. mean, yes, space is hard. Yes, we have to figure out the cooling challenge of building an enormous radiator. Yes, we have to figure out radiation and other things. But all of that, nothing is against the laws of physics. You just have to be really dedicated and figure it out.”3: Swim like a dolphin on the moon? I’m +10000 in.“If you're swimming on the moon, you could basically swim like a dolphin so you can propel yourself out of the water. And like you could actually, you could do the reverse of a dive. Like you could propel yourself so far out of the water you could land on a diving board. Anyway, yeah, you could basically swim like a dolphin on the edge of a crater with earth rising in the background, 24 seven sunlight…”Speaking of dolphins, I might have to finally start watching White Lotus…

In AI, there’s only one “Igor” and I am SO STOKED to share that he joined me for an AI with Alec interview. Please find time to hear legendary AI pioneer Igor Jablokov, founder + CEO of Pryon, move through all sorts of fascinating topics. Chapters: 00:00 - Introduction to Igor Jablokov 00:53 - Igor's Journey: From IBM to Siri and Alexa 02:24 - Understanding Pryon and Enterprise AI 04:47 - Working with JD Vance and Rise of the Rest 07:18 - The Three Acts Post-ChatGPT 09:04 - Critical Take on AI Company Practices 11:04 - Lessons from Social Media 12:27 - Thoughts on DeepSeek 15:08 - AI and the Arts: The Opera Analogy 19:07 - Future of Work and AI (2030 Vision) 22:53 - Enterprise AI Adoption 25:35 - The Evolution of AI: From "Punk Rock Days" to Mainstream 27:48 - Closing Thoughts: AI's Role in Solving Global Challenges Key Highlights: - Igor reveals how Pryon was the original codename for what became Alexa - Discussion of the three phases of enterprise response to ChatGPT - Unique perspective on AI's relationship with creative arts, comparing AI to opera - Insights on augmented intelligence vs. replacement of workers - Vision for 10x productivity growth through AI augmentation - Candid discussion about AI companies' practices and ethics Guest: Igor Jablokov - Founder and CEO of Pryon - Former IBM AI team lead - Pioneer behind technologies that became Siri and Alexa - Early AI innovator, pioneer and absolute legend aka AI OG

If you don't know about NotebookLM, now you know. It has ben described as "the next ChatGPT" and once you give it a shot, you'll experience the AI magic and know why. During the episode, we cover: 1: Re: AI, we're past "why" and all in on "how," especially within the Enterprise. 2: This isn't a promise to change the way you work, it's a tangible reality available to anyone. Right. Now. 3: The discipline to build a great product is what it's all about. Reminds me of what the legendary Rick Rubin refers to as the "ruthless edit"...