Utkarsh Narang (00:02.488) What happens when storytelling meets artificial intelligence? Today, I'm going to speak to Shane, who's written a beautiful book called, Dwelling in the Place of Yes. And we'll speak how you stay relevant, how human beings choose, because we've been wired for millennia to be a no person. And how do you move into that yes person? This conversation, if you continue to stay with us till the end of it, will hopefully help you understand how you make decisions and how you're going to look at the future starting right now. Shane, welcome to the conversation. Shane H. Tepper (00:34.574) Thank you for having me. Utkarsh Narang (00:35.948) Looking forward to it and Shane, we've done about 50 episodes now. We put our guests and ourselves into the deep end of the pool by asking the first question, which is that if that eight year old Shane, eight year old little boy wherever he was growing up, no artificial intelligence, no madness of the world that we see right now, if that eight year old comes and meets you right now, what kind of conversation do you think will emerge between the two of you? Shane H. Tepper (01:01.804) Yeah, I love this question. And I think if I met my eight-year-old self today, he'd be a little bit confused and maybe a little bit surprised because I think eight-year-old me had this notion that adults have everything figured out. And I think that's largely a product of the fact that I grew up in a very stable, solidly middle-class household. provided everything that I wanted, my friends largely from similar backgrounds, my exposure to adults, the adults closest to me at that stage in my life where they seemed like they had everything together and had it all figured out. And I think that that is not, while that provided a good foundation, I think for myself, as an early exposure to what adults adulthood was like, don't know if that was necessarily representative of what all or even most adults feel. I think there's a lot of uncertainty that comes along with adulthood and having to operate in the world and find your way and sort of figure out what you care about and what you want to do and the kind of impact you want to have. there was this maybe unrealistic expectation early on that by the time I reached, I guess, almost 40. Utkarsh Narang (02:24.206) Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (02:31.514) now. I just have a very good idea of the path that I was on. And I don't, like I said, I don't think that's necessarily true. I don't think that's, certainly don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. And I would explain this to my eight-year-old self to kind of help them prepare for entering adolescence and young adulthood. And then, I guess middle age now, I guess I am approaching middle age or within middle age now. But yeah, I think that he might be uncomfortable. Utkarsh Narang (03:01.688) Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (03:10.224) with that idea that you know maybe you don't Utkarsh Narang (03:11.076) Mm-mm. Shane H. Tepper (03:14.9) you know, have everything, everything fully understood and figured out by the time you, you know, you've been around on this planet for about four decades. But I think he'd, I think he'd be very interested in the work that I'm doing with AI. I think you'd ask a million questions about that because you know, eight year old me was someone who loved to build things, loved to create things, whether it was, you know, know, painting or drawing with colored pencils or building things with Utkarsh Narang (03:21.188) Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (03:27.48) Hmm. Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (03:44.736) blocks or connects. I would write little plays with my brother and my cousins during family gatherings. I always doing something creative, always making something. And I think the fact that we now have tools that have drastically augmented how we create things, I think that would be something that was fascinating to him. I think to circle back, think my eight-year-old self would be Utkarsh Narang (03:58.991) Mm. Shane H. Tepper (04:14.65) know, a bit bit astonished, I think, to have his his understanding of what adulthood is kind of shaken up a bit. But I think he'd be very excited about about, you know, what what the world that we're living in now this this AI enhanced augmented world looks like. Utkarsh Narang (04:33.89) Yeah, yeah, it's just crazy, right? And as you were sharing, I think there's this innate need for human beings and we act like in their 20s and 30s also try to, to like, see, like, how do we figure things out? And I think it's, I turned 40 this year. So it's come from, comes from a really personal experience that you reach a certain age when you start to feel like You don't even need things figured out because without figuring it out is much more fun than it would be if it were to all be figured out. And you spoke about this eight year old, right? Being astonished and confused and surprised. If you were to try and explain it to that eight year old, and I know today's eight year olds are like really savvy of a 11 year old, but if you were to try to explain to like a eight year old of 20, 30 years ago, what is AI? How would you explain it to them in the most simplest way, Because they'll be like, what the hell is Sora and Chat GPT and what not and yeah they'll be confused. Shane H. Tepper (05:32.419) Yeah, absolutely. mean, yeah, where would I even begin? would explain to them that AI, you know, if this is the lesson for an eight-year-old, I guess, I would say that AI is based on... is based on computers, right? Because when, I'm about your age, I turned 40 next year. When I was eight years old, I think we had maybe just gotten our first family PC. I was playing games like Number Munchers and maybe Oregon Trail One and stuff. I would be like, AI is a computer that has been trained on vast amounts of information. Maybe even the sum total of what humans know, right? Billions of different data points. the technology, the AI has learned to recognize patterns and make connections between this very large set of data. And you can use it for various things. You have a written prompt, a written question, or a written statement that you would type into your computer that has been on the AI and then the technology uses its pattern detecting capabilities to give you an answer very specific to that statement in response to that statement you have written. So some of these tools might show you an image, right? You can describe a landscape, little Shane, young Shane, you can describe a landscape and then it'll create, it could create an image of a landscape. If you want it to look like a photograph, could look like a photograph. If you want it to look like a painting by your favorite artist, it can look like that. And the more detail you provide, the closer the image that it creates resembles your original vision. You can also ask it a bunch of questions about anything. You can ask it about history. You can ask it about literature. You can ask it about economics. You can ask it about programming. Shane H. Tepper (07:47.571) And it will provide you with very specific answers for your topic. can also, certain programs, certain types of AI programs, you can write a written prompt and it'll create a video for you as well based on the situation that you're describing. So I think it would, you my description would come down to you have these super, super smart computers, these programs that have been trained on vast amounts of data. Utkarsh Narang (08:01.956) Mm. Shane H. Tepper (08:17.424) And I would tell them that they kind of work like human brains and that they're finding patterns that exist among this large amount of data and they're using what your written prompt, they're responding to your written prompt, they're almost thinking like a human brain would and then they're presenting you with whatever it is you want to see based on what you wrote down. Utkarsh Narang (08:22.532) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (08:35.108) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (08:43.332) So many parts that I could take as you were saying all of this, right? Because a computer that knows almost everything, you can ask it questions. And what I'm also thinking, I was in a webinar yesterday, Shane and they asked like how many people use AI and they had like a few options. And out of like about two 50 to 70 odd people, there were, I think only 12 % that said they use AI every single day. And I was baffled because to me, Shane H. Tepper (09:10.232) That's bad for me. Utkarsh Narang (09:11.044) That's really low because to me, AI is your partner, your intern, your data analyst. It's everything, like, and you and I were talking about, You're therapists in some cases, absolutely. So what is it about AI that you think people are still scared of? Shane H. Tepper (09:21.774) You're therapist? Shane H. Tepper (09:31.661) I think... You know, we do have a tendency as human beings to be very skeptical of things that are new and things that we don't understand. And I think a lot of people don't understand what AI is. And I think people also have a very reasonable skepticism of, of, of technology companies as well and their motives. And, you know, they're sharing, you know, they may not want to share, you know, what they're thinking, what they're feeling with an AI. They don't know how that information is being stored or processed. There's just a lot of mistrust, I think. I think that's part of it. And yeah, the novelty of it, the mistrust, and maybe the lack of understanding around what AI is really good at and what AI might not be super good at yet. So maybe people bring these conceptions, these notions of what AI is and isn't, and they're like, I don't think this is something that can help me. I don't think this is something that can enhance or augment anything that I do in my life. know a lot of pure creatives as well that don't like AI for good reason. It's perfectly, it's rational that you see this a piece of technology. It's been trained on a bunch of literature, a bunch of artworks, like human-made creative work products, and they're just being absorbed into a model, and then the original artists aren't being credited or compensated. Shane H. Tepper (11:15.906) in any sort of way and you know if I'm an author or a painter or you know a screenwriter or something like that I can absolutely you know see someone like that and I've you know as a creative myself you know I come I come from a filmmaking and a copywriting background and an advertising background before I got into tech, can, you know, I think those are completely legitimate reasons to not want to be as involved with this technology as you could be, you know. So I think there are just a number of reasons why someone might not embrace the technology as quickly as you and I have. Utkarsh Narang (11:56.377) Yeah. Yeah. But here's what my thought is and I'd love to understand your view. So it's something that's here and it has evolved massively, rapidly, infinitely almost in the last three years. I think the users on ChargeGPD have gone from one million to maybe nine million and maybe even that data is old that's in my head right now. So those who are not on it, I sense are missing out on something. and I can be a purist and I can say that, I'm skeptical and I want to get onto it. But what do think these people are missing who are still either ignoring or are telling, I'm not going to focus on AI. What are they missing out on? Shane H. Tepper (12:38.69) Yeah. I think a lot of convenience, a lot of ways that their lives could be made easier. You don't have to use AI to make a creative work necessarily. You can use it to simplify a lot of everyday things in your life. One instance, something that I love doing with with Chatchity 2 for instance, is I look in my fridge and I'll see, I'll have like, I don't know, maybe some chicken and different sauces and maybe I'll have some different dry seasonings and some vegetables. Utkarsh Narang (12:42.918) Mm-hmm. Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (13:10.07) can you know input all of these ingredients into Chachi BT and be like I want to make a you know a healthy nutritious meal with just these items that I that I have and there it goes and it creates it creates a recipe for you in real time. You know you can make within you know can also add additional parameters I want I want this to be I want this to be ready within you know 45 minutes and it'll it'll create a recipe that you can make quickly you know you could use Chachi BT to to put together you know a meal prep plan a Utkarsh Narang (13:20.004) Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (13:39.973) an exercise regimen, so many different things. You can use it to, to collate data very easily. I've, I've used it on a number of occasions to put together travel itineraries. You know, I'll be, you know, I'll go to, I'll be going to a certain place and there are different activities that I want to do that are maybe scattered around different parts of the city or town that I'm visiting. And I, I'll be like, put together a three day itinerary and then, you know, group, group the activities by proximity so we can sort of. Utkarsh Narang (13:46.745) Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (14:09.796) So you don't, you know, I'm not crisscrossing, you know, the, the, the city, you know, all day long and it'll put together a wonderful, and then you could, you could put together, you could add, want to, I'd like to try these restaurants as well. You can just upload, you can just put all that data into an LLM, a large language model, give it parameters and then tell it what you want its output, what you want the output to be. And boom, you have a wonderful travel itinerary for you and, know, your friends or your family or significant other, whoever you're traveling with. I just think there are so it literally anything you can think of can be a use case. Anything you can think of can be a use case. doesn't need you don't need to be, you know, feel as though you're exploiting, you know, the the artists, the academics, you know, who the the the developers who kind of supplied all this information on which the models are trained. You can you can basically customize it for your specific life and your specific, you know, the specific Utkarsh Narang (14:43.204) Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (15:09.797) instances that you want to optimize within your own life. So I think that'd be a good place to start for someone who might be a skeptic. Utkarsh Narang (15:15.288) Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (15:19.484) I love it. And these are really simple yet powerful ideas which will A, make one's life efficient. So I think it's a great experimenting ground to start with. But what I'm also wondering is that, and I was in India a few months ago and we were there for two weeks and we had like multiple families to meet and all of that. I fed all that in chat, Jipdian said, this is where people live, I'm this date to this date. I'd want anything on the weekends and this and that. And it created such a thoughtful, itinerary. I just loved it. We just had to implement it and we were all sorted. But I think, and your book also speaks about fear. Fear is something that's very close to my heart. I've given a TEDx talk on that. I think it's the fear, right? That shapes this choice, whether we want to be on chat, GPT, or AI, or LLM, or 11 Labs, or whatever we want to call it. And so there's fear that's stopping us from doing certain things. What's your perspective? how do you really overcome fear? Shane H. Tepper (16:17.9) Yeah, it's very difficult, right? Because it is one of those most primitive of emotions that people experience. you know, evolutionarily, it's been a very helpful emotion. You sense something unfamiliar and, you know, it's helpful to stay alive when, if you associate, you know, unfamiliarity with danger. It helps you avoid potentially, you know, doing something that'll harm you. And I think it is in a modern setting, it can still be very helpful, right? If I find myself in an unfamiliar place, unfamiliar surroundings, and you know, I might, you know, my... guard's gonna go up and I'll be I'll be more careful as I as I move about those surroundings. That is an instance where we're having that fear is still helpful. Where it can be limiting or harmful even is when these unknown opportunities pop up that are unfamiliar that could potentially if taken really really have a positive impact on your life and yet you continue to avoid them because because they are unfamiliar and because you know what's on the other side of making that decision is unknown. And so that is really what the book focuses on is providing a framework for people to kind of evaluate these unknown opportunities, these unfamiliar opportunities. You know, you can't blindly say yes to every opportunity that comes along your way. That's not helpful. That definitely sets you up for disappointment in a lot of instances. But if you have a way of thoughtfully understanding Shane H. Tepper (18:10.272) you know exactly what the opportunity is and evaluating whether or not saying yes is appropriate in a particular instance that is extremely valuable that can help people overcome this this innate instinctive fear that they have to to just say no I'm going to continue on this this comfortable familiar path and really allows puts them in position you know if they open themselves up puts them in position to really perhaps change the change their lives for the better Utkarsh Narang (18:38.776) Yeah, yeah. So what's this framework? I'm intrigued and I'm hopeful that our listeners are too. What do you think is the framework? you explain and take a step by step as to how do we put this into practice? Shane H. Tepper (18:51.544) Sure, I think the first step is understanding is recognizing that fear, that instinctive no. And understanding that while natural, can be, it is very limiting. know, allowing yourself to experience that discomfort or that fear and then letting it go, which allows you to approach the situation with, I think, a much more Utkarsh Narang (18:58.404) Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (19:21.486) high intent sort of, intentional sort of mindset. And then you kind of weigh basically, it's a matter of the, imagine looking forward, walking yourself through the pros and cons of either declining or accepting the opportunity. Because a lot of times in our minds we tend to overestimate how harmful it would be to say yes to something and give it a shot. But at the same time, you could maybe having an appropriate level of skepticism about something is also important. So it really forces you to kind of slow down and logically consider the potential outcomes, the pros and the cons. And there's a way that I described, it's called the decision bridge framework, which you essentially map out the potential positives and the potential negatives. Utkarsh Narang (20:17.06) Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (20:22.736) of saying yes or no and then you... Ultimately come to a point where you make your decision and then once that decision is made you you are you are dedicated to that to that decision, right and really giving It's important that you you give You give the the yes, if should you should you should you choose? Yes at that particular juncture, right if you you must give that yes a Fair go of it and really put yourself into that situation Utkarsh Narang (20:36.548) Mmm. Utkarsh Narang (20:56.43) Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (20:58.48) and go forward without, really without regret. Utkarsh Narang (21:06.2) Hmm. Love it. So, so I think be very intentional, slow the process down. What you said that you need to first really understand and recognize where the fear is popping up from. What is that fear? So be intentional about that process. Do the pros and cons because sometimes the thing in the brain feels, feels large, monstrous. And as soon as you start to put it on, on paper, it starts to get simplified. And then you do the decision bridge framework you've done. Like this is what it is that once you've made the decision, then dedicate yourself to it. Give it a fair chance. give that yes, a fair chance. I love that framework. what I also felt, Shane, is that sometimes you almost need the fear to push you off the cliff and you'll never be ready. You'll never be ready. I call this right, that any startup, we're all trying to build our airplane, our ships while we're sailing, while we're flying. And it's a journey. It's a journey. Shane H. Tepper (21:58.797) Absolutely, don't think, we have a tendency to want to feel like completely comfortable with something before doing it. Like I want to feel wholly and completely ready before I launch my startup, you know, before I start, before I, you know, really make any decision, particularly in a business context. And I think, you know, we're never... Utkarsh Narang (22:06.628) Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (22:12.1) Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (22:19.106) Yeah. Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (22:26.262) never really fully certain. We're never really fully certain. So we have to be comfortable with that level of discomfort and uncertainty. That's well, I'll talk more about that when when you ask the question at the end about about what my 80 year old self would say to me, because I think that is definitely something that has been a recurring theme in my life is is is trying to be comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty. Because I think that's a super important thing, but we can we can return to that later. Utkarsh Narang (22:56.076) Absolutely love that love that hook for the audience and you know fear like the TEDx talk that I gave is saying that fear, the next step to fear is somewhere courage and you speak about that too. What was a moment maybe in your life and share a story with us or whatever that feels right Shane? What's one decision where you thought you said yes too early but then that was the best thing that might have happened to you? Shane H. Tepper (23:20.78) Yeah, no, this is, so this is something that I talk about in my book. I sort of relate these different incidents in my life to the framework and to saying what I call, it's a qualified yes is how I refer to it. Again, it's not just saying yes to any opportunity that comes your way, it's kind of qualifying those opportunities and then saying yes or no. Utkarsh Narang (23:39.448) Mmm. Shane H. Tepper (23:50.687) instance that I discussed in the book happened when I was recently out of college. fortunate enough to graduate in 2009 into one of the worst economies in decades. I moved back home, I was waiting tables at a restaurant, you know, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do or even what was available to me at that time. The job market was not so great. It wasn't a very optimistic time for me or for anyone, I don't think really. But I'd always loved moving Utkarsh Narang (24:04.068) BAAAA- Shane H. Tepper (24:29.424) I'd always loved film. I was looking on Craigslist for film opportunities and I saw that there was an unpaid internship to work as a production assistant on a low budget horror film. And I thought, know... Utkarsh Narang (24:49.444) Mmm. Shane H. Tepper (24:53.966) take this unpaid three week gig? it worth it? Am I going to learn anything? And I ultimately decided that... Yes, I was going to do that and get my first job on a film set and see what that was like. And I thought that that would be, you know, kind of a foundational experience to see if this is really something that I wanted to do. And I ended up meeting and becoming very close with both the cinematographer on the set and on the shoot and one of the producers. I ended up sort of having like an apprentice type of Utkarsh Narang (25:17.444) Mm. Shane H. Tepper (25:33.761) relationship with the cinematographer for about a year where he taught me everything about the camera and how different settings affect the image, shutter speed, lens length, all that sort of thing. And ended up working with him on a number of projects, additional feature films, short films, some commercials, and then also with that producer as well. Utkarsh Narang (25:45.006) Mm, lovely. Shane H. Tepper (26:01.506) He got me some of my earliest gigs in the industry and really kind of kicked off a phase of my life and career that lasted several years. I eventually founded a video production company of my own with a business partner that we scaled over a period of years. So had I not said yes to that initial opportunity, it didn't seem that appealing, right? Unpaid production assistant gig for three weeks. you know, it wasn't, didn't seem like that. amazing of an opportunity on its face, but I figured it was a great opportunity to kind of break into an industry that I wasn't sure if I would like or wasn't sure if it was for me. And it ended up being absolutely one of the most transformative decisions of my career. it kind of got me, know, the filmmaking ultimately led me to advertising, to copywriting and advertising, which ultimately led me to working in-house in copywriting. and marketing and business in B2B technology companies, which led me to my current pursuits in AI. So it really kind of kicked off the whole trajectory of my career. And had I said no, who knows what I'd be doing today. Utkarsh Narang (27:08.909) Right. Utkarsh Narang (27:24.494) Yeah, that's so powerful. And it's like, it might seem like a leap of faith, Shane, but I think what you've said, the qualified yes, it's a more logical thinking process that you go within yourself to go into that yes, because yeah, from the outside, it'll seem like, what did Shane do? Shane just took a leap and started filming and production. But it was a very logical thought through step is what I believe it is. Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (27:48.451) Yeah, yeah, and you know, the risks were very low. was, I didn't have a family to support or anything like that. I was living at home with my parents. So, you know, my cost of living was really low. There really was no downside other than, know, if I had come out of it and had decided that, this isn't something I want to do, that would have been what, three weeks of my time at age, you know, 20, 22, 23. Utkarsh Narang (28:17.188) Yeah, not life changing, not life changing if you don't do something, but yeah, but you did. so that shifted the trajectory. Fascinating. I want to come back to AI because that's a topic that I like is, and the speed at which it's moving, Shane, the videos that Sora is now producing, the Shane H. Tepper (28:18.384) I can deal with that. I can deal with that. Yes. Shane H. Tepper (28:29.752) Mm-hmm. Utkarsh Narang (28:46.116) conversations that you can have with voice from 11 labs, the smartness of chat GPT and all of the other tools that are there, right? And, and this new browser war that's now emerging and I don't know where that will go. What do you think as machines become smarter and smarter? What do think humans gain and what do we lose? And I want us to spend like a couple of minutes on both of these because I feel like machines are now starting to drive what is true, what is not, what we see, what we know. the algorithms are keeping people confirming to the kind of things that they want to watch and see and buy and whatnot. So it's going to take a lot of human consciousness to protect itself from these forces. So A, what do humans gain as machines become more and more powerful? Shane H. Tepper (29:37.967) I think what humans gain as the machines become more more powerful is a, as you alluded to before, a companion to bounce ideas off of, a creative collaborator. I said therapist. I don't know if that's the most responsible use case for LLMs. But it's an external sort of... evaluator of the products of your own mind. There have been so many times in the pre-AI era where I would have Utkarsh Narang (30:08.644) Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (30:15.01) you know, an idea and I kind of wanted to stress test that idea or see if that idea was corroborated by data. You know, had anyone else been kind of thinking along these lines? Was this an established concept or was I genuinely doing any sort of original thinking here? And it just would have been so helpful to have some sort of a companion with, you know, the smartest person. that I possibly could ever meet to kind of like work through some of these ideas, these issues, these problems, you know, going back to some of the use cases I enumerated earlier, know, just ways to make my, the various processes in my life, the various things that I do on a day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month basis easier and more streamlined. You know that I think we gain, we get to remove a lot of like the drudgery work, you know, from our lives and get to get from, you know, from concept to execution much more quickly. AI has absolutely compressed, has absolutely compressed, you know, the distance between, you know, something that's going, that's rattling around in your head and its creation, its existence in the world. Utkarsh Narang (31:26.404) Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (31:39.553) And I think that is so valuable to us to be able to have technology that can help us. It's like taking a block of raw marble and instead of having to chisel it, you have a bunch of robotic arms that come in and are working together to hone this piece of marble into something that you had in your head that would have, if you were manually chipping away at it, would take you weeks to to create your final work when instead it can be completed in minutes. I think that's what we gain is a lot of efficiency and a lot of a much quicker path between our thoughts and the execution of those thoughts. Utkarsh Narang (32:14.03) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (32:28.43) Yeah, yeah, love it. And then what do we lose as human beings? Shane H. Tepper (32:34.72) I think there is an inherent danger, particularly for people for whom critical thinking isn't necessarily a strong suit to begin with, to... have the assumptions that we make and thoughts and beliefs that we have that aren't necessarily grounded in reality or corroborated by anything, you know, anything scientific or data backed. think these tools could kind of reinforce those bad or incorrect assumptions, behaviors and habits. People talk all the time about how a lot of these models tend to have... sycophantic tendencies where they're just kind of reaffirming the mental framework that you have in place. And I think for a lot of people, this sort of metacognitive type of thinking where you're constantly evaluating your own thoughts, like, I justified in believing this? Is this something that's real or is it just a perception that I'm having that isn't based on facts or data? A lot of people don't naturally do that. think folks like you and I, like really thoughtful people, you know, that's something that comes second nature to us. I don't like making assumptions about things. I want to know that what I believe, what I say, that there's good reason to believe and say those things, right? I'm also very comfortable with, you know, if I don't know something and I don't know a lot, there's so much I don't know, I'm very comfortable with saying, I don't know, I don't know. Utkarsh Narang (33:57.924) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (34:21.304) Yeah. Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (34:25.422) And then I try and learn but I think a lot of people don't Don't like saying that they don't know and and our don't you know aren't receptive to to new ideas and Don't think about the way Utkarsh Narang (34:33.934) Mm-mm. Shane H. Tepper (34:43.212) that they're thinking in a way that opens them up to the idea that they might be wrong, that they might be making harmful assumptions about any sort of topic, any number of topics, they should really reevaluate and kind of try and change that way of thinking. while and these are like you know and these are the same things that like you know if if approached if approached with you know, a metacognitive sort of way of thinking, a recursive way of thinking, like that AI is so good at that, right? It's so good at helping you kind of like kick the tires of your thinking and your ideas. Am I right? You know, if you ask it the right questions, right? Am I justified in thinking this? Is this pattern that I'm seeing? Is this something that's real? You know, can I make inferences from this? If you're asking those kinds of questions and you're using the tools in that sort of like questioning a curious way, they're amazing. But if you don't, if you're, you you kind of get out of it what you put in. And if you're careful and intellectually rigorous, it's, you these tools are invaluable. But if you're not, they can be very harmful. So I think we kind of lose. I think we kind of lose a lot, depending on how we use these tools, people lose that sort of pushback and that sort of, I guess, it's easier to just fall into this cyclical pattern of thinking that's not necessarily correct or helpful. Utkarsh Narang (36:32.152) Yeah. Yeah, I love it. And as I'm listening to you see machines, it's like the Internet all over again, right? When the Internet came about, there were people who were skeptics. There were people who were like, this is going to change the world, push out whatever might happen. But but people found creative ways to use Internet and it became part of our existence and gratefully so. Right. And now there's this AI, which is which is growing at a rapid pace. think it's how we as human beings see possibilities in those patterns, become more curious to learn, to ask, to see what's possible. And then there'll be some creative ones who already are doing beautiful things. But as you said, the concept in your head can be executed in moments if you give the right technology. I think... Shane H. Tepper (37:21.965) Mm-hmm. Utkarsh Narang (37:25.656) I think it's a train that everyone should get on. think it's, not worth missing this, this beautiful time that we're living on this planet. And, in terms of like our generation, Shane, we've seen a world where, don't know if you remember, having those cassettes and tape recorders where you'd had to like build your favorite cassette with the right songs. Else you'll have to buy the full album for that one. And then from there we went into the iPod. remember. Shane H. Tepper (37:47.98) Mm-hmm. Yep. Utkarsh Narang (37:52.761) buying my first iPod. it was like a dream. What did I get in my hands? And then the iPhone and the internet and wow. And we're looking at chat GPT and have been through COVID. What else is left, my friend? What else is left? Shane H. Tepper (38:05.78) I know you, mean, that's exactly right. I think our generation, you know, I guess the older millennials, we've really lived through, you know, kind of like the end of the analog era and like into the early digital era. And now as we're kind of getting into AI, you know, it's an entirely new era all over again. What was the question? What's next? What can we expect? Utkarsh Narang (38:32.26) There's no question. There's no question. Just a reflection. Shane H. Tepper (38:33.686) Yeah, there's no question. When you were talking speaking earlier about the internet, you were kind of like, you know, you the internet as an analogy, comparing it, comparing the internet era to this era of AI that we're living in now, it got me thinking when the internet became prolific, at least optimistic people were like, we now have any information at our fingertips, can be pulled up. Google has indexed the entire internet for us. We just type in a few keywords and we can learn whatever we want, literally the sum total of human knowledge at our fingertips at any point in time. And I think a lot of optimistic people were like, this is going to usher in an era of unprecedented learning and human flourishing, right? But 25 years later, we've seen some of more negative effects of the internet where people who have maybe bad ways of thinking about things. The internet has made it easier for these people to find each other and form these groups online. And that reinforces maybe this negative thinking, you know, and, you know, social media. out, you know, a lot of social media algorithms work by, you you engage with a certain kind of content and, you know, the algorithm learns what you like and it's more likely to surface that content to you. And again, that also has kind of like this reinforcing effect, you know, if you have bad ideas about, you know, a concept, a group of people, an industry. Shane H. Tepper (40:32.826) you know, education itself, then, you know, the, the, then the, algorithms make it a lot easier for you to kind of, you know, exist in these, in these bubbles, and, and, just have this, have this, these, these kind of harmful toxic ideologies, reaffirmed. So it's, you know, and I think, I think we're, you know, so you, so you have like, you know, the, dawn of the era, you know, optimism, you know, and it's still there, right? Utkarsh Narang (41:00.292) Mm. Shane H. Tepper (41:02.67) the sum total of human knowledge is still there at our fingertips if we wanted to learn, if we want to learn about anything, if we're interested in stress testing our own thinking, we can do that. That's available to us, that has been available to us. But I'm not sure if many people predicted that, you know, the opposite could also be true, is you have these notions in your mind already about how things are and how things work, and that the internet is kind of like only forcing you to to become more entrenched in those beliefs and those thought patterns. Utkarsh Narang (41:38.789) Yeah. At the end of the day, Shane, it's all a bloody choice. It's a choice if I want to go down the path. Like there were drugs, there was other challenges, poverty, there was viruses, the world wars, there's the internet, then there'll be chargability and then there'll be something else. There's scope. So I think it's ultimately human choice, which I think we need to overcome that primitive brain, right? To dwell in that place of yes, as you put out in the book. Because otherwise we could be negating all the good things that are coming to us and focusing straight on what's not working. And so maybe a question that comes is like, in this ever evolving rapidly world of AI, how do you see human beings flourish? And I know it's a very deep philosophical questions, maybe we'll come up with an answer that will serve the audience or not, but where do we find human flourishing truly in this rapidly evolving world? Shane H. Tepper (42:44.994) Yeah. I mean, AI is affecting virtually every workflow in every industry, right? Nothing will emerge untouched by AI. And I think we're seeing a lot of examples of how it is helping human flourishing. I was reading a piece a couple months ago. There is a team of physicians, of doctors, medical doctors, who have basically uploaded information on a bunch of drugs to an AI model. And they tag the drugs with what they treat and then what the side effects are, maybe the effects of the drug that aren't necessarily part of what the drug was intended to do or intended to treat, but which just something that the drug does, an effect it has on the body. And these doctors have been finding cures or at least ways to treat the symptoms of a whole range of conditions and diseases, applying drugs to treat those conditions in ways that they had never even thought of before, right? So a drug that might be good for blood pressure also maybe tends to relieve... Utkarsh Narang (44:05.092) Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (44:14.398) know, maybe some nausea symptoms perhaps for someone who's undergoing chemotherapy, you cancer treatment. I mean, that's a super high level example, but a lot of drugs are being prescribed in novel ways and it's because AI has allowed doctors to see, you know, which of these drugs that traditionally historically have not been used to treat certain conditions could actually be used to treat those conditions. So that was very fascinating for me. Utkarsh Narang (44:39.618) Yeah. Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (44:43.822) I just think there are so many ways that this technology can be put to use. Any sort of workflow that has any sort of like, another healthcare example, the healthcare industry in the US is... super messed up. think we can agree. A lot of the reasons why Americans pay more for their health care for worse outcomes than any other developed country in the world is because of the high administrative costs that come with running a for-profit health care system. with AI, a lot of these kind of low cognitive, high administrative tasks can be automated, right? And you can sort of reduce costs that way. If we're going to maintain a, if we're going to have a for-profit healthcare system, you can drive costs down by implementing some of these automated workflows. So I think, and then you can really apply that to Utkarsh Narang (45:37.55) Mm. Utkarsh Narang (45:53.988) Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (45:58.817) a number of things, a number of industries that are, in which services are delivered to humans. And... Utkarsh Narang (46:10.82) Hmm. Shane H. Tepper (46:15.882) I think it's really, you know, whether or not AI contributes to human flourishing really depends on, I think, the will and efforts of the people who using these tools. They can be used to harm and exploit, and they can be used or they can be used to enhance and help. And I think that is... You know, like you said, it's a choice that humans make. We make choices whether to use our talents and our abilities for good or for bad. know, every successive wave of technological improvement, I think we've seen the same thing, You know, efficiencies gained, but also, you know, new ways of unfortunately exploiting and harming. Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (47:06.404) using it. Absolutely. Yeah, I think this is such a beautiful thought, like it can be used to harm and exploit or help and enhance such a thought provoking conversation chain between this merging of AI and H.I., which is human intelligence and artificial intelligence. As we get to this end point of our conversation chain, let's go to that 80 year old, 40 years and some months from now. when you turn 80 and if that 80 year old chain comes to you right now and says this is my advice to you on how to live the rest of your years what would that 80 year old tell you to do? Shane H. Tepper (47:46.851) Yeah, I think my 80 year old self would probably say something very simple. know, move faster towards the things you already know you want. You know, and don't misread your uncertainty as a... as a lack of preparation or having thought through something. As you alluded to earlier and as I said, think we wait so many, so often in our lives, we wanna wait to be 100 % sure, feel 100 % comfortable before pushing through on an idea or an endeavor. And I think that so rarely if ever come that moment so rarely if ever comes of being absolutely sure like I'm ready to pull the trigger right now And I think that that's more that's all the more the case when you when you know, you're you're a thoughtful a deep thinker, right when you when you and You know, you just have, you you're familiar with the term analysis paralysis. We just have a tendency that kind of like just overanalyze, overanalyze. But I think if you, and that's kind of, that was one of the reasons why I wrote, Dwelling in a Place of Yes was because I didn't want to be, I don't want to be paralyzed by this constant analytical, you know, state. I wanted a simple framework that, you know, helps me easily and quickly map out pros and cons and then you make the decision. There's another saying that the 80-20 rule, 80 % of the way there is good enough. Actually, don't know if that's the 80-20 rule, but being 80 % of the way decided and having thoughtful reasoning behind that Utkarsh Narang (49:38.862) Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (49:53.263) 80 % certainty that's enough to certainly if you're launching a business or something like that. We just have a tendency to like, you have this thing and you want to keep tweaking it and tweaking it until it's absolutely perfect. But in reality, the best approach I think is to get your most of the way there idea out into the world, see how people respond to it, and then you can iterate on it from there. It doesn't have to be perfectly finished. Utkarsh Narang (50:00.185) Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (50:17.177) Yeah. Shane H. Tepper (50:23.216) perfectly polished, you know, when you first get it out there. And being uncomfortable with that uncertainty, or being comfortable with that ambiguity and that uncertainty, I think is something that my 80-year-old self would be like, you know, Shane, you know, looking back on our life, you know, there were so many moments where you, you know, you... You hesitated, you didn't get out as quickly as you could have. It didn't hold you back ultimately, right? It didn't, but you could have been quicker. Utkarsh Narang (50:46.084) Hmm. Utkarsh Narang (50:50.178) Yeah. Utkarsh Narang (50:55.224) Yeah, such powerful advice. To everyone who's still with us at about 50 minutes, I think let's listen to the 80 year old Shane's advice because it's worth it. Move faster towards the things that you know you already want and don't wait to be 100 % sure. I think there's nothing that's 100%. Technology and the change in the world will either harm and exploit the world or help and enhance. What role are you going to play in this is what you need to decide. And remember, nothing's going to be untouched by AI. Everything's going to change. You better be ready and part of the change rather than sit this change out. And humans gain a lot through this. Machines look at patterns, but humans look at possibilities. So remember that. You don't have to have like a full 100 % yes. All you need is a qualified yes to go on that journey and then make the journey worth it. And make sure that you understand that this... This idea that eight-year-old said is that you'll be confused, surprised and astonished how the world continues to change and evolve. Be part of this evolving journey and make the most of that you have right now. Thank you, Shane, for that wonderful conversation. Our listeners who are still on podcast, share with someone who might enjoy this. And if you're on YouTube, then this is a good time to put something in the comment section to let us know that you're watching and you're still here. Subscribe to the channel. Shane, any words before we drop the mic? Shane H. Tepper (52:24.662) No, I think that was a beautiful summary of our conversation that you just gave, Utkarsh. And thank you so much for having me on the show. was a pleasure kind of exploring these different ideas with you. Utkarsh Narang (52:30.436) Amazing. Utkarsh Narang (52:37.07) Thank you for being here. Have a beautiful rest of your evening and this is Utkarsh and Chain signing off.