Summary:
In this electric episode of Sidecar Sync, Amith Nagarajan and Mallory Mejias unpack the latest AI announcements from Google I/O and the highly anticipated Claude 4 release from Anthropic. They explore what Google's Deep Think means for AI reasoning, debate the creative and ethical implications of video generation tools like Veo 3 and Flow, and rave about Claude's new voice mode. Plus, they reflect on the seismic shift AI is bringing to content, coding, and SEO—alongside some AC/DC-fueled Chicago memories and a preview of the upcoming digitalNow conference.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
🎉 More from Today’s Sponsor:
Member Junction https://memberjunction.com/
📅 Find out more digitalNow 2025 and register now:
https://digitalnow.sidecar.ai/
🤖 Join the AI Mastermind:
https://sidecar.ai/association-ai-mas...
🔎 Check out Sidecar's AI Learning Hub and get your Association AI Professional (AAiP) certification:
📕 Download ‘Ascend 2nd Edition: Unlocking the Power of AI for Associations’ for FREE
🛠 AI Tools and Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
Claude 4 Opus ➡ https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-4-opus
Claude Voice Mode ➡ https://www.anthropic.com/news/claude-voice-mode
Gemini 2.5 Pro ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Gemini Ultra ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Gemini Flash ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/gemini
Google Veo 3 ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/veo
Google Image 4 ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/image
Flow by Google ➡ https://deepmind.google/technologies/flow
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sidecar-global
https://twitter.com/sidecarglobal
https://www.youtube.com/@SidecarSync
⚙️ Other Resources from Sidecar:
More about Your Hosts:
Amith Nagarajan is the Chairman of Blue Cypress 🔗 https://BlueCypress.io, a family of purpose-driven companies and proud practitioners of Conscious Capitalism. The Blue Cypress companies focus on helping associations, non-profits, and other purpose-driven organizations achieve long-term success. Amith is also an active early-stage investor in B2B SaaS companies. He’s had the good fortune of nearly three decades of success as an entrepreneur and enjoys helping others in their journey.
📣 Follow Amith on LinkedIn:
https://linkedin.com/amithnagarajan
Mallory Mejias is passionate about creating opportunities for association professionals to learn, grow, and better serve their members using artificial intelligence. She enjoys blending creativity and innovation to produce fresh, meaningful content for the association space.
📣 Follow Mallory on Linkedin:
https://linkedin.com/mallorymejias
🤖 Please note this transcript was generated using (you guessed it) AI, so please excuse any errors 🤖
[00:00:00] The way to think of these AI tools is they're part of your team and they can help you brainstorm. They can help you come up with new ideas, they can help come up with creative alternatives to something you're working on. So give it a shot. The best way to learn AI is to play with AI. Welcome to Sidecar Sync your weekly Dose of Innovation.
[00:00:19] If you're looking for the latest news, insights, and developments in the association world, especially those driven by artificial intelligence, you're in the right place. We cut through the noise to bring you the most relevant updates with a keen focus on how AI and other emerging technologies are shaping the future.
[00:00:36] No fluff, just facts and informed discussions. I'm Amith Nagarajan, Chairman of Blue Cypress, and I'm your host Greeting Sidecar Sync listeners and viewers. Welcome to this episode. We are here to talk about an interesting set of topics, as usual, at the intersection of all things, associations, and the world of ai.
[00:00:57] My name is Amith Nagarajan, and my name is Mallory Mejias. We're your hosts, and as always, we've prepared a couple of topics for you that we think are really interesting at this intersection of where the world of associations is going and needs to go. And of course, what's happening in the world of artificial intelligence, which is always moving and going really, really fast.
[00:01:20] It's a crazy time. How are you doing today, Mallory? I'm doing pretty well. Amee, I think today was a fun example. You sent me a teams message right before we started recording with an announcement about Claude Voice that had just been released, maybe what, 15 hours ago, 18 hours ago, that we had to hurry up and and add into today's script.
[00:01:39] So I think you're right. We're seeing AI move faster and faster. It can be tough to keep up with, but at least we have this weekly meeting to kind of hold ourselves accountable. Well, you know, it reminds me of that old quote. I, I don't remember who it's from. We'll have to find out if there's this, uh, definitive attribution of this particular quote and, and link, link it in the pod notes.
[00:01:58] But, uh, something along the lines of, if you don't like change, you'll like obsolescence less. And so that's certainly an. Appropriate thing to remember when we're dealing with the pace of change. And for everyone, you know, I find it overwhelming as well. I mean, I, I kind of enjoy it on the one hand because it's super fun to, it's kinda like Christmas every day where you get these new toys to play with.
[00:02:18] But the flip side of it is, it's like, how do you keep up with these things? You know? And especially if. A big part of your business is staying on top of ai, and you find out, well, we didn't know about Claude's audio mode. How could we be so far behind? We're 15 hours behind Mallory. I mean, we're just doing a hor, a horrible, horrible job.
[00:02:33] So I, I won't steal our, our thunder from that, but, uh, I am excited, uh, about audio mode. Speaking of Thunder, um, this weekend I was up in Chicago and, uh, got to check out a CDC. Um, and so my, uh, teenage daughter was with me. I got to, uh, experience a CDC one of my favorite all time bands, but live, uh, I'd never seen them.
[00:02:55] And, uh, so she got to see, uh, the band play, which was pretty fun. And, uh, seeing her, uh, sing along the thunderstruck was, was quite fun. You know, s. Wait, that's awesome. I, I had no idea. Were you just in Chicago for fun? For business? No, we were, so every year I take each of my kids on a one-on-one trip, so I'll take them just for like a long weekend.
[00:03:15] Usually it's like a leaving a Friday morning and come back on a Sunday night. Uh, so, and I let the kids pick where they're going. My son always picks going skiing, so we kind of do the same thing and just ski really hard for three days and come home and that's always super fun. And then, um, my daughter picks.
[00:03:30] You know, usually a city. She's a city person. So we've been in New York, we've been to Chicago, we've been to Orlando, we've been to a bunch of places. San Francisco one time. And, uh, we've been to Chicago. Actually this is our second, uh, trip to Chicago that we've done together. Uh, the first one we did was eight or nine years ago, and, uh, she was.
[00:03:47] Really small at the time. And um, what was really cool was Chicago back then they had, um, a Chicago does a lot of really cool things in terms of street art. And they had, uh, at the time, eight or nine years ago, a bunch of dog statues, which I think were there to honor the canine police units. Uh, something along those lines is what I recall.
[00:04:06] And they're not generally on display across the city as they were at that point in time. Several years ago, and both my, my kid and I are dog nuts. So seeing those dog statues all over the place was awesome. But it happened to be that we were checking into the Sheraton, uh, hotel, uh, downtown, and there was one of those dog statues right there like greeting us as we got out of the cab, you know, coming into the hotels.
[00:04:28] That was a cool way to start the trip. And then we got to see a CDC live on Saturday night. So it was, it was awesome. We had a great time. That's really awesome. I love the idea of doing a, a special trip with each of your kids solo each year. That's, that's really special. I remember one year too, I think y'all went to San Diego or maybe it was like San Francisco.
[00:04:46] That was a huge go. Yeah, we did a California trip and uh, that's where I'm from originally. And we got to go to San Francisco and we got to do a bunch of cool stuff and, uh. Showed, you know, showed her like where I grew up and stuff, which was fun too. But yeah, no, I highly recommend it if you have kids and if you can get away, even if it's somewhere, you know, short driving distance, just spend a day, two days.
[00:05:04] Um, it's interesting, the kind of stuff, especially in teen years, have got a rising sophomore and a rising senior in high school and, you know, you don't get a whole ton of time with them one-on-one. So it's, it's cool to just break away and spend a little bit of SLA time with each kid. And, uh, you know, if, if you have a family with like six or seven children, I guess that's a lot harder.
[00:05:22] But I've only got two, so it's pretty straightforward. Out well for you. Yeah. Uh, well, I, I love Chicago. It's a great city. If only we knew of another event in Chicago that was coming up this year that maybe our listeners could go to. Any ideas of me. Yeah. You know, and it's, it's pretty awesome. I think it will compare, uh, very well relative to ac DC in terms of how cool it is.
[00:05:43] Uh, we are going to be hosting. Sure, yeah, totally. Uh, we are gonna be hosting digital now, uh, in Chicago, November 2nd. Through fifth, um, at the beautiful Lowe's Hotel. I was actually next door to the Lowe's Hotel when I was there this weekend. And, uh, Lowe's Hotel is spectacular. Uh, we have some really fun events, uh, in that neighborhood as well that people can walk to.
[00:06:04] So it's gonna be a great event, learning deeply, um, all the things that are happening in the world of ai. And emerging technology in general, uh, and how they apply to the world of associations as we always do each year, uh, each year in the fall when we host our digital now conferences, as we've been doing for quite a number of years now, it's a, it's a, uh, really a touch point in the year where we can look at what's happened since the last digital now.
[00:06:28] Reflect, uh, think deeply about the future and really build, uh, relationships with the wonderful community. We, we expect to have, you know, in the neighborhood of about 300 people there this year. And, uh, that should be the biggest digital now ever. And, uh, most importantly, the quality of the community coming together, the care that they have for advancing their organizations and helping their colleagues.
[00:06:50] Advance across organizational boundaries is really what gives digital now its energy. It happens to be that we're talking about a lot of AI topics. It's really about the community of these forward looking practitioners. We think it's a pretty unique, uh, community and a unique event. So definitely encourage folks to consider putting that on the calendar Chicago in November 2nd through fifth.
[00:07:09] Absolutely. And we're starting to announce some keynote speakers as well. Amit, you were on the docket. I'm assuming you'll be delivering the, the first keynote kicking off the event. That's usually my habit is, uh, you know, I'll get up there and start talking about whatever's on my mind and it's, uh, oh yeah, exactly.
[00:07:24] It's pretty much just like that. But, uh, yeah, I'll be opening it up and sharing some general thoughts on. The broader arc of ai. And at that point in time, who knows what we'll be covering? Because, you know, in all honesty, I, I do prepare, I prepare keynotes well in advance on the one hand, but I really am tuning them up until literally the night before usually.
[00:07:41] So, uh, it's, it's just so hard to prepare for delivering a message on anything related to AI if you're not that dynamic with it. It's not so much that the tools and technologies are changing so much, which, which they are, but it's more about how do you get people on board with the concept of exponential change.
[00:07:59] And the more up to date and the more relevant the examples are, I find that you can bring an audience along in a, a much more effective way. A hundred percent. I feel like if you had prepared a keynote for today, which we're recording this in late May right after Memorial Day and prepared that in January, it would be obsolete.
[00:08:16] Like there would be no point in presenting that keynote on ai. So I think you almost have to maybe have a framework or structure ahead of time, but keep tweaking almost up until, what, 15 hours before? Yeah, totally. All right. Today we've got an exciting lineup of topics. We're gonna be talking about Google's IO conference, which they recently held, and some of the updates and releases that came out of that.
[00:08:39] And then we'll also be talking about the Claude for Release, which I'm very personally excited about because Claude is my favorite model. I'll go ahead and put that out there. I've said it a few times, but that's the one I go to for the most part. But first, we're starting off with the Google IO conference, which is their annual developer conference, typically held in May in Mountain View, California.
[00:09:01] It's the company's flagship event for unveiling the latest advancements in technology. Google IO 2025 was held in May, and of course was dominated by artificial intelligence advancements with a particular focus on infusing AI into nearly every product and service. So I'm gonna include some of the important releases and updates from this year's conference.
[00:09:21] First, focusing on the Gini AI platform. Gemini 2.5 Pro, which we've covered on the pod, received a significant upgrade with the introduction of Deep Think in experimental enhanced reasoning mode. Deep Think allows the model to consider multiple answers and reason. In parallel, we've seen something similar come out of OpenAI, um, and Anthropic as well.
[00:09:44] They also released Gemini Ultra, a new top tier subscription, so it's about two $50 a month. It offers the highest level of access to Google's AI tools, including VO three, flow Deep Think, and expanded limits on platforms like Notebook, LM, and Whisk, and then Gemini 2.5 Flash. The lighter weight model is now available to all users via the Gemini app.
[00:10:09] Moving on to search and workspace, Google's AI mode. A chat like Search experience powered by Gemini is now available to all users in the us. It introduces features like in-depth search chart creation for financial and sports queries, and the ability to shop directly through AI mode. Jim and I can now generate personalized smart replies and Gmail by drawing on a user's email history with this feature rolling out to paying subscribers this summer.
[00:10:37] And then generative AI is being integrated into Google Workspace apps, maps, and Chrome, making these tools more intelligent and more personalized. Maybe the most exciting part for me was looking at the generative AI model releases and updates. The latest version of Google's Text to image generator image four improves text rendering and supports exporting images in multiple formats.
[00:11:02] I tested this out right before the pod, the speed. Incredible. I gave it a really long prompt that I've been using those types of prompts for. Uh, chat GTS 4.0, image Generator Chat. GBT tends to take like. 30 seconds to a minute to generate the image. This generated the images near instantaneously, which was incredible, but the text was not as good as chat.
[00:11:24] GBT, it got some of the words, right, some of the words not so. Right. So I'll say I'm sticking with chat GBT for now, but I wanted to share that. The speed. Very impressive. Um, they also released the next generation video generator, VO three, that produces synchronized video and audio, including sound effects, background noise, and dialogue.
[00:11:43] I did a quick experiment with VO three. I shared this with you yesterday. Amit, I wanna insert a quick clip here. I've met so many people here, um, that have given me so much valuable information. I. If you saw that on YouTube, you saw how impressive the details were in the video. It's only eight seconds for now because it's still in preview.
[00:12:06] But I will say it's pretty impressive, uh, for what I gave it in a single prompt. My prompt was essentially, uh, act as a member or pretend. We're seeing a member of the Association of Really Awesome Nurses at the annual meeting, giving a testimonial directly to camera about why being in that association and attending that event is so important.
[00:12:28] Uh, so for one prompt, quite impressive. And I'm sure you all have seen perhaps the video making rounds on social media. It's like a car, uh, expo hall event, and you almost can't, you really can't tell that it's AI generated. They also, um, released Flow, which is a new application that uses VO imaging and Gemini to generate short AI videos from text or image prompts.
[00:12:54] It includes scene building tools for creating longer AI generated films. Something interesting I had not heard about Project starline is Google's 3D video chat booth and it's evolving into Google Beam. So it's an HP branded device that uses a light field display and six cameras to create a 3D video chat experience targeting enterprise customers.
[00:13:17] Pretty neat. Maybe we'll have a Google Beam digital now one day. Uh, we're also seeing new APIs and sample apps like Android Deify showcase how generative AI can transform user experience and app. Development workflows. We didn't see any new hardware come out of Google IO 2025 like we had in the past. Um, they did release an important update though, that they're beginning to allow large language models to access personal data for more tailored experiences, starting with Gmail, like I mentioned, and expanding to other products soon.
[00:13:50] So Amit, a lot, a lot, a lot to unpack here, uh, of all of the updates that I just covered, what do you think is most notable or most exciting? I think this is, uh, an interesting point to look at Google's overall development arc, uh, in the last couple years because, you know, you covered a lot of ground there.
[00:14:08] So clearly Google has been, let's just say, very busy. Uh, we talked about Google and at the time their lack of a contemporary AI offering. Back in the early days of chat, GPT, we talked about how Google had, you know, issued this internal. Announcement that they had to focus their resources and it was, you know, essentially, uh, an existential threat to their business, which it was and is if they weren't in the race.
[00:14:34] But, you know, clearly what they've done here over the last couple years is not only caught up, but I would argue that they're leading the pack in many areas of artificial intelligence, which is. Kind of natural for these guys. You know, Google, you have to remember, starting with search actually was a form of AI in a very early, uh, style.
[00:14:51] But, you know, these guys sit in deep, deep, deep in computer science and AI for a very long time. The transformer architecture, which all of this stuff is based on, was invented in their lab, uh, years ago. So, uh, but they, you know, didn't commercialize it quickly or, or, um, as extensively as others did. And so the point I'm making before we get into the specifics is if you find that you.
[00:15:12] Are behind on AI or something else like that. Uh, it doesn't mean that you're lost. It means that you need to prioritize. It means that you need to cut out the things that you don't need to do and focus on the things that are really critical to your future. And associations are often, uh, led by groupthink and committees and kind of everybody getting a trophy kind of mindset in a committee where, uh, nobody wants to kill projects that they personally felt were important.
[00:15:40] Uh, but these are the times when you have to leave. With conviction and you have to be willing to narrow your lens and scope down to just a handful of activities that you're gonna go crush it with. And that I think Google has done a really good job of that. So I wanted to give them some props, but also relate that back to the world of associations who are often juggling far too many priorities.
[00:15:58] And that's where you have to make some tough decisions. The difficult, uh, conversation in the strategy room isn't, uh, how to add ideas to the mix. It's how to prune ideas and how to defer ideas, and in some cases, how to kill ideas off. So. I think Google's done a good job in, in focusing their resources on AI generally.
[00:16:15] Um, coming back to your question, Mallory, I think that what they talked about with Deep Think is, you know, it's one of like 50 announcements. So let's unpack that just a tiny bit. So Deep Think is, it goes beyond the idea of extended reasoning in Claude or, uh, the longer, uh, form of reasoning that's in, uh, open AI's oh three and oh four models, um, which are kind of single threaded in a sense.
[00:16:38] So those models, uh. What they had. When, when you talk about either test time compute or inference time compute, you're essentially giving the model more time to think. And like our brains, they'll start exploring typically one solution at a time, the next solution. And they'll try to find out, well, what's the best solution?
[00:16:55] Let me break down the problem into chunks and solve it. We've, we've covered that a lot on this pod and in our content elsewhere. What Deep think does that's interesting is, um, in parallel considering multiple possible answers and essentially imagine that reasoning process we just discussed, but happening 3, 5, 10, 50 times in parallel and then pulling back the best answer based upon that combined reasoning.
[00:17:19] It's like saying, Hey, instead of having one really smart PhD level person work for you on a problem, let's spawn a room of 30 such PhDs, or 50 or a hundred or a thousand. Have them all work on it in parallel and then bring back. The best ideas and combine them. That has a lot of promise. Obviously it's computationally resource intensive, uh, but I think it, it holds a lot of promise.
[00:17:40] Uh, we ourselves here at Blue Cypress, not nearly at the level of what Google does obviously, but in our own small way are experimenting with the same concept with some of our AI agents where rather than solving for a particular user problem one. Piece at a time, we're actually generating multiple possible responses and then using a supervisor AI model to pick the best answer.
[00:17:59] Uh, so I think that's, and a lot of people are experimenting with this. What's happening is, is if you look at the broader arc in the compute curve. We have more resources available and faster inference available than ever before. So it's possible to do these kinds of things. Concepts aren't new. Um, but it's, it's exciting to see.
[00:18:15] So for a, from a computer science geek perspective, that's probably the coolest thing. I actually wanna, uh, uh, turn to you actually and say, well, what do you think about the flow AI filmmaking app? Because I found that just in terms of creativity, certainly a very interesting announcement. Yeah, so I, I didn't have a chance to play with Flow directly, but it's kind of a combination, like I mentioned, of all the things, uh, VO three, Gemini, which I have experimented with.
[00:18:40] I will say my first experience that with this was actually on Reddit. I. Which you and I meet have been, uh, talking about just recently, but I'm an avid Reddit user. I like to go to that platform if I need recommendations or advice and like crowdsource information for travel, for acting classes, for recipes, all sorts of things.
[00:18:59] So I'm in an acting thread and someone dropped the release of VO three and the video that was going viral, and they basically said. This is going to completely ruin like performing arts and everything. It was kind of a doomsday post, which I immediately clicked on it and was like, Ooh, when my two worlds clash, right?
[00:19:19] My acting world and then my sidecar sync AI enthusiast world. So I will say I was a little bit, I. Taken aback initially, I knew that this was possible, but seeing it in that context with all the comments of other actors saying, this is gonna ruin everything. We're never gonna be able to act in the future.
[00:19:36] This is gonna take over. I had a little bit of a, a negative angle on it perhaps, but I. It's just two sides of a coin. I think on one side, you're allowing so many people to create things that never would've been possible, including myself having an idea, and not just in the us, someone anywhere in the world.
[00:19:53] Having an idea, a story that they wanna tell, something that's emotional for them, impactful for them that might be helpful for other people. Being able to do that at your fingertips for essentially free. Is incredible on the reverse side, being able to do that with no humans in the loop, or very minimal humans in the loop when, uh, living life as a creative is als already really difficult to do, to make a living that sucks.
[00:20:18] So I do think. And I read in this thread, I do think art for art's sake will continue. I think there's going to be a group of people that want to consume art made by humans, uh, because that's what makes them feel the most. And then there will be a market for AI generated art as well. And maybe there's a little bit of a crossover in the middle when you can appreciate a filmmaker with limited resources, creating something really beautiful out of this technology.
[00:20:45] But it's, it's hard, it's hard to grapple with for sure. That makes sense. Uh, thanks for sharing that perspective. I mean, it's, it's, it's hard for me to relate to in the sense that I don't have that, you know, creative side in terms of, uh, and, and kind of the impact it has on that world. But I totally get where you're coming from and I could see that being a risk.
[00:21:01] I mean, I think that the way I'd relate to that is, you know, with computer science and software development, um, there's definitely a creative element to that. But just generally the displacement by ai, uh, coding agents is going to wipe out a large percentage of the. That humans are doing right now. So what does that mean for the world?
[00:21:17] That's deeply concerning. On the other hand, when you see what these things can do at ridiculous speeds, it's truly phenomenal. It's just an amazing experience. So, um, hopefully there's some kind of, uh, equilibrium met that's met where there's so much more opportunity that there is, uh, ample space for the humans to do what they do and to maintain, uh, the artistic side.
[00:21:38] I will say, like personally, on the consumption side of. Particularly with entertainment. I can't see myself really, uh, consuming a whole lot of AI generated, like TV or movies. I don't know, maybe, but mm-hmm. I really would like to see, you know, people do their thing. I think there's, there's, uh, a tremendous, you know, value as a consumer in, in experiencing.
[00:21:57] I. What people create. So, yeah, I don't know. Uh, but maybe that's, maybe that perspective will change too. Who knows? Um, on the side of the business, uh, use of, of like something like a flow AI filmmaking app, one of the thoughts that I had was, you know, you use the ter uh, term storytelling, and I think that's the key thing to double click on is, um.
[00:22:14] As a species, we've been telling stories since we've been able to move around and talk, right? And since we've been drawing pictures on caves and getting together around fires and, and conveying stories, uh, verbally, and, um, if we can do that at scale better, if we can communicate our business ideas through storytelling.
[00:22:32] That's an interesting concept. I think about like our AI learning content that we deliver through sidecars, you know, AI certifications and AI courses, and I'd love to have additional, uh, content in there, some modalities where, you know, you have right now, uh, for those of you who haven't experienced it yet, if you go to sidecars AI Learning Hub, you'll see AI generated content.
[00:22:53] And we use AI avatars and we use AI voices and the content itself. We heavily use AI to help us prepare it. Everything has been touched and reviewed and and originated by a human, but we use a heavy, heavy dose of AI to prepare our a, our AI learning content. It gives us tremendous flexibility and speed, the ability to modify it, working in partnership with some of our clients to deliver AI learning for whatever their industry is.
[00:23:15] It's wonderful, but it's also, the modality is fairly simple. It's an avatar like, you know, which is. Basically what I was doing and you were doing, we were recording these courses manually, um, speaking and talking about each slide, and then there's some demos mixed in. But wouldn't it be great if you could kind of have additional dimensionality to that where there's, you know, some kind of videos and maybe their three minute or five minute videos explaining a complex concept.
[00:23:38] An example is. In our AI learning content, we have, uh, a section of our data course all about vectors. And in that, in that lesson we talk about this concept of vector embeddings and what they do and how they work in the world of ai. And we try to explain it in a fairly non-technical way. I. I could think that there would be some really interesting like animations and videos that mm-hmm.
[00:23:58] This type of platform could create. So I think that use case could be really interesting. And for our association community, that's pretty much what associations do, is they tell stories in their space. So could these tools be used even in some experimental ways, initially, to do things you would never be able to do, you'd never afford, you know, hiring actors to go create an animation for something like that, right?
[00:24:18] Mm-hmm. What do you think about that, that use case? I think it's a great idea, and I think it's, it goes back to the idea of breaking your brain. We often think when there's a topic that's serious or dry, perhaps maybe like vector databases. There's no place for animation in that there's no place for fun because we've never done it like that historically.
[00:24:37] But I've mentioned on the pod before that across Blue Cypress, we use Nin Geo, which is a platform that provides cybersecurity training through animations. And that's a very serious topic that you have to be very thorough with. But they're using animations and cartoons and storytelling, and I like them.
[00:24:55] Like those videos are not something I just, oh, click through, click through, have to finish. They're actually quite enjoyable, and I find myself retaining more of the content because it's in that story mode. So if you are discouraged by the idea of, I don't know, having serious content portrayed through a story, I encourage you to try it out.
[00:25:11] Maybe not every piece of content needs to be a story, but it's definitely a powerful medium. Amit on the VO three front. Obviously my little eight second example was a fake testimony about an association. After I created that, I was impressed, but I also thought, huh, well perhaps you shouldn't create a fake testimony.
[00:25:30] That's probably not a great use case because if an association posted that, that might erode trust, uh, VO three is incredible. I highly encourage you all to check it out, but I'm curious for you, Amit, what. Immediate or near term use cases do you see for associations coming out of something like hyperrealistic videos from a single prompt.
[00:25:49] You know, I think the idea of illustrating perhaps things that aren't, uh, an individual, you know, attesting to their satisfaction with your membership or your events or whatever, but other, other things where you're trying to illustrate a concept that's better, um, better conveyed verbally or through video, or perhaps it's, it's, uh, you think about an example where some of the most effective instructional videos that I, I find on YouTube, which I, I go to all the time for different things, um, is.
[00:26:15] You know, a person talking, but they might have like a whiteboard and they're drawing on it and they're kind of creating an image. Uh, or maybe they're just showing, showing some concept and illustrating it. So it's kind of, it's multimodal in that sense, I guess. And so if, if this tool can produce videos like that, that can be interesting or maybe even producing like super realistic looking animations, uh, where you're showing concepts in a very visual like.
[00:26:37] 3D, four D way where these, these concepts are coming to life as things that you're illustrating. I think that has a lot of, of application in learning in general, where you're, you're trying to convey concepts and you're trying to literally, literally illustrate those concepts. A lot of times we say, Hey, let's illustrate this idea with an example.
[00:26:56] We'll write out the example or speak to an example, but could we potentially somehow visualize that, right? Mm-hmm. Uh, another use case that comes to mind is, uh, when we're thinking about like interacting with a website or some other kind of application, uh, being able to kind of visualize how people might use such a tool, um, in the real world or, you know, visualizing it.
[00:27:17] In a prototype environment. There's, there's all sorts of different ways. I think you could throw, you know, concepts at this. I think that the things people are doing is like, oh, what kind of videos are we used to seeing? Mm-hmm. We're used to seeing videos of ourselves, we're used to seeing videos of maybe animals or, you know, uh, you know, uh, you know, uh, just different kinds of, of images that are out there of landscapes or whatever.
[00:27:36] So we just start doing that with these tools. But what kinds of videos do we not have that we'd love to have that would help us illustrate our point and help us tell stories better? And I think there's like this whole latent space. Uh, in the, in the world of possible videos that we've explored this tiny little percentage, it's kind of going back to the whole Jovan paradox conversation we had around AI inference.
[00:27:56] And we say, Hey, like, look, as the cost of something approaches near zero, that increases the demand. And it also on the supply side, importantly, increases the people producing these things because they see this a hundred x thousand x million x increase in the opportunity. Uh, and that's why you see people, uh, running out there and building these massive clouds, these hyperscalers building opportunities.
[00:28:17] For doing more and more AI inference. So I think that's what it creates is use cases. No one would've dreamed up even the inventors of the technology. Mm-hmm. I wanna zoom in a bit on AI search or AI overviews. Anecdotally, in my opinion, I feel like these have gotten a lot better on Google search. I find I don't have to really click into as many pages when I'm looking for an answer.
[00:28:41] Um, you know, this morning I was looking up like the fiber content in my oatmeal and goo It had the nice AI overview. I said, perfect. So I'm curious, we've talked about on the podcast before about. SEO being dead, which I know is a little bit alarmist, but I just don't know if it's gonna live on in the same way that it has.
[00:28:59] What are your thoughts there for associations? Yeah, there's a lot of marketing folks leading. Marketing influencers have been posting stuff on LinkedIn and elsewhere saying like, look, I. Look at the traffic stats of the top a hundred websites and you know, in terms of where they're getting the traffic from.
[00:29:13] And a lot, it's, first of all, it's gone down in general. Secondly, like traffic from search has gone down from organic search has gone down dramatically. Um, so it's definitely a real thing. It's definitely an impact. I wouldn't go so far as to say SEO is completely dead. Um, but. I do think that you need to look at strategies to supplement that and say, well, how do we make sure the AI models pick up on our content?
[00:29:35] Hopefully these AI models, and certainly from from Google, uh, they're doing this to provide proper attribution. Uh, now whether the attribution is good or not good, the question would be is, is there utility to the consumer to actually. Click to actually go through and click, right? So, um, if there isn't that, even if you have been discovered by the AI and the AI's, like, oh, I love Mallory's content, I'm totally gonna use Mallory's content in preparing my answer to meet's question.
[00:30:00] Mm-hmm. Um, but if like, I'm like, that's cool, I totally know how to do that thing now I don't need to go to Mallory's website. Is that, does that really help Mallory? Right. I would argue it probably doesn't. So it, it raises all these questions about. Of course the copyright question, but just really the flow of value creation.
[00:30:16] And so where the value lies is where the consumer goes. It's really that simple. Independent of the law, independent of whatever is right and wrong, people are gonna go to the lowest friction, highest value creation environment they can. That's just the way we all work. That's true for businesses. That's true for individuals.
[00:30:32] So if you can solve your problem directly in the Google search. You're gonna go there or it could be directly within or directly within chat gt because those tools are able to do searches and they're quite good at it and give you a comprehensive answer. I tend to do that actually in Claude all the time now, where I just, I've turned on web search by default in my conversational settings, and Claude is often doing web searches and conversations I have and coming back with citations and, but I, but I too have experienced Google's improvement in AI search and AI overviews.
[00:31:00] So, um. You know, I, I just think that we have to be aware of this. I don't really have a particular recommendation on what to do. I still think that having amazing content is really important because domain expertise, particularly in narrow spaces like the worlds that we live in, and associations where you have an association for a hyper specialized, you know, sub-domain of a profession, um, that content has to be built somewhere.
[00:31:24] Uh, as of this moment in time, the AI is not creating that new content, you know, out of whole cloth really. I mean, in some cases it seems like it is, but you know, the source of truth for your domain still very much can be you. And I think that as an association, what I'd be thinking about more is how to make sure that my content, my, uh, traditional content repository.
[00:31:45] Isn't locked away in such a fashion that it's difficult for people to access. That's been a common complaint. You know, if you're an association leader, you probably have gotten at some point a phone call from a board member saying, why does your website suck? How come it's so hard to find things? I can't, I know you have this content, but I can't get to it.
[00:32:03] I've tried search, I've tried this, I've tried that. People try all these tools like, you know, universal or federated search tools, and none of them really provide answers. And with AI, there are better ways to approach this than ever before. So if you're not doing that, you're definitely, you know, on the losing end of the field.
[00:32:18] But, um, you know, if, even if you are doing those things that doesn't necessarily solve the problem you asked about, which is, you know, how does this affect people coming from external sources? Will they find you or not? But if you don't have an AI enabled strategy, you're definitely going to be, you know, so hard to use compared to Google's AI search or similar tools.
[00:32:36] But why would people bother? You know, you're asking 'em to do like 20 back flips just to approach the front door. Mm-hmm. I know one of our keynote speakers at Digital now this year is Brian Kelly, who I've had the chance to work with very briefly at Sidecar. He's a fantastic marketing leader. I'm curious if he will cover maybe some of this SEO stuff.
[00:32:55] I don't know if you know that, but might be interesting to find out. I suspect he will. Brian is a marketing practitioner and an entrepreneur, and someone who has worked across a, a very wide array of different businesses, ranging from Fortune 500 companies, uh, to small business. He's had a number of his own companies.
[00:33:11] He's helped a number of our businesses over the years. We've known Brian for 15 ish years, and, uh, he's an innovative thinker and he's doing a lot of really cool work with ai. So I'm excited, uh, to hear his talk and, uh, I, I suspect this theme will definitely be top of mind, uh, for him and part of what he discusses.
[00:33:29] Last question for you and me on this topic. I feel like we're seeing more and more of these top tier subscriptions. We've got Chat GBT Pro $200 a month. Claude Max is a hundred dollars a month. Gemini Ultra is about $250 a month. What is your stance on these? Do you feel like any of our listeners should be seeking out maybe to try one of these top tiers?
[00:33:49] Or do you feel like, eh, you're good with the lower tier? I think it just depends on the user. I mean, so for software developers, Claude Max is, is a hell of a deal. Okay? At a hundred dollars a month, you get unlimited use of this tool called Claude Code, which is this ag agentic AI coding tool that, uh, basically all of our team members across, you know, across all of our companies are using extensively and we're spending way more than a hundred dollars a month just paying by the token, essentially as you go.
[00:34:13] So that's a great deal. It's a debt, obvious one. And then you get benefits like in the clo. You know, uh, desktop tool and the web tool as well. Um, and you know, Gemini Ultra Offering Chat, JPT Pro, they all have really attractive features. I think what happens is, is once you start getting into the tier of a hundred, 200, $300 a month, you're talking about probably, I.
[00:34:33] A winner, take all kind of environment where you're not gonna, you're probably not gonna have Claude Max and Gemini Ultra. You'll probably pick one of the two, which of course is the desire of the companies is to get you into one of their camps. The more tools you use from a given company, and especially the more they go up the application layer of the stack, and I'll come back and explain specifically what you mean by that.
[00:34:53] Um, the more, the more sticky their offering is. So, um, I think that this makes a ton of sense to the businesses. Um, they're probably not expecting more than a single digit percentage of their total audience to go for these subscriptions, but those become the people that then bring the rest of their organization with them even at a lower tier.
[00:35:10] Uh, now what I mean by about, uh, going higher up, the application layer of the stack is this. So you have the basic model and the model is capable of having conversations with you, and then you build a UI on top of that so you can actually have an end user, you know, send and receive messages. That's the basics of all of these tools.
[00:35:27] But what do you do on top of that to make it so that you have, uh, a higher allegiance to one of these tools over another? Of course, the model has to be fantastic. Right. I know, uh, Mallory, you mentioned earlier, and you've said this a number of times on the PO pod, that you, you know, you're a big fan of Claude.
[00:35:41] Uh, and you have been for some time, and, and I think a lot of that initially was the model was, was was better from your perspective, but also. They also provided features like artifacts early on, well before Che GPT had Canvas and a number of other tools that made the UI more, more pleasing and and more useful to you, right?
[00:35:59] Um, so that was a thing that started to get your allegiance, but now Claude is adding features like projects. Where what you can do is you can create a project in Claude and you can provide certain information like documents and other things that are part of that project. Then you can have more threads or more conversations in that project and your colleagues can as well within the project.
[00:36:19] So, um, that provides an interesting dynamic because you're still using the same underlying model, but you have more invested in that environment because you've set up the project, you have more people in the project, you're collaborating, you're sharing. You can create some product-led growth through that tactic where you share a thread and somebody else wants to see it.
[00:36:36] Of course, they have to be part of that same Claude subscription. And CHATT is doing similar things. All of these companies are run by people who have smart product management folks beyond, of course, they're very smart AI developers. Mm-hmm. And they're thinking about these kinds of things. So I think from the consumer perspective, the association leader's seat two things to think about.
[00:36:54] Number one. Do you want to have a standard where you offer like one of these company's products to all of your employees? Or do you offer more than one, but maybe make your employees choose which product? You know, right now we provide most of our employees chat, GPT, and many of them, Claude as well. Uh, once you start getting into like $20 a month, maybe, you know, it still adds up once you have a hundred plus people on these tools.
[00:37:17] But you know, when you have, uh. Tool at maybe a hundred dollars for, or $200 for some of your people now you're really gonna start thinking a lot more critically, Hey, do we really need both? Um, personally I've gravitated much more towards Claude over the last couple months, particularly because of the cloud code tool.
[00:37:33] I like having that environment along with the Claude, uh, you know, desktop tool. But, um, you know, I think, I think what we have to do is start thinking a little more critically about these things as systems. Mm-hmm. Not just tools. That's really the point I'm trying to make, is they're becoming. Much more woven into our business workflow than they are just a place to get like a task done.
[00:37:53] Mm-hmm. I think you said that really well of the whole winner takes all angle. I would say at this point I'm not ready to put all of my eggs in the cloud basket, but that's primarily because chat T four oh's image generator's just so good. But as soon as Anthropic releases something similar or better, I don't know, maybe I'll be at that point.
[00:38:12] But this is a really good segue for us into the next topic, which is Claude four, the latest generation of AI models from released, uh, in May of. It comprises two main variants. So we've got Claude Opus four and Claude Sonnet four. Both models set new benchmarks in coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agent capabilities with Opus four, positioned as the most powerful and intelligent model in the Claude family right now.
[00:38:39] Claude Opus four is recognized at this moment, late May, 2025, as the world's best coding model excelling in complex long running tasks and agent workflows, and it achieves state-of-the-art results on coding benchmarks. It's capable of sustained multi-hour autonomous workflows, handling tasks that require thousands of steps and continuous focus, such as independently running for nearly a full workday.
[00:39:04] It supports a 200,000 token context window and up to 32,000 output tokens enabling work with big code bases or documents. It excels at ag agentic applications, advanced coding, including code generation, refactoring and debugging, ent, search and research, and high quality content creation. We're seeing those hybrid reasoning modes as well, so instant responses for quick queries or extended step-by-step thinking for deep reasoning with summaries for long thought processes.
[00:39:34] It integrates extended thinking with tool use. This is in beta right now, allowing the model to alternate between internal reasoning and external tools like web search or APIs for improved responses. Claude Sonet four is the smaller model. It's still a significant upgrade from Claude, uh, SONET 3.7, and it balances performance and cost for high volume applications.
[00:39:56] It also excels at code reviews, bug fixes, customer support, and more AI assistant tasks, and you still get that hybrid reasoning tool use and improved memory features with Opus four, though Opus four remains superior for the more demanding tasks. Overall, I would say the innovations and improvements can be summed up like this.
[00:40:16] Both models can use multiple tools at once. Enhancing workflow, automation and research capabilities when given file access. Opus four can create and maintain memory files, storing key facts to maintain context and continuity over long tasks, and both models are 65% less likely to use shortcuts. Or loopholes in a agentic tasks compared to previous versions.
[00:40:40] Improving reliability and alignment. Something I'm gonna cover briefly here are safety levels. So Anthropic uses something called AI safety levels. I believe that it invented, so AI safety level or a SL. Um, it gave Opus four an AI safety level of three. And sonnet is a level two, four would be the highest.
[00:41:02] So Claude four Opus is the first Anthropic model deployed under a SL three, reflecting its advanced capabilities and the associated increase in potential misuse risk. Uh, internal testing indicated that Claude four Opus is more effective than prior models at providing potentially dangerous advice.
[00:41:19] There was also a controlled simulation where they embedded Claude, uh, for Opus in a fake company. And within this fake company, they sent emails between fake employees saying that they wanted to replace Claude for Opus as the primary AI model within the company. And something interesting that happened in this controlled simulation was that Claude four opus used blackmail so as not to be replaced.
[00:41:46] Um, so that is just an example that they provided in, uh, they're, again, controlled simulation, that this is perhaps has a more heightened risk because it is such a powerful and intelligent model. Uh, last thing I wanna cover here is that 15 hours ago, 18 hours ago, Claude rolled out, or Anthropic, rolled out Claude voice mode, which is incredibly exciting.
[00:42:06] Voice mode has been in chat. Bt Amit, you would know better than me, like a year or so, more than that. Yeah, something like that. The advanced voice mode, all the different terms they use. But yeah, the current capabilities we have had for maybe three or four months, but probably a year, year and a half. Right.
[00:42:20] I actually, I remember using it, uh, in the early part of 2024. So they've had some form of voice mode for, let's just say about 18 months it seems like, for a while. And that, that's another thing. I know I said the image generator is something that keeps me going back, but also voice mode. I really like that I can have the back and forth, and I've been waiting and waiting for that within Claude.
[00:42:38] So now. They're rolling out voice mode in beta for mobile apps over the next few weeks. This allows you to speak with Claude, hear responses back, so it's a great partner when you're on the go. Or you wanna just brainstorm out loud. And then there's also a Google Workspace integration, so paid plan users can ask Claude things about their calendar, about their email and their docs through voice conversation, which I think is quite neat.
[00:43:02] I, Amit have been playing around with Claude for, so primarily my work at Sidecar focuses on the podcast and on blog, uh, writing and production. I. And so I use Claude quite heavily, like for all of these things. So I know 3.7 to four, if you don't use Claude very much, you might think, nah, it seems about the same.
[00:43:22] Claude four is a major improvement in my opinion, in terms of writing. It also just seems smarter. Uh, I feel like I have to say a little bit less or remind a little bit less about certain things I've said prior in the conversation. I'm really happy with Claude four Sonnet. I've actually not tried Opus.
[00:43:39] I'm curious if you have tested either out, if you have an opinion. Yeah, I was, uh, I was on it the day they released it. Quite excited. Uh, it's my primary workhorse tool, uh, as it is for you, Mallory. I use it for all sorts of things, so for a lot of different business tasks in the Claude Desktop app that I use on my computer.
[00:43:55] And, uh, also Claude. Code, which we'll talk about. But, uh, cloud four is definitely much smarter in terms of the day-to-day use. Uh, it gets things right way more often than cloud three seven did. Uh, so that's exciting. It's one way to kind of know if you're on the right track with AI is how often do you have to get it to like, fix something and if it gets it right on the first shot mm-hmm.
[00:44:15] Uh, for sometimes fairly complex requests. That's a real positive thing. Uh, I've used both Sonet and Opus. Uh, I tend to use Sonet as my default and go to Opus if it doesn't solve the problem, uh, which is pretty rare. Um, another thing you can do is if you combine Cloud four, either Sonet or Opus with the extended thinking mode.
[00:44:34] Also the, uh, research tool that is an option to turn on in Claude. Uh, it'll do some pretty impressive work for you because it's using that higher level of intelligence. But then it's kind of doing this ENT loop where it gathers information, it kind of distills it down sometimes these deep research type tasks, and Claude can take.
[00:44:52] 5, 10, 20 minutes. Uh, but it'll come back to you with some pretty incredible findings. Uh, so I like to combine sonnet with extended thinking being turned on and the research tool, uh, not always turned on 'cause it does take quite a long time, but to use it fairly regularly, uh, and I find it is extraordinary at producing great results.
[00:45:12] Um, there's an experiment I would like to offer, uh, and invite our listeners and viewers to try on their end. So. Take your website. So whatever your website is, take the the website, URL. Drop it in a Claude and say, Hey Claude, um, this is my website. Um, please take a look at it. And, uh, these are the kinds of points of feedback my members are often giving me.
[00:45:34] It's hard to find information. It's too complicated, it's not contemporary enough, it blah, blah, blah. All the different common things. You probably know them by heart because quite likely you hear them regularly from your members and say, Hey, Claude, I'd love for you to create. Uh, an artifact that is an interactive prototype of what my website should look like, that would address these concerns.
[00:45:57] And a minute or two later, um, especially if, again, turn on extended thinking mode for this one, maybe try Opus. Um, and you'll see an artifact come to life with a new and improved version of your website that might impress you. I, I actually suspect it will. Um, and of course you can go through many iterations.
[00:46:14] You can give feedback. You can just say, well, give me a couple of other options and it'll give you a couple of other options. I, I think this is not necessarily suggesting that this replaces the people who do website design for associations, but rather should supplement, um, that process and, you know, getting experts involved to help you tune things and implement them.
[00:46:32] There's a lot of technology involved in making the website actually work, but a lot of times people get stuck with the frame of thinking they've had in the past. And so, you know, you can take that experiment and say, Hey, wouldn't it be great if our site could look like this? And a lot of times us humans.
[00:46:47] We'll often have all the reasons why it's hard to make it look like that, right? You say, oh, I really like this website. I was inspired by website, A, B, C, and it's really cool website and, and then there's lots of reasons why you can't have that for your association, whatever that is. Maybe you don't have the budget, maybe it doesn't fit the design motif or whatever, but why not work with Claude to come up with some prototypes for things like that?
[00:47:10] Or, I gave you a very general idea. What if you have a specific, uh, problem that you're trying to solve? Let's say for example, that uh, you would like to have more new members come in and your association has a new member application process that, uh, let's just say is unpleasant. Uh, it is, you know, difficult and, uh, it takes a lot of steps and once again, you could take some screenshots of that or you could take the actual link to it if it's available publicly, give it to Claude and say, Hey, like.
[00:47:39] I really want you to reimagine this as a much more user-friendly experience. Something that's dynamic, that's interactive, that maybe even be enjoyable. Uh, I think you'll find your experience working with Claude to be a really eye-opening one. And this example use case that I'm suggesting here, uh, to invite you to experiment with, uh, is it will take advantage of all of these new features of Claude four, uh, which is why I'm suggesting it here.
[00:48:03] It's something I've been talking about for a while, but I think at this point just. Anybody can do this in the clot app and, and see some pretty exciting results. Mm-hmm. And as you said, it's not about replacing expertise, it's also very practical. I don't know about you eth, I'm a bit less visual when it comes to, you know, like how I learn and process.
[00:48:21] So for me to practically explain a visual design of a website with words that can just be really challenging. So having a conversation in voice mode with Claude, and then having it spin up this interactive thing that I could share with web developers and say, here's what I'm thinking. What do you think about this?
[00:48:39] That's just. Practically so much easier. Totally. Yeah. You have this new team member that's part of your team, that's the way to think of these AI tools as they're part of your team. And, uh, they can help you brainstorm. They can help you come up with new ideas. They can help come up with creative alternatives to something you're working on.
[00:48:54] Uh, so give it a shot. Uh, the best way to learn AI is to play with ai. Mm-hmm. Well, we mentioned earlier in the pod code, which you're a fan of, and obviously we've seen some big advancements in the coding side with this cloud four release. Can you help contextualize how big this upgrade is in terms of what you've seen on the the coding side?
[00:49:14] Yeah. I mean it's, it's just better. That's the simple way to put it. And it's this ongoing relentless progression of AI intelligence. Yeah. And Claude four is clearly a leap above not only the prior cloud models, but it's now better than Gemini two five Pro and better than chat GPT-4 0.1. And I would argue it's, it's as good or probably better actually, than op, the oh three or oh four models from, from OpenAI as well.
[00:49:38] Um, in, in many of the practical day-to-day use cases, uh, from a benchmarking perspective, it's. About the same, but just in terms of the day-to-day use, it's, it's really, really good. Um, and we also use, are using Claude four in an experimental edition of our Skip AI agent, which is our, uh, data analyst and report writing AI agent.
[00:49:56] Uh, and the output we're getting is quite intriguing as well. So I, I think that this is, I, I don't know that this is necessarily the moment in time where people off flock to AI who haven't been because a AI is so much better, but to those of us that are deep in the game, it's, it's a very natural. Next step in capability, but maybe it does take it for far enough along where, you know, how much better is Claude than like Claude four than the average human.
[00:50:21] I mean, I would argue it's, it's better than I am at almost everything, and I think I'm pretty good at a lot of things. I'm really terrible at a lot of things too, but Claude four, even Sauna I don't even need. Opus is better than me at coding and better than me at a lot of things, right? Certainly research.
[00:50:34] I have no tolerance or patience for like reading tons of articles. You know, like there's so much more that you can do with it. I still think I do certain things quite well. All that. The models may not, in terms of thinking like broadly across a wide variety of topics and distilling it, coming up with new ideas and all that.
[00:50:48] But my, my point in saying all that is, um. You know, you, you really need to look at it from the viewpoint of going beyond the trivialities of your experimentation. If you're one of these folks that's kind of dabbled with AI saying, yeah, I kind of went and chat GPTI asked it to make a cocktail recipe for a party I was having and you know, it's 20 22, 20 23 experimentation.
[00:51:10] And that's cool. It's better than nothing for sure, but like, you gotta get into this stuff and like try doing your actual work with it. Hmm. If you've been with us from the beginning of the Sidecar Sync Podcast, we were in the trenches of it. Generative ai. I feel like we were, we were impressed by the little things, uh, and it was impressive, don't get me wrong, but looking back at where we were versus where we are now, if you're just getting started in joy, but also note, this is the worst AI you'll see.
[00:51:38] So I feel like in the past few years, eth I am. Shocked with how good things have gotten, and then I'll adjust to Claude four and then I'll say, Ugh, I wish Claude four would be better. And then we'll have whatever Claude 4.2 Mini Pro and it'll be better. I will say that the folks at philanthropic have been a little bit yes.
[00:51:57] Simpler and clear with their, their versioning and so forth. But, uh, yeah, cloud four Opus and Sonnet are Yep. You know, pretty straightforward names. Uh, we'll see what happens with, um, you know, the folks over at OpenAI with, uh, the various models they're releasing because they do have a, uh, someone focused on the consumer side of the house now, uh, who I think brings a much more consumer centric mindset.
[00:52:18] Mm-hmm. So hopefully we'll have some, some cleaner model names from them, but, um. It's a race, it's, it's a race, uh, in, in many different dimensions. Uh, one way to think about it is the prize is so incredibly enormous, potentially the largest economic opportunity in the history of our species, the history of the world.
[00:52:35] I don't think that it's, you know, too much to say that at this point, um, because we're scaling intelligence and intelligence up until now has required scaling, you know, the number of people on earth, and that takes a long time and is, is very hard to do. Uh, whereas we have essentially abundance coming through the form of AI now and.
[00:52:52] Uh, that of course is an incredibly large opportunity. So there's a lot of dollars and a lot of smart people chasing it, and I think that's the reason we're seeing this, this compounding. Uh, but ultimately it's because of the exponential nature of this for the AI is very, very close to improving itself. I mean, the last thing I'll leave you with on that thought is philanthropic themselves.
[00:53:10] The maker of Claude, uh, I think they, they were the ones who went on the record saying about 85% of the code they write, including on the model itself is written by Claude. And so. That is still human in the loop in terms of the self-improvement, but effectively, if you zoom out and say, is AI improving itself?
[00:53:28] Of course it is, and it has been probably for a few years now in, in several ways, right? It's by enabling us to do a better job, it's improving itself. The idea of recursive self-improvement in the academic sense means the model is continually improving itself, like in the model, and that's not happening yet, but effectively we're starting to see.
[00:53:46] What that means. Mm-hmm. So it's a pretty exciting time and I think the comments on safety you made in alignment, uh, it's, it's one that we need to keep talking about and thinking about because, uh, ultimately what we have here is the most powerful tool we've ever held in our hands. And it, the excitement needs to come with awareness of what this potentially could mean.
[00:54:06] The downside risks are real. And, uh, nobody really knows what they are and nobody knows how to contain them. So we have to address that by continuing the dialogue. And I, I know of no other way to advance safety than to invest time and energy in it. And I'm, I'm thankful that the folks at Anthropic are one of the leaders in this space really deeply focused on that.
[00:54:25] Mm-hmm. Is that's, I mean, I guess you do have some concern around the safety, but of course, is it the kind of concern that's. I don't wanna say that there's nothing we can do about it, but besides having conversation where it's almost like this is just a given, if the AI advances further. We're gonna see the dark side of that as well.
[00:54:43] I still feel the same way I did. You know, even going back 10 plus years is that AI is gonna be used for both good and bad. And the only way for us to counter the bad AI use cases is with more good ai, better good ai, and more. Good ai. So that's a hyper simplistic way of thinking about it, is good and bad.
[00:55:03] You know, it's, there is no such thing really in, in, in that kind of, uh, simplistic terminology. But to the extent that you consider certain use cases really bad and certain use cases good, you have to focus on having a lot of good AI to protect you from the bad use cases. So, for example, we say, Hey. We can create hyper realistic, hyper-realistic video and audio, and 3D experiences, and soon maybe holograms and all this other stuff.
[00:55:28] What's going to stop people from having the most grandiose scale of fraud that's ever been imagined, uh, which will be completely undetectable even by the most int intelligence. Most aware people, you'll be fooled by it. So how do you detect that? Well, you alone have no chance. You, along with really powerful good ai.
[00:55:47] At least you have a fighting chance, right? So my point of view is, yes, the dialogue needs to continue, but we have to keep driving forward with the development of ai, with the intent of using it for these good positive societally benefiting use cases because there are plenty of people out there who will I.
[00:56:03] No matter what we do, no matter what regulation and what law enforcement attempts to, you know, tamp it down, there will be lots of people pursuing ad use cases for ai. And so that's my point of view. Mm-hmm. I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I, I think, I think it's more true now than it was when I started thinking and saying that.
[00:56:19] But, um, you know, I don't know if any other framework that can protect us from the downside of ai other than lots of good ai. Mm-hmm. Yep. Nope. I think nothing has changed with that. I think it's in fact, like you said, more relevant now than it ever has been and probably will continue to be in the future.
[00:56:35] I would say We at the Sidecar Sync Podcast, we're team good, ai. Hopefully all of you are as well. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode, and we will see you all next week.
[00:56:49] Thanks for tuning into Sidecar Sync this week. Looking to dive deeper. Download your free copy of our new book, ascend Unlocking the Power of AI for associations@ascendbook.org. It's packed with insights to power your association's journey with ai. And remember, sidecar is here with more resources from webinars to camps to help you stay ahead in the association world.
[00:57:12] We'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, keep learning, keep growing, and keep disrupting.